Page 3 of Gray’s Surrender

“Need help moving anything?”

Her expression changes by a fraction. “You’re offering to come to my classroom?”

“I’m offering muscle.”

“Tank has muscle.”

“Wasn’t offering Tank.”

She laughs softly, and the sound does bad things to my discipline. I move closer without meaning to. Meg stays against the counter, neither retreating nor pretending she doesn’t see it happen.

“Tank trusts me,” I say.

The humor leaves her face. “I know.”

“He trusts me not to cross a line with you.”

“That’s Tank’s line, not mine.” Her gaze holds mine. “I’m asking where yours is.”

I look at the woman in front of me. Not Tank’s kid sister. Not a convenient answer to a closed program. Meg, and her mouth close enough to ruin a brotherhood and years of friendship. I reach for her wrist. My thumb settles over the beat beneath her skin. It jumps, quick and hard.

“I mean I don’t see the teenager you used to be when I look at you.”

Her breath slows. “What do you see?” My phone vibrates on the counter before I answer. I release her wrist and look down.

BISHOP.

The name drags old roads and older business through the room. Bishop rode Perdition’s firearms runs when the old president, King, and Perdition MC’s president, Cyrus, still treated Ransom like a shared corridor for illegal goods.

River Bend pull-off. Fifteen minutes. Old road. NO KANE.

Meg watches my face, not the screen.

“Club stuff?” she asks.

“Yeah, something like that.”

She nods and reaches for my mug to wash up. No interrogation. She grew up around cuts. She knows how this works.

“Ruby can stay with Mrs. Lawson until you get back,” she says.

The River Bend diner closed three years ago. Weeds split the parking lot, and plywood covers the windows. Bishop waits at the river pull-off beyond it, leaning against a dark truck with a Perdition cut over his shoulders.

He is in his fifties, lean and gray-bearded, with a scar pulling at one corner of his mouth. We ran cargo together when I was young enough to think silence made a man uncomplicated. I stop ten feet away.

“One meeting,” I say. “That’s all.”

Bishop looks at the road behind me. “No tail.”

“You asked for me, that’s what you got.”

“Asked for privacy too.”

“This is as private as it gets.”

The river moves behind him, brown beneath a heavy summer sky. Bishop folds his arms. “Cyrus wants one clean window on the old road. Monday night. Truck comes through, uses the landing and leaves before dawn.”

“No.”