© 2026 D.D. Joaquin. All rights reserved.
3
Ink
Church wasn’t built for comfort. Nights like this drove it home harder. The room had its own weight once the door shut and the noise of the clubhouse dropped away, like the air itself understood what this table was for. Same scarred wood. Same chairs. Same quiet settling over men who didn’t come in here to posture. Deacon’s empty chair sat there like an accusation all by itself. I saw Priest clock it before he sat down, his face going still in that particular way he got when something had cut too deep to show cleanly.
I let my eyes move around the table once before anything started, more habit than thought. Graves looked like Graves, straight-backed and already braced for the worst. Nomad looked loose, but his eyes were working, tracking everything without calling attention to it. Ledger had his hand near the notebook and that blank face he got when his mind was moving faster than the room. Rook was pure stillness at the far end of the table, which usually meant nobody was going to get sloppy without regretting it. Ghost wasn’t here yet, just his voice on the speaker, still out chasing something down. Priest hadn’t sat yet. Deacon’s chair was still empty. That was enough to put a hard edge on the whole room before anybody opened their mouth.
Priest sat before the thought of Deacon’s chair could get any bigger, and Church did what Church always did. It moved.
“Retribution Auto is steady,” Graves said, voice flat. “No shortages. No heat.”
“Last Rite’s booked through the month,” I said. “Walk-ins slowed, but the books are solid.”
Ledger touched the edge of his notebook without opening it. “The Bar’s clean. Cash flow is steady. No flags.”
Priest’s eyes moved to Nomad. “Red Mercy?”
Nomad gave him a dry look. “Still printing money. Girls are happy. Customers are predictable.”
Ghost snorted over the speaker. “Everyone sins. They just feel better doin’ it there.”
A few mouths twitched, but nobody let it turn into a real laugh. Not with Deacon in the ICU breathing through machines and Dead Man’s Hand still out there somewhere, waiting to see how much we’d started bleeding.
Then Rook leaned forward and the room tightened around it.
“Next run’s got a problem.”
That settled everybody harder than they’d been a second before. Priest looked at him once. “Talk.”
“Fallen Angels,” Rook said. “Spotted twice in the last week. Once near Dead Man’s Hand’s southern edge. Once closer to the old rail spur.”
That got attention fast. My eyes narrowed before I could help it. Graves shifted like his whole body had already started preparing for trouble.
“That ain’t normal,” Priest said, voice slow and measured. “Fallen Angels don’t circle. They stay neutral. Always have.”
“Exactly,” Rook replied. “Which means they’re breaking pattern, or someone’s feeding them a reason to look like they are.”
“Or they’re bein’ used as cover,” Ghost added quietly.
Priest leaned back, chair creaking under him. “Next run was supposed to take us through Fallen Harbor, cut north into Briar Hollow, and drop with Thorn Crown.”
I shook my head once. “Not if Fallen Angels are sniffin’ around Dead Man’s Hand. Too many variables.”
“We don’t run blind,” Priest said. “We cancel.”
No one pushed back. That was how this table worked when it was working right. Men could argue. Men could question. Men could make each other defend a call until the whole room bent one way or the other. But once the danger showed itself, nobody wasted time pretending pride was a plan.
Graves’s jaw worked once before he spoke. “That leaves us with the bigger issue. Someone’s talking, or someone’s listening where they shouldn’t.”
Silence settled hard after that.
Then the door opened and Ghost came in like he’d never been gone, jacket still on, pale hair falling where it wanted, eyes already tracking the room before he’d fully sat down. He disconnected the call, pocketed his phone, and tapped two fingers against the table.
“Might be time to rattle the cage.”
Rook glanced at him. “How?”
“Fake tips.” Ghost looked at Priest, then at the rest of us. “We seed different versions. Different routes. Different timing. Different payout structures. Each piece sounds real enough to carry, but none of it puts product or brothers on the road.”
I leaned in. “Compartmentalized.”
“Exactly.” Ghost’s voice stayed flat and quiet, but I knew that look. He was already halfway through the angles in his head. “Each version goes to a different circle. Not people close to officers necessarily. Adjacent people. The kind who hear things because they’re always near the room, but never supposed to be inside it.”
