Hunter: "I'm here, aren't I?"
I look at every brother in the room. "My daughter sleeps upstairs. Where else would I be."
Knox nods once. The vote is unanimous.
From the hallway, Diesel's voice carries through the closed door. "For what it's worth, I'm not going anywhere either."
Nobody tells him prospects don't get a vote. Knox smiles.
"Full lockdown," Knox says. "Families to safe houses. We change patrol patterns, move the records to the clubhouse vault, and we prepare."
"For what?"
Knox meets my eyes. "For when they come in force."
Bruiser clears his throat. He pulls up a second feed on the wall screen, a camera angle from the north perimeter of the clubhouse. A truck parked on the access road, lights off, engine running. The timestamp puts it during the scouts' operation.
"Dale Rickman's truck," Bruiser says. "He sat there and watched while we left to go to Colt's." He zooms in on the driver's side. Rickman behind the wheel, phone in his hand, pointed at the compound gate. "He's taking notes."
"Allied with Bloodstone?" Finn asks.
"Not allied." Bruiser shakes his head. "Circling the same target. Humans First and the clan aren't coordinating, but they're both watching us and they're both waiting for the other to make a move." He kills the feed.
Two threats. Rickman doesn't need to be allied with the Bloodstone clan to benefit from what they do to us.
Knox calls the end of the meeting. Brothers scatter to their posts.
Knox catches my arm as I pass him. His voice is low enough that only I hear it. "Don't ever do that again."
"Yes, Prez."
He lets go."
I climb the stairs.
The reinforced room sits at the end of the upstairs hallway, steel door, no exterior windows. I open it.
Lily is supposed to be asleep but she sits up the second the door opens, her hair tangled, her eyes wide in the low light. She sees my face—the butterfly strips, the bruising already darkening around my eye, the bandage on my knuckles—and she goes still.
She doesn't cry or ask what happened.
She gets off the cot, crosses the room, takes my face in both hands, pulls my head down, and presses her lips to my forehead.
My arms close around her. Everything comes back at once—Maren's photograph smashed against the wall, the ring rolling across the hardwood floor, the spray paint behind me where I put a man through the drywall. I hold my daughter and my arms shake. I press my face against the top of her head so she can't see it.
I sink to the floor with her in my lap. Ellie sits on the cot. She doesn't move or speak, she just gives us the silence we need.
After a while, Lily's breathing slows. She falls asleep against my chest, her fingers still hooked in my shirt. I carry her to the cot and set her down and Ellie pulls the blanket over her shoulders.
I sit back on the floor with my back against the wall. Ellie sits beside me. She reaches for my hand and I let her take it.
But I don't lean in. My grip holds hers and it's tight, she threads her fingers through mine and I let her because I don't know how to stop.
The surveillance photograph was Ellie's silhouette at the circulation desk, visible through the library window, framed right behind Lily and me. They put her in the picture. She's in the frame because she's in my life, and they know it, last time a woman's life connected to mine I felt her die inside my own chest.
Ellie reaches up and touches my jaw. I turn my head away from her. Just enough that her fingers slide off my skin.
She drops her hand, I can't look at her.
