Chapter 24: The Bridge Road

The storage yard smelled of diesel and wet gravel, and two hundred bikes stood in rows with their engines ticking in the cold.

It was ten to five on Friday.

The patch stood in the headlights in their cuts and vests, drinking coffee from paper cups, and Morton moved among them with a clipboard.

He shook hands.

He clapped shoulders.

He saw me come in on the back of Rhett's borrowed bike, and he smiled.

"There she is," Morton said. "The wife who came back from the dead. Welcome, Rhona."

"Thank you, Morton."

"How's the ankle?"

"It holds."

"Good girl."

Rhett cut the engine and swung off, and the two of them stood face to face.

I watched Rhett do the hardest thing I'd ever seen him do.

He smiled.

"Morning, Mort."

"Prez. I mean, not Prez, you're still the one who counts. Big day."

"Big day," Rhett said. "Before we roll, Mae wants to say something."

Mae walked into the light with her phone in her hand.

She had put on the green cardigan she wore to funerals.

"I've got something to play," she said. "I want every one of you to hear it."

She looked around the circle of faces.

"If I'm wrong, you can throw me out of my own bar."

The patch went quiet.

She held up the phone and pressed the screen.

Morton's voice filled the yard, easy and patient, out of a cheap speaker.

Not the brakes again.

She got lucky and he got lucky.

The truck comes out of the access lane at the narrow span.

I'd have been kinder to her if she'd just stayed dead.

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