Graves smiled, slow and humorless. “Whoever repeats the lie tells us who’s leaking.”
“And who they’re leaking to,” Rook added.
Priest nodded once. “We don’t move product. We don’t put boots on the ground. We move information.”
My mouth twitched. “Digital chatter too. Burner numbers. Dead drops that go nowhere. Watch who reacts.”
“Dead Man’s Hand won’t sit on intel,” Graves said. “They’re sloppy when they think they’ve got an advantage.”
Priest looked at Ghost. “And Fallen Angels?”
Ghost shrugged. “If they bite, we learn something. If they don’t, that tells us something too.”
The room changed then, quiet settling in the way it only did when a plan had finally found its teeth. I watched Priest while the others watched the table. He looked steady enough to pass. Sounded steady too. But there was something off in the rhythm if you knew him well enough to hear it. Deacon laid up in ICU. Blue back in his orbit and not his. Sadie hanging around the edges of everything like something sour no one could get out of the walls. He was holding it together. Barely clean enough to pass.
“This stays quiet,” he said. “No bravado. No warnings. We let the lie breathe.”
“And if the rat realizes it’s a trap?” someone asked.
Priest stood, and the room settled with him.
“Then they panic,” he said. “Panic makes mistakes.”
The approval that moved through the room wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. You could feel it in the sharpened focus, the slight shift in shoulders, the way everybody at that table understood the hunt had just changed shape.
“Ghost and Ink build the threads,” Priest went on. “Rook decides who hears what. Graves, keep your people tight. No chatter.” His gaze swept the room once, steady and final. “We don’t need to know who’s betraying us yet. We just need them to think they’re getting away with it.”
Church broke slow after that. Chairs scraped. Men stood. Low voices picked up as purpose settled back into the room. I fell into step beside Priest before we reached the door.
“You think Fallen Angels flipped?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Then why now?”
He looked once toward Deacon’s empty chair. “I think somebody wants me looking the wrong way.”
That felt right.
I watched him go and thought the same thing I’d been thinking for days now. Whoever was moving pieces around us had picked the right moment.
When the doors opened and the night spilled back in, Saints did what Saints always did. It went back to looking normal.
Ghost and I drifted toward the bar built into the far wall, scarred wood and cheap bottles and the kind of noise men used when they wanted to look casual without leaving home. We didn’t sit close. Didn’t lower our voices. That was the point. A couple of patched brothers nearby pretended not to listen, which usually meant they were listening harder than anyone else.
Ghost kept his eyes on the muted TV. “Evernight Cove’s been quieter than usual. Harbor patrols backed off last week.”
I shrugged and took a lazy pull from the beer in my hand. “That’s a coastal window. Only worth it if we’re dropping light and moving fast.”
No details that mattered. No order inside it. Just enough to sound possible.
Toward the back, Rook stood at the pool tables with a cue balanced easy in his hand while Patch and Switch hovered close with beers sweating onto the felt. I watched him line up a shot like he hadn’t just been handed one thread of a larger lie, then heard him say, easy as anything, “Next run might come up quicker than planned. Southern stretch through Black Ash still hasn’t cooled.”
Patch winced. “That road eats tires.”
Rook sank the ball with a sharp crack. “Yeah. But it skips three checkpoints if you time it right.”
At the next table, two brothers kept their eyes on their game and their ears open.
They always did.
Outside by the fire pit, voices drifted low and casual. Graves. Ledger. Nomad. Raina. Old Ladies. Sadie somewhere at the edge of it all, present and listening. Different conversation. Different route. Different version of the same lie. The trap was breathing now. It didn’t need me hovering over it.
By the time Ghost peeled away to “take a leak” and actually go plant the first burner where it needed to be found, I already had a decent read on who had listened too hard. The smart move would’ve been staying put, finishing the beer, heading upstairs, and opening the laptop to start building the digital side of the trap. That was the move men expected from me. Quiet. Controlled. Useful.
Instead I found myself outside twenty minutes later with my bike under me and no good reason for where I was headed.
Two towns over, Wicker Falls Memorial waited under too much fluorescent light and too little mercy.
