Homework

Chapter 9:

The black car is still there when the sun comes all the way up.

I watch it from the window. Same car. Same spot at the town line. No headlights, no wipers, no movement. Just a dark shape parked sideways on the shoulder like somebody left it there and forgot.

Then Jax comes in from the back and says, "It's been there since six."

Kael's already behind the counter with a cup of coffee. He doesn't look up.

"How long's it been there?"

"Since six. Carl called it in at six-fifteen." Jax shakes rain off his jacket. "Said the fella inside ain't getting out. Ain't rolling the window down. Just sitting."

I come down the last steps.

They both look up.

And Kael's eyes go somewhere they haven't been yet. Not to my face. Not to the bruises. To the cut. His cut. Still on my shoulders. Hanging off me, the sleeves swallowing my hands.

Something in his face goes tight and satisfied.

"Mornin'."

"Who's in the car?"

"Probably the detective."

My stomach drops.

"Marcus?"

"Don't know. Could be the lawyer again. Could be the man in the suit. Could be nobody." He pours a mug and slides it across the counter. "Coffee."

"Kael."

"Or it could be a man sitting at a town line because he wants us to look at him. Which is the same thing, when you think about it."

I sit down on the stool.

I drink the coffee. It's terrible. Too strong, been on the burner too long. It's the best thing I've ever had.

"Jax," Kael says. "How many bikes in the lot?"

"Four. Rook's boys came in about five. Saw the sign on the door and figured something was up."

"Get 'em up. Get 'em standing at the window. Not outside. In the window. Where he can see 'em."

Jax grins. "You want me to make it look like a lot of us."

"I want you to make it look like all of us."

---

It takes five minutes.

By seven-fifteen there are four big men standing in the front window of the Iron Vipers with their arms crossed, looking down the street like it's their job. Two of them I don't recognize. One's got a shaved head and a tattoo of a bird on his neck. The other's built like a refrigerator and hasn't blinked since he got up there.

Kael tops off my coffee.

"Now we wait."

We wait.

The black car doesn't move. I watch it from the corner of the window with my cup in both hands. The rain's come back thin and gray, the kind that's not really rain, just the sky sweating.

Kael's on the stool beside me with his own cup and his jaw working slowly.

"He's not going to come in."

"No."

"Then what's he doing?"

"Looking at us." Kael tips his head. "He came to see how many bikes we got. How many men. What the bar looks like from the street. Which window's the best angle. Which door opens the easiest."

"That's terrifying."

"That's amateur." He drinks. "A man who does his homework in person isn't a professional. The professional's the one who was already here before anybody knew he was here. He'll show up in a few days and he'll be somebody you already talked to."

I think about that.

I think about everyone I've talked to since last night. The sheriff. Miss Ada. Carl. Ruth with her shotgun and her car.

I put my cup down.

There's a woman on the sidewalk.

---

She's young. Twenty-five, maybe. A coat that's too thin for the weather and wet hair and a phone in her hand. She walks fast up the street and past the black car like it isn't there and straight to the bar door.

The bell rings.

Kael's already between us.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Marcy. I live in the third house past the church." She's breathing hard. "I'm the one who called Jax."

"Why'd you call Jax?"

"Because there's a man in that car taking pictures." She holds up her phone. "Of your bar. Of your bikes. Of her." She jerks her chin at me. "Through the window. He's been doing it since sunup."

"Did you see his face?"

"No. He's got the visor down and a hat." She turns the phone around. "But I got a picture of the plate."

Kael takes it.

He looks at it for a long moment.

Then he laughs. Not a nice one.

"What," I say.

"Plate's a rental."

"So?"

"So rental plates get logged. Every rental company in three states keeps a record of who drove what and when." He hands the phone back to Marcy. "Thank you. You did good."

Marcy looks at me.

"Everybody in this town knows about you," she says. It doesn't come out rude. It comes out gentle. "The whole street's been up since six. My husband's on the roof with binoculars."

