"Did you call it in?"
"Told Prez. He said people check out the compound sometimes, curiosity."
"Did it feel like curiosity to you?"
Decker turns back to the bar. "No," he says. "It felt like someone counting bikes."
I look across the room at Sav. She's laughing at something Meg said, her head tipped back, completely at ease in this room in a way that took her a while to get to and that I don't take for granted. She catches me looking and raises her eyebrows in a question.
I shake my head slightly. Not yet.
Then we hear the gunshots.
The room moves fast, the way it moves when men who've trained for exactly this snap into it without thinking. The old ladies are already gone before Prez has finished shouting, out the back door, fast and practiced, because they've been briefed and they know.
"Find the women," Prez says, and his eyes are on me as he says it, because he knows me.
I go.
I come through the back of the clubhouse at a run and for three seconds, three seconds that feel much longer, I don't see her. I see Rosie, Jules and Meg. I see Cam behind them, but I don't see Sav, and something cold goes through me that I don't want to examine.
Then she steps out from behind the door where she's been shielding Cam's youngest.
"I'm here," she says, the moment she sees my face. "I'm here, Austin."
The relief hits me like a physical thing, not warm but sudden, the kind that makes your hands shake if you let it. I get my hands on her face and I look at her.
"You're okay."
"I'm okay. Go. I know what to do."
I kiss her hard and fast and go back.
Richie is down in the front yard. Decker sees it the same time I do and moves for the door.
"Decker." Prez's voice is a wall. "Do not open that door."
But the grenades come through the windows before any of it matters.
The first one blows out the east wall. The second takes the bar. The third lands in the middle of the room and we're already moving, throwing ourselves behind whatever's standing, and the blast goes up and takes the ceiling tiles and the noise of it is all-encompassing. It’s the whole world for two seconds, and then it's smoke, ringing ears and someone is shouting Richie's name.
Prez gets us out the side door and we move up the flank in the dark, quiet and fast. We find them in the tree line. The High Stakes MC, or what's left of them after the hotel, and they've brought new men the way Ruby said they would. They didn't count on us coming out of the clubhouse still standing.
We hit them hard and we hit them clean and they scatter and then they run, leaving their dead behind them the way they did the first time, and the night goes quiet.
Decker is the one who sees the all-clear first. He steps out in front of the building, into the light.
"Get back," Prez calls.
"It's clear. The shots have stopped; we need to."
"Decker, get the fuck back here now."
He turns.
The grenade comes from the dark at the edge of the property. One of theirs, delayed, the last thing they left us.
I'm already running.