I told myself I was going because Deacon was there. I fed myself that line the whole ride, all the way into the visitor lot, all the way through killing the engine and sitting there with my helmet still on while the ER entrance glowed ahead of me like a dare. Deacon was upstairs. Somebody was always going to see him. Priest most nights. Me often enough that the ICU nurses barely looked twice anymore. Brotherhood was a clean excuse. It would have held up fine if anybody had asked.
The trouble was I knew exactly who else was in that building, and I knew how much trouble a man like that was going to cause me.
That damn nurse had turned into a problem somewhere between Deacon’s room and my own head.
By the time I stepped inside, the place hit me the way hospitals always did, with noise and motion and the sharp chemical sting of disinfectant trying to bury everything under it. Coffee gone stale. Blood somewhere close. Scrub shoes squeaking over the floor. Voices clipped tight around too many things happening at once. Deacon was upstairs with machines doing half the work for him. That should have been enough to keep my feet moving toward the elevators.
Instead I stopped just past the desk, because there he was.
He had a chart in his hand and one hip against the counter, saying something to a resident who looked one bad minute away from forgetting how to function. He looked up in the middle of it, caught sight of me, and his whole face changed. Not surprised. Pleased was closer. That bright, easy grin slid into place like I had just improved his shift by existing, and something in me went tight all over again.
“Ink,” he said, warm as anything, like I’d just become the best part of his shift.
I stopped at the edge of the desk and gave him the kind of look that usually made people rethink themselves. Evan only leaned a little harder into the counter, eyes moving over me once before they came back to my face.
“You look lost.”
“I know where ICU is.”
His grin deepened just enough to make my jaw tighten. “And yet you’re standing down here with me instead of upstairs with your favorite unconscious biker.”
There was too much satisfaction in that. He saw my face lock down and looked even more pleased with himself for getting a rise out of me. “You always this nosy?” I asked.
“Only when a biker I’m interested in materializes in my ER looking like he’s either here to start a fight or make one terrible decision.”
He said it flat-out. No hesitation. No shame. The word interested was already hanging there between us by the time my eyes cut past him on instinct, tracking movement and distance, who was close enough to hear something they shouldn’t. Nurses were moving. A phone was ringing behind the desk. A patient farther down the hall was complaining loud enough for half the floor to hear it. Nobody was paying us too much mind, but enough bodies were around that the habit landed hard anyway. Look first. Think later.
Evan caught the glance and caught what was in it. I saw the moment he did. Something in his expression shifted. No hurt in it yet. Just awareness. That bothered me worse than if he’d missed it.
He pushed off the desk and drifted a little closer, dropping his voice in a way that felt more like kindness than caution. “Relax, biker boy. I’m not about to jump you in front of triage.”
That should have taken some of the edge off. It didn’t. It only put me closer to him, close enough to smell hospital soap and coffee on him under the clean heat of his skin, close enough to see the tiredness under his eyes now that I wasn’t looking at him from across a room. He’d been wearing that easy grin, but there were cracks in it if you got close enough. Long shift. Too many people. Too much heart. The real thing under the performance.
“So,” he said, and his voice had gone quieter without losing that spark in it, “what are you really doing here?”
I should have said Deacon. I should have lied clean and simple and gone upstairs before I did something I’d have to spend the rest of the night regretting. Instead I stood there looking at him while the silence stretched, and somewhere in the middle of it the truth sat up inside me ugly and bare. I had come because I wanted to see him. Because he’d been under my skin since the first time I saw him in the ICU, bright and fearless and way too damn comfortable with being seen. Because wanting him had started to feel less like attraction and more like a problem that kept showing up wherever I did.
“Deacon’s upstairs,” I said finally.
Evan gave one slow nod, like he was willing to take that much while still knowing it wasn’t the whole of it. “Okay.”
Then he stepped into the side hall without looking back, like he was sure I’d follow. I should have let him go.
I followed him anyway.
It was quieter there, away from the desk and the sliding doors and the constant churn of the floor. Supply rooms, alcoves, the low hum of a building that never really slept. Evan stopped near a half-closed door and turned to face me with his arms loose at his sides. No performance in him now. No joke meant to keep things easy. He looked at me the way he had in Deacon’s room, too direct and somehow steady through all the teasing, and for the first time since I’d met him, I had the bad feeling the grin and the flirtation were only the outer layer. The man under that was paying attention.
