You've been thinking about how to say that for a week, he said. Two days, Will admitted. It's a good line. Marcus turned and looked at the line of bikes and riders and then back at Will. Here's how I want to do this.
We go into town as a group, not aggressive, not looking for anything. We go to the diner and we have breakfast. Your friend Patty, the owner, she'll have us. She'll have 40 of us. Will said she'd have a hundred.
Good. We eat breakfast in Silver Creek and we let the town see us and we let Keller's people call him and tell him what they're seeing because they will. And then we see what he does. Marcus looked at him. Does that sound right?
It sounds exactly right, Will said. Marcus turned back to the group and raised one hand, and the sound of 31 engines starting was one of the finest sounds Will Carter had heard in 22 years. He got in his truck and led them into Silver Creek. They came down Main Street at 8:15 in the morning, and it was a Sunday, which meant the street was quieter than a weekday, but not empty. A few people on their way to the church two blocks over, a family getting into their car outside the motel.
Pete Alcott's truck outside Will's shop because Pete had driven in to collect the shovel head and apparently arrived to find the shop closed for the first time in four years and was standing in the driveway with a confused expression. Every person on the street stopped. Pete Alcott stopped. His hand froze on the door of his truck and he stood with his keys in his hand and his mouth slightly open and watched 31 motorcycles come down Main Street in a line behind Will Carter's pickup truck. The family by the motel stopped.
The father's hand went automatically to his wife's arm. Not in fear, but in the instinctive gathering of the people near you when something large is happening. Inside the diner, Patty Ghoul was pouring coffee for her one Sunday morning, regular and 80-year-old retired rancher named George Watts, who came in every Sunday at 8 for two eggs over easy and decaf. And she looked up at the sound and went to the front window and put her hand against the glass and stared. Then she untied her apron and put it on the counter and went to the front door and opened it and stood on the step in the cold November morning and watched them come.
Will pulled his truck into the small parking lot beside the diner. The motorcycles filled Main Street and the side street and some of the lot arranging themselves with the unhurried precision of men who'd parked in formation so many times it had become automatic. Marcus came up beside Will's truck window. Will rolled it down. Nice town, Marcus said.
It is, Will said. It usually is. He got out. Patty Ghoul was coming across the lot toward him with her hands clasped in front of her and her expression entirely under control in the way of someone who was feeling a great deal and had decided to feel it later. Will, she said, "Patty," he said, "I need to feed 30ome people."
She looked past him at the men who were climbing off their bikes and stretching and doing what men who'd been riding since before dawn do when they stop easy and unhurried and present. She looked at their vests at the patches and her expression did something Will couldn't entirely read, but it wasn't fear. "I've got eggs and bacon for 20," she said. "I'll need to make a call for more bread." "Make the call," Will said.
She turned around and went back to the diner. Will went after her and Marcus followed. And behind Marcus, a handful of the others came. And by the time Patty was behind the counter with her phone in her hand, Will's diner had more people in it than it usually saw on a Sunday afternoon. Marcus sat at the counter beside Will, which was where he'd always sat in diners, at the counter where you could see the whole room.
He ordered eggs and black coffee without looking at the menu because men like Marcus didn't look at menus. He looked at the room at the town visible through the front windows, at the people on the street who had stopped to look and were still looking. They're not scared of us, Marcus said with a slight surprise in his voice. No, Will said. They're not.
They've been scared of someone else for 6 weeks. That changes the math on scared. George Watts at his corner table had been watching all of this without saying a word, his two eggs cooling in front of him, his decaf halfway to his mouth and suspended there. He was 80 years old and had grown up in a Montana where the Second World War was still a fresh wound and had lived through things that put motorcycle clubs well down on the list of remarkable phenomena. He set his decaf down and picked up his fork and went back to his eggs with the composure of a man who had decided that what was happening was probably fine.
Patty put coffee in front of Marcus. Marcus nodded his thanks. They looked at each other for a moment, the diner owner and the man at the counter, and something was said in that look that didn't have words, some compact of mutual recognition. "You're Marcus Hayes," Patty said. Marcus looked at her steadily.
"Yes, ma'am." "Will told me about you just this week. He didn't say much." She glanced at Will, then back at Marcus. He didn't have to.
"No," Marcus said. "That's usually how it goes with Will." She went to take another order and Marcus looked at Will with the almost smile. She's good, he said. She's the best person in this town, Will said.
One of them. Emily Parker. Will looked at him. He hadn't mentioned Emily's name on the phone. He described her in function.
The waitress who'd noticed the young mother who' told him about the extortion. I know more than you told me, Marcus said simply. I made some calls after yours. To who? People who know this town know who lives here.
Know what's here. I always research before I ride. He drank his coffee. She's important to you. It wasn't quite a question and Will didn't quite answer it.