Noah watched his face anxiously.
“Was Dad mad?”
Grant wiped his eyes with the back of one hand.
“Yes.”
Noah looked worried.
“At me?”
“No.”
Grant crouched again.
“Never at you.”
“At you?”
Grant nodded.
The boy considered that.
“Were you bad?”
Children had a brutal talent for asking questions adults spent decades avoiding.
Grant looked at him.
“Yes.”
Noah’s grandmother inhaled softly.
Grant continued.
“I made a mistake when your dad needed me.”
“What mistake?”
“I didn’t believe him enough.”
Noah looked toward the miniature motorcycle.
“Dad said people can love you and still disappoint you.”
Grant stared.
“He said that?”
“A lot.”
The old biker looked away.
Lucas had apparently done more growing during twelve silent years than Grant managed inside an entire club.
Noah pointed toward the toy.
“He said there’s something under the front.”
Grant remembered the letter.
Together they turned the miniature motorcycle upside down.
At first Grant saw nothing.
Then Noah pressed a tiny spring pin between the fork tubes.
A chrome sleeve slid free.
Inside was a narrow brass key wrapped in wax paper.
Noah’s grandmother stared.
“What does that open?”
Grant examined the stamped number.
17-B.
His stomach tightened.
He knew.
Iron Hollow had rented storage lockers behind the original clubhouse before moving to their current property.
Most had been emptied.
One building remained near the old freight yard.
Locker numbers began with floor sections.
17-B.
Grant stood.
He looked toward Warren again.
The treasurer was no longer beside the barbecue trailer.
Grant’s entire body went rigid.
“Ellis!”
The vice president turned.
Grant pointed.
“Where’s Warren?”
The older biker looked around.
“Was right there.”
“Find him.”
Something in Grant’s voice changed the atmosphere instantly.
Club members stopped joking.
Two men moved toward the parking area.
Grant folded Lucas’s letter carefully.
He placed it inside his vest.
Then he looked at Noah.
“We’re going somewhere.”
Noah’s grandmother stepped closer.
“Where?”
“To find out whether I failed your father once or twice.”
The storage building sat four miles from the fundraiser behind a row of abandoned warehouses.
Grant drove there in his black pickup.
Noah and his grandmother followed in their small sedan.
Ellis and two senior club members came behind them.
Grant had deliberately refused the twenty bikers who wanted to join.
This was not a raid.
Not a revenge ride.
Lucas had been explicit.
Do not use it for revenge.
Grant intended to obey at least one thing his brother asked.
The building manager recognized him.
“Been years.”
“Locker seventeen-B still active?”
The manager checked a computer.
“Yes.”
“Name?”
He frowned.
“Paid under L. Mercer.”
Grant closed his eyes.
Lucas had kept it for twelve years.
“Access key works?”
“Should.”
They climbed a narrow metal staircase to the second level.
Noah insisted on carrying the miniature motorcycle himself.