No more waiting
1438 Words
(Noah)
I could not sit still.
That was the problem. I had been at the compound for two hours and I had walked the yard twice, checked in with Ryder, looked at the freight route update Dante had left on the table and put it back down without reading past the first line. My head was not here and I was not going to pretend otherwise.
I went outside and sat on my bike without starting it.
The yard was quiet at this hour. A couple of the guys were over by the far building, talking low, not paying attention to anything outside their own conversation. The lights along the fence were on. Everything was exactly as it should be and I was sitting here thinking about a man in a hallway who had no idea what he was standing in the middle of.
That was the part that stayed with me.
He had no idea.
He had shaken my hand and said good to see you again with that easy smile of his and turned back to her like I was nobody worth a second thought. Not because he was dismissing me. Because he genuinely had no reason to look twice. As far as he was concerned I was a neighbor and nothing more, and he had somewhere to be and she was waiting for him.
I had watched her unlock that door and let him in and close it behind them both.
I had stood in that hallway for a moment after it shut.
Then I had taken the elevator down, got on my bike and ridden here, because the apartment was the last place I needed to be tonight.
Dante came out of the main building and crossed the yard toward me. He had a folder in one hand and his phone in the other, and he looked like a man with something to say.
"Ryder clocked movement at the freight yard exit last night," he said. "Two vehicles, no plates, in and out clean."
That got through.
"What time?" I asked.
"After midnight. Under twenty minutes total."
I looked at him. "That's not a test run."
"No," he said. "That's a crew that knows the route."
I got off the bike. "I want eyes on that exit every night this week. Close enough to get something useful. Faces, plates, anything."
"Kane's available," Dante said.
"Put him on it. I want a report every morning."
He nodded and wrote something down. Then he looked at me the way he looked at me when he was deciding something.
"You good, Prez?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I said. "Let's go inside."
We went back into the main room and I sat down and looked at the map properly this time. The freight yard exit had been the quiet one, the one we had pulled resources from because nothing had moved through it in months. Iron Cross had been patient enough to let it go cold and then come back to it once we stopped watching it closely.
That was the move of a group that understood how we operated. They had not gotten lucky. They had waited us out.
I did not like that.
It meant they had someone thinking carefully before acting, someone who understood that patience was a weapon if you used it right. That was a different problem from the usual Iron Cross aggression. Aggression I could read. Patience was harder to get ahead of.
"Who's running their operations now?" I asked.
Dante sat down across from me. "Word is it's Vega. He took over the south side crew about four months ago."
"I don't know Vega."
"Nobody did until recently," Dante said. "He came up through their east crew. Quiet. Doesn't make noise."
"That fits," I said.
Four months ago. Right around the time they went quiet. Vega had come in, assessed everything, shut down the visible activity and started moving carefully where we were not looking. That was not the Iron Cross I had been dealing with for five years. That was something that required a different response.
"I want everything you can find on Vega," I said. "Who he knows, how he moves, what he has done before. I want it before the end of the week."
"I'll get on it tonight," Dante said.
He left the room and I sat there with the map and gave it what it needed for the next hour, going through the route, the timing, the gaps in our coverage that had let two clean runs happen without us knowing. By the time I sat back the picture was clearer than it had been.
Vega was building toward something. The freight yard runs were not the end goal. They were practice. He was timing his crew, making sure everything was clean before he moved whatever he was actually planning to move. We had time, but not as much as the six weeks of quiet had made it seem.
I rolled the map and was reaching for my jacket when my phone vibrated on the table.
My father.
I picked up. "Dad."
"Noah." His voice was the same as it had always been. Even and direct, the voice of a man who did not waste words on things that did not need them. "Haven't heard from you in a while. Everything alright?"
"Everything's fine," I said. "Been a busy stretch."
"It's always a busy stretch with you," he said. There was no complaint in it. Just a fact he had made his peace with a long time ago. "Your mother's been asking about you."
"Tell her I'll call her this week."
"You can tell her yourself," he said. "That's actually why I'm calling. Mace is coming in next Friday. Staying for a week. Your mother wants everyone at the house Saturday evening. Dinner, nothing big, just the family."
I leaned back in the chair. Mace. My younger brother had been living out of state for the past eight months, working a job he had taken up without much explanation and checking in when he remembered to. Hearing he was coming back for a week was the first genuinely good piece of news I had received all evening.
"How is he?" I asked.
"You know Mace," my father said. "He sounds fine. Whether he is fine is another question." A pause. "Same could be said for you."
"I'm fine, Dad."
"You sound like something's sitting on you."
I did not answer that right away. My father had always been able to read the things I did not say out loud. It was one of the things that had made him a good president before me and one of the things that still caught me off guard when I was not paying attention.
"I'll be at the house Saturday," I said.
He was quiet for a moment. "Good. Your mother will be happy." Another pause. "You sure everything's alright? With the club, with everything else?"
"Club's handled," I said. "Working through something but it's under control."
"And everything else?"
"I'll see you Saturday, Dad."
He let it go the way he always let things go when I made it clear I was done with a line of conversation. He had passed this club to me and with it the understanding that some things were mine to carry and mine alone.
"Saturday," he said. "Don't be late. You know how your mother gets."
I almost smiled at that. "I know."
We hung up and I sat there for a moment with the phone in my hand.
Mace coming back was good timing, though my brother would laugh if I told him that. He had a way of showing up when things were moving in directions he had not been around to see and asking the questions nobody else thought to ask. That could be useful right now or it could be the opposite of useful depending on how much he noticed.
With Mace it was always one or the other. Never anything in between.
I put the phone down and picked up my jacket.
I thought about her door closing.
I thought about him on the other side of it.
I had given her space and I had said what I needed to say and I had let her push back and I had not pushed harder because I had told myself she needed time. That had made sense for the first few days.
It did not make sense anymore.
I put my jacket on and picked up my keys.
Tomorrow I was going to do something about it.
- Writer
