Chapter 3: What Happened to Her Mother
The truck sat there for a long time.
Engine running.
Nobody getting out.
Dex — that was what his men called him — kept his eyes on it.
He hadn't told anyone what the bracelet meant.
He hadn't said the name out loud yet.
Not to his crew.
He turned to the man on his left.
"Take her behind the bikes.
Keep her low.
Keep her calm."
"Dex—"
"Now, Rourke."
Rourke nodded and crouched beside Lila.
"Hey, sweetheart.
Come with me a second.
We're just gonna sit over here."
Lila looked up at Dex first.
He gave her a small nod.
She went.
The moment she was behind the line of motorcycles, Dex exhaled.
His hand pressed flat against his chest for just a second.
Then he dropped it.
The man to his right — older, gray at the temples, a long scar across his chin — stepped up beside him.
That was Colt.
Twenty years together.
Colt didn't ask questions unless he already knew the answer was bad.
"Talk to me," Colt said quietly.
"The bracelet." Dex's voice was barely above the wind.
"I had it made.
Seven years ago.
I gave it to someone.
Someone I haven't seen since."
Colt was quiet for a moment.
"Who?"
"Her name was Nora." Dex didn't look away from the truck.
"We weren't together long.
But she was — she was good.
The kind of good that makes you feel like you've been doing everything wrong your whole life." He paused.
"She disappeared.
No warning.
No note.
I looked for eight months.
Nothing."
"And the girl?"
Dex's jaw worked.
"Lila said her mama's been g0ne since she was a baby.
She said some man told her that.
Some man who put her in a house with a blue door and told her she was safe." He finally turned to look at Colt.
"That bracelet never left Nora's wrist.
Not once in all the time I knew her."
Colt looked back at the truck.
"So either Nora gave it to the girl herself—"
"Or someone took it off her." Dex turned back to the road.
"And gave it to a child to keep quiet."
The truck's engine cut off.
Both men went still.
The driver's door opened.
One man stepped out.
He was tall, broad, wearing a gray jacket.
He didn't walk toward them.
He just stood beside the truck and looked down the road.
Like he was measuring something.
Behind the motorcycles, Lila made a small sound.
Rourke's voice came low.
"She's shaking, Dex."
Dex didn't move his eyes off the man in gray.
"She know his name?"
A pause.
Then Rourke again, quieter.
"She says he told her to call him Uncle Marsh."
Something in Dex's chest went cold and flat.
He knew that name.
Not from a long time ago.
From three weeks ago.
From a conversation in a parking garage with a man who'd offered him money to stop asking questions about a woman who'd gone missing seven years back.
A man Dex had walked away from because the offer itself was the answer.
Marsh.
Colt read his face.
"You've met him."
"He came to me," Dex said.
"Told me to let it go.
Told me Nora had chosen to leave.
That she didn't want to be found." His voice dropped.
"I didn't believe him then."
The passenger door of the truck opened now.
A second man stepped out.
Shorter.
Something in his hand caught the light.
"Colt."
"I see it."
Dex turned and walked back to Lila.
He crouched in front of her.
Her face was pale, her eyes fixed on the man by the truck even from this distance.
"Lila." He waited until she looked at him.
"Did he ever mention my name?
Did he ever say the name Dex to you?"
She blinked.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
"What did he say?"
Her voice was barely a breath.
"He said if I ever saw a man named Dex, I should run the other way." She looked at him with something that was almost an apology.
"But you didn't feel like someone I should run from."
Dex held her gaze.
"You were right not to run."
He stood up.
Colt was already beside him.
"What do you want to do?"
Dex looked at the man in gray standing at the end of the road.
Marsh hadn't moved.
Hadn't come closer.
He was waiting to see what Dex would do first.
"Get the girl on a bike," Dex said.
"Rourke takes her.
He doesn't stop until she's at the chapter house." He glanced at Colt.
"And get me everything we have on a man named Marsh.
Whatever name he's using.
Whatever he owns.
Whatever he's touched."
"And him?" Colt nodded toward the truck.
Dex pulled on his gloves.
One finger at a time.
May you like
"He came to my road," he said.
"Let him make the next move."
