He climbed out, leaving the keys, but taking his guns.
“Has she had issues before?”
“She’s had some tight spots she’s squeezed out of. But she’s only been hurt a handful of times. And never seriously. I’m sure she has played it all down for me, though, so who knows.”
Yeah, I got that impression from her too. She didn’t want him to interfere, but she also didn’t want him to worry. And, maybe underneath that all, she also didn’t want him to see her as incapable. It couldn’t be easy when your old man was good at everything.
“What was the last job she did before this current one?”
“Worked a deal between a cartel boss and his wife who changed the codes to his safe before she left because he was keeping her dog from her out of spite.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. It ain’t all guns and action sequences in the broker game.”
“Guess not,” I agreed. “This is yours?” I asked when we approached an ancient red pickup truck with the metal rusted around the wheel wells and paint so faded it was almost white in spots.
“Just rebuilt her engine. Should get another four-hundred-thousand miles out of her.”
With that, we both climbed in.
“Where am I headed?”
“Miami for now. It’s where she was taken from but we don’t have a direction yet,” I told him. “Shit,” I said when my phone registered two missed calls.
“What?”
“My president,” I said, shooting off a text so he didn’t worry.
“How long you been a biker?”
“Not long. Still technically prospecting. Me and my brother.”
“You the oldest?”
“By about a decade.”
“Club let you stop being the parent, huh?”
“Something like that. But not entirely,” I said, a little put off by his ability to read the situation so easily.
“He’ll always be the little kid to some extent, and you the one who’s gotta protect him.”
“Yeah.”
“Know that feeling well.”
“Noa didn’t mention an uncle.”
“She didn’t have one. My brother, Noah, died overseas right before she was born.”
“Sorry to hear that.” But it also gave Noa’s name a lot more meaning than ‘her old man probably wanted a boy.’
“My advice: no matter how much he hates it, keep breathing down his neck. Shoulda talked my brother out of following me into the service.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Yet,” he said, sighing. “And I shoulda talked my girl out of this career path too.”
