She turned.
“Oh, wonderful.”
“You don’t have to like it.”
“You met me once.”
“Twice.”
“You fixed a motorcycle. That does not make you my security adviser.”
“No.”
Luke leaned against the workbench.
“It makes me a guy looking at two tampered parts.”
Raven’s face tightened.
“Fine.”
Marcus looked relieved.
Then Raven continued.
“I’ll take security.”
Marcus nodded.
“One vehicle.”
His face fell.
“Two.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Marcus.”
“One visible. One far enough away I can pretend it isn’t there.”
Marcus thought.
“Deal.”
Luke stared.
“You negotiate kidnapping risks like buying a truck.”
Raven looked toward him.
“I negotiate everything.”
That afternoon, Raven did not leave immediately.
She sat on the farmhouse porch drinking coffee with Luke while Marcus spoke on the phone near the SUV.
Emma played in the yard.
Luke asked no questions for almost ten minutes.
Raven noticed.
“You can ask.”
“About what?”
“Everything you are pretending not to wonder.”
Luke took a sip.
“All right.”
She prepared herself.
“Why motorcycles?”
Raven blinked.
“That’s your question?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“My father.”
“He rode?”
“Before money.”
Luke looked toward her.
“Was there a before?”
“Yes.”
“People forget.”
Raven watched Emma chasing something invisible through the grass.
“My father started Steele with one machine shop and three employees.”
“By the time I was twelve, he had twenty-seven facilities.”
“By the time I was eighteen, strangers knew our address.”
Luke nodded.
“Motorcycles were the one thing we did that didn’t belong to the company.”
“He taught me.”
“Then?”
“He stopped riding after my mother died.”
Luke’s expression softened.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
Raven looked toward him.
“And you?”
“What?”
“Single dad.”
Luke’s face changed slightly.
“You saw the drawing.”
“Yes.”
He looked through the screen door toward the taped picture inside.
“Her mother died four years ago.”
Raven said nothing immediately.
Good.
Luke noticed.
“Cancer?”
she eventually asked.
He nodded.
“Fast.”
“She was thirty-two.”
Raven closed her eyes briefly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Emma laughed in the yard.
Luke watched her.
“Emma remembers pieces.”
“Her voice less every year.”
“That part scares me.”
Raven looked at him.
“You record stories?”
Luke frowned.
“What?”
“About her mother.”
“No.”
“You should.”
He stared.
Raven shrugged.
“My mother died when I was nineteen.”
“I thought I’d remember everything forever.”
“I don’t.”
“That feels like betrayal even though it isn’t.”
Luke looked toward Emma.
He nodded slowly.
That night, after Raven left, he found an old digital recorder in a drawer.
He recorded thirty-seven minutes about Anna Harper.
How she laughed when nervous.