Page 43 of Bram

“Where’s Sally?” Rusty said.

The Colonel stepped sideways, only the fence between him and Rusty. “I know you think she belongs to you,” he said. “But I’ve made other arrangements.”

“You touch her…”

“You mean the way I did Emma?” He turned, a clean pivot, and signaled to his men. They fell in behind him, perfect parade line. I watched them file back into the limo, each one scanning our yard, hands never far from the hardware.

When the car pulled away, nobody said a word. The dust hung in the air, heavy, blocking out the sun.

Rusty waited until the taillights were gone before speaking.

“You should have let me kill him,” he said. “You owe me that.”

I shook my head. “He’s waiting for us to crack.” I nodded down the street. “There’s an unmarked Barstow PD cruiser down the street, watching every move.”

“Fuck,” Rusty murmured.

I looked at the gate, then at the clubhouse. I could see the shape of a body in the window, the curtain moving just enough to betray the watcher.

“Nobody in or out,” I said. “If someone so much as sneezes, I want to know about it.”

Rusty only nodded, still pissed. I didn’t blame him. I still needed to make up for Millie’s murder. The Colonel belonged to me regardless of what he’d done to anyone else.

The yard emptied like the aftermath of a funeral—nobody wanted to be the last one standing around the casket, not even the hard cases. Most of the men drifted back inside, eyes scanning the perimeter one last time for threat, but really it was to avoid catching mine. They didn’t want to know what was coming next.

I stood there, arms crossed, waiting for the static in my blood to burn off. Rusty stayed beside me, his silhouette knife-edged against the sun, both of us staring at the road where the limo had disappeared.

That’s when the door of the clubhouse slammed. Julie stepped out, blinking into the desert glare, her hair unbrushed and wild, face set in a mask so cold it could’ve iced the steel railings. She’d been told to stay inside, to keep Emma inside with her, to let the men handle the part of the day that might end in a body count. But Julie didn’t give a fuck about orders—she never had.

She walked to the top of the stairs and stopped, shoulders back, hands loose at her sides. She wasn’t holding a weapon, but her whole posture was like a loose canon.

Her voice carried over the gravel and heat. “He’s gone, right?”

“Gone for now,” I said. “He’ll be back.”

She squinted at the horizon, lips pressed flat. Her arms never moved. For a second, I thought she might spit, just to punctuate the silence.

“He’s never going to stop,” she said.

“That’s how it works with fathers,” I told her. “You know that better than I do.”

She smiled, if you could call it that. “You’re wrong. I know how it works with men like him.”

There was something in her eyes then—a flash of green shot through with black. You could tell she was playing a tape in her head, running through every conversation she’d ever had with the Colonel, every threat, every impossible demand.

“He’ll go around you,” she said. “He always does.”

“He can try,” I said.

Her gaze flicked to Rusty, then back to me, then to the gate. “Emma’s asleep,” she said. “She woke up three times in the night. Doesn’t remember half of it, and the other half is all screaming.”

I didn’t have anything for that. I just nodded. Rusty’s jaw ticked. The Colonel and I needed to finish this thing and soon.

Julie started down the steps, bare feet finding the cool cracks between the sunbaked planks. “If you want to keep her safe, you need to end it,” she said. “Don’t wait for him to bring the war here.”

“I’m not waiting,” I said. “I’m baiting.”

She was almost to me now, close enough to smell her sweat and the cheap soap from the shower. She stopped, looked up at me with those impossible eyes.