Page 29 of Priest

That table has its own order, and it sure as hell wasn’t built by Sadie.

Lena Cole sits near the end with a glass of sweet tea in front of her and one leg tucked beneath her like she has nowhere better to be. Ledger’s Old Lady doesn’t rush anything. Not words. Not judgment. She watches people with quiet eyes and lets them fill their own silence until they tell on themselves. Beside her, Tessa Mercer leans back with her arms loose over her middle, her face calm in that way that never means relaxed. Graves says Tessa can hear a lie before most people can speak one, and I believe him. Raina Boone sits across from them, Nomad’s sister, no property patch on her back but more club in her blood than half the women who’ve passed through here trying to earn attention. She has a kid’s juice box in one hand and a look on her face that says she already knows where this is going and finds it exhausting.

Sadie steps into their circle anyway.

“I was thinking,” she says, conversational as anything, “it might be easier if we keep things simple tonight. Less running back and forth.”

She doesn’t say, I want. She doesn’t say Priest prefers. She’s smarter than that. She lets the sentence hang there in the space between suggestion and instruction, all gentle voice and mother-to-be hand on her belly, like the room ought to bend because making her uncomfortable would be cruel.

Lena looks up slowly. “Simple’s relative.”

Sadie smiles. “Of course.”

“Depends who’s deciding,” Lena adds.

There it is.

No raised voice. No public slap. Just a line drawn so clean Sadie would have to trip over it on purpose to pretend she didn’t see it.

Tessa doesn’t say a damn word, but her eyes flick to the prospect returning with the crate, then back to Sadie. Raina catches a juice box before a passing kid can knock it off the table and slides it behind her elbow, her gaze still fixed on Sadie. The look on her face is so dry it almost drags a laugh out of me.

Sadie recalibrates fast. “I’m not trying to step on toes. I just thought, being here and with the baby coming, it made sense to help where I can.”

“Helping’s appreciated,” Lena says mildly. “Speaking for the club’s different.”

Sadie’s smile holds, but it tightens at the edges. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No?” Raina asks.

The word lands soft and flat.

Sadie looks at her, then away. “No.”

The air tightens around the table. None of the women turn cruel. That would be easier to deal with. They simply make room for Sadie to understand she has mistaken protection for position, and they do it without handing her a scene she can use later.

Across the room, Lena’s eyes meet mine for half a second.

Acknowledgment.

She knows I saw it. That sits sour in my gut, because Lena isn’t wrong to notice and neither are the others. Sadie is threading herself into places I never gave her, and every day I don’t pull that thread loose, it starts looking like permission.

I tell myself I’ll handle it later. Privately. Cleanly. Sadie’s pregnant. She’s been through so much. Despite how the past came to be, she is still Ace’s widow, and that still means something even when everything about her lately feels like a hand reaching for more than she’s owed.

If keeping her busy keeps her from hovering near me all day, maybe that buys me room to breathe.

It sounds reasonable enough until I hear it in my own head.

Church goes clean. Too clean.

The officers take their seats around the table, and the door shuts out most of the noise from the common room. Nomad already has the map spread in front of him, one forearm braced beside the marked routes as he walks us through the changes he’s made since the last run. His voice stays even while he points out roads he wants avoided, fuel stops he wants rotated, and the stretches he wants doubled up until we know why Dead Man’s Hand keeps getting too damn close to places they should have no reason to watch. That seat belongs to him because he knows the road like it talks to him, and tonight, every mile he names feels like one more place someone might be waiting.

Ledger covers numbers after him, the tension under the facts carries through the room when he gets to delayed shipments and vendors asking questions they’ve never asked before. Nothing direct. Nothing loud. Just little shifts in timing, delivery windows, fuel charges, supply pickups that suddenly line up too clean with routes we’ve used for years. Ghost stays quiet through most of it, eyes on his laptop, fingers still against the keys until the room gives him space to speak.

“Pattern’s there,” he says.

Nomad looks over. “Where?”

Ghost’s gaze stays on the screen. “Around us. Not in us. Suppliers, stops, invoices, delivery calendars. People touching information they should only need pieces of, except lately the pieces keep lining up.”