I ride back up to the house, ready to see my family again.
I handout the pie and pull up a chair next to Sav and put my arm around her. EJ sits across from us and eats his pie The afternoon carries on with EJ and Savannah, easy and warm. I keep looking at them, smiling, happy, together, and I don't want to have the conversation I need to have with Sav.
But I need to have it.
EJ goes to bed at eight, worn out from the day, and I read him half a story before he's gone. I come back downstairs and Sav is in the kitchen washing up the dinner dishes, which she didn't have to do. She looks up when I come in.
"Hey," she says. "Good day?"
"Yeah." I pull out a chair at the table. "Come and sit with me for a minute."
She dries her hands, comes over and sits down to look at me. She knows by my face that this isn't nothing.
"I need to tell you something," I say. "I'm not going to tell you the details because club business stays in church. But I need you to know enough to keep yourself safe."
She waits. She doesn't rush me and she doesn't fill the silence. I love that about her.
"The men who shot EJ. They're not gone. They went quiet after we raided them, but they'll regroup and come back. That's confirmed now. We're working on finding them before they can rebuild properly, and we will. But right now, there's a window where they're out there and we don't have eyes on them yet."
Sav sits with this. No panic. No immediate questions to manage her own feelings. She just takes it in, and I watch her do it.
"How long is the window?"
"Few weeks. Maybe a bit less."
"And in those weeks, they could come back?"
"It's possible. Less likely than it will be once they've rebuilt. But it's possible."
"What do you need from me?"
The question is so clean. No drama around it, just straight to the practical thing, and it's one of the reasons she's the person she is.
"You go to your surgery in town to work. You're out of the compound. I need you paying attention. Bikes you don't recognize parked nearby. Someone watching the building from across the street. Anyone who comes through the door and gives you a feeling you can't explain. You trust that feeling. And you call me before you call anyone else."
She nods. "Okay. What do I do if something happens and I can't call first? If someone's already inside?"
I reach into my jacket and put my phone on the table. "I've already got my number in Millie's phone. I'm putting a shortcut on yours too. One press, no unlocking, nothing. Just press it and I'm on my bike."
I take her phone to set it up and hand it back. She looks at it.
"How long?"
"Four minutes from the compound gate. Less if I'm not careful about the speed limit."
She turns the phone over in her hands. "Is this what it's always like? There's always something like this in the background?"
I think about how to answer that honestly. I owe her that.
"There's always something in the background," I say. "Most of the time it's quiet and it stays there. This is louder than usual because it's fresh and because they went after a child, which means we're not letting it go without a proper answer. But yeah. There's always something." I hold her eyes. "If that's not something you can live with, I need to know that now. I'd rather hear it now than lose you to it later."
She's quiet. I let her be quiet.
"I'm a doctor," she says finally. "Something is always happening. Someone is always in the worst moment of their life and I'm the person standing between them and it getting worse. That's my whole job." She looks at me. "What I'm not used to is having someone four minutes away."
Something in my chest loosens.
"You've got that now."
