Chapter 2 - The Ride to St. Agnes
Jax shoved me behind the brick wall beside the diner.
“Down!”
I dropped to the wet pavement as a second shot punched through the diner’s metal sign.
The bikers moved with frightening coordination.
Cole killed the exterior lights.
Mateo, the quiet man who had not spoken since I entered, sprinted behind the parked motorcycles and drew a handgun from beneath his vest.
Eli crouched beside me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Stay here.”
He began to rise.
I grabbed his sleeve.
“Please don’t leave me.”
The words escaped before I could stop them.
Eli looked at my hand gripping his arm.
Something softened in his face.
Then another bullet struck the brick above us.
He pulled me closer and shielded my head with his body.
Jax peered around the corner.
“Shooter’s near the tree line. North side of the highway.”
Mateo disappeared into the darkness.
Cole ran toward the back of the diner.
The waitress, June, crawled through the broken doorway carrying a shotgun.
I stared at her.
She gave me a grim look.
“Honey, this is rural Missouri. We don’t call the police until we know whether we need them.”
Jax almost smiled.
Headlights flared across the road.
A black sedan sped from the trees and swerved onto the highway.
Mateo fired once at the rear tire.
The shot missed.
The sedan vanished into the rain.
Jax immediately pulled out his phone.
“Cole, get the plate.”
“Already did,” Cole called from behind the diner.
Eli helped me stand.
My legs shook so badly I had to lean against him.
The warmth of his hand at my elbow sent a strange ache through my chest.
For thirty-two years, I had imagined what my son might have looked like.
In some dreams, he remained a baby.
In others, he was a little boy running toward me through a field.
I had never imagined meeting him as a scarred man in a leather vest while bullets shattered windows around us.
Jax looked at the hole in the booth.
“They were aiming for Eli.”
“How could anyone know he was here?” I asked.
“That is what bothers me.”
Cole returned, rain streaming from his blond hair.
“Temporary plate. Probably stolen.”
“Any cameras?”
“June’s got one over the gas pumps.”
June shook her head.
“Hasn’t worked since Christmas.”
“It worked when I fixed it last month,” Cole replied.
June blinked.
“You fixed it?”
“You said the repairman wanted four hundred dollars.”
She gave him an approving nod.
“Maybe I’ll stop calling you the useless one.”
Cole hurried inside to retrieve the footage.
Jax turned toward me.
“Where is your car?”
I pointed to the old blue sedan parked beside the diner.
“You cannot drive that to the hospice.”
“Why not?”
“If they followed you, they know it.”
“What do you suggest?”
Eli gestured toward his motorcycle.
I stared at it.
“I have never ridden one.”
“Tonight is full of firsts.”
Under any other circumstances, I might have refused.
Instead, I climbed behind a stranger who might be my son and wrapped my arms around his waist.
He stiffened.
So did I.
For one suspended second, neither of us moved.
Then he started the engine.
The motorcycle roared beneath us.
Jax and the others surrounded us as we pulled onto the highway.
Rain struck my face like needles.
I held Eli tightly, terrified of falling and even more terrified of losing him before I knew the truth.
The Iron Saints formed a moving shield around us.
Jax rode in front.
Mateo and Cole watched the lanes behind.
The fourth biker, Briggs, remained near Eli’s left side.
The formation looked practiced.
Protective.
Familial.
I wondered how many dangerous roads they had traveled together.
I wondered who had comforted Eli when he was sick, taught him to ride, stood beside him at funerals.
A man named Silas had apparently raised my child.
A man I had never met had heard his first words and watched him take his first steps.
The thought filled me with gratitude and jealousy so sharp it nearly became anger.
Twenty minutes from St. Agnes, Jax signaled us off the highway.
We pulled beneath the awning of an abandoned service station.
Eli removed his helmet.
“What happened?”
Jax held up his phone.
“Cole accessed the diner footage remotely.”
Cole turned his screen toward us.
The image was grainy, but the black sedan was clearly visible beside the trees.
A man stood outside it before the shooting began.
His face was partially hidden beneath a cap.
Then he looked toward the camera.
My stomach clenched.
“I know him.”
Eli stepped closer.
“Who is he?”
“Thomas Grady. He works for my mother’s attorney.”
Jax frowned.
“What does he do?”
“Harold Pike calls him an investigator. He handles property disputes and difficult clients.”
“He shoots at difficult clients?”
“I never knew anything like this.”
“Did Grady contact you recently?”
“He came to my bakery three days ago.”
“Why?”
“He said my mother had misplaced important documents. He wanted to know whether she had given me a key.”
Eli’s attention sharpened.
“What key?”
