Page 29 of Property of the Bikers

He’s comfortable in silence in a way that most people aren’t.

“Reeve picked up a new vehicle on the rural road feed this morning,” he says, without particular inflection. “Different plates than the two from last week. Clean registration.”

I chew and look at the mountains. “How many does that make?”

“Three distinct vehicles over seven days. Different plates, different makes, different times of day.” He drinks his coffee. “Same road. Same slow pattern.”

“He’s mapping the patrol rotation,” I say.

“That’s what Reeve thinks.”

“Viktor doesn’t move until he knows the gaps. He’ll run surveillance for as long as he needs to before he tries anything physical.” I look at the last of the burrito in my hand. “He’s patient. It’s the thing people underestimate about him. They see the money and the network, and they think that’s the threat. The patience is the threat.”

Jax is quiet for a moment.

“What was it like?” he says. “Before you found the folder. Living with someone who was building that while you were in the same apartment.”

I think about how to answer that honestly.

“Ordinary,” I say. “That’s the part that stays with me. It was completely ordinary. He made coffee in the mornings. He asked about my OB appointments. He sat at the edge of the bed when I was sick in the first trimester, and he was steady and calm and present.” I look at the window. “The ordinary was real. That’s what I keep coming back to. It wasn’t performance. He wasn’t pretending to be a normal husband while secretly building an elimination plan. He was both things at the same time without any contradiction between them.”

“That’s what makes him dangerous,” Jax says.

“That’s what makes him dangerous,” I agree.

He nods and looks at his coffee cup and turns it slowly in his hands, and there’s a moment where I almost ask him something I’ve been sitting on.

The thing he said about the hospital administrator that he shouldn’t have known, but I look at his face, and I put it away again.

Not yet.

“Church voted last night,” he says.

“I know. Maya told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That it passed. That it wasn’t unanimous.” I look at him. “That the men who voted for it voted for the club’s position, not for me specifically.”

He looks up. “She said that?”

“She said it in different words. But that’s what she meant.”

He holds my eyes for a moment and then looks back at his cup. He doesn’t confirm or deny it, which is confirmation enough.

I finish the burrito, fold the paper bag, and set it on the nightstand. The coffee is decaf again, which I’m making peace with, and I hold it in both hands, looking at the room.

My vitamins on the nightstand. My boots beside the door. My gray sweater on the chair. The piece of paper with four phone numbers in the open pocket of my bag in the corner.

A week.

I try to run the clean version of this in my head, the one where the logic is simple and the terms are clear. I’m here because Viktor wants me dead. I stay because leaving at seven months pregnant with stress-induced hypertension endangers the baby.

The compound is secure. The men are capable. The arrangement is operational, not personal, and I understand its terms and accept them because I have no better option.

Then I think about Cade walking the fence line when Ghost was available to do it. I think about Jax in this chair every morning for seven days. I think about Reeve standing in the doorway when he brought the phone back, asking if I needed anything, which was a question he absolutely did not need to ask and asked anyway. I think about lying awake at two in the morning, listening to footsteps stop outside my door.

I set the mug down.