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“Especially after all that.”
She sighs, but I catch the smile she tries to hide.
“Lord have mercy,” she mutters. “I introduced the girl full of sunshine to Bitter Adams before lunch.”
“That sounds like a good first day.”
“That sounds like paperwork.”
I laugh and step through the doors of the Grave Prowlers School of the Dead with my government name tucked safely away, a new name blooming on my tongue, and the very clear understanding that bikers are bad news.
The thing about bad news, though? If you are very unlucky or very curious, it looks right at you and waits to see whether you scare easy.
I don’t.
Chapter Three
Bitter
Friday, Church starts with Hyde saying, “Ravenfork,” and the whole damn room goes quiet.
That name ain’t one we toss around for fun. The Ravenfork Reapers MC runs the eastern roads where the hills fold tight, cell service dies, and men with bad intentions know how to make a truck disappear before breakfast. Their patch is a raven with a split beak and a scythe tucked in its claws. Dramatic as hell, but the bastards earned enough blood that nobody laughs about it to their faces.
Well, Boogie might. Boogie is why we have liability concerns.
I sit back in my chair and make my face bored, because that is what I do when something gets under my skin. Across the long table, Hyde stands with both hands planted flat on the wood, president patch heavy on his cut and murder sitting easy in his eyes. The old arrangement room still has stained-glass windows from when grieving families used to sit in here picking coffin liners and pretending satin made death gentler. Now it is church for the Grave Prowlers, with patched chairs, locked cabinets, coffee that tastes like burnt regret, and a carved femur gavel Boogie found at a swap meet.
Hyde keeps it because he says every club needs tradition.
I think he keeps it because it makes lawyers uncomfortable.
“Say it plain,” Nevermore says from Hyde’s right.
Hyde looks at CSI.
CSI turns one of his laptops around. A map of town fills the screen, marked with red dots around Main Street, the vendor field, the south gate, the backside of the School of the Dead, and the old cement dump road.
“Our cameras caught three unknowns last night,” CSI says. “Not locals. Not registered vendors. One bike had a Ravenfork plate bracket. They circled the festival grounds twice, asked about coffin race registration, and one tried to get past the barricade by the murder hole.”
That makes my fingers stop tapping.
The murder hole is what folks call the old cement dump outside town, past the broken plant and the trees that lean too close to the road. Sixty feet down, straight sides, concrete bottom. During festival week, tourists take pictures of the warning sign and buy little shovel magnets from the booth beside it. Locals dare each other to spit over the edge. Drunk men act brave until rocks hit bottom too late.
People call it bottomless.
It ain’t.
I know because I’ve been down there.
“What the hell do Reapers want at the dump?” Ghoul asks, boots stretched under the table. “Ain’t nothing out there but broken concrete, poison ivy, and bad decisions.”
Boogie grins. “That’s half our membership.”
Tinman points at him without looking up. “Keep talking and you’ll be the whole membership.”
Hyde doesn’t laugh. “The dump road becomes overflow parking once the festival opens. It backs up to the grave-dig field and the vendor lanes. People wandering. Trucks moving. Music loud. Nobody paying attention to what goes in and out.”
Carver’s jaw ticks. “And we’ve got custom pieces moving tomorrow night.”
