Six Harleys roared up the dirt driveway, trailing clouds of dust behind them. In the center rode Lou, dressed in his customary black suit.

The bikes came to a stop about a hundred feet away from us, but each rider turned his motorcycle sideways as he parked. Now there were barricades of steel between us and them, as though they wanted cover.

Which was precisely the idea, since almost every man pulled a pistol as soon as he got off his bike. I recognized them as Lou’s inner circle – all except one, a guy in a denim jacket. He also wore a full motorcycle helmet that obscured his face.

He looked around at the other bikers like he was confused. Maybe that was because he was the only one without a gun.

“Fiona, cover Egghead here, why don’t you,” Jack said as he shifted the rocket launcher away from the barn and towards Lou and his thugs.

I pressed my gun into the meth cook’s back and prayed he wouldn’t do anything, since there was no way in hell I was going to pull the trigger.

Hopefully he didn’t know that.

“Jack… Jack,” Lou said in a tsk tsk tone of voice as he walked out in front of the bikes. “Is this any way to treat an old friend?”

“When the old friend sends three guys to kill me and burn down my house, yeah, I’d say it’s a great way to treat him.”

“That was all a big misunderstanding.”

“Really? Molotov cocktails and shotguns are just a ‘misunderstanding’?”

Lou saw this wasn’t going anywhere, so he asked instead, “Where’d you get the popgun?”

“Around.”

“The gangs in LA havin’ a sale?”

“The more important question is, what are you going to do about it now that it’s pointed at you?” Jack asked.

“Negotiate, of course,” Lou said.

“Better start, then.”

“Just don’t hurt Einstein there while we’re talking.”

“Make sure you don’t do anything stupid while we’re talking, then.”

Lou turned slightly to face me, even though he was still ninety feet away. “Fiona,” he said in a friendly voice.

“Asshole,” I said back, as though I was calling him by name.

Lou grinned. “It seems to me that all of this started with you. You showing up in town… you poking around… you stirring the pot.”

“You know why I did it.”

“I do – and it’s led us all here, to this spot, right now. You were the start of a chain reaction with unforeseeable consequences. Property destroyed… bad blood between club members…”

Lou gestured at Jack’s rocket launcher.

“…and some potentially very, very bad choices that shouldn’t be made. For the good of everyone involved.”

Jack shifted the rocket launcher ever so slightly. “You better start convincing me not to make them.”

“Alright. You have somebody I want… and I have somebody you want.”

“All I see is a bunch of thugs,” Jack yelled.

“Then you’re not seeing clearly,” Lou answered. “Actually, it’s not somebody you want so much as it is somebody your girlfriend there wants.”

My chest tightened, and it got hard to breathe.

What the fuck was going on?

“Wild Bill!” Lou shouted. “Bring him on up here.”

One of the guys in the pack – a big dude with a bushy beard and Willie Nelson braids – suddenly put his pistol in the masked rider’s back and pushed him forward.

The masked rider turned around in shock, then held up his hands as Wild Bill poked the gun right in the helmet’s faceplate. The masked rider turned around and stumbled over next to Lou as Wild Bill prodded him along.

“Jack, as far as you and me go – we can’t exactly undo what’s been done,” Lou said. “But I’ll make it good between us. Peters will make sure you see the insurance money on your house and the body shop, and I’ll personally cut you a check for a hundred grand if you agree to leave town. Kade, you’re welcome to stay, or you can go with Jack, whatever you want. All you have to do is just hand Einstein there over to me, leave my property alone, and go on your merry way.

“As for you, Fiona – you wanted your cousin’s killer? Here he is.” Lou pushed the rider out in front of him a couple of feet. “You can do whatever the fuck you want with him. Kill him, torture him, I don’t care. Make him pay however you want. But after that, you leave town too, and you never come back.”

I stared at the masked rider. He was trembling in fear as he looked back at Lou in bewilderment.

My head was spinning.

Was this true?

Was this the killer?

And how the fuck did Lou know who he was?

Lou raised his pistol and pointed it at the rider. “Take off the fuckin’ helmet.”

The man raised his shaking hands to his head and pulled off the helmet. A shock of blond hair and a childlike face appeared.

Benjy.

Ali’s killer was Benjy.