Page 10 of Thunder

That's the part nobody brings up at church anymore, but every man in that clubhouse is carrying it.

We got hit at home.

On our own dirt, with our women and our kids in the house.

A man walked out of the dark and put bullets in Marlena, Banshee, and me, and damn near a kid.

The only reason we're all still breathing is luck, Bex, and a dog that took a round meant for Nash.

You don't come back from a night like that and ride easy.

You ride watching.

Which is how I catch it.

We're maybe forty miles out, a long empty stretch of two-lane with nothing on it but mesquite and heat shimmer, when the truck catches my eye.

Silver, newer, sitting a quarter mile back and holding there.

Not gaining. Not falling off.

Just sitting in that spot a vehicle sits when the man driving it wants to keep eyes on you without walking up your bumper.

I know that spot, I've driven that spot.

I've followed men from that exact distance more times than I could count back when following men was part of what Phantom paid me to do.

It holds through two curves and a straightaway.

Matches us through all three, that same clean quarter mile.

A civilian doesn't do that.

A civilian speeds up, slows down, turns off, gets bored.

A civilian lives his own life at his own pace and never once holds a perfect quarter mile off the back of three bikers for ten miles of empty road.

This truck holds it like it's on a rail.

I key the comm in my helmet.

"Blaze. Spur. Don't look. We've got a tail. Silver three-quarter-ton, quarter mile back, been on us since the Kimble line."

Up front I see Blaze's head not turn, which is exactly right, which is why he's VP.

"How sure?"

"Sure enough that I want a plate before we do anything else."

"Spur," Blaze says.

"Next curve, you're the mirror."

We run it clean.

On the next long left-hander, Spur drifts his line out just enough to bend his mirror back down the road, natural as anything, a man adjusting for a curve, and he holds it a half-second longer than he needs to.

"Partial," Spur says over the comm.