Page 76 of Colt
— Colt —
Dutch was waiting for me the next morning. “Need your head in the game,” he said. “Got a run. Not Louisville—that’s still coming. Portland. Referral from the distribution network. One facility, day and a half. I want to see how you run it before we move on the big one.”
“Holden?”
“Already confirmed.” He looked at me the way he got when he was thinking something but waiting to see if I’d say it first. “She and the boys could stay here while you’re gone,” he said. “Easier to keep eyes on.”
I felt it land before I understood it—the shape of something I’d spent years not letting myself think about. A run. A compound. Coming back to nothing.
Dutch saw it. “We’re not them, brother.”
I knew that. My gut didn’t.
“Rotation at Betty’s,” I said. “Two at the house. Someone on school escort, both ways.”
He nodded once. “Done.”
“And you’ll check in?”
“I’ll check in.” He pushed off the doorframe. “Go see her before you leave.”
“I will.”
“Go.”
?
Lilac took it better than I expected.
I told her that afternoon, standing in Betty’s kitchen while she was cutting vegetables for dinner and the boys were in the backyard. She didn’t stop cutting.
“Okay,” she said.
“It’s overnight. Holden’s coming. It’s a legitimate contract—security consulting, distribution facility. First assessment trip.”
“You don’t have to justify it.”
“I know. I just—” I leaned against the counter. “I didn’t want to disappear without explanation.”
She looked up then. Just for a second. “When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
She nodded and went back to the carrots. “The boys will ask.”
“I’ll tell them myself. Tonight.”
“Okay.” She was quiet for a moment. “Come back,” she said softly.
I looked at her. She wasn’t looking at me—eyes on the cutting board, jaw set, like she was irritated at herself for saying it.
“I’ll come back,” I said.
?
We left before dawn—me and Holden and Handful, who’d invited himself without asking and argued that three was a better number than two. He wasn’t wrong.
Holden rode the primary route the way he always did, steady and unhurried, hitting the checkpoints in the marginsof his notes without referring to them. There was a dead zone through the coast range that took eight minutes at speed, comms dropping to static and then finding Glitch’s repeater signal like a lifeline.
