Page 12 of Thunder

Then Blaze speaks up, "We finish the run. We hand off the paper, we act like nothing, and we bring that plate home to Phantom and Rogue tonight. Rogue'll know how to run it down."

"Rogue'll know," I agree.

Because Rogue's the one who brought this down on us.

Not on purpose.

No man chooses to have his old life come collect, but the Firm is Rogue's ghost, and Rogue's the only one of us who's ever sat on the inside of what's hunting us now.

If a silver truck is running our charter without a front plate, then the second man from the bunkhouse didn't crawl off and die somewhere.

He went home.

And he reported in.

* * *

Roan's clubhouse sits on the flat outside Lubbock, and we roll in tight and careful, three men who just got tailed forty miles and aren't in the mood to be surprised.

Roan meets us in the lot himself.

He's got Phantom's height and Phantom's way of reading a man's face before the man's said a word, and he takes one look at the three of us and says, "Who died?"

"Nobody yet," Blaze says.

"We picked up a tail comin' down. Lost him at the pass-through, but he was on us from Kimble."

Roan's jaw sets.

He was at the bunkhouse cleanup, same as the rest of us, close enough to this to know exactly what a professional tail means, and a charter president reads that in about a second and a half and likes the answer no better than we do.

"The Firm," he says.

Not a question.

"Maybe," Blaze says.

"Spur's got a plate. Rogue's runnin' it tonight."

"You'll call me the minute you know."

Roan takes the paperwork off Spur and doesn't so much as glance at it, because the paper was never really the point of this run, and everybody standing here knows it.

"And you'll tell my brother I said this doesn't get handled quietly. Last time we tried quiet, Marlena caught a bullet, and you caught two." His eyes flick to my leg, to the way I'm standing. "How's the hip?"

"Fine."

"Liar." But he says it gently, the way family says it. "Sit down before you fall down, Thunder. I'll get you boys fed for the road."

I don't sit down.

I don't sit down because if I lower myself into one of Roan's low clubhouse chairs, I'm not getting back up without a show of it, and I've taken all the looking-at-my-leg I can stand for one day.

I lean on a pool table instead like it's a choice, and I let the brothers eat.

My eyes stay on the door the whole time, because somebody on this run has to, and my body can still do that part sitting still.

Watching the door's about all I'm good for anymore.