It wasn’t the way I envisioned spending my morning, but it was time. Though it killed me spiritually to put a new throttle assembly on the bike, keeping the old one was guaranteed to kill me physically. I was adjusting the choke when the Skype tone on my laptop sounded. I stopped everything and ran for it.

Only one person ever Skyped me, so when I heard that sound, I rushed to answer the call.

“Dude, look at you,” Silas was every bit the Army guy. And every time I saw him, it reminded me how much he had changed over the years. His hair, once long, was now close-cropped and neat. His body, once lanky and lean, now rippled with the muscles of free weights and war. “You look good, man. How are things?” The screen shook, and his face came in and out of view. The connection was rarely great, but it was always good to see my brother.

“Hey there, Hawk.” Silas leaned toward the screen so his face was dead center.

He was only two years younger than me. There were days like today where he looked like a teenager. Other times, when life took a toll on him, and he looked like an old man. Our early years had been tough, to say the least.

People weren’t exactly waiting in line to adopt a trio of orphaned boys. Once they found out the gruesome circumstances surrounding our parents’ death, phrases like “post-traumatic stress disorder” and “years of therapy” sent them running in the other direction.

“What’s up, Rooster?” Mom had given him that name because the minute the sun lifted, he was up and making noise.

“Oh, you know, different day, same shit. The normal early morning raids. The powdered eggs for breakfast. Showers that work on occasion. Toilet paper that feels like sandpaper on my ass. It’s a fucking paradise.”

“Sounds like it.” Silas’s time was up soon. He’d been gone for nearly eight years, and I wanted him home. “You coming home this time?”

“Haven’t decided yet.” He said the words and pulled his hat lower on his head, hiding his eyes from me.

I could always read his eyes, so when he was warring with himself, he hid them from me. “The pussy must be good in the field, or is that the goats I hear bleating in the background?”

“Fuck you. I’d never screw a goat. Not saying it doesn’t happen. Some of these guys here were raised on squirrels and possum. I swear some of them were raised by wolves. They would do and screw anything. What about you? Have you tapped that waitress yet?”

“You’ve been talking to Nate.” Damn bastard was going to get my fist shoved down his throat or my boot up his ass. “I’m not doing Hannah. She’s a forever girl. I know better than that. Forever is bullshit. All you got is now.”

Silas grabbed the bill of his hat and pulled it off. He looked straight into the camera. “Now is forever. All we got is now, and all you can promise anyone is the moment you’re in. If you like her, go for it. You can give her all the moments you’re in. Stop living in the past, man. It’s eating up your future.”

“Says the guy who lives on the edge just so he can feel alive.” I wished Silas hadn’t joined the Army. He’d said it was because he had no options, and that was partly the truth. I had been rotting in prison when he turned eighteen. He didn’t want to come back to Fury on his own. He couldn’t face it by himself. That might have been why he enlisted, but he stayed because it made him feel something. He thrived on the adrenaline. On making it through another day alive. That’s what he took out of the massacre. He had an unquenchable thirst to live on the edge. “I want you to come home.”

Silas shook his head. “Home? That hasn’t been home for twenty years.” Behind him was the army green wall of his tent. It moved like a soft peaceful wave—flowing, traveling, and in motion like my brother.

“It could be home. Mom and Dad built this place for us.”

“Aren’t you going to turn the shop into a bar?” He played with the cap, turning the bill around his head, gangster style.

“I couldn’t get the loan since I couldn’t get the permits or licensing. Turns out a gun isn’t the only thing you can’t have as an ex-convict. They won’t give me a liquor license either. What good’s a bar without liquor?”

“Shit, that loan was supposed to help finance the private investigator.”

I wrapped my hands around my head, feeling like my brain might explode. “I’m doing what I can.” I’d promised myself I’d never let him down, but there I was, failing him. Again.

“It’s not enough, Hawk. Our brother is out there somewhere. You talk about Mom and Dad leaving the place to us. Don’t you think they wanted Decker to have a piece of it too?”

“Yes, dammit, of course.” Mom and Dad would have wanted us all together, but the system had other plans. Babies were easy to place, and Decker was adopted right away. I closed my eyes and saw his big blue ones. Mom called him Owl because his eyes were all you saw when you looked at him. “We’ll find Owl, I promise.”

