Page 33 of Dread

I closed the patient files. Stacked them neatly on the corner of the desk. Locked the bottom drawer -- the one that held the clinic’s controlled substance log, though that wasn’t what I was thinking about when I turned the key. The deadbolt on the back entrance was already thrown. I checked it anyway. Palm against the metal, feeling the solid engagement of the bolt in the strike plate, and the habit was so old it felt autonomic, like checking a pulse.

My phone from my pocket. Fox’s contact, which lived in my favorites not because I called him often but because in fifteen years of brotherhood, the times I’d needed him had been the times when scrolling through a contact list would have cost seconds I didn’t have.

Blocked call at the clinic. Second time. Blue Silverado still a factor.

I sent it. Didn’t wait for a reply. Put the phone face-down on the desk and reached for my jacket on the hook behind the door. The leather was cool, worn soft at the elbows, and I pulled it on without hurrying. My keys from the desk drawer. My clinic bag from the floor beside the filing cabinet, already packed because I packed it the same way every afternoon -- stethoscope coiled, penlight, the flat aluminum case from my back pocket transferred to the bag’s side pouch where it lived during clinic hours.

Past the front desk. The receptionist looked up. “Heading out, Doc?”

“Yep. Lock up when you’re done. Deadbolt on the delivery door.”

She nodded. Didn’t ask why. The deadbolt on the delivery door was always locked at closing. Reminding her was redundant, which meant I was performing a routine for my own benefit rather than hers, and the fact that I recognized this didn’t stop me from doing it.

The parking lot was empty. Afternoon sun hitting the asphalt at a low angle, turning the potholes near the curb into shallow pools of amber light. I scanned the street while I walked to my truck. Main Street was quiet -- a few storefronts still open, no blue Silverado in any of the spaces I could see from here. That didn’t mean anything. Empty spaces were data, not reassurance.

My phone buzzed against my thigh as I reached the truck. Fox.

Brothers have eyes on last known location. Truck spotted near county line 30 min ago. Moving east. Hornet and Cotton rotating gate tonight. Keep your phone on.

I read it twice. Got in the truck. Started the engine. Let it idle while I sat with my hands on the wheel and ran through the list like I ran through pre-op checks -- methodical, thorough, no item skipped because skipping items got people killed.

Camera angles at the house. The Ring doorbell pointed at the driveway. The motion light on the east side of the porch that would catch anyone approaching from the tree line. The deadbolt on the front door, which I’d checked this morning and would check again when I got home. Katy’s phone. Charged or not? She’d been on it at breakfast, scrolling through her feed while Ellie talked about food groups, which meant the battery was probably above fifty. The landline in the kitchen worked. I’d tested it yesterday, dialing my own cell from the handset, watching the caller ID pop up on my screen.

Which brothers were on compound tonight? Hornet and Cotton, according to Fox. Hornet was loud but capable. Cotton was something else entirely -- the stillness of a man who had spent years in places where stillness was a survival skill rather than a personality trait. Between the two of them, the gate would be covered. The perimeter would be walked. The cameras would be watched.

I put the truck in gear. Pulled out of the lot. Main Street slid past the driver’s window -- storefronts, the post office, the diner where the club sometimes gathered for breakfast on Sundays -- and I didn’t speed. Didn’t run the yellow light at the intersection. Drove the speed limit because drawing attention was its own kind of risk, and the man in the blue Silverado had already drawn enough for both of us.

The clinic shrank in the rearview. Gray brick, white trim, the Hades Abyss MC patch visible in the front window if you knew where to look -- small, discreet, placed where the morning sun wouldn’t fade it. I’d put it there three years ago, after Fox asked if I wanted one for the clinic, and I’d said yes without hesitation because some affiliations were worth advertising and others were worth keeping close, and the club fell into both categories depending on who was looking.

Someone was looking now. The blocked calls said so. The truck said so. The empty parking space across from my clinic said so with the particular eloquence of absences that had been carefully arranged.

I turned onto the county road that led home. The maples were thick on either side, their leaves catching the late light, and the compound gate came into view half a mile ahead -- chain link, razor wire, the particular silhouette of a place that had been built to keep things out rather than let them in.

My phone stayed silent in the cupholder. No new texts. No calls. Just the engine’s rumble and the sound of gravel under tires as the county road gave way to the compound’s private lane, and the list in my head kept running, item by item, because that’s what lists were for -- containing things so the rest of you could function.

The gate was open. Cotton stood beside it, one shoulder against the post, his arms crossed over his cut. He didn’t wave. Didn’t nod. Just watched me approach with those green eyes that missed nothing, and when I passed through, he reached for the chain without looking at me and pulled the gate closed behind my truck with a sound that traveled through the frame and into the bones of the house waiting fifty yards ahead.

* * *

The house smelled like garlic and tomatoes when I came through the back door. Katy had something simmering on the stove, and Ellie was at the kitchen table with her workbook open in front of her, talking while she worked.

Apparently, subtraction had survived dinner preparations.

I set my clinic bag on the bench by the back door and unzipped it. The aluminum case sat inside -- the combat medic kit, restocked two days ago, gauze and butterfly closures and antiseptic wipes arranged in the order that twenty years had baked into muscle memory. I’d added extra gauze. More tape. The kind of inventory adjustment that happened below thought, like a pilot checking fuel without being asked.

The front door was twenty feet away through the living room. I crossed to it and tested the deadbolt. Locked, exactly as I expected. That didn’t mean I was done checking. I moved to the windows.

When I turned, Katy was watching me from the stove. Wooden spoon in one hand, the other braced against the counter’s edge, and her eyes had that particular focus they got when she was reading something in a room that wasn’t written down. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. The fact that I’d walked directly to the deadbolt before saying hello was its own kind of communication, and she received it same as she received most things from me -- with quiet attention, without flinching.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

Ellie looked up from the kitchen table. Her homework was spread across the oak in the disorder she favored -- worksheets overlapping, a pencil case spilling colored pencils across the geometric pattern placemat I’d bought three weeks ago and had never seen her use for its intended purpose. “Doc! My poster got a smiley face. Ms. Keller said the Popsicle comment was funny but not educational, which I think means she liked it but couldn’t admit it because she’s the teacher.”

“Teachers have rules,” I said.

“I know. It’s a whole system.” She went back to her workbook, brow furrowed as she worked through the next problem.