Page 7 of Riding with the President Biker

Grave says nothing for a long stretch, which I recognize as him forcing himself to be strategic rather than angry, a thing that costs him visibly.

Hansen listens to all of it before he speaks.

When he does, it is not a monologue or a declaration. He asks two questions, absorbs the answers, and then outlines a direction in about four sentences. The room settles around it without drama.

The call comes in a few minutes into the strategy session.

Luke's phone, then his voice flat and immediate. "Depot on Mill Road. Small explosion. Structure hit. No casualties confirmed."

The room's temperature changes. Hansen does not raise his voice, he calmly says two words and men start moving.

Grave is already in a separate conversation. Two men near the door are pulling on gear. The space doubles in noise and intensity inside of sixty seconds, reorganizing from deliberate to mobilized.

I step back toward the wall and give the room room to work.

It is too loud and too much, not in a way that frightens me but in a way that oversaturates every input at once, and I realize I have been running on adrenaline for the last several hours without stopping.

I find Grave through the crowd and catch his arm.

"I need a few minutes outside," I say, close to his ear so he hears it. "I have to call the hospital to confirm my leave. I didn't tell them I'd be away this long."

He frowns. "You didn't tell them—"

"I'll be two minutes, I'm not going anywhere." I give him a look that ends the conversation before it starts.

He does not love it. But he nods, and I thread through the controlled chaos toward the stairs to the back door behind the bar.

The parking area behind the building is a wide expanse of gravel and packed snow, lit by two overhead lights that cast a flat yellow glow across the vehicles angled along the perimeter. Most of the trucks and bikes have moved with the mobilization, leaving gaps in the rows.

The noise from inside is muffled now, and I can finally hear myself breathe.

I pull out my phone and find the hospital's direct line and press call. I am composing the language in my head while it rings — an extension of leave, probably another week, maybe more depending on how the next few days resolve. I am not ready to figure out what that means beyond the immediate problem.

I am three sentences into the message I am leaving for the department supervisor when I hear boots on gravel.

I half-turn.

The first man is already too close.

The arm comes around from behind, fast and hard, and the gloved hand covers my mouth before I can form a sound. I drop my weight immediately and twist to destabilize his center of gravity, the way I was taught a long time ago in a self-defense class I have thought about exactly once in the last decade and cannot stop thinking about right now.

He compensates. He is heavier than me and has done this before, which tells me something important in the fraction of a second I have to think.

I stop using my weight against him and bite down hard into the web of his glove.

He grunts, and his grip shifts, and in the gap I drive my elbow backward and connect with something solid — ribs, maybe — and get half a breath of cold air before the second man grabs both my arms from the other side and the coordination between them snaps back into place.

The second man has a rasp in his throat when he breathes. Every inhale is slightly wrong, like something in his chest does not fully clear, and I lock the sound of it into memory because I cannot see his face. The smell on him is gasoline and something industrial underneath.

I am still twisting when the van doors open. I register the metal floor against my cheek before I register the sound of the doors closing behind me.

The van moves immediately.

I press my palms flat on the cold floor and hold still.

There are two men up front, separated from the cargo space by a panel with a small perforated window. I can hear their voices but not their words. The rasp-breather is one of them.

I count seconds and turns, left out of the lot, a long stretch of smooth road, then a curve that goes right, another that goes left after what feels like about four minutes. The road surface changes under the tires somewhere around the ten-minute mark, rougher, less maintained, and the van slows slightly to compensate.