He picks up on the second ring. "Yeah."
"Note on my windshield. Hampton off the interstate. He's tracking her."
There’s a long quiet on his end. "Bring her home."
"Tomorrow morning. Won't drive through the panhandle in the dark with a tail."
"Where is she?"
"With me."
"You stay with her, Spur. Eyes on her until you cross my property line."
"Yes, Prez."
"If anything happens?—"
"With all due respect, Prez, if anything happens, I’ll fuckin’ handle it."
"Good." He hangs up.
I put the phone in my back pocket. Look at Dakota standing in the middle of a rented room with the rain coming down on the parking lot outside the window and a note in her hand that says I can't watch her every second, and I make a decision in my body before I make it in my head.
I'm going to find this man, and I'm going to put him in the ground.
Whatever it costs me with Phantom.
Whatever it costs me with the club.
Whatever it costs me with whatever is left of the man I have been trying to be for the last decade.
She's mine to protect.
I haven't said it. She doesn't know it. The club doesn't know it. Phantom doesn't even know it.
But it's true.
And somewhere in the country between the Tri-State Fair and the highway home, a man who has been watching her for who knows how long has just walked into the last week of his life.
He doesn't know it yet either.
He will.
* * *
I have the adjoining room door open all the way.
I'm sitting in the chair by the window of my room with the lights off and the rain is coming down hard.
There’s a beer I haven't opened on the table beside me that I can’t break myself to open yet.
Dakota's in her room. She’s been in the shower for fifteen minutes.
Then I hear the water cut off, and the sound of her moving around her room, and the smaller sounds of her getting into bed.
The TV comes on low. Some show I don't recognize. White noise.
After a while the TV goes off, then she's in the doorway of the adjoining door.