“I told him I had no idea.”
Jax looked toward the road.
“Evelyn has evidence.”
“Or money,” Cole said.
“No,” I replied. “My mother lives in a modest house. She has a small retirement account. There is nothing worth killing for.”
“People do not always kill for what something is worth,” Eli said. “Sometimes they kill for what it proves.”
He put his helmet back on.
“We need to move.”
Jax stopped him.
“Wait.”
He reached into his saddlebag and removed a folded plastic envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
It showed three young men standing beside a battered motorcycle.
One was Jax at nineteen.
The second had kind eyes, a heavy mustache, and one arm around Jax’s shoulder.
“Silas,” Eli said quietly.
The third man wore a doctor’s white coat.
I recognized him from newspaper clippings my mother once kept in a kitchen drawer.
Dr. Adrian Pike.
Eli stared at Jax.
“You knew him?”
Jax did not answer immediately.
“Silas worked as a hospital maintenance mechanic before he founded the Iron Saints. I worked nights with him. Pike paid us to repair a generator at St. Catherine’s.”
“On the night I was born?” I asked.
“Yes.”
My skin went cold.
Jax turned the photograph over.
A date had been written across the back.
September 14.
The date of Samuel’s birth.
Below it, in faded ink, were five words.
ASK EVELYN ABOUT THE SECOND BABY.
I read the sentence twice.
Then a third time.
“What second baby?”
Jax shook his head.
“I don’t know. Silas left that photograph in a locked box after he died. He told me to give it to Eli only if someone named Evelyn Bennett ever came looking for him.”
Eli’s expression darkened.
“You waited nine years?”
“I thought Evelyn was dead. Then Nora walked into that diner.”
I looked again at the photograph.
My mother had never mentioned a second child.
I remembered the delivery only in broken flashes.
Pain.
Bright lights.
My mother whispering near my ear.
A doctor telling me to push.
Then darkness.
When I woke, my stomach was empty and my mother was crying.
“The medication,” I said.
“What about it?” Eli asked.
“They gave me something after the birth. I slept almost an entire day.”
“Could you have delivered twins?”
“I would have known.”
“Would you?” Jax asked gently. “You were twenty, exhausted, medicated, and surrounded by people who were lying to you.”
A terrible possibility opened before me.
One stolen child was unthinkable.
Two was impossible.
But the photograph existed.
We returned to the road.
By the time the stone walls of St. Agnes appeared through the rain, police vehicles were parked near the entrance.
An ambulance idled beneath the awning.
My heart began hammering.
Eli stopped near the rear door.
Jax spoke quickly.
“Cole and Mateo will watch the parking lot. Briggs, check the east entrance. Eli, stay close to Nora.”
We hurried inside.
The receptionist recognized me.
Her face tightened.
“Ms. Bennett, thank God.”
“What happened?”
“Your mother became agitated. Then a man arrived claiming to be her attorney.”
“Harold Pike?”
“He signed in under that name.”
“Where is he?”
“No one can find him.”
I ran toward my mother’s room.
A nurse tried to stop me.
“Ms. Bennett, please prepare yourself.”
I pushed through the door.
The bed was empty.
An intravenous line hung from the pole, its needle dripping onto the floor.
The window stood open despite the rain.
Eli checked the bathroom.
“No one.”
I turned toward the nurse.
“Where is my mother?”
“She was here five minutes ago.”
Jax entered and examined the room.
On the pillow lay a single blue feather.
I picked it up.
It had been cut from wallpaper.
Blue paper.
A yellow bird.
The same pattern Eli remembered from his dreams.
Beneath the feather was a note written in my mother’s shaking handwriting.
NORA—DO NOT TRUST THE SON WHO COMES FIRST.
Eli read it over my shoulder.
His eyes met mine.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
A man appeared in the doorway wearing a clean gray suit.
He was tall, silver-haired, and perfectly composed.
I recognized him immediately.
“Harold.”
My mother’s attorney looked at Eli.
For one brief second, fear crossed his face.
Then he smiled.
“Nora,” he said calmly, “I believe this man has taken your mother.”
Eli stepped forward.
Harold reached inside his coat.
Jax drew his weapon.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Harold slowly removed a leather folder.
“I came to protect Evelyn.”
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
He opened the folder and removed a sealed document.
“Your mother changed her will this morning.”
“I don’t care about her will.”
“You should.”
“Why?”
Harold placed the document on the bed.
“Because she left everything she owns to Elias Rourke.”
No one spoke.
Harold looked directly at Eli.
“And according to the statement she signed, Elias is not Nora Bennett’s son.”
May you like
He paused.
“He is Evelyn’s.”
