The siren started as a faint wail somewhere beyond the snow, a sound that didn't belong to the clubhouse. It grew louder, closer, until even Lily stopped tracing circles on the fogged window and listened. Those aren't bikes, she whispered. Marcus's chest tightened. No, he said. They're not. Wrench barged back into the den, his phone pressed to his ear, his face set in a way Marcus hadn't seen before. Not just angry, but afraid. When? He barked into the phone. How long ago? A beat. His jaw clenched. Lock it down, he said. Nobody moves till Reaper gets back. He hung up, noticed the kids watching him, and tried to rearrange his face into something calmer. It didn't work.
What happened? Marcus asked. Wrench hesitated. Prisoner transfer out of county, he said. They were moving Colt. Lily's head snapped up. They caught him. Yeah, Wrench said. Reaper and the boys found him first, roughed him just enough he couldn't run, then called it in. Cops took over. Paperwork, chains, the whole show. Then why do you look like that? Marcus said. Wrench's eyes flicked to the door, then back. Because he didn't stay in chains, he said. Van never made it to the lockup. They found it ten miles outside Denver with the driver knocked out and Colt gone. Lily's fingers dug into the bear's fur. He escaped. Yeah, Wrench said softly. He escaped.
The sirens peaked, then began to fade, racing past the exit that led to the clubhouse's quiet industrial street. Whatever chaos was unfolding out there, it wasn't here. Not yet. Marcus swallowed hard. Where's Reaper? On his way back, Wrench said. He's the one who called to warn us. What if Colt comes here again? Lily whispered. Wrench knelt so he was eye-level with her. Then he finds out why nobody messes with Reaper's family twice. He said. But we're not waiting for that. We're changing the script. He turned to Marcus. Reaper told me to get you ready. Ready for what? Marcus asked. Ready to stop running, Wrench said. Ready to stop being leverage and start being something else. The words settled over Marcus like a weight and a promise at the same time.
Being leverage had always meant he existed so other people could be hurt. Maybe this was the first time someone was telling him he existed so people could be saved. Heavy boots thudded down the hall. The den door opened without a knock. Reaper filled the doorway, snow still clinging to his jacket, eyes sharper than when Marcus had left him in the garage. There was a cut on his cheek that hadn't been there before and blood on his knuckles that wasn't his. Lily launched herself off the couch and ran straight at him. He dropped to one knee just in time to catch her. She wrapped her arms around his neck like she was afraid he'd disappear if she let go. You're late, she said into his shoulder, voice shaking.
Traffic, he replied, his voice rough but anchored. You know how it is. Only after he'd had— held her for a long moment— did his gaze lift to Marcus. We need to talk, he said. Marcus rose slowly. About Colt. About Colt, Reaper confirmed. About all of it. They gathered around the table. The same table where Lily had colored Suns and Marcus had studied a map that led into danger. Now it held a different kind of map. A path out. Reaper dropped another folded document onto the wood. Detective Murray sent this after Colt escaped, he said. Turns out they've been digging into him longer than they told us. Marcus smoothed it open. Mugshots. Financial records. Connections. Under aliases and false addresses. A single thread repeated. Cold head.
been trading information about multiple biker clubs, including Reaper's, to people who would pay for it. He was selling secrets, Marcus said. Not just secrets, Reaper replied. People patterns, weak points he'd been tracking who mattered to who kids, partners, where they lived, when they were alone, lily shivered. He started with rivals, Reaper continued. Fed them just enough to make them think he was on their side. When that wasn't enough, he moved on to law enforcement. Then private. The line disappeared. Anyone with a grudge and a number could hire him to break a life without pulling a trigger. And us? Marcus asked quietly. Reaper's gaze didn't waver. He targeted you and Lily because he knew it would break me, he said. And because he knew you didn't even know I existed.
That made you easier to move. Marcus should have felt like a pawn hearing that. Instead, it hardened something inside him. So what now, he asked. He's out. He knows where we are. We can't just wait. We're not, Reaper said. We're changing the board. He slid another paper across the table. A copy of an email exchange between him and the detective. At the bottom was an address, a safe house location in a Denver suburb, usually reserved for witnesses in federal cases. You're sending us away, Marcus said. Reaper shook his head. I'm sending you forward, he said. There's a difference. He turned to Lily first. Lil, Detective Murray's people have a place with alarms, cameras, and no blind spots. Colt knows about. It's near a regular school where kids walk home with backpacks and complain about math homework.
You'd be there with people whose whole job is to keep you breathing. And wrench would be too. Doors down, Lily frowned. You're not coming, not at first. He said honestly, 'I have work to finish. There are loose ends in this club and out there on the roads that I need to tie up myself. But that doesn't mean I'm leaving you. It means I'm giving you room to have a childhood without wondering if every engine you hear is the last one.' She swallowed. Will I still see you? Every week until you get- sick of me, he said. Managing a small smile, maybe more— we're not disappearing from each other again. That part of the story is over. He turned to Marcus for you. He said, 'It's a choice.' Marcus's pulse spiked.
