Page 35 of Open Road

Craig’s voice is still in my head. It’ll probably be there for a while. The precision of a four-year campaign doesn’t dissolve overnight, but it’s quieter than it was this morning.

“Okay,” I say.

Roam nods once—decided. The same way Creed nodded, a gesture that means the conversation has reached the only place it was ever going to reach, and everything after this is forward motion.

He closes the laptop.

“Go check on Rose,” he says. “Get some sleep.”

Not a dismissal, something else. It is the particular tone of a man who has been watching someone carry something heavy for longer than they should have had to, and is telling them, in the most practical terms available, that they can put it down now.

The bag sits near the door.

Permanent,probably.

I walk out into the hall, pull the door closed behind me, and stand there for a moment in the quiet dark, breathing.

One large hand on a stuffed rabbit. The corner of his mouth when Rose said goodnight. The bag near the door.

Permanent,probably.

Then I go downstairs to my daughter.

Chapter Twelve

ROAM

Morning comes in through the workshop bay the way it always does. Gerald is already in his strip of sun near the gate. The compound smells of coffee, engine oil, and the particular combination of warm concrete and cut grass that has made Jacksonville feel like home to me for years.

Janie is at the kitchen window. Our talk two nights ago seemed to settle her.

She’s not anxious. More watchful, the distinction matters, and I’ve learned to read it. The cup is in both hands. Her hair is down, no armor in it this morning, the left side tucked behind her ear. She’s looking at the yard where Rose is conducting some sort of formal proceeding with Mr. Rabbit as the defendant. The corner of her mouth is close to something.

The morning is doing things to her face.

I look away, pour my coffee, and take it outside.

The Softail needs a look at the rear brake line, a small thing I’ve been meaning to get to. The workshop is quiet at this hour. Scout is not in yet. Winchester is already done and gone by the state of the tools on his bench. The work is good. Hands-on, concrete, the kind of problem that has a solution you can find with your fingers if you know where to look.

What I’m not doing is thinking about last night.

The thing that stays with me is how fast Rose fell asleep. Thirty seconds, maybe less. One second she’s full conversation, completely present, then gone, like a switch being flipped. Total trust in everything and everyone around her.

Never seen a kid do that. And Janie watching the both of us.

I don’t know what my face was doing. Something quickly happened in hers and was gone before she let it settle. It was the way you look at something you’re not ready to want yet.

The brake line holds as if there was never anything wrong with it.

I put the tools back in order.

The common room fills up by mid-morning as it usually does. Reaper is at the far end of the table with something he’s reading. Scout is coming through the back with two coffees and the expression he wears when he’s been talking to someone interesting. Winchester’s chair is empty. Creed appears in the doorway, looks around, decides whatever he came for can wait, then disappears again.

Janie comes through from the kitchen with Rose on her hip, looking for the coloring book Devil left somewhere in here yesterday. She scans the shelves along the wall, Rose pointing at random objects and naming them with great confidence.

“That’s a radio. That’s a lamp. That’s a man. That’s Reaper,” Janie says.

“Hi, Reaper,” Rose says.