Page 23 of Mustang

He didn’t offer reassurance.Didn’t say we’d be safe.Mustang wasn’t a man who managed fear.He moved through it, and if you were smart, you stayed close.

I didn’t ask for reassurance.The only useful questions had answers we already knew: yes, they would find us eventually; no, we couldn’t outrun them forever.So, I sat with my boots on the floormat and my shoulder against the cold window while the road disappeared under our tires.

Somewhere past the two-hour mark, my eyes got heavy.

I didn’t mean for it to happen.One minute I was watching the reflectors flare and die, flare and die, and the next the rhythm of it had worked its way into my blood, and the exhaustion I’d been carrying since Mustang woke me with the sound of zippers caught up all at once.My head tipped toward the window.The glass was cold against my temple.The vibration of the engine traveled through the frame and into my skull, and I was gone.

I woke to gravel under the tires and warmth on my left side where there had been cold.The heat vent had been angled toward the passenger seat, dry air working through the canvas jacket and wool socks, coaxing my body back toward waking.

Mustang’s hand was back on the wheel.Ten and two.His eyes were on the rearview, then the side mirror, then the road ahead where two floodlights cut through the fog and illuminated a heavy steel gate flanked by concrete barriers.A man stood beside it – young, lean, wearing a prospect cut over a plain black t-shirt – and he straightened up so fast when he saw the truck that I could hear his boots scrape on gravel from twenty yards out.

The gate swung open.Manual, no hydraulics, the prospect putting his shoulder into it and heaving until the gap was wide enough for the truck to pass.Mustang rolled through at walking pace, his window down, and the prospect nodded once – sharp, respectful – without speaking.Mustang didn’t speak either.Just lifted two fingers off the wheel in acknowledgment and kept driving.

The compound opened up beyond the gate.Gravel lot, well-maintained, Harleys parked in a long row under a corrugated awning that ran the length of what had to be the clubhouse.The building itself was massive – a converted warehouse, corrugated metal siding painted matte black, the Wicked Mayhem MC logo emblazoned across the front in crimson and white that caught the floodlights and held them.Two stories, maybe three, windows few and high-set, the main entrance a set of double doors reinforced with cross-braces and what looked like bulletproof glass.Warm light spilled from the doorway, yellow and steady, cutting a long rectangle across the gravel where a handful of men stood smoking in the cold.

Mustang killed the engine.The truck settled with a sigh, and he sat there for a long beat, both hands on the wheel, eyes sweeping the lot.Exits.Heads.Terrain.Reading all of it the way he read everything—thoroughly, silently, missing nothing.

Then he was moving.Door open, boots on gravel, the sound sharp in the quiet.I reached for my handle, but he was already there, circling the front of the truck with that unhurried stride that covered ground faster than it had any right to, and my door opened before my fingers touched the latch.

He stood there with one hand on the door frame and the other extended, palm up.Not impatient.Not performative.Just there, offering a hand I could take or leave.

I took it.His palm was warm, callused, sure against mine, and he guided me down from the cab like he intended for me to land on my feet no matter what waited outside.

The cold hit me full in the face.Sharper than the mountain, carrying engine oil, cigarette smoke, and the emptiness of places where men gathered to do things they didn’t talk about.The clubhouse loomed ahead, warm light spilling from the doorway, voices carrying low and overlapping on the night air.

Mustang’s hand stayed on my lower back as we walked toward the doors.Not possessive.Not controlling.Just present, solid enough that I could lean if I needed to.

I didn’t need to lean.But knowing his hand was there made the cold air easier to breathe.

The common room hit me like a warm wall.Heat from a wood stove somewhere in the back, the smell of leather and gun oil and food cooking that wasn’t canned stew.Low ceiling, exposed ductwork painted black, scarred wooden tables arranged without any obvious pattern across a concrete floor worn smooth by twenty years of boot heels.A pool table dominated the center under a hanging light with a green glass shade, cues racked along the wall beside a chalkboard covered in scores I couldn’t read.The bar ran along the back wall: solid oak, dark with age, lined with bottles in no clear order and a row of club patches mounted in frames behind glass.Wicked Mayhem MC.Est.1998.The dates underneath told their own story.

Men occupied the space the way men occupy spaces they built: sprawled, comfortable, taking up more room than they needed because nobody had ever told them otherwise.Some at the bar.Some at the tables.Some working on bike parts near a garage door that stood half-open to the night, tools spread across a workbench under fluorescent lights that threw every surface into harsh relief.

Socket saw us first.He was halfway through a sentence to someone I couldn’t see, a wrench in his right hand, grease darkening his palms, when he turned and did exactly what Mustang did: swept the room, took inventory, landed on me.Then he looked to Mustang, and whatever passed between them didn’t need words.Socket’s mouth closed.The wrench hung in midair for a beat before he set it down with a clank that turned heads.

Screwball was at the bar with a beer in front of him and a grin already forming, slow and wide, the scar along his jaw pulling tight as his mouth curved.“Well,” he said, voice carrying across the suddenly quieter room, “that’s not a dead woman.”

Mustang didn’t turn.Didn’t shift his weight.Just said, “Shut up, Screw,” flat and final, the way you tell a dog to stop barking when you’re not actually mad about the barking.

Screwball’s grin didn’t falter.If anything, it widened, and he lifted his beer in my direction – not a toast, exactly, but an acknowledgment – before taking a long drink that emptied half the bottle.

At the far end of the room, near the garage door, a man I hadn’t noticed straightened from whatever he’d been working on.Dark hair, trimmed beard, eyes that held mine for one measured beat before he nodded once – sharp, respectful – and reached for the nearest stool.Pulled it away from the table it belonged to and set it closer to the bar, within the circle of warm light, then stepped back without a word.

An offer.Wordless, but clear as anything spoken aloud.

It was Socket who actually spoke to me first.He’d crossed the room while I was watching Torque, dropping the wrench on the nearest table with a clatter that made Screwball wince, and now he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, grease darkening the tribal tattoos that ran up both forearms and disappeared under his sleeves.

“You the baker?”he asked.Direct.Unadorned.A question that expected a direct answer or none at all.

I blinked.“How did you—”

“Word travels,” Mustang said from behind my left shoulder.His voice carried that dry edge he used when he was amused but wouldn’t admit it.

Socket barked a laugh.Short, sharp, from the chest and ending as abruptly as it started.He shook his head once, almost to himself, and something in his expression softened, not much, just enough to notice, before he turned back toward the garage door where whatever he’d been working on still waited.

Screwball slid a mug down the bar toward me.Not a beer.Coffee, black, steam rising in a thin curl that caught the overhead light.“Heard you make cinnamon rolls,” he said, leaning against the bar with his elbows planted wide.“Just putting that out there.No pressure.Except there’s pressure.I really like cinnamon rolls.”

I wrapped both hands around the mug.The tin was warm, almost hot, and the coffee smelled better than anything that had come out of the cabin’s tin pot — rich, actually brewed, made by someone who gave a damn about ratios.I took a sip and didn’t wince, which seemed to please Screwball enormously based on the way his eyebrows went up.