Iron Daughter

IRON DAUGHTER Chapter 12

"Wren's gone."

Cash said it before he was even all the way through the door, no greeting, no acknowledgment of what he'd clearly just walked in on, the kind of urgency that cut straight past whatever tension had been sitting thick in the garage a second earlier.

"Gone where," Duke said, already pushing up off the stool, one hand braced on the workbench.

"I don't know. She called me about ten minutes ago, barely coherent, said she couldn't be here anymore tonight, said some things I didn't fully follow, and then the line went dead. I've called back six times. Straight to voicemail." Cash's eyes moved between the two of them, reading the room fast, the particular stillness of somebody who'd walked into the middle of something and was doing quick math on how it connected to the thing he'd actually come about. "Her bike's gone from the lot. I checked on my way in."

Raine felt something cold drop through her chest, fast, faster than she expected given everything Wren had just admitted to doing to her. She hated that some old instinct in her still cared, hated it even as it was already moving her toward the garage door.

"She say anything about where she was headed?"

"No. But she sounded bad, Raine. Not just upset. Bad." Cash's jaw tightened. "You know how she rides when she's not right in the head. Always did."

Duke was already moving toward the door, slower than either of them, his hand finding the frame for balance, and Raine stepped in front of him without quite deciding to.

"You're not coming."

"She's my daughter."

"You're ten days out from a hospital bed, Dad. You chase her down tonight and we end up with two emergencies instead of one." She kept her voice level, because yelling at him wasn't going to change his mind and she didn't have time to find a gentler way to say it. "Call Marcus. Get him to check the usual spots, the diner, the overlook. I'll go with Cash."

Something in Duke's face wanted to argue. He didn't. Maybe six years of regret had taught him, finally, when to listen to somebody instead of deciding for them, or maybe he just didn't have the strength left tonight to fight two battles in a row. Either way he nodded, pulled his phone from his robe pocket with hands that weren't quite steady, and Raine was already moving past him toward the lot before he finished dialing.

"Raine." He said her name once more before she made it to the door, and she stopped without turning all the way around. "Thank you. For going."

"I'm not doing it for you," she said, which was true and also not the whole truth, and she didn't have time tonight to sort out which parts of it belonged to which feeling.

The night air hit different once she was outside, cooler than she expected, carrying the smell of cut grass and distant rain that hadn't arrived yet, and Cash's truck sat idling at the edge of the gravel, headlights cutting twin cones into the dark.

"Where would she go," Raine asked, climbing in, the familiar creak of the passenger door landing somewhere in her chest she didn't have time to examine.

"Widow's Curve, maybe. That's where she goes to think, always has, ever since she was a teenager." Cash threw the truck into gear, gravel spitting under the tires as he pulled out onto Mill Road faster than the speed limit technically allowed. "It's not a safe road at night even when you're thinking straight. There's no guardrail on the drop side, hasn't been since the flood took it out years back, and county never got around to fixing it."

Raine's stomach tightened at that, an old familiar road rising up out of memory with a clarity that scared her, the specific camber of that curve, the drop beyond the shoulder, the handful of times as teenagers they'd all taken it too fast just to feel their stomachs lift, laughing in a way that only made sense when you were young enough to believe nothing could actually touch you. Wren used to ride it slower than the rest of them, back then, careful in a way that hadn't matched the rest of her personality. Something about that detail nagged at Raine now, a piece that didn't fit the picture of a girl reckless enough to be riding it tonight, upset and alone, in the dark.

"How far."

"Fifteen minutes if I push it."

He pushed it. Neither of them talked much on the drive, the cab filled instead with the sound of the engine working hard and the radio turned low on a station neither of them had chosen, something with a slow guitar line that felt wrong for the moment and too right to turn off. Raine watched the dark tree line blur past the window, replaying every version of Wren she'd known, the sixteen year old at the bonfire, the twenty four year old on the phone talking about cake tastings, the version from twenty minutes ago with her hand on a doorknob and fear written plain across her face for the first time Raine had ever seen it there.

She still hated her. She was fairly sure of that much. But hating somebody and being terrified for them, it turned out, could apparently sit in the same chest at the same time without canceling each other out, which was a complication she hadn't expected tonight on top of everything else.

"There," Cash said, leaning forward over the wheel, his voice gone tight, and he was already braking hard before he'd finished the word, tires chewing gravel as the truck fishtailed slightly before catching.

The headlights swept the curve ahead, catching on something low and dark against the pale gravel shoulder, metal and chrome lying at an angle no motorcycle should ever sit at, the front wheel still spinning slow in the beam of the truck's lights, a thin ticking sound audible even through the glass as the engine cooled. The drop beyond the shoulder fell away into black, no guardrail to catch the light, nothing but empty air and the distant sound of water somewhere far below that Raine's body remembered before her mind fully caught up to what she was looking at.

Cash had the truck in park before it had even fully stopped moving, both of them out the doors in the same instant, boots hitting gravel, the night suddenly loud with crickets and the tick of cooling metal and nothing else, no voice calling out, no sign of movement anywhere along the shoulder or the tree line beyond it.

No sign of Wren anywhere around it.