Page 13 of Kane's Kingdom

Not all of them, only enough to notice before Kane steps in behind me and the attention disappears. He doesn't touch me; he never does. My brain betrays me by being a little disappointed that he doesn't.

He walks half a step behind, almost as if guarding me without laying claim where he hasn't earned it. That's becoming a problem too.

I'm almost at the hallway when the wall catches me and stops me cold.

Photographs cover most of it. Brothers on club runs, rallies, outside the old clubhouse, or beside bikes with their arms slung over one another's shoulders, young enough to believe they'll never die.

I remember this wall. I remember being small enough that my father had to lift me to show me his picture.

There should be a portrait near the center. Red Rourke at twenty-eight, broad-shouldered and grinning, his beard still dark. There should be a group shot from Kentucky, King and Red shoulder to shoulder. Another from the summer the clubhouse roof caved in and half the club rebuilt it in the rain.

They're all gone, without even an accidental glimpse of my father at the edge of somebody else's memory. There are gapswhere frames used to be, but other photographs have been shifted to cover them. The wall looks complete unless you know how it looked before, and I do.

King didn't merely remove a portrait. He purged my father from the club's memory.

"Every picture," I say.

Kane's voice comes from close behind me. "Yeah."

"He took every one down."

"I know."

"And you left it like this?"

His silence is answer enough. I turn to find the muscle in his jaw tight and his eyes steady.

I want an excuse, something easy to hate. Kane never gives me easy.

"I've had the gavel three weeks," he says. "Some things haven't been dealt with yet."

My laugh is brittle. "Busy schedule, huh?"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Turn everything I say into proof I'm him."

"You're standing in his clubhouse, looking at the wall he erased my father from."

"It's my clubhouse."

"Then why does it still tell his story?"

The words hit exactly where I intended. I walk away before he can answer.

His room is at the far end of the hall. It's barely lived in. The bed is made, boots are lined beneath a chair. There's no clutter, no photographs and nothing of King, not even the silver lighter King carried for as long as I knew him.

Kane has stripped King from this room as thoroughly as King stripped my father from the wall.

I don't know what to do with that. So I change out of my work clothes and sit on the edge of Kane's bed pretending I'm not breathing him in.

The door opens without a knock. Kane stops on the threshold. His eyes drop to my bare legs before coming back to my face.

I'm wearing sleep shorts and an old tank top, nothing I'd think twice about at home. But this isn't home.

"What?" I ask defensively.