Page 11 of Riding with the President Biker

The bar. The way she held her glass. The steadiness of her voice when she told me about Portland. The way she read the room and named what she saw without needing me to confirm it. The way her hands found my forearm in the wreckage of the bar and pressed down without hesitation, and how that contact landed somewhere in my chest.

She is Grave's sister. I know what that means. I knew what it meant the moment I heard him say her name in the bar, and I have been holding it at a professional distance ever since, filing it under the category of lines that exist for reasons that do not require explanation.

She walked into my world for forty-five minutes and ended up in the back of a van because of who she is connected to, and what I am feeling right now has no clean justification.

And yet…

The thought of her in that building, tied to something, does not produce the focused operational concern I would feel about any civilian caught in the crossfire. It produces something else.

I look at the road ahead.

The plant comes into view through falling snow as a dark geometric mass against a darker sky, broken windows running along the upper structure like absent eyes, snow dusting the rebar that juts from a collapsed section of the north wall.

One vehicle visible at the far end of the lot. Lights just barely visible through the lowest bank of windows, moving and intermittent, flashlights or lanterns rather than a fixed source.

We cut the engines two hundred yards out and walk the bikes off the road onto the shoulder, leaving them in the tree line where the dark and the snowfall will do the rest.

The cold is aggressive now, cutting through everything, and the snow muffles our movement in a way that works in our favor. I watch Miller pull position with two men to the north side. Grave moves without being told to the east wing because he knows that is where she is.

We go on the signal.

The flashbang through the second window from the east sends light and sound through the structure in a wave that bounces off concrete and returns from three directions at once, and the Wolves move through every entry point in the same breath.

Gunfire inside the plant is enormous, the building amplifies it into something physical, pressure you feel in your sternum as much as hear with your ears. Muzzle flash strobes off gray walls and pooled water and broken glass.

I move through the main corridor fast and low, clearing sightlines as I go. Two men at the first junction, one of them raising a weapon that does not finish its arc before I put him down with two rounds, precise and economical. The second breaks toward the outer wall and Miller takes him from the adjacent corridor before he reaches cover.

The fighting to the north is louder — Grave, from the specific quality of it. Hand-to-hand rather than just gunfire, which means someone made the mistake of getting close enough to give him what he actually wanted tonight.

I do not stop to observe that.

I go deeper into the east section.

The corridor opens into a wider space. Concrete pillars, dim light from a single work lamp hung from a chain above a central area, cold air from somewhere in the ceiling where the structure has cracked.

She is there.

In a metal chair, her wrists tied behind her. Her lip is swollen at the left corner and there is a shadow of bruising starting to develop along her cheekbone. Her hair has come mostly free, covering her face partially.

Her eyes are steady, open and alert, tracking me the moment I clear the pillar, and there is no panic in them, no glassiness, nothing broken. She is in one piece in every way that matters, and the breath I release comes out slower than I intend it to.

I cross the space fast and come down to a knee in front of her. My hands go to her wrists first, assessing the damage before I start working the knot, fingers pressing delicately along the bones of her hands, checking. She holds still for it without being told to. Her breathing is even.

The rope is not particularly complex but it has been pulled tight and I take my time undoing it rather than rushing and causing more damage, and in doing so I am close, closer than the situation strictly requires, close enough to feel the warmth she radiates even in this frigid space, close enough to see the fine detail of her face in the dim light, the cut at the corner of her mouth, the slight flex of her jaw that is her managing pain she has decided not to vocalize.

When the rope finally releases, she rolls her wrists slowly and I stay where I am, hands still close to hers, and neither of us moves for a moment.

"I knew it would be you," she says.

I want to say something back that I should not say. I can feel it forming and I redirect it deliberately, and what comes out is rougher and simpler than anything I planned.

"I've got you," I say. My voice is lower than I mean it to be. "You're done here."

When I stand, I bring her with me, and when she is upright and I can feel her weight settle and see that her legs are solid under her, I make a decision that does not involve asking. I put one arm under her knees and bring her up against my chest and carry her, and she does not protest.

She does not tell me she can walk, which she probably can. She turns her face slightly into the collar of my jacket instead, a small, instinctive movement that she may not fully register, and I feel it register in me.

Behind us, the plant is still clearing. I hear Grave's voice giving orders somewhere in the northern section, the low bark of men confirming positions and boots on concrete.