"On the roof—"

"It's Blackpine," Kael says. "Nothing happens here. When something happens, everybody wants to see it."

Marcy leaves.

The bell rings behind her.

---

The black car pulls out at eight.

We all watch it through the window. The slow turn. The taillights. The way it heads back out of town and stops one more time at the line and sits there, idling, for one long minute.

Then it goes.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"He just leaves?"

"He came to look at us." Kael picks up his mug. "Now he knows how many bikes we got, how many men, what the bar looks like, which window's the best angle. He came to do his homework."

"What do we do about it?"

"We don't do anything about it. We do the opposite." He tips his head at the window. "He thinks he's got a picture of a biker bar with four bikes out front. Tomorrow there'll be fifteen. Next week there'll be forty. Every day he sits out on that line with a camera, the number goes up."

"Where are they going to come from?"

"Every club from here to Ashford." He drinks. "I made some calls last night. Before you came down."

I look at him.

"You called the clubs."

"I called the clubs."

"How many?"

"Don't know yet. Somewhere between forty and sixty by the weekend. Men and bikes. Some of them bringing their old ladies. Some of them bringing trailers." He sets the mug down. "By Friday this lot's going to look like a rally."

"And Marcus?"

"Marcus is going to drive past this town on Friday and see sixty motorcycles parked outside a bar in a town of eight hundred people. And he's going to have to decide whether his wife is worth that."

---

I look out the window.

There's a woman on the corner sweeping the sidewalk in front of the hardware store. There's a kid on a bicycle. There's a man in a truck with the engine running, talking on his phone.

Ordinary morning. Ordinary town.

And every one of them knows I'm here.

"Kael."

"Mm."

"How many people in this town know?"

He thinks about it.

"All of them."

"All of them."

"By now? Yeah." He tips his head. "Miss Ada's got a phone tree. She's had it since 1998. It's for funerals and fires and when somebody's husband is out of work. She called it at six this morning."

I look at the street.

"What did she tell them?"

"She told them there was a woman at the Vipers who'd been hurt and who needed a town that wouldn't ask questions." He drinks. "And then she told them to bring food."

I put my hands around the coffee cup.

"Nobody's ever done that for me before."

"Done what?"

"Nobody's ever made a phone call for me." I look at him. "Not one person. In two years. Not one person in that whole world ever picked up a phone and said, 'Something's wrong.'"

Kael's quiet.

"Welcome to Blackpine," he says.

---

He stands up.

"Now."

"Now what?"

"Now you're going to do something for me."

I look up at him.

"What?"

He walks around the end of the bar and picks up his cut off the back of a chair — a different cut, an older one, faded at the shoulders. Not the one I'm wearing. He shrugs it on.

"I'm going out."

"Where?"

"Gas station. Then the hardware store. Then I'm going to drive the county road and look at every mile of it and figure out where a man would park if he wanted to watch this town without being seen." He tips his head. "It's going to take two hours."

"And me?"

"You're going to stay here. You're going to eat the casserole. You're going to keep your feet up. And you're going to sit at that window so every single person who drives past this bar sees you sitting in my patch."

"Why?"

"Because a man in a black car sat out on that line for two hours this morning and took pictures. And now I want him to come back tomorrow and see you sitting in that window like you own the place."

I look at him.

"That's not protection. That's a message."

"That's exactly what it is." He picks up his keys. "He wants to know what he's up against. So we tell him."

---

He stops at the door.

"One more thing."

"What?"

"The Harley."

I don't move.

"The big black one in the front of the lot," he says. "The one you had your hand on."

"I wasn't—"

"You were." He tips his head. "I'm not mad about it. I'm telling you something."

"What?"

"That bike's got a key in it." He opens the door. "It's been in it since last night. It's still in it now."

The bell rings.

And then he's gone.

---

I sit at the window with my coffee and my wrapped feet and his cut on my shoulders.

And I look at the Harley.

Chapter 9 Ends.