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Every brother in that room knew exactly where she’d slept and probably what we’d been doing. Not one of them said a word to me about it. Their faces did the talking though.

I scowled at all of them. It used to work. Now it just made Havoc give me an almost-smile.

Marco called it from the gate before lunch.

“Car pulling up. One guy getting out.” A pause. “He wants Preacher.”

Preacher went out. So did I, and Gage, and half the room behind us. I put Mya on the couch in the back hall on the way past.

“Stay here. Don’t move.”

She looked up at me. Whatever she saw on my face, she didn’t argue.

The car was a dark sedan. It pulled up outside the gate in broad daylight and sat there with the engine running. The man standing beside it had put on a good gray suit for the occasion, like he’d come to sell us insurance. I knew who it was instantly.

Vega.

My gun was under my cut and I rested my hand there. I could have put him down right there on the road, and I wanted it so bad my hand ached.

But it was Preacher’s gate and Preacher’s call. I kept my hands where they were.

He stayed back from the bars. He looked at Preacher, then at Gage, and then his eyes came to me and stopped there.

“You have something that belongs to us,” he said.

“Do I?” Preacher said.

“Thirty crates. And a pilot.”

“Those crates landed on Unholy Few territory. That makes them ours now.” Preacher didn’t raise his voice. He never does. “The pilot’s under our protection. You can tell Tomas both of those things.”

Vega smiled. “The pilot saw something she shouldn’t have.”

“She saw you shoot a man in the chest for asking for a raise,” Gage said. “We heard.”

“Then you know why I need her.” Vega shrugged with his good shoulder. “She can’t stay behind those walls forever. We’re patient people. We can wait.”

He looked at me again, longer this time, perhaps sensing something in the way I looked at him.

I walked up to the gate until there was nothing between us but the bars. I kept my voice low, so only he’d hear it.

“Shoot a man in the right spot and he bleeds out in a few minutes if nobody helps him. I’m gonna wager that no one would help you.”

He held my eyes for a long moment, and the smile went away.

Then he got back in his car and drove off, slow, like he had all the time in the world.

“He’ll be back,” Gage said.

“Let him,” I said.

When I went back inside, Mya was standing in the hall where I’d left her, pale as paper.

“What did he want?”

“You,” I said.

She nodded slowly, like she’d known the answer before she asked. “He’s not going to stop, is he?”