Page 5

“Breaker’s due back when?” Leo asked.

I didn’t look at him. “Tomorrow. Memphis.”

“Right. Memphis.” He nodded too fast. “And he’s riding with…”

“Nobody. Solo.”

Leo’s mouth closed. He should have known that. The list was posted in the common room every morning. I updated it myself. Black marker on whiteboard, clear as anything. Breaker, Memphis, solo, return tomorrow. The kid had been on gate duty for six weeks straight. He’d read the sheet six times a day.

I went back to my count.

The compound spread behind me in the fading light. Member houses to the west, dark shapes against the tree line. Prospect row to the east, the townhomes quiet. The clubhouse threw warm light through its front windows. Somebody had lit the fire pit near the pool. I could smell woodsmoke from where I stood.

I’d built this. Not the compound, but the system. The rotation. The headcount. The gate schedule that ran like clockwork because I made damn sure it did.

It was a better use of whatever I had. I ran numbers instead of running code. I kept men safe by knowing where they were.

The name had stuck. Patch. I answered to it. After twenty years it sounded more like me than Lincoln ever had.

I checked my watch. Yankee would radio when he hit the county line. Fox would want the headcount before Church at eight.

Leo had settled some. His hands were still. He’d stopped fidgeting with the button. The kid was learning. Slow, but learning. Eighteen months was a long Prospect run. Either the club was testing him or they hadn’t decided yet. I wasn’t in that conversation. My job ended at the gate.

I looked at the lot one more time. The bikes sat in their rows. The tire ruts held the last light. The clubhouse windows glowed. Behind me, the compound breathed. Families in their houses. Brothers in the common room. Kids somewhere, probably by the fire pit, somebody’s wife watching them from the porch.

I was forty-nine years old. Silver threaded through the dark at my temples. My hands were scarred and steady. My knee talked when the weather turned. I carried a trauma kit in my saddlebag I never opened. The reading glasses lived in my cut. I pretended they were someone else’s.

I was content. By every measure I used, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

The dusk settled into dark. The lot lights came on. I gave Leo the nod that meant he was clear to lock the gate behind the next bike in. He straightened his shoulders and stood a little taller. The kid wanted it bad. I could see it in the set of his jaw.

I turned toward the clubhouse. The headcount was done.

The night would run the way nights ran. Predictable. Controlled. The way I’d built it to run.

* * *

My phone went off halfway to the clubhouse steps.

The ringtone was the default. I hadn’t changed it in twenty years. No reason to. Nobody called unless something was wrong. I pulled the phone from my pocket and pressed it to my ear.

“Patch.”

Brazil’s voice came through in pieces. Fractured. Breathing hard. The sound of a man driving fast with one hand on the wheel and blood on the seat.

“Freak took a round. Through the shoulder. County road handoff east of Benton. Nobody sanctioned it.” A breath. The engine noise behind him told me he was pushing eighty. “It’s dark, the blood’s dark…”

“Where exactly?”

“County 47. Mile marker 12. Heading south toward the junction.” Another breath. Harder. “I’ve got pressure on it. Rag from the truck. Not holding great.”

“Conscious?”

“Yeah. Talking. Color’s shit. Breathing’s fast.”

I was already moving back toward the gate. My free hand found Dread’s number in my contacts. I hit call. The phone rang. Voicemail. I called again. Voicemail.

Dread was a thousand miles away on a beach somewhere with Katy Reece. Genuinely off-call for the first time in twenty years. The man had earned it. The timing was spectacular.