Page 18 of Wilder’s Mistake

“Not everyone looks convinced.”

I follow her attention toward the yard. Griz and Chains are checking their bikes for the next rotation, both carrying the same hard expressions they bring to most church meetings.

“They do not have to like every decision,” I say. “They still follow it.”

“What happens at midnight?”

“We keep watching.”

“They may attack.”

“They may.”

“You may get hurt.”

“Possible.” She hates the answer, but I won’t give her a comforting lie.

“Your brothers still need you out there,” she says.

“They do.”

“And I hate this, you know?”

“I know.”

“But I’m not leaving.”

Her promise stills me, and I kiss her once, slowly enough to tell her I heard her.

Eventually, darkness settles over the compound. Bikes rotate through the gates. Weapons stay loaded. Every engine beyond the fence turns heads.

Lucy refuses to disappear into my room. She sits at the far end of the bar where she can see the front windows and the hall leading to the garage. When a bike returns, she looks up. When a radio speaks, she listens without pretending not to.

I bring her coffee at eleven.

“This is terrible,” she says after one drink.

“Club coffee.” I shrug.

“That explains the violence. Maybe you’d all chill out if you had better coffee.”

Midnight passes without a call. Nobody relaxes. The silence feels deliberate, another pressure Cyrus expects Kane to answer. Lucy watches the clock over the bar reach twelve oh five, then twelve ten.

“He wanted you waiting for him,” she says.

“Yeah, we anticipated this.”

At twelve fifteen, Gray reports fresh tire marks near the old mill road. I ride out with him and find tire tracks from three vehicles in a turnout. The vehicles are gone, but the position gives a clear view of anyone leaving the compound toward the river.

“Watching our response, I figure,” Gray says.

“Or waiting for us to relax,” I reply.

We return by separate turns at the final junction in case somebody is still recording our pattern. At one in the morning, I open my bedroom door. Lucy lies across my bed in one of my black shirts. Her clothes hang over the chair beside one of my gun belts. Her keys and phone sit neatly on the dresser.

“Still here,” I say.

“You told me to stay inside.”