Page 28 of Falcon’s Forever

Security Phone:

ALL CLEAR FOR INTERNAL MOVEMENT. External patrol remains elevated. SUV lost eastbound. No confirmed threat to compound. Security channel remains active.

Underneath it, there’s another line, from Condor this time.

Condor:

Need feedback on system later. Falcon says keep updates going even after all-clear.

I stare at the last line longer than it deserves.

Frankie reads it over my shoulder. "What?"

"Nothing." I turn the phone away and she raises an eyebrow, unconvinced, but doesn't push.

It shouldn't matter this much. He didn't do anything dramatic. He listened to something I said, carried it into Church, and made it part of how the club runs now. That's all. It's also everything, and I hate how much matters.

The tension in the house eases with the lockdown lifted. Sarah goes to tell the women upstairs. Maya takes the cookies into the living room because apparently surviving a potential threat requires two kinds of snacks minimum. That leaves Frankie and me alone at the table. I pull the notebook closer and turn to a clean page.

“We need the lockdown zones written up properly,” I say as I uncap my pen. “We should also make a list of what kind of space each person prefers.”

“Definitely.” Frankie leans over the table to look at the page.

I jot down the first few ideas. “Maybe we should prepare a bag for each person too. Medications, copies of important documents, emergency contacts.”

Frankie’s mouth curves into a teasing smile. “Now you sound like Vulture.”

I point my pen at her. “Take that back.”

She laughs and lifts her hands in surrender. “Sorry.”

“You should be,” I reply, returning to my list.

We spend the next half hour turning tonight's scare into something useful, and by the time we finish the list's grown again, and I find I don't mind. For years everything that happened to me was something I endured. This is different. Something happened tonight and I can use it, we can all learn from it, and that feels like a kind of power I haven't had in a long time.

Outside, engines start somewhere near the clubhouse, several at once. The brothers moving out on patrol. The sound still hits my nervous system, though not as hard as it did this morning. I listen for one bike in particular and don't let myself find it.

I turn my attention back to the women instead. This is where I am tonight. This is what I can control.

Chapter 5

Falcon

Imake it almost three hours before I fuck up again, which has to be some kind of record.

Church ends and Vulture catches my arm before I make it to the door. "Take Rook. Garcia's account is three weeks late again."

It’s not a request. I nod and go find Rook, and twenty minutes later we're parked outside a tire shop on the south side that's been paying the club a cut of its receipts for longer than I've been VP, in exchange for the club making sure nobody else's problems become Garcia's problems. It used to be protection money in the old sense, before the neighborhood got safe enough that nobody remembers why the arrangement started. Now it's just an arrangement, and arrangements have terms.

Garcia meets us in the back office, already sweating before either of us says a word. He knows why we're here. Everybody always knows why we're here.

"Two weeks," he says. "I swear to God, two weeks and I'm current."

"You said that last month," Rook says, not unkindly. He's not a cruel man. That's not the point of him being here. The point is that he's big enough that cruelty doesn't need to be demonstrated to be understood.

"The shop's slow. Everybody's slow right now, it's not…"

"Not our problem," I say. "The number doesn't care whose fault it is."