Page 77 of Colt
Good?Holden said into the radio when we cleared it.
Good, Glitch confirmed from three hours back.
The contact’s facility was exactly what Holden had said: industrial park, off highway, quiet in the way that only came from money spent on perimeter, not personnel. The site manager met us at the gate in a company polo with a company handshake, and within forty minutes I’d clocked six things wrong with his existing security setup.
The client had opinions, like Dutch said he would. He wanted the cameras placed where they looked impressive. I told him where they needed to be, and by the end of the first hour he’d stopped arguing with me. By the end of the second hour he was asking follow-up questions. By the end of the fourth, he was talking about a service contract and asking about the other two facilities.
Outside, Handful had made friends with the facility’s on-site security team—laughing at their jokes, making a few of his own, looking like exactly the kind of guy you could tell things to. By the time I was done, he’d have learned more about this operation than the site manager knew I was looking for. Holden stood by the door and said nothing.
“Good scope,” Holden said through the comms as we headed to the motel. Road noise behind it, his voice flat and close in my ear the way it always was when we were moving.
“It’s preliminary.”
“It’s good. You know what you’re doing in a room like that.”
“It’s not different from what we do for the club.”
“It’s completely different. You’re not intimidating anyone. You’re just—” He went quiet, the kind that meant he waswatching the road and finishing the thought at the same time. “Smarter than they expect. So they listen.”
Handful cut in. “Same reason they talked to me. You play what you’ve got.”
He wasn’t wrong. Holden with his silence. Me with the scope. Handful making himself easy to trust until people couldn’t stop talking. The client had seen three bikers and gotten something else entirely.
Holden grunted into the earpiece. His version of agreement.
?
I called the boys from the motel that night.
Knox told me about the card trick he’d been practicing. Luca told me about a book Bea had lent him. At the end of the call, Knox said, “Come home safe, Dad,” with the absolute casualness of someone who said it all the time, who expected it to be true, who couldn’t imagine a world where it wasn’t.
I sat on the edge of the motel bed for a while after I hung up.
Holden was already asleep. Handful was watching something on his phone with one earbud in. The room smelled like highway and fast food.
I thought about Betty’s kitchen. Vegetables on the cutting board.Come back.
I thought about how I’d spent seven years in motel rooms like this one, rooms that looked exactly like this one, and never once had anyone said come back.
We rode home the next afternoon with the preliminary scope written, two follow-up meetings scheduled, and a service contract in discussion. Legitimate work. The kind that built things instead of burning them.
I pulled up to Betty’s as the sun was going down and the boys came out of the front door at a dead run.
Luca hit me first, hard enough that I had to brace. Knox was half a step behind him, quieter about it, but he didn’t let go.
I held onto both of them for a second longer than I meant to.
When I looked up, Lilac was standing at the door, arms crossed, watching.
She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. She uncrossed her arms, turned, and went back inside. I followed, with a boy attached to each leg.
Chapter 31
?
— Lilac —
Two weeks of trying. That’s how long it had been since the garden, since I’d told Colt I wanted to figure out who we were together.
