The biker who broke fate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 81 - チャプター 90

They moved after dark.Didn't have much. Two bags between them, the coffee can with what was left of their money, Maya's packed bag for the baby that she grabbed last.Dominic checked the street from the window before they went down. Quiet out there. Nobody sitting in cars, nobody hanging around near the building.They walked the two streets to Ray's fast as Maya could manage which wasn't very fast at all at thirty six weeks but she didn't complain and Dominic didn't rush her.Marta opened the door before they even knocked.She looked at Maya first, then the bags, then stepped back without saying anything and let them in.The back room was small. Bed pushed against the wall, one window that looked out at the yard, small lamp on the floor. Clean though. Sheets fresh, towel folded on the end of the bed."Bathroom's across the hall," Marta said. "I put things in there you might need.""Thank you," Maya said.Marta looked at her the way she looked at people, straight and steady. "have You

Ray came in twenty minutes after the baby arrived.He knocked soft and Dominic stepped out into the hall and pulled the door behind him."Talk," Dominic said."They found your old building," Ray said. "Landlord told them you moved out two nights ago. Didn't know where but he described you both well enough.""So they know we're still in town," Dominic said."And they're going street by street," Ray said. "Slow and quiet. Asking around, showing pictures to whoever opens their door."Dominic went still. "Pictures.""Old ones from what my guy said," Ray said. "But clear."Dominic put his back against the wall and looked at the ceiling for a second. Through the closed door he could hear Alice moving around and the baby making those small new sounds and Marta's voice low and steady."How close are they," Dominic said."Three streets over when I got the message," Ray said. "That was forty minutes ago.""So they could already be on this road," Dominic said."Could be," Ray said.They stood in

Ray was gone a long time.Long enough that Dominic got up twice and walked to the hallway and stood there listening and came back and sat down again.Marta moved around the kitchen washing things that were already clean, the way she did when she was waiting on something.Maya sat on the bed in the back room with Nora against her chest and listened to the house.Twenty minutes. Maybe more.Then Ray's footsteps in the hall and he came back into the kitchen and sat down and put his phone face down on the table.Dominic looked at him. "Well."Ray took a breath. "He'll talk," he said. "But not like this. Not over a phone and not through me. He wants to meet the person with the information directly.""Meet where," Dominic said."He'll come here," Ray said. "Or somewhere close. Somewhere he can sit across from you and hear it himself.""How long," Dominic said."Two days," Ray said. "Maybe three. He's got to move careful too. Can't just show up somewhere without making sure he's not being wa

He wasn't what Dominic expected.Medium height, plain clothes, looked like someone who worked in an office somewhere unremarkable. Maybe forty, maybe older, hard to tell. Carried nothing except a small phone and sat down at Ray's kitchen table like he'd been there before.He looked at Dominic first then at Maya then at Ray."Marcus Webb," he said. Not offering a hand. Just saying it so they knew what to call him."You want tea," Marta said from the stove."Please," Webb said.Marta put a cup in front of him and he wrapped both hands around it and looked at Dominic."Ray told me the basics," Webb said. "I need to hear it from you. All of it. Take your time and don't leave anything out because the things that seem small are usually the ones that matter most."Dominic nodded. "Where do you want me to start.""Wherever it begins," Webb said.So Dominic started.He talked for a long time. Longer than he'd talked about any of it to anyone. Went back further than he'd even told Maya, back to

The safe house was a small place on a quiet road outside of town.Nothing special about it from the outside. Just a house. Ordinary looking, neighbours on both sides, a tree out front losing its leaves. The kind of place nobody looks at twice.Webb pulled up and cut the engine and sat there a second."This is it," he said.They got out slow. Maya with Nora against her chest, Dominic with the bags, both of them standing on the pavement in the early morning light looking at this ordinary house that was supposed to be the beginning of something different.Webb unlocked the door and they went in.Clean inside. Warm. Someone had been in before them, heating on, basic food in the kitchen, towels in the bathroom. A proper bed in the main room, a smaller one set up with a moses basket next to it that Maya stood and looked at for a long moment."Someone set this up for the baby," she said."I told them," Webb said from the doorway.Maya looked at the basket. Small and clean with a white blanke