“One hour.”
Relief loosened something tight in my chest.
“Thank you.”
He nodded once before steering the younger officer back towards the waiting area. Not leaving entirely. Just backing off. The second they were out of earshot the tension around me shifted again. Different this time.
“He listened to you,” Fury muttered, sounding vaguely suspicious of it.
“He used to arrest half of us,” Baz added darkly.
“That’s because you commit crimes, Barry,” I answered automatically before I could stop myself.
For one stunned second, nobody spoke. Then Chaos, or maybe it was Carnage, barked out a laugh. Loud enough it echoed down the corridor. Even Fury smirked. And beside me, Indie shook his head slowly, something almost fond flickering across his exhausted face.
“You’re fitting in around here far too well, Doc.”
*****
“She’s asleep now,” Emmie muttered, the stairs creaking behind her as we watched her descend into the lounge.
The house was small, modest. Tidy beyond an inch of its life. A place for everything and everything safely in it. There hadn’t been a pair of shoes in view until we all walked in. Now there was a line of thick-soled boots in the small hallway at the front door, and a stack of hoodies and jumpers piled on the end of the banister.
“Sophie, pet. Give me a hand with these?” Mamma Dot called from the kitchen at the back of the lounge. “Put those sausage rolls on a plate for me, lass,” she instructed, pointing to a stack of white plates at the end of the counter when I stepped in behind the woman commandeering the oven.
The kitchen smelled like a restaurant. Onions, garlic, hot sausage meat, black pepper, the sweetness of pastry. She’d cooked up a feast in the middle of a storm, and my stomach already growled angrily.
I placed the plate on the kitchen table, gently moving back Suzy’s sewing machine and the material she had been working on. Blue and white, a tiny arm stuck out at one angle, and I swallowed hard, a fresh wave of emotion washing over me.
“They know what they are having,” I whispered to myself.
“Aye, pet. Just the other day, at the last scan, he finally let them see him. Just before all this happened. At least he got to find out he was having a son.”
A hot tear fell down my cheek, fresh and angry, tracing the same path as the ones still stuck to my skin with salt. I’d never felt pain like I had today. Even when my mother went into the care home, when she started to forget who I was. It didn’t feel like this. This was almost too much to bear.
“Sophie?” Mamma Dot broke the thoughts escalating in my brain. “Have you heard from Reap, yet?”
“No. He’s not checked in at all.”
She muttered something I couldn’t hear and then stared at the clock. I followed her gaze. 3.30am and here we were in a kitchen cooking a buffet for the bikers that just kept coming. Prospects had arrived now, and some others that Mamma Dot said were from a brand-new prospect chapter.
“Indie! Fury! Get in here,” Mamma Dot called with more authority than the president and vice president put together.
“Mam?” Fury answered, scooping his long dark hair up onto his head like he was already expecting to be given a job.
“You heard from Reap?”
The men looked at each other.
“I’ll send some prospects to find him and bring him back here,” Indie answered, flashing me a reassuring smile as Mamma Dot handed me a plate piled high with pizza slices.
“He’ll not be far, pet. But he should be here with all of us.” She patted my shoulder reassuringly as I turned toward the table.
Something inside me didn’t feel reassured. It felt tight, anxious, building.
“Lads, grub’s up!” she bellowed suddenly.
The men answered from the lounge, voices raised slightly, a gruff rumble and as they formed a queue for the kitchen table.
