Page 4 of Bram

The meeting ended the way these things always did: with chairs scraping concrete and men filing out two at a time, already swapping logistics in low voices.

I stayed where I was until the room cleared. Then I got up, walked out past the bar, and into the common room. On the wall, just above the pool table, hung the one photo I’d ever let anyone display: Millie, smiling wide at a club barbecue, holding up a paper plate and wearing a ratty Jackson Brothers tee that looked two sizes too big. She wasn’t looking at the camera. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were on me.

I reached out, touched the corner of the frame. Didn’t say anything.

After a second, I pulled my hand back and left the room.

Out in the yard, the air was desert-cold and clean, and I could hear the club coming alive with orders, engines turning, all the old machinery grinding into motion.

There was a reckoning on the horizon, and the Colonel knew it. His club had been somewhat decimated over the past twenty years while he sat in prison, but there was no doubt that as soon as he walked out of that prison, he’d be making calls and putting the old gang back together again. I couldn’t let that happen. The man had to die.

I stood there a minute, letting it hit me, then went to find Rusty. There was work to do.

three

Julie

You get good at waiting, in my line of work. I’d spent six years cultivating an expression that suggested nothing ever surprised me. It worked most days, but not all. Today, for instance.

The DA’s office looked like every other government box: white walls, hollow wood, chairs so cheap you’d swear the legs would fold under the weight of a tough question. My desk sat center stage, caught in the sunlight that bled through the single window. On the wall behind me, three law degrees stacked like warnings, each a different flavor of Latin. A small cactus kept dying and reanimating on the corner of the blotter, surrounded by a procession of case files tagged in three colors. I liked the effect. It said, I know exactly where your bones are buried, and which color I’ll use to label them.

As much as I tried to ignore the letter at the center of my desk, it kept speaking to me: “Hey bitch, he’s being released in three days. Whatch-ya-gonna-do?”

Great question that only had shit answers. I could sit back and watch it all happen, watch the town burn to the ground. I could pack my shit and run—the better sounding of my options. Or, the last thing I actually wanted to do, I could stop the Colonel’s release and hope it held up in court. If it didn’t, well, I was fucked either way.

I returned to my elbows-deep plea offer on another case—a real shitshow, meth and domestic, the kind that always ended with some kid getting shipped to a grandparent in Hinkley—when the intercom popped.

I ignored it. It popped again. This time, Marcy’s voice broke through, nasal and tense.

“Ms. Sparta? There’s a—uh, a Bram Jackson here to see you.”

I dropped my head to the desk. “You can schedule him for next week; tell him I’m in a meeting.”

The pause was just long enough to make my teeth itch. “He says it can’t wait. He’s already in the lobby.”

Of course he was. “Did he specify a topic?” He didn’t need to. I knew why he was here. Hell, I had expected him earlier.

“Said it was about your shared—‘interests.’ And he’s—well, he’s not alone. He’s with two other men, but they’re staying outside.”

I closed the file and set my palms flat to the desk, feeling the cheap veneer flex. The hand that reached for my water glass shook, just a fraction, but enough. I crushed it by making a show of straightening my blazer, then clicking the pen twice.

“Julie?”

“Send him in, Marcy,” I said, and I was proud of how level it sounded.

The outer door opened and closed. Heavy footsteps—one limp, two normal—approached. Marcy made a strangled attempt at an introduction, failed, and then Bram Jackson filled the door like the world’s most unwelcome weather system.

Six-four, lean and roped with the kind of muscle you didn’t get at Gold’s Gym. Gray hair that looked silver if he stood in the light. He wore a club cut, faded denim and leather, with the word PRESIDENT riding above a patch that said exactly what everyone in Barstow already knew. He wore a long-sleeve black tee under the vest, and his hands—scarred, one knuckle split open and healing—hung loose and empty.

I stared a moment too long, caught up in the badass arrogance that followed him around.

“Ms. Sparta,” he said. He always used the formal. Never Julie. Never.

“Mr. Jackson,” I answered, letting his own name do the work of an insult.

He stepped inside. I didn’t tell him to sit, and he didn’t, just kept coming until his shadow landed across the desk. He looked past me, at the degrees, at the window, at the case files, at everything except my face. Fuck, I imagined his picture next to the word masculinity in the dictionary. He was everything women loved and hated.

I waited him out. That’s the trick with men like him. Let them fill the silence with their own ghosts.