Page 5 of Iron and Ivory

He should be the pres, not me.

But I don't say that. Because it doesn't matter now. We're past all that now.

I nod. "All right. People gotta sleep now. Half on, half off. Three-hour shifts."

Three hours is enough time to actually sleep—if sleep'll have ya. Not so long that the ones holdin' the line drift off standin' up.

Funny thing is, everyone in this room is bone tired. They want rest. They're hopin' for it. But I know what happens when it's time to put your head down on that pillow in the dark and the quiet closes in.

Good luck findin' any peace in there.

Cause that's what they really want.

Not sleep.

Peace.

Diesel turns and starts barkin' orders, his voice low, and flat, and certain.

I only half listen as I take myself over to a table in the corner and sit. Then I set my hands flat on the wood and look at 'em for a second. The ink on my knuckles, M-E-R-C-Y, and I think about her in that fancy school and know I made the right choice when I let Cash Ashby take over her life.

She's gonna be OK. She's gonna make it.

I'm not sleepin'. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again, not the way a man actually sleeps, not the way a man lets go.

Because the demons inside me—the ones I've been haulin' around since the day I was born—they're screamin' now.

And the thing that's keepin' me up, the thing that's got its hand around my throat from the inside out, is this: they aren't screamin' because they lost.

They're screamin' because they won.

CHAPTER 2

My world closes in around me, and I mean that in the most literal sense.

The ranch, and the driveway, and the mountains, and the whole enormous sky just compress themselves into a single narrow corridor of dark, and at the end of it is Legion's taillight gettin' smaller and smaller until there's nothin' left but the sound of the bike's exhaust fadin' into the kind of silence that swallows you whole.

He left.

"What the hell just happened?"

My words come out as a whisper, thin and uncertain and nothing like the voice I use when I mean something.

Cash's hand is on my shoulder. He's bein' gentle about it. Tryin' to steady me.

"Ya OK?" he asks.

I don't answer right away. I let the breath out slow, just blinking.

Then I turn and start walkin' toward the Range Rover like I've already made the decision, which I have, because there is no other decision available to me. The gravel crunches under my boots and the sound of it feels like the only real thing in the world right now.

"Hey." Cash grabs my arm. Not rough. But not negotiable either. "Where are you going?"

I pull free from his grip and I am acutely, precisely aware of how many times in my life a man's hand on my arm has been the thing standin' between me and where I needed to be.

"Where am I going?" I repeat it back to him, and I hear the edge creepin' into my voice. "Where the hell do you think I'm going, Cash? After him. Obviously."

"Savannah, when your man, your outlaw biker boyfriend, tells your older brother to keep you away from him—don't you think he's got a reason for that?"