"¿Me oyes? Volveré. Lo juro por mi madre."
She's crying. She's saying please. She's saying it in English and then Spanish and then something else, and behind me, a truck door slams somewhere out in the dark.
I take my hand off the door.
And I walk out ofLa Nadawith a stranger's notebook against my chest, a key I can't identify, and my mother's name still in my mouth.
The desert takes me, cold and black and enormous and mine.
I count my steps.
An old habit of mine, but I’ll need to remember this later. All of it.
CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
Rooster
Four-forty in the morning and there's ice on the water in the dog bowl by the garage door.
I break it with my thumb.
The dog's not mine. She’s the club’s, I guess.
She started coming around when Hope was born and Ruby started leaving food out, and now there's a bowl, and someone has to break the ice in it on these frigid mornings.
She's not up yet. It’s too cold.
One light on in the whole club, and it's the one I turned on.
I need coffee first, then I can deal with the bikes.
Six of them are under the overhang, frost on every seat. I move each one out and back so nothing seizes.
Python's first because Python's is the one that'll fight me.
Zorro's after.
Doom's is clean enough to eat off, and I take an extra second with it.
There are boots on gravel behind me around five. "You do that every damn morning?"
Compass, hood up, hands pulled into his sleeves.
"Yep."
"Why?"
I set Doom's bike on its stand and step off it. "They're cold."
"They're bikes."
"They're cold bikes." I go past him. "Coffee's on."
He follows me in because the kitchen's warm and he's twenty-six.
Chairs are up on the tables in the main room.
