“The kid’s green, Holden. Really green.”
“Everyone’s green until they’re not.” I met his eyes. “I’ll have him riding behind me where I can watch him. He needs the experience.”
Handful opened his mouth to argue, but Glitch’s arrival cut him off. He had his laptop under one arm and that focused look he got when he was running something in his head. He dropped into his chair without greeting and started typing immediately.
“Ran comms on your route this morning,” he said without looking up. “Found a new dead zone on the secondary.”
“Where?”
He pulled up a map on his screen and rotated it toward me. “Here. About thirty miles past the Riggins junction. Cellcoverage drops to nothing for about eight minutes at highway speed.”
I studied the map, cross-referencing it with my own notes. “I had that marked as intermittent coverage, not dead.”
“It was. They’re doing unplanned tower maintenance this week. I checked with the carrier—service won’t be back until the fifteenth.”
Shit. That was two days after the run. “Can we work around it?”
“Already planned.” Glitch turned the laptop back toward himself. “I’ll set up a repeater at this location—” he pointed to a spot on the ridge above the dead zone “—and boost the signal through our encrypted channel. You’ll have coverage, just routed differently. Right now, it’s a thirty-second delay instead of real-time. It’ll be real-time by go time.”
“That could be the difference between—”
“I know what thirty seconds can mean.” His voice was flat. “That’s why I caught it now instead of day-of. You’ll have comms. I guarantee it.”
Before I could respond, Dutch walked in. The room went quiet, that automatic shift in energy that happened whenever the prez was present. Dutch didn’t demand attention. He just had it.
He took his seat at the head of the table, gray eyes sweeping over each of us. “Everyone’s here. Good.” His gaze settled on Colt. “Brother. You had something.”
Colt cleared his throat. “Yeah.” He drew a breath. “Lilac’s pregnant. Eight weeks. Keep it close for now — she’s not ready for it to be common knowledge yet.”
For half a second, nobody moved. Then Handful let out a whoop that shook the table and lunged across it to clap Colt on the shoulder. “About goddamn time, brother. I want in on the betting pool. Due date, compound odds.”
Colt shot him a look that might have been cold if his mouth hadn’t twitched. “There is no betting pool.”
“There is now.”
Glitch closed the laptop and nodded at Colt. I’d seen him keep typing through a bar fight. Dutch’s mouth did the thing that in another man would have been a smile.
“We told the boys this morning,” Colt added, aiming for casual and not quite landing it. “Luca immediately tried to start campaigning for names. Thunder. And Lightning, as a backup.”
Handful lost it — and then, to my complete lack of surprise, dug a pen out of his cut and started writing on the back of a napkin. He underlined the heading twice:Colt Baby Pool. We all watched as he created a list. Due date. Birth weight. First name Lilac vetoes. Baby Spencer name. Bar fights started before the kid arrives. Number of prospects Colt makes cry before baby Spencer arrives.
Colt was looking at the table, working hard at neutral. But I’d known him long enough to see the grin fighting through at the corner of his mouth, and the way his hands had gone still on the wood in the particular way they did when something mattered more than he wanted to let on.
“Congratulations, brother.” Dutch’s voice was quiet. He rapped once on the table. “Now, the run.”
I stood and walked to my maps, falling into the familiar rhythm of the briefing. “Primary route takes us east on 20, then north on 95 to the pickup point. Four hours total, with a thirty-minute buffer for fuel and any unforeseen delays.”
I traced the route with my finger, pointing out landmarks and waypoints. “We’ll ride in formation—me on point, Danny behind me, Colt flanking the cargo vehicle. Dutch brings up the rear. Handful runs the follow van with Reyes, Fewin, and Baxter, fifteen minutes back.” I looked up. “Questions?”
Nobody asked why fifteen. They knew.
“Why Danny on point?” Handful asked. “No offense to the kid, but shouldn’t we have experienced riders up front?”
“Danny’s on point with me so I can watch him,” I explained. “If something goes wrong, I need to see it happen. And having fresh eyes up front sometimes catches things the rest of us miss.”
Dutch nodded. “Makes sense. Continue.”
“Secondary’s our checkpoint fallback — slower, but off the main highways. Tertiary is emergency only, if we’re actively being tracked. Bad roads back there, but nothing can follow us.” I looked at Glitch. “Tech update?”
