“Can I bring anything?” she said, glancing at the chaos of her living room.
“Just you,” I said, then added, “and the dog.” It almost made her smile. I hesitated and then said, “Pack a bag, not a suitcase. Pronto.”
When Emily was finished, I slung my cut over my t-shirt and shrugged the weight onto my shoulders. Emily stared at the patches, the bold red and bone-white, the words that marked me as an animal even before I’d proven it a hundred times over. She touched the Secretary patch, the motion a cross between a question and a warning.
“You going to tell me what’s really happening?” she said, low.
I glanced at the window, then at the locked chain on the door. “We know who left the note. Damron’s got proof. Sultans are planning something big—maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. They want us off the board. You’re a pressure point.”
She looked at her feet, then back at me. “So I’m just a hostage, then?”
I shook my head. “You’re leverage, yeah. But you’re not a hostage. Not with me.”
She let it hang in the air, then scooped up the dog’s bag, slung it over her shoulder, and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
The walk to the bike was silent except for Sergeant’s toenails on the stairwell and the distant grind of a garbage truck three streets over. The lot was empty except for myHarley and Emily’s Honda. I did a quick sweep, eyes tracing every shadow. Emily and Sergeant climbed into her car, and we left.
The ride to the clubhouse was short, but I took the long way, dodging strip malls and the 24-hour donut place.
The sky was turning a lighter blue, the kind that makes you feel hungover even if you weren’t drinking. I pulled into the alley behind the clubhouse, killed the engine, and watched for a beat. The door was already propped open, a sliver of light cutting through the cinderblock gloom. Two patched members flanked the entrance, hands in their pockets, eyes on everything. I recognized Nitro’s twitch, the way his fingers drummed his thigh even when he was standing still. He nodded to me, then to Emily, and didn’t bother to hide his surprise at seeing her there.
We went inside, Sergeant leading. The hall was thick with old smoke and the pine-sol tang of a hasty mop job. Augustine waited in the meeting room, tapping a knife against the table. Brick was there too, hunched over his phone, probably texting his dealer.
Damron stood at the head of the table, arms folded, eyes like two chips of winter. He gestured us in, then motioned to the seat next to him. Emily hesitated at the threshold, her whole body braced for an ambush.
“It’s okay,” I said, hand at her back. “They’re not here for you. Not like that.”
She sat, Sergeant at her feet, the dog’s eyes flicking from face to face, already cataloguing the threats.
Damron didn’t waste time. “Glad you made it,” he said, voice pitched low. “We start in five. Everyone’s coming in hot. Shit’s about to get Biblical.”
Emily looked at me, then at Damron, then back at the dog. I watched the way her jaw set, the way her hands clenched in her lap. She was scared, but she wasn’t going to run.
That was the thing about her. Even when you gave her an out, she stayed. Even when the fire got close enough to burn, she just pulled the dog a little tighter and waited for the next order.
I leaned in, lips at her ear, and whispered, “We’ll get through this. I promise.”
She didn’t answer. But her hand found mine under the table, fingers interlocked, and held on until the room filled with the rest of the club, and the war planning started in earnest.
***
The war room was a long, narrow box of a space, walls packed with the history of the Bloody Scythes, every square inch covered in dusty glass and the faces of men who’d either aged out, been locked up, or ended up in the ground. The oldest photos were yellowed, the frames mismatched. Some showed guys in desert camo, arm-in-arm with dead-eyed grunts, the patches on their vests not yet faded from sun and sweat. Others caught a different flavor of battle—burnouts in the desert, booze-soaked cookouts, birthday cakes with a single candle stabbed through the top. There were plaques for the fallen, their club names engraved in gothic, impossible-to-pronounce fonts. I’d memorized every one before I’d ever gotten patched.
Emily trailed me down the corridor, her steps half a click behind mine, Sergeant marching point with her head up and her tail down, scanning for threats. The stares started before we hit the meeting room. First, from Gordo, who managed the garage; he looked Emily up and down with the same eye he’d use to assess a suspicious carburetor. Next was Chino, covered in grease and ink, his hands crossed in front of his chest as he sized up what it meant for a civilian—and a woman, at that—to be brought into the inner sanctum. Neither said shit, but the air changed, the oxygen getting tighter with every step.
I kept a hand on Emily’s back, steering her through the bottleneck. My thumb pressed against her spine, a signal she didn’t need but one I couldn’t stop giving.
We stepped into the main room, where a pair of battered couches flanked a homemade table the size of a coffin. Damron was already seated at the head, boots on the floor, arms folded, his cut a banner of stitched scars and rank. There was a whiskey bottle on the table, half-empty despite the hour. He didn’t look up right away—he let the power settle in, let every man in the room decide for himself what came next.
Nitro was there, sitting as close to Damron as the table allowed, his buzzed scalp gleaming, the tattoo on his neck still raw and red. Augustine circled the perimeter, never quite sitting, using a folding knife to shave dirt from under his nails, his eyes darting from the window to the hallway to me. Brick nursed a double shot of brown, his face already flushed, his phone on the table but screen down—a rare display of respect.
Emily paused just inside the door, as if she’d hit a physical wall. I caught her hand and squeezed once before guiding her to the seat behind mine. She sat, posture perfect, both hands in her lap. I positioned myself so that every eye in the room had to pass over me to get to her, a move I learned from Damron but would never admit.
Sergeant curled up under the table, her breathing even but low. The men watched this, too, the dog’s presence as telling as a gun on the table.
Damron’s gaze finally lifted, sweeping the room like a searchlight. He landed on Emily, eyes narrowing in a calculation I’d seen him use on rival bosses and cops with questionable motives. Then he looked at me, the message clear: your responsibility, your problem.
He cleared his throat, and the entire room leaned in.
