Page 30 of Open Road

“Where’d she get it?”

“His office. Emergency inhaler for Rose was in his desk.”

He picks up the drive. Turns it once, then pockets it.

“Give me a few hours.” He moves toward the workshop and stops at the door without turning around. “Get Fingers.”

Fingers is out back on the plastic chair he dragged to the patch of shade behind the workshop six months ago and claimed as his own. Laptop open, coffee going cold on the ground beside him, Nerd cross-legged in the grass next to him, reading something on her phone. Neither of them looks up when I round the corner. Fingers operates on his own timeline, acknowledging interruptions when he’s ready to.

“Winchester needs you,” I say.

He looks up, reads something in my face, and closes the laptop.

“Now?”

“Now.”

Nerd stands without being asked, brushing grass off her jeans. She goes where he goes when there’s work involved. They’ve functioned as a unit since before most of the brothers were patched in. Nobody asks questions. Fingers doesn’t require context to work, only a power outlet and to be left alone.

He gets both.

The compound runs its morning around that closed door. Bikes in the workshop, tools, low voices, Scout arguing with someone about a sprocket. Gerald in his strip of sun near the gate. Ordinary sounds, the kind that fill up the space between things.

Rose is in the yard with Nerd, who materialized from Winchester’s office somewhere around the two-hour mark and has spent the time since teaching Rose a clapping game. Nerd is patient about it, restarting the sequence each time Rose demands it, which is four times now and counting. Rose is a rigorous student.

Janie is in the kitchen.

She’s been there most of the morning, moving between the coffee maker and the window that looks out on the yard. Not anxious exactly. Watchful. The way she gets when something is in motion, and the direction isn’t clear yet.

Janie handed over the drive without hesitation, which speaks volumes. Six months of having an emergency bag, taking the USB at the last minute because something made her take it. Trusting it to this clubhouse the way she’s been trusting everything to this house. Not blindly or easily, but one careful step at a time.

The morning moves around us while the door stays closed.

Winchester finds me at noon.

Not in the workshop. He walks out to the side yard where the Softail is parked, stands at the edge of the shade with his hands in his pockets, and wears the expression he wears when the information he’s carrying is heavier than the container.

“Church,” he says. No elaboration.

Five minutes later, the door closes behind us.

Creed is already at the head of the table, which means Winchester went to him before he came to me. The look Creed gives me when I sit down isn’t surprise, but the one he uses when something he suspected has been confirmed, and the confirmation is worse than the suspicion. Reaper is to his left, arms crossed, jaw set. Scout comes through the door last, reads the room, and stops talking.

Fingers sets his laptop on the table. His glasses are slightly crooked, the particular focused stillness of a man who’s been in a room with a problem for three hours and taken apart its components.

“Two directories on the drive,” he says. “The first is what she thought… property records, purchase agreements, and financial statements for Dawson Real Estate Holdings. Nothing unusual, nothing worth hiding.”

He pauses, and it has weight. “The second directory was password-protected.” He opens the laptop and turns it toward the table. “Took me a while.”

The room waits.

“Pure Ventures LLC.” Fingers pulls up the spreadsheet with columns dense with dates, figures, and reference codes. “Registered in Delaware. Craig Dawson listed as controller. On paper, it looks like a real estate investment vehicle, property acquisitions and development loans. Standard front architecture.”

Winchester says, “Rock called a few months back. Needed a Florida gun buyer vetted. Buyer’s name was Pure Ventures LLC.”

The room shifts, not with a sound but a pressure change, where the particular quality of a space when everyone in it arrives at the same point simultaneously.

Reaper’s hands come off the table.