Page 65 of Silent as Sin
I traced the seam where the bar met the floor and whispered to the nothing: Ashen will come.
And I lay there in the dark, metal biting my skin, holding the thought like a match in the wind. The flame was small, but it was mine. I would hold it until he came.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE ROAD THINNEDinto a wash of heat and static.I rode hard because speed kept me from thinking, but thinking caught me anyway, it always did. Dusty’s story ran through my head on repeat: blackout, hit in the skull, came to, Wren gone. Convenient. Too convenient. The camera above the back door dead — convenient. A club full of men who sleep with guns under pillows? Not convenient.
I pulled the bike off where the scrub opened and killed the engine. Quiet hit like a slap. I let the memory of the clubhouselot run back through my head, frame by frame, because the earth doesn’t lie even when men do.
At the back door there were two sets of prints. Only two. Dusty’s and Wren’s. They left together. Not a bunch of boots, not two strangers walking side by side. That told me they hadn’t been grabbed by a pair of men hauling her out of the club. They’d stepped out —the two of them— toward whatever waited.
Then there was one set of boots that kept going. One set, heavier, dragging. The tread smeared in the soft dirt, a gut-deep gouge where something had scraped. The drag marks ran off the lot and dove into the brush that framed the property like a mouth. No second set walking away. No companion. Just one man’s path and the track of something being pulled behind him.
Bones could carry a woman. He’d leave deep, heavy prints, the kind that speak of weight shouldered and carried. Dusty couldn’t. Not the way he’d looked in the hall when I saw him, bandaged and shaking, an apology quarter-formed on his lips. Not the way his shoulders slumped like someone who couldn’t hold his own weight upright, let alone lift another. But the dirt didn’t care how I wanted to feel. The math of the footprints was simple and ugly.
Two sets at the door. One set and a drag into the scrub. Wren’s prints stopped where the drag began. The glass bird I’d seen in the dirt at the clubhouse flashed in my head — her charm, broken wing — a bright, stupid promise that had been left behind.
I tried to push it away. We are a club. We are brothers. You don’t let that image settle in your head if you can help it. Dusty was one of us. He’d been in the club for over twenty years. He’d bled for the cut. He’s not the kind of man I want to believe could hand one of ours over. My gut fought me.
But the tracks were facts. The camera dead was an edited story. Wren stepping out without Dusty —who didn’t noticeher leave— didn’t line up unless Dusty had been the one to take her to the edge and put her where Bones would pick up the rest. He could have dragged her to the property line, left her there, and walked back. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t honorable. It was the kind of cowardice that hides in plain sight.
I thumbed my phone, felt the hard metal under my palm like something I could trust. Warden’s face was a flat line when he answered; you could see the math already running behind his eyes. I gave the order slow, precise, return, lock it down.
“Head back,” I said, my voice hiding my fury. “Now. Lock the lot. Nobody leaves. Bring Maul and Scyth. Find Dusty. Nobody off him until I get there.”
Warden didn’t argue. He’ll get there and he’ll do what I ask, we’ve been friends and brothers for too long for him to question. The others felt the shift; engines coughed to life and the line closed in. The world narrowed until the only thing that mattered was getting to the clubhouse and making the dirt tell its whole truth.
I kicked the bike up and rode the shortest line back. Betrayal smells like wet earth and iron, and it sat under my boots. It needed answering.
***
WE ROLLED INTOthe lot like thunder rolling across the hills. Men spilled off bikes in practiced silence, Warden barking short orders, Maul and Scyth to check the border, Throttle already cutting toward the clubhouse. Training. Muscle memory. The club snapping tight.
I killed my motor and dropped off the saddle. The glass bird felt heavy in my pocket; small and reminding. I wrapped my fingers around it until my knuckles ached.
Warden met me at the back door, hand on my shoulder. “What’s the read?” he asked.
“Dusty,” I said, and I didn’t need to spell the rest. Warden’s face hardened, the disbelief already scraping away.
“You’re joking,” he snarled, like the idea tasted wrong in his mouth.
“Look.” I pointed down. “Only two sets of prints by the back door — Dusty’s and Wren’s — the two walking a short ways from the door. Then one set kept going, dragging. The furrow started shallow, then gouged deeper until it flattened into a heavy, uneven stride. Where her prints stopped the drag began; where the drag deepened the lone tread carried on.”
“Fuck.” Warden’s voice dropped. He followed the boot line with his eyes like it was a sin he was trying to read. “And no tracks toward the clubhouse. How the fuck did I miss this?”
I walked the line with Warden, boots punching into the soft dirt. The single tread that continued alone was wide, heel pressed flat under burden.
“This wasn’t Bones,” I said. “He’d have carried her no problem.” I let the words hang. “She stepped out with somebody she trusted. Someone we know.”
“Why would he turn?” Warden asked, his voice filled with anger.
“Doesn’t matter right now.” I felt the heat under my skin, the animal wanting to tear and not think. “He’s a fucking rat, and he’ll pay for this.”
We walked back inside and found the stool where Dusty’s cut usually sat empty. His bandage lay in a crumpled ball on the floor like it had been ripped off in a hurry.
“No sign of him,” Throttle called from the doorway. “His bike’s gone.”
Two kinds of absence in a clubhouse: the planned, and the sneaky. This was sneaky. Men leave for runs and favors and they tell someone. Dusty hadn’t checked out.
