Page 38 of Dread

I looked at him. Really looked. The lines at the corners of his eyes, the weathering of a face that had spent decades looking at things most people turned away from. His hand rested on the table between us, broad and steady, the calluses along the knuckles pale against the sun-browned skin, and something in my chest turned over, same as it did whenever I allowed myself to see him clearly -- which wasn’t often, because seeing him clearly meant admitting what was happening, and admission meant vulnerability, and vulnerability was still newer than fear.

The rest of the day passed without another sighting, another blocked call, or anything new from the brothers watching the roads. By evening, the groceries had been put away, dinner had come and gone, and our mugs sat half-empty on the kitchen table. Outside, the porch light clicked on automatically as daylight faded from the yard.

We washed the mugs. Dread dried. His hand brushed mine over the sink, and the contact was brief and electric and entirely unremarkable because neither of us made it remarkable. The kitchen was small. Bodies brushed. That was the physics of the thing, and we had both stopped performing the dance of people who were pretending not to notice.

The back porch steps were cool under my thighs. Wood, weathered gray, still holding the day’s heat in their grain though the evening had started to take it back. Dread sat beside me. Shoulders touching, not because the steps were narrow but because neither of us had chosen to create space, and the contact was warm through the cotton of our shirts and steady in a way that felt deliberate without being performed.

I leaned my head against his arm. The muscle there was solid, the particular density of a man who had spent decades being reliable in a world that asked for nothing less, and when my temple found the curve of his bicep, he shifted. Not much. A subtle shift of his stance, his arm moving around my shoulders, his hand coming to rest warm and steady at the junction of my neck and collarbone where tension had lived for longer than I wanted to measure.

His thumb found the ridge of my clavicle. Traced it once. Stopped. Held.

“I’m not leaving,” I said.

I hadn’t meant to say it quite like that. The admission slipped out before I could dress it up. The decision itself wasn’t new -- Ellie’s teacher already knew her by name, the rock collection had outgrown the windowsill, the juice boxes had a permanent shelf in his refrigerator. This was just the first time either of us had said it out loud, in a sentence with a period at the end. I didn’t look at him. Kept my eyes on the yard where the porch light ended and the dark began, the maples beyond the fence just shapes against a sky that hadn’t decided on stars yet.

“Not because of you,” I said. “Not because of the compound, or the gate, or Cotton standing there with his green eyes checking my tires every time I come through. I’m staying because I want to stay.”

I looked out across the yard.

“The second I heard he was getting out, I packed everything I could fit in the SUV and drove. I didn’t stop to think about where we were going. I only knew I wanted Ellie as far away from him as I could get her.” I swallowed. “And maybe that was the right choice then. But I’m not giving him the next choice too. He doesn’t get to decide whether I go to the grocery store or take Ellie to school or sleep in the same bed tomorrow night that I slept in tonight.”

Dread’s arm tightened slightly around me.

“I spent five years knowing exactly where he was,” I said. “Then one phone call changed that. I don’t know where he is anymore, and I hate it. But I can’t make my entire life about where he might be.” I turned my head toward Dread. “He took enough from me before he went to prison. I’m not volunteering anything else.”

Dread looked at me for a moment. “Good.”

That was all. Coming from him, it was enough.

We sat there. The Missouri dark came in full -- not gradual, like dark arriving in places with streetlights, but all at once, same as it fell in the middle of nowhere, the tree line disappearing and the sky opening up and the cicadas filling every silence with a sound so constant it became its own kind of quiet. Dread’s hand stayed on my shoulder. Warm. Present. His pulse beat against my temple where my head rested against his arm, and the rhythm of it was slower than mine, steadier, the particular cadence of a man who had nothing to prove to the dark and saw no reason to hurry.

When we finally stood, my legs were stiff from sitting, the edge of the step imprinted across the backs of my thighs. I pushed through the screen door into the kitchen, passing Ellie’s rocks on the windowsill and the mugs we’d left on the table earlier.

Dread followed me inside and headed toward the hallway, apparently assuming I would follow. I almost did. Instead, I stopped at the front door and reached for the deadbolt.

I turned it and heard the familiar click.

For years, locks had been something I checked because of what had happened to me. After the call from the victim advocate, they’d become one more thing standing between Ellie and a man who was free again. Tonight, the lock meant something different.

I wasn’t securing a motel room or an apartment I already knew I’d eventually leave. I was locking Dread’s front door at the end of the day because I planned to wake up behind it tomorrow.

I gave the deadbolt one quick check, turned away, and followed him down the hall.

I stood there and didn’t move until Dread’s voice came from down the hallway -- low, even, asking if I wanted the bathroom light on -- and the ordinary question pulled me away from the door and into whatever came next.

Chapter Twelve

Dread

Fox’s office had no windows and only one door, and with several men packed inside, the air had gone stale. I stood against the back wall with my arms folded while Fox laid out what they knew, sticking to details he could confirm and leaving speculation out of it. There wasn’t much, but what he had was enough to hold everyone’s attention.

The wall-mounted monitor showed four feeds in grayscale. Compound gate. Clinic parking lot from two angles. The service road behind the building where the dumpsters lived and the delivery door opened to a loading dock nobody used. The timestamp in the corner read 06:43. Morning light, pale and unforgiving, turning the asphalt to something between concrete and mercury.

Fox stood at the head of the table, his weight settled back on his heels. The black leather cut had ridden his shoulders for twenty years, the Hades Abyss patch faded to charcoal at the edges. He delivered the bad news in the same tone he might have used to discuss club business on any other day, never raising his voice or emphasizing the worst of it. He didn’t need to. Everyone in the room was listening.

“Dark blue Chevy Silverado. Service road behind the clinic. Two mornings running.” His finger tapped the screen. The feed jumped, rewound, stopped on a frame where the truck sat parked with its nose pointed toward the tree line, driver’s window down, exhaust visible as a faint plume in the cold air. “Brother on a supply run clocked the same vehicle idling a block from the east gate at 23:17 last night. Driver never left the cab. Sat there forty minutes and drove off when the headlights swept the intersection.”

The office wasn’t built for five men. Hornet stood by the door, his stocky frame blocking most of it, the scar along his jaw stark beneath the overhead lights. Cotton had taken a position beside the monitor, green eyes fixed on the camera feeds. Two Prospects I didn’t know by name yet waited near the filing cabinet, attentive and smart enough to stay out of Fox’s way while he was talking.