Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(3)

A lot had changed in this little town since the first time she’d come. Shops and businesses had been built up, houses that had been abandoned had been restored and filled with families. It was still an insignificant little town, but when she’d first visited, it had shown the wounds of a losing battle, and now those wounds seemed to have healed.

It was nearly ten o’clock on a Friday night. Adrienne had intended to stop for the night in Illinois, hours ago, but then she was so close, having already driven more than eight hundred miles over two days, and she just didn’t want to stop again.

She hadn’t fully calculated that she’d be coming into town so late on a Friday night. She’d only been in Signal Bend half a dozen times in the past four years, but she kept in touch regularly with Shannon and Badger, and he knew that the Night Horde had parties on most Friday nights. She’d been to the clubhouse a few times, but never on a Friday night—yet she’d heard that those parties got pretty intense.

The turn for the clubhouse came up on her right; the clubhouse was visible from the main road, which became Main Street about five hundred feet farther in. To get to Shannon and Show’s house, Adrienne would need to drive into town and turn left at the main crossroads. Without really thinking about it, she turned right, drove the short distance to the clubhouse entrance and pulled in.

Considering the wild reputation of Horde parties, she’d expected the lot to be more crowded, but it was only about half full, mostly with bikes and trucks she recognized. She parked her yellow 1974 Beetle convertible in the closest available space. The little car rattled a little and seemed to sigh as Adrienne turned off the engine. Almost three hundred thousand miles on her, and she was getting a little tired.

Adrienne had always thought of her car as a ‘she.’ For the first few years she’d had her, since she was sixteen, she’d called her Daisy. Then she’d gotten to know Showdown, and she couldn’t think of a car by that name anymore. But she was still a ‘she.’

For a few seconds, Adrienne sat behind the wheel and considered whether it would be a mistake to go into the clubhouse. The club knew her, but she didn’t know about the other people who’d be in there.

Show had always been adamant that a Friday party was no place for her, and she’d taken him at his word.

So what would she be walking into? She was a little scared.

But Show’s bike was in the lot. So was Badger’s. They wouldn’t let anything happen to her. And, honestly, the reason she was here in Signal Bend, only two months after her last visit, was Badger. He was being weird. More than that, he was worrying her. A lot. He’d been strange since the fall. She knew something had gone down with the club; when she’d visited in January, they’d all looked different—they’d all been different.

She’d come around the corner upstairs one morning when the master bedroom door had been open.

Show had been pulling a t-shirt on, his back to the door. His back was a horror of scars. She’d gasped— she’d almost screamed, really—and he’d turned around to see her standing in the hallway with her hand over her mouth. He’d smiled sadly and said only, “It’s okay, little one. I’m okay.”

It wasn’t just him. Len now wore an eye patch. Havoc was dead. And Shannon was pregnant. At forty-two. After always insisting that she didn’t want another child. All the Horde and their families were different in some way. She didn’t know why, only that whatever had happened was terrible.

And Badger—he looked okay, but he was maybe more changed than any of them. They’d developed a close friendship over the past four years, talking and texting several times a month, hanging out together when she came to visit. But since the fall, he’d been like a stranger to her. They talked a lot less often, and he was different when they did. Sometimes, he was hostile. Sometimes, he was open and raw. Sometimes he was almost like he’d been. But he was mostly distant. It broke her heart.

Adrienne was a little in love with Badger. Maybe fifty percent in love with him. But he didn’t feel that way about her, so she didn’t let herself get any further than the crush stage. She’d tried to make something happen a few times, and they’d made out a few times, but he always set her away right about the time she thought they’d go further than just kissing. He only wanted to be friends. She’d rather be friends than nothing, so she’d stopped trying to make it more than that. She knew it was true that he didn’t want more, because he wasn’t jealous. He didn’t mind when she was dating. In fact, he’d talked her through a rough breakup a year or so ago. He’d talked her through a couple of breakups, actually. She’d been dumped a lot.

She didn’t really meet guys’ expectations.

She and Badger, though, were buds. He was her best friend, really—which was probably sad, since they lived a thousand miles apart and she had this massive crush on him. But he was easy to talk to, and he didn’t just chat about nonsense like the girls she was supposed to be besties with. They talked about things that mattered—at least the things that mattered to them, to each other. Over the years, he’d learned more about her than anyone. Probably more even than her family. And she thought the same was true about how she knew him.

But other than those few kisses, the closest they got physically was sitting together watching horror movies in Show and Shannon’s living room, when she’d bury her face in his arm or his chest during the scary parts. She made sure to be ‘scared’ pretty often.