hand dropped from his belt. Outside the sound of tires on gravel, two black SUVs pulling up to the curb, federal plates. That would be the FBI, Sam said, checking his watch. Right on time. The agents came through the door with badges out and voices low. Professional. Efficient. They separated Wade and Braddock immediately. Different corners of the room, different agents, different questions.
Hope Gardner stood outside on the sidewalk watching through the window. A crowd had gathered, thirty, forty people. Townspeople who’d come to see what fifteen motorcycles outside the Iron Mule meant. For the first time in fourteen months every single one of them was looking at her. Not through her. At her. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away. She’d earned this. The FBI took Wade and Braddock in separate vehicles. The crowd watched them go. Two men in handcuffs loaded into the back seats of black SUVs driven away without sirens. Quiet. Final. The townspeople lingered for a while murmuring to each other, glancing at Hope then drifting back to their shops and houses the way people do when they’ve witnessed something they don’t yet know how to talk about.
By late afternoon, the gas station parking lot was almost empty. Most of the bikers were checking their bikes, recalculating the route to Memphis. The detour would add three hours, but nobody complained. Three hours was better than a thirty-foot drop into Miller Creek. Hank found Hope sitting on the curb behind Connelly’s, her back against the wall, Craig’s leather gloves folded neatly in her lap. She was staring at nothing in particular. The kind of stare that comes after adrenaline burns off and exhaustion takes its place. He sat down next to her. Didn’t ask permission. Just lowered himself onto the curb like a man who’d done this before. Sat with someone who needed company more than conversation.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Where’d you grow up? Hank asked finally. Here. Birch Lane, two blocks from the church. Parents? My grandmother raised me, Eleanor. She passed fourteen months ago. Hope’s voice was matter-of-fact. No self-pity, just the shape of things. Mom left when I was three, never met my father. Eleanor sounds like a good woman. She was the best person I ever knew. Hope paused. She used to read to me every night until I could read faster than her. Then I’d read to her. She’d fall asleep in her chair and I’d put a blanket on her and keep going. Hank smiled at that. A real smile. The kind that reaches the eyes. What happened after she passed? Bank took the house, sixty days. Hope picked at a thread on the gloves. I tried the shelter in Colton, full. Tried the church here, Pastor Lewis said he’d pray for me. I figured if prayer worked that well, Pastor Lewis wouldn’t need a salary.