Page 7 of Deacon

“Because you’re the only one who ever says more than two words to me.” Her chin came up. “And because nobody else in Salvation is going to stop this.”

She had me there. What I’d do, I kept to myself.

“Stay here,” I said, and got up. “I need ten minutes.”

Church at nine-thirty on a Wednesday meant whoever was still in the building. Preacher, the Unholy Few president, at the head of the table. Smoke on his right with his arms folded. Gage, Switch and Havoc. Lock in the chair by the door like normal.

I laid it out. The ice house. The trucks, and Harry Laine.

“They lost the mine track,” Gage said. “They need somewhere closer in.”

“The phone call’s the good part,” Smoke said. “Laine’s got his hands in it. You have to ask yourself how close he is to this shit.”

“He’s taking calls from whoever’s at the building,” I said. “He knew she’d been past before she opened her mouth.”

Gage looked at me across the table. Flat. Assessing. “Or he sent her. Could be a trap,” he said, leaning back in his chair and tilting it on its back two legs.

My jaw went tight. “He didn’t.”

“You’d know that how?”

“Because I’ve watched her for four years.” That came out wrong. Havoc bit the inside of his cheek. “She’s straight. She’s scared and she’s pissed off and she drove out here against her own father. Nobody fakes that face.”

“People fake shit all the time,” Gage said, not unkindly.

Preacher held up a hand. “Doesn’t matter yet whether she’s straight. What matters is how close she is to him.” He looked at me. “How close?”

“Close enough. She has dinner with him once a month. Got a key to his office for when he’s out of town.”

“Then she’s inside his house.” He said it slowly, turning it over. “We’ve had Laine’s paper for a year. What we’ve been missing is a way in. Keep her close. Keep her talking. Find out what she can get to without him noticing.” He looked at me again. “She came to you. She’s yours.”

“She’s a civilian, Prez.” It came out harder than I meant. “She walked in here because she thinks we’re the good guys.”

“Then let’s not disappoint her.” There was the almost-smile, there and gone.

“We’re not the good guys,” Havoc pointed out.

Smoke studied the grain of the table. “She doesn’t need to know that tonight.”

Gage let his chair drop back onto four legs. “And if Laine finds out she’s been here?”

“Then we’ll have to deal with it if that happens,” Preacher said, and the table went quiet. “But right now, Deacon. You handle her.”

Twenty minutes ago she’d been Chelsea from the bakery. Now she was an in. An asset to the club. A crack in Harry Laine’s house wide enough to get a crowbar into.

I’d have said the same about anybody else who walked through that gate. I had said it, more than once, sitting in this same chair. But somehow this felt very different.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll handle her.”

Smoke caught my eye across the table and held it a beat too long. That said plenty.

Lock spoke for the first time. “Anybody follow her in?”

“Prospect says the road was clear,” I said.

Lock nodded once, satisfied, and went back to saying not very much.

She’d drunk the whole mug of coffee by the time I returned.