“That wasn’t the whole answer,” he said, and there was nothing playful in it. Just the truth, set gently between us and left there.
Heat moved fast and low in me. My body had already proven it had no common sense where he was concerned, and standing there a step too close with him looking at me like that only made it worse. He noticed. I knew the second he noticed. His gaze dipped once, quick and sharp, then came back to my face, and the understanding that settled in him hit me harder than it should have.
“There it is,” he said softly.
“You got no sense.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“No?”
He shook his head, the grin gone now, replaced by something that landed a hell of a lot harder. “This is me asking whether you came here because your brother’s upstairs, or because you wanted to see me.”
The question hit like a fist. Every instinct I had rose up at once, old survival wrapped around newer fear until I couldn’t tell them apart. He was asking for something simple. A truth. A line said out loud. For him, maybe that was all it was. For me, it was a knife held to every old scar I’d spent years hiding under skin and ink and silence.
I looked past him at the wall because it was easier than looking at him while I lied. The trouble was I couldn’t find one that didn’t sound thin.
He waited me out.
That was the thing about Evan. He made noise like it was second nature, but when it mattered, he knew how to hold still. He knew how to leave a silence alone until it started doing work for him, and by the time I looked back at him, I hated that he’d figured that out so fast.
“Deacon’s upstairs,” I said again.
His mouth twitched, not mocking, just knowing. “Yeah. I heard you the first time.”
I moved before I’d decided to. One step. That was all. Enough that he had to tilt his head back a little to keep looking at me. His breathing changed. Mine had never even steadied. The air between us went hot and tight, and suddenly all I could think about was his mouth. Not in some vague, passing way either. I wanted it. Wanted to shut him up with it. Wanted to see if he tasted like coffee and trouble the way I’d been half imagining since the ICU. My hands flexed at my sides because if I lifted one, if I touched him anywhere, I wasn’t sure where I’d stop.
“You enjoy pushin’?” I asked.
“Only when something pushes back.”
My eyes dropped to his mouth before I could stop them. His lips parted just slightly when he caught me looking, and that tiny movement hit me lower than it had any right to. One more inch and I could have kissed him. One more bad decision and I would have known exactly how much of that brightness stayed when his back hit a wall.
Then somebody barked his name from farther down the hall, and the whole thing cracked open.
Evan closed his eyes for half a beat like he wanted to cuss at the interruption. When he opened them again, the heat was still there, banked but alive, sitting under that smaller, rougher version of his grin. “Duty calls.”
“Looks like it.”
He still didn’t move. Neither did I. I knew what the smart move was. Step back. Let the moment die. Go upstairs. Pretend this never got close enough to matter.
Instead I reached out and caught his wrist.
It was the smallest thing in the world. Skin under my hand. Warm. Quick pulse. But it hit like a live wire anyway. Evan looked down at my fingers, then back up at me, and whatever humor had been left in him thinned into something sharper.
I let him go almost immediately.
Still too late.
“You do that again,” he said quietly, “and I’m gonna start getting ideas.”
I almost laughed. Almost dragged him into the nearest room and gave us both something worse than ideas.
“That’d be your first mistake.”
His smile went lazy and wicked in a way that made my whole body sit up and pay attention. “Baby, I’ve had ideas about you since the ICU.”
Jesus Christ.
I stepped back because I had to. Because one more second in that hallway and I was going to stop pretending I’d come there for any reason that mattered. “Go do your job.”
He started moving, then slowed just enough to throw back over his shoulder, “Don’t disappear on me, biker boy.”
I watched him walk away, all loose stride and quick hands and scrub top stretching across his shoulders every time he moved. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. I stood there until the hall felt like a hall again, until my pulse stopped trying to beat through bone, until dragging him into a supply closet sounded less like instinct and more like the kind of mistake that came with consequences.
Then I scrubbed a hand over my mouth, cursed under my breath, and forced myself toward the elevators.
Deacon was upstairs.
That was why I was there. Not because of a hot nurse with a sparkly personality and not enough sense to know flirtin’ with me was the wrong kind of trouble.
But by the time the elevator doors slid shut, one thing was sitting under my skin hotter and meaner than before.
I wanted him to say my name like that again.