Page 86 of Joker

There isn’t room for that kind of easy anymore.

Not with Raven under this roof. Not with Lexi starting to look for me in rooms. Not with my head wired this wrong.

I drag a hand over my jaw and head inside before I do something even stupider than turning down uncomplicated sex for the first time in recent memory.

By morning, the feeling hasn’t gone away.

If anything, it’s sharper. I wake already keyed up, like my body caught something in the dark and passed the message along before my brain had words for it. The clubhouse is moving through the usual early routine when I head out front with coffee, cut on, boots laced, eyes already scanning before I tell them to.

That’s when I see the car.

Old sedan. Dark. Nothing special about it at first glance except the way it slows a little too much when it passes the property line. Not enough to be obvious to anyone not looking.

Enough for me.

The windows are up. Driver keeps his head forward. Doesn’t rubberneck. Doesn’t stop. Just drags the speed down by ten, maybe fifteen miles an hour for the stretch where he hasthe clearest view of the entrance before picking it back up again. Could be nothing.

Still gets filed away immediately.

I watch it disappear down the road until the taillights vanish behind the bend. Then I pull my phone out and make a note of the make, color, and partial plate before the details can blur. When

I lift my head again, Shadow is standing on the porch with his own coffee, looking at me like he’s trying to decide whether I’ve gone paranoid or if he should trust the look on my face. “What?”

I jerk my chin toward the road. “That sedan’s gone by twice since sunrise.”

Shadow glances that direction. “You sure it’s the same one?”

“Yeah.”

He takes that in, no jokes for once. “Want me to send somebody after it?”

“Not yet.”

That’s the thing about bad feelings. Sometimes they’re instinct. Sometimes they’re just a man too deep in his own head looking for patterns because he wants an excuse to justify the tension under his skin.

I’ve survived this long by knowing the difference. So I don’t move on the car yet. I just log it and keep watching.

The rest of the morning doesn’t help.

In town, the feeling gets worse.

I’m at the gas station on the edge of Bartsville grabbing filters and a couple things Logan wanted for the garage when I walk in on the cashier talking to one of the locals. Old guy. Farm cap. Smells like cigarettes and feed store. Harmless enough. Except the second he sees my cut, he says, “You boys got company out there at the clubhouse now?”

The question is casual.

I don’t stop walking. “We always got company.”

He chuckles like we’re sharing some local joke. “Nah, I mean new company. Saw a dark-haired woman with a kid the other day. Ain’t seen her before.”

There it is. Not proof. Not a threat. Still enough to get my attention.

I take the filters to the counter, set them down, and look at him just long enough to make the atmosphere go slightly wrong. “Then you still haven’t,” I say.

The cashier, who knows better, suddenly becomes very interested in scanning my shit as fast as possible.

The old guy lifts both hands a little. “Wasn’t prying.”

“Good.”