Standing in the corridor, I think about Raven crossing that room while Torch undressed her with his eyes, and the idea of the two of them together doesn’t bother me a damn bit, not even slightly. She isn’t ol’ lady material, not the kind of woman I’d have on the back of my bike or take to bed every night, and if I am being honest with myself, maybe I’d always known that. Maybe I’d just needed tonight to make it clear.
I go to find my keys and slide on my bike.
The desert road home is dark and quiet, the Vegas lights falling away in the mirror as the city gives way to open road, and the house comes closer in the distance. Pulling up to the gate, I cut the engine and sit there for a moment in the dark, just the tick of the cooling engine and the vast Nevada silence beyond it, before I get off. Memphis is at the door when I walk in, pressed against it, his tail moving once in that understated way of his that says he’d been there a while. After feeding him, I move through the dark kitchen without bothering with the lights and stand in the hallway for a moment.
Sophia’s door is closed.
Standing there beside it for just a second, one hand resting lightly against the wall, I notice the quality of the house with someone sleeping in it, something fuller than the empty versionof this place had ever managed to be, something that has crept up on me so gradually I’ve stopped being surprised by it.
I have had a long day. Heavy in some places, full in others.
By the time I’ve stood here long enough to register all of it, I am running on empty.
And head to bed.
***
It is five in the morning when I get up, the desert is still dark outside the windows, and the house is completely silent around me. Moving through the kitchen, the coffee is brewing, and Memphis is sorted. I do everything with the care of a man who is conscious of every sound he is making and doesn’t want to be the reason someone’s sleep ends early.
Standing at the counter with the mug warming both hands, I find the notepad and pick up the pen.
Gone to the clubhouse early.
Back tonight.
There’s coffee.
Propping it against her mug, the white one with the small chip in the handle that she’d never mentioned and never switched out for one of the others, I pick up the pen again and look at what I’d written for a moment, so I add…
Don’t go anywhere without Remy.
Standing there a moment longer than I need to, the house quiet and dark around me and her door closed down the hall, I put the pen down and leave.
***
Church is the fullest the room has ever been.
Both clubs are around the table, my men on one side, Blood Brothers on the other, Quill at my left, the way it should be between presidents who respect each other. I take the time to look at each man around that table, every face, both clubs, all of them here because of what Clemente had taken from all of us. The weight of it settles properly into the room for the first time.
The gavel comes down once, and the room goes quiet.
“You all know why we’re here. We’ve been building intelligence on Clemente’s operation for several weeks. Cable’s going to lay out everything we have.” A pause. “This affects all of us, which is why you’re all in this room.” I nod to Cable. “Go.”
Cable opens his laptop and turns it so it faces the full table. The satellite image fills the screen, and the room reacts, Blood Brothers leaning forward almost as one, Hawke’s eyes moving methodically across the image, Torch already calculating, Trigger studying the access road. Quill’s expression goes carefully still in the way it does when he is absorbing something significant.
Rhyder doesn’t move. He just looks at the screen, as if memorizing it.
Cable walks them through everything, including the location confirmation, the shell companies, the financial trail, the hacienda itself, including the walls, structures, and security presence. Thorough and unhurried, he answers every question as it comes, and they come fast from both sides of the table.
“How current is this imagery?” Hawke’s eyes don’t leave the screen.
“Updated three days ago.”
“Access road, is it the only one?” Torch leans forward.
“Only confirmed one. There may be a secondary track on the north side, but it hasn’t been verified yet.”
“The blind spot on the north wall.” Torch continues studying the image. “Fourteen yards. What’s the ground like, open or covered?”
