Page 22 of Joker

Raven shuts the door gently and looks through the windshield, not at me, not at Grinder, just forward like if she looks anywhere else this might stop feeling possible.

I close her door, circle the hood, and slide into the driver’s seat.

Grinder steps up to my open window before I can start the truck. For the first time since I got here, there’s no chapter president in his face at all. Just a father with murder in his eyes and nowhere useful to put it. “You keep them breathing.”

I meet his stare. Not offended. Not threatened.

Just clear.

“That’s the plan.”

His jaw tightens once, and he gives a short nod like that answer is all he’s getting and all he’s willing to take.

Then he steps back.

I start the truck. The engine turns over low and steady, the headlights cutting through the dark in two clean beams. The gate is already beginning to open by the time I ease the truck into gear.

Nobody says anything as we roll across the lot.

Not Grinder.

Not Raven.

Not me.

The silence sits heavy and watchful in the cab as the gate swings wide and the road beyond opens up into darkness.

I glance once toward the clubhouse in the side mirror as we pull away. Grinder is still standing there under the dim lot lights, arms crossed, cut hanging open, looking like the kind of man who is going to tear the world apart one piece at a time if it ever gives him a clean shot at the right target.

Then he disappears behind us.

The road stretches ahead. The night closes in around the truck. And for a few minutes, all I hear is the hum of tires on pavement, the rattle of something small in the center console, and Lexi’s soft breathing from the backseat as she drifts the rest of the way under with Bunny still in her arms.

I keep my eyes moving.

Mirrors. Tree line. Rearview. Road. Instinct. Habit. Job.

Beside me, Raven sits too straight in the passenger seat. She hasn’t said a word since we left.

That’s fine.

I don’t need chatter.

Still, after a few miles, I glance beside me. She isn’t looking at me. She’s staring out the passenger window into the dark like she’s waiting for headlights to appear behind us. Like she’s waiting for the world to catch up.

I don’t know this woman. I don’t know the details of what sent her running. I don’t know how bad it got or what kind of man makes a chapter president hide his own daughter under a cheap wig and a baseball cap.

But I know that look.

I know the shape of somebody braced for impact long before it arrives.

And for reasons I can’t quite explain yet, I don’t like the knot that forms in my chest when I see it.

The first thing Lexi does once we’re on the road is ask if she can go to sleep.

It comes from the backseat in a tiny, tired voice, soft enough that I almost miss it over the hum of the tires and the steady growl of the truck engine beneath us.

“Mommy?”