Chapter 16: Church Doors

At eleven on Sunday morning, Rodney drove her up the mountain with both hands tight on the wheel.

Mara sat beside him in a clean white shirt and said nothing for the first hour.

She had not forgiven him.

She had asked him to drive because he was the only one who knew every gate and every dog.

"If they shoot me at the door," he said, "don't stop."

"I won't."

"Good."

"Rodney."

"Yeah?"

"You're still saying it to the club. You don't get to die before that."

He laughed once, thin and wet, and wiped his face with the back of his wrist.

The night before, Wyatt had asked her for permission.

He had stood in the clinic with his hat in his hands.

"I want to walk in the front gate at dawn and give them my name," he said. "They'll lock me up with Nash. I'll be inside when you come."

She had wanted to say no more than she had ever wanted anything.

Instead she had said, "Why?"

"Because you can't open that door from the outside, and I can't stand on the other side of it again."

"You're asking me."

"I'm asking."

She had kissed him then, hard, in front of his brothers, and let him go.

Now the clubhouse rose out of the pines ahead of them, long and low, with a hundred bikes angled along the lot.

Dean and Boone were already in the trees on the north slope, with a rifle and a radio.

Dean's friend inside the club had promised nothing.

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