Page 3 of Gage

The line went quiet. When the man returned, his voice hadn’t warmed. “Come to the compound gate. Preacher has your name. They’ll listen there.”

“Does that mean they’ll protect me?”

“Means they’ll listen.”

The call ended, leaving me with exactly what he had promised. A chance to be heard and that was all I could hope for right now.

The small town of Salvation appeared late in the afternoon, bleached pale beneath a hard blue sky. Empty storefronts broke up Main Street, dust crowded the curbs, and the mountains beyond town looked close enough to touch despite the miles between us. I’d spent years avoiding every road connected to my father. Now I was driving toward men who had given him reasons to need reinforcements.

The club could refuse me, use me against Tomas or decide I was bait and hand me back, but none of those possibilities felt worse than having to marry a man I didn’t know and know that I never tried to save myself.

Salvation Motor Works stood beside an old union hall behind a high metal fence. Motorcycles and trucks filled the yard, and the black cuts moving between the garage and clubhouse left no doubt that I had found the right place. I stopped outside the closed gate with both hands on the wheel.

A man detached himself from the shade near the entrance and walked toward me. The patch on his chest read SERGEANT-AT-ARMS. His dark hair was cut short, his forearms were tattooed and bare beneath a black T-shirt and a pale scar crossed the knuckles of his right hand. He didn't hurry, and the men behind the fence watched him rather than me.

He moved as if nothing at the gate could surprise him. When his eyes met mine through the glass, heat caught low beneath my ribs, so badly timed I almost mistook it for another kind of fear.

He stopped beside my window. “Elena Rivas?”

“Yes.”

“Turn the engine off, step out and keep your hands where I can see them.”

I did. He watched every movement, including the moment my eyes found the handgun beneath his cut. Once I stood beside the car, he looked through the windows as if to check there was nothing in there he needed to deal with.

“You armed?”

“No.”

“Anybody behind you?”

“Not that I saw.”

His attention moved to the road and returned to my face. “Seeing isn't the same as checking.”

“Then no one I know about... I was careful.”

That answer seemed to suit him better. He signaled to a younger man inside, and the gate rolled open just wide enough for me and the car. “Drive straight through. Stop where I tell you.”

I parked in the outer yard. The gate shut behind me with a heavy metal rattle that made refuge feel uncomfortably similar to a cage.

The Sergeant-at-Arms led me into the old hall without introducing himself. Inside, the air smelled of coffee, engine oil and old wood. A long bar ran along one wall. Three men waited around a scarred table, and I recognized the names Preacher and Smoke on their patches attached to stories nobody in my father's circle enjoyed discussing. A fourth man sat at the table too.

“Gage,” Preacher said, and the man beside me shifted far enough to block the quickest path back to the door. “Stay.”

Preacher looked at me. “What do you want?”

“Protection from my father. In return, I've got information about what he’s doing in Salvation.”

“What information exactly?”

“Not until we have a deal.”

Preacher’s gaze hardened. “You’re Tomas Rivas’s daughter and you want me to protect you on a promise.”

“I want you to decide whether the promise is worth hearing. If I give you what I know first, I’ve got nothing left to trade.”

Gage had stayed beside the door, but his attention sharpened on me. Preacher let the silence stretch before he asked, “Why do you need protection from your own father?”