Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)(2)

He took a breath and pushed back his crap about Holly and what he had to do today. No use bringing that around his brothers.

“What you doin’, boss?” Show was older than Isaac and had worn a patch longer, but Isaac was President. Show didn’t want that weight; he was comfortable in the VP role, better advising than leading. Or he had been. Lately, even that wore heavy. But the Horde had shrunk in the past year, and Isaac insisted that he still needed Show at his side. He knew it was true. Isaac was good at the head of the table. He was smart, he was strong, and he had his priorities straight. But he had a temper, too, and a tendency to let his emotions grab the reins. Show’s job was to make him take a breath and think.

Isaac was the only man Show had ever known who was bigger than he was. Show was six-five, 260.

Isaac had about two inches and twenty pounds on him. Bart, the youngest patch, had once tried to get the club started calling them the Two Towers, but, apt though it was, it hadn’t caught on. Most of the Horde hadn’t known the reference, but Show and Isaac both did. Show had read The Lord of the Rings with Daisy. Isaac was just a nerd; he read all that crap—fantasy, mythology, science fiction, whatever. Show was a reader, too, but his tastes ran to histories and biographies. He’d never had much patience for pretend. He lived in the world as it was. As bad as it was.

Isaac set the white queen—a gleaming piece of pale wood, ten inches tall and intricately latticed, on the board, next to the tall, solid white king. He looked up and grinned, the scar on his left cheek forcing his grin sideways up the right half of his face. “Thought it was time we start a new game, now that things are quiet around here again. What do you say?”

Show’s first impulse was to refuse, but he took a beat and considered. Ten months had passed, and he’d barely noticed. Ten months since he’d lived. His memory of those last months was almost nonexistent, just stray scenes, almost all of them horrific—Daze’s waxy, lifeless body on a gurney in a post-op room at the hospital. Holly’s rage. Dan lying dead in the ice cream shop. Isaac’s old lady, Lilli, naked and covered in blood, stabbing some * with a letter opener. That desolate Christmas alone. Daze’s birthday.

Holding Gia, Isaac and Lilli’s new baby girl, his goddaughter, while Isaac stayed with Lilli in the ICU.

His one good memory in almost a year, holding that little new life, her fresh, innocent eyes staring calmly up at him. She’d been born nine months after Daisy died, almost to the day. As if his girl had left a little piece of herself behind in the world.

“Sure. You open. I gotta go.”

“What’s up, brother?” Isaac moved a white pawn, E2 to E4.

Show recognized the open and knew his move, but let it sit. He’d move later. He considered blowing off Isaac’s question, too. Telling him where he was headed would start a conversation he was not in the mood to have. He turned and started toward the front door, but then he turned back. “Got to go to the house.

Holly wants me to ship a bunch of furniture and shit to her and the girls.” He had no clue why he’d said that.

Isaac took a step forward, his brow creased. “You been back there yet?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“Then I’m with you, Show. You don’t do that alone.”

“No. On my own for this.”

Isaac shook his head. “Fuck that. I’m riding alongside, or I’m riding behind, but I’m with you.”

Show did not want an audience for whatever he was going to see and feel, whatever he would need to deal with, when he got to his house. He had no clue in what condition he’d find anything. But Isaac was staring steadily at him. He glared back, and Isaac crossed his arms. “I won’t get in your way, Show. I just got your back. I owe you, man. I got your back.”

Finally, Show nodded. Then, without a word, he turned and headed out of the clubhouse. Isaac followed right behind.

oOo

They pulled up to the house together. Show sat astride his bike and stared at the grey clapboard, the deep blue shutters, the red door. Holly’s flower beds, cultivated with devotion for almost sixteen years, were untended and unruly, overrun with knee-high weeds. The whole yard had gone to seed, in fact.

Otherwise, though, the house, from the outside, looked as it always had. As if he could open that red door and find his girls in the living room, sprawled across the furniture, doing the things they did.

That wasn’t going to happen, though.

So he sat there. Not thinking, really, not with any kind of focus. His head was full of noise—memories and imaginings clamoring for place. Isaac sat next to him, astride his own bike. Show could feel him there, being still, saying nothing, just waiting. Understanding that Show needed to work up to it.

For most of Isaac’s life, since before he wore a patch, when he was just the President’s kid, riding a hard road of his own, Show had watched out for Isaac. Big Ike had been a hard man. He’d been a mostly solid, if fearsome, President, but there hadn’t been much in the way of patience in him. No kindness, not much love. Even less when he was drunk, and he’d been a drinker. Show had been a Prospect when Isaac’s mom had killed herself and his older sister had run. He didn’t know the details—even now, after almost thirty years, Isaac had hardly spoken of that time—but he knew that Isaac, from that point, from the age of twelve, had come up in a home devoid of love or comfort.