When the Road Went Silent novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Lake Road

On Sunday at noon the road shook before we saw them.

I stood in the middle of Lake Road with my father's ring in my fist and the clubhouse behind me.

The old man stood on my left.

Ward stood on my right, with his arm taped under his sleeve.

Eleven brothers stood behind us in a line across the asphalt, and two prospects held shotguns they had never fired.

Kayla had stayed in town.

I had made sure of that.

The first bikes came over the rise in a black wedge.

Twenty of them, then thirty.

Behind them rolled two pickup trucks with men standing in the beds, and Boone rode in the first row beside a gray-haired man in a leather coat.

They stopped sixty feet from us and the engines dropped to a growl.

The gray-haired man swung off his bike.

He was the Hounds' boss, and he was smiling.

"Which one's the girl?" he said.

"I am."

"You're smaller than I was told."

"You're later than I was told."

A few of the brothers laughed.

The boss's smile didn't move.

"Your friend here says you're a reasonable woman," he said, and tipped his head at Boone. "He says you'll hand over this strip of road, the garage and the shore, and you and your boys walk away."

"Boone says a lot."

"Then I'll say it plain. Walk away today, and nobody here bleeds."

"This is Pellham ground," I said. "Nobody lays a hand on a Pellham here. My father swore every patch in that building to it."

"Your father's dead."

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