Nobody ever said that to him. Life had always happened to him. Nobody had asked what he wanted from it. You can come to the safe house, Reaper said. 'New school.' 'A bed that's actually yours.' 'A kitchen that always has food.' You could ride on the back of my bike without wondering if I'll drop you off and vanish. Or, or. Marcus echoed. Or you can stay here as my prospect, Reaper said. 'Not tomorrow.' 'Not next week.' 'But when you're old enough, and when this mess with Colt is finished, you can learn the business from the inside.' Help me change how it works so no other kid ends up on a leverage list ever again. Marcus stared at him. You're offering me two families. I'm offering you two- doors, Reaper said.
Both end with you at my table. One just gets there with more homework. For the first time in a long time, the future didn't look like a blank wall. It looked like a fork in a road, both paths leading somewhere that had his name on it. What about Colt? Marcus asked. What if he doesn't stop? What if he comes after me at the safe house? Or after the club because we handed him over? He already came, Reaper said. And he already lost. He slid one last item onto the table. A photo taken on someone's phone, printed quickly. showed a highway patrol car at an angle across an icy off-ramp, blue lights flashing. In the
No, Lily whispered. They found the bike two hours ago, Reaper said quietly. No body yet, but blood on the guardrail and a trail down the rocks. Weather's bad. Search teams are waiting for daylight. He could still be alive, Marcus said. He could, Reaper agreed. But if he is, he's hurt. On foot. In the cold. With half the state looking for him. He's not the hunter anymore. He's the one running. The idea of Colt out there, reduced from a shadow in their windows to a limping figure in the snow, didn't erase the fear. But it shifted it slightly. Monsters didn't look so large when they slept. So this is it. Marcus said. We just move on. No. Reaper said firmly. We move forward. A difference. We don't pretend it didn't happen.
We carry it, but we don't let it decide everything else for us. He looked at both of them, his kids, in a way Marcus finally let himself believe. I'm done letting other people write our story, he said. From now on, we do it ourselves. Lily sniffled. I want the place with homework, she said finally. I want to wake up without listening for bikes. Reaper smiled, eyes wet. 'Safe house it is,' he said. He looked at Marcus. What about you? Marcus thought about the rail yard, the blizzard, the maintenance room where he'd wrapped his hoodie around a stranger's shivering shoulders.
He thought about alleys and empty beds and a mother who'd done the best she could until she couldn't anymore. He also thought about the look on Reaper's face when they'd stared each other down in garage, both refusing to blink. About Lily's fingers clutching his sleeve when the sirens got close. About Wrench pacing like an anxious uncle who didn't know the word for what he'd become to this strange, stubborn boy. I'm tired, Marcus said at last. Not just from today. From— Everything before today. Reaper nodded slowly. 'Safe house,' he said. For now. For now, Marcus echoed. But when it's done, when cold is just a 'n-' in a file and not a shadow in a window. I want the garage. I want the table.
I want to help make sure nobody ever has to sleep behind a warehouse to stay alive. Reaper's throat worked. 'Deal,' he said. You get your childhood first. Then, if you still want it, you get your cut. Lily slid her hand into Marcus'. We can have pancakes there? She asked. We'll have pancakes and too much homework, Marcus said, and Wrench yelling at us to pick up our shoes. From the doorway, Wrench snorted. You assume I'm coming, he said. You assume you're not, Reaper countered. The older biker shook his head, but there was a smile ghosting around his mouth. Somebody's got to teach the kid to change oil before he changes the world, he muttered. Outside, the snow kept falling, soft instead of savage now, covering the tracks of bikes and boots and bad decisions in a blanket of white.
It didn't erase what had happened. It just made it harder to see the scars unless you knew where to look. Weeks later, in a small house on a quiet street, Lily would wake to an alarm clock instead of engines, and Marcus would drag himself out of bed complaining about math like any other 8th grader. Reaper would show up every Sunday with groceries and stories that got a little less violent each time, learning how to leave out the parts that didn't fit in a kitchen with cereal bowls. In the sink. Sometimes, when the wind was just right, Marcus would swear he heard a bike in the distance and his chest would tighten. Then he'd look at Lily at the table, at Reaper leaning against the counter, at Wrench arguing with the coffee maker, and he'd feel something he'd never had a word for before.
Home. The blizzard that tried to erase Denver had failed. It hadn't erased Marcus. It hadn't erased Lily. It hadn't erased the man who called himself Reaper and had to learn what it meant to be just dad instead. The storm had taken a lot, but it had given something back too. Three people who might never have found each other any other way, now bound not by patches or paperwork or DNA reports, but by a choice they made every day. To stay. And somewhere out past the city limits, beside a ravine where a bike had gone down, search teams would eventually stop looking. Files would get closed. Names would fade. From active lists. But in a small house on a quiet street with too many shoes by the door and a map pinned on the wall with no red circles left, Marcus would draw a new line, not between places to hide, but between places they wanted to go. Because the biker's daughter had been lost in a blizzard, a homeless boy had found her. And the Hell's Angels hadn't just changed his life. They'd given him one.