Dutch was three days into his honeymoon and Colt was running things, but with Lilac halfway through the pregnancy and Colt unwilling to be far, most meetings had been over at his house. Tonight she was napping and Betty had Luca and Knox, so he’d dropped by the clubhouse to go over Louisville logistics with me. We had the corner table, route maps spread between us, my coffee gone cold an hour ago. Dutch hadn’t cleared me for runs yet, but I could do the paperwork, the intel analysis, the administrative work that kept the machine turning.
The door to the main room opened and a woman walked in.
She was maybe mid-twenties, dark hair pulled back, wearing a jacket that didn’t quite close over her stomach. Pregnant. She stood in the doorway and looked around the room. Seemed like she’d probably rehearsed what she was going to say and was now trying to figure out who to say it to.
“I need to speak to the Road Captain,” she said. Loud enough to carry. Not aggressive — but not asking, either.
A couple of brothers looked up from the pool table. One of them — Target, I think — let out a low whistle through his teeth.
“Road Captain’s busy, sweetheart,” someone called from the bar. “You got an appointment?”
She didn’t flinch. “No. But he’s going to want to talk to me.”
“Yeah?” Target leaned on his cue. “What’s your name, darlin’? We get a lot of girls coming through here looking for their baby daddy.”
There was laughter. Low, the kind that comes easy in a room full of men who’ve seen this play before. Patch chaser walks in, tells a story, wants money or a ring or both.
The woman’s jaw tightened, but she held her ground. “My name is Joanne. And I’m not looking for a handout. I’m looking for the man who got me pregnant.”
“Aren’t they all,” someone muttered.
“The man I slept with,” she said, cutting through the noise, “was your Road Captain. Holden.” She looked around the room. “Where is he?”
My head shot up.
Someone near the bar laughed. “Brother, she’s asking for you by name. You gonna leave her standing there?”
Another voice. “Holden, come claim your girl before Target does.”
More laughter. Easy, stupid, the kind that comes from men who think this is entertainment. I couldn’t move. Colt was watching me from across the table, very still, waiting.
“I was here,” she continued. “A few months ago. I’d been drinking. I came with a friend who knew someone, I don’t even remember who. We ended up at the bar. A man started talking to me.” She touched her stomach without seeming to notice. “We went to his room. We didn’t exchange names. Wasn’t really that kind of night.” She let that land.
Her eyes found me then — landed right on me, held for half a second — then moved on. She scanned the room, brother to brother, like she was looking for someone else entirely.
“How do you know Holden’s the baby daddy if he didn’t tell you his name?” someone called out. A few of the brothers laughed. Someone slapped a hand on the bar.
“His cut was hanging on the back of the door,” she said. “Road Captain. Holden. I remember that because I thought it was a strange name.” She frowned slightly. “It was loud that night. People coming and going at all hours. I remember thinking something had happened — everyone seemed wired. I left before he woke up. I didn’t think I’d ever need to come back.” She paused. “But here I am.”
The room was very quiet.
I knew what night she was talking about. Everyone in that room did now too. A few months ago. The night the run went wrong, the night Danny died, the night we came back to a building full of people we couldn’t send home because Dutch needed everything to look normal.
And one of them had ended up in my room.
I stood up.
“Well, shit,” someone muttered.
Colt looked at me. I could see him working it through — the same calculation I’d already run, arriving at the same answer. My room. My cut. My blackout. The night I couldn’t remember, the hours I’d built an entire confession around.
“That’s me,” I said.
Joanne turned to face me. The frown came immediately — small, involuntary, the kind you make when a puzzle piece doesn’t fit. “You’re Holden?”
“Yeah.”
She studied my face. But she didn’t say anything yet. Maybe she was second-guessing her own memory. She’d been drunk that night. So had I — past drunk, past functional, past anything resembling a person who could make decisions.