Silas leaned back and plopped his feet on the desk. The soles of his boots were caked with desert dust. “What do you hear from the private eye?”

This was a question I dreaded. I didn’t hear from him at all. People don’t work unless you have money, and money was something I didn’t have much of these days. “I couldn’t afford to keep the private investigator looking anymore.”

Silas took off his cap and hurled it. “Then sell something. He’s our brother. We’ve got to find him.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I pounded my fist on the table, making the computer shake. “Don’t you think if I could have kept him with us, I would have?” I raked my hand through my hair. “Aren’t you glad we couldn’t? Look at what happened to you.”

“Don’t you bring that up. I’m not going there ever again. Find something to sell. Do something.” His voice cracked with emotion.

The day Mom had told me to watch my brothers and Sparrow, I had failed. I’d told Silas to watch Decker, and he believed he’d failed too, but he hadn’t. All of this lay on my shoulders. Every death, every life ruined was all on me, and I’d never forgive myself.

“There’s nothing left to sell. We might … we might just have to give up the hunt for a bit.”

“Bullshit. Do something.” He flexed his fists, and I knew he’d be pounding a wall or something else to relieve the tension. “What about business? You’re working, right?”

“I’m taking in any job I can. The problem is, the sheriff has chased out every biker within a twenty-mile radius.”

“Fuck the sheriff. From what you tell me, he’s as bad as his dad was. What the hell are you doing with your time?”

“I’ve been fixing Dad’s bike.”

A glimmer of light reached his eyes. “You’re going to sell it, right?”

My head reared back like I’d been slapped. “It’s all we’ve got left of him.”

“Stop making him look like some venerated saint. This is all his fault. What parent brings their kids up in a biker gang, puts them at risk every day?”

I didn’t have a valid answer. “When you’re a kid, you don’t know any different.”

“Well, you’re not a kid anymore, and you know this was their fault. If Dad had been a normal father, we’d be living in suburbia while Mom made cookies and checked our homework after school. You blame yourself for what happened to them—what happened to us. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was. You know what happened.”

Silas growled into the screen. “I know you snuck in there, I know Sparrow toppled a box. I know a bunch of trigger-happy assholes shot each other up. You didn’t put the guns in their hands. You didn’t pull the damn triggers. Sell that shit bike for what you can. I’ll send you more money this payday. We have to find Decker.”

I nodded. He was right. We had to find our little brother. “I’ll do what I can.”

“I love you, brother.” Silas put his hand to the screen, and I pressed my hand to his. It was how we ended each call.

“Love you too. Come home.” The screen turned black, and I went back to the garage to ready the bike for sale.

I hopped on Dad’s bike to give it a test run. It started on the first kick, and a throaty growl filled the air. At least something was working in my favor.

After that call, I needed to clear my head, and there was nothing that did the job better than the wind in my hair. I turned out of the shop parking lot and accelerated down the straightaway. Seventy miles an hour felt amazing. The wind was in my face, and the past was at my back. I was free. Until I found myself back on Abundant Drive in front of her house.

I downshifted and came to a stop before the old worn-out home. In the driveway sat a Jeep that had seen better days. There hadn’t been a vehicle in that driveway since the murders, and this one didn’t belong there.

A shadow passed in front of the bay window, and a feeling of ownership rushed through me. No one belonged here but her … and me. I closed my eyes and saw her twisted body as it bled out in front of my eyes. This is her shrine.

I vaulted off my bike and raced to the door. I pounded and pounded and pounded until a woman answered.

Her face was flushed with a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Long brown hair pulled into a ponytail hung over her shoulder. Her bangs stuck to the sweat on her forehead. She leaned on a broom and smiled like she knew me.

“Can I help you?”

“Who the fuck are you, and what the hell are you doing in there?” My words were harsh, and she was gorgeous, but I didn’t care about either of those things. She was a trespasser. I wanted her gone, and I’d make sure she left immediately.

She stepped back from the door. “I own this place. It’s my house.”

“That’s bullshit.” I looked past her into the house that I hadn’t entered in decades. “The people who lived here are dead.”

She shook her head, making her ponytail swing over her shoulder to her back. “A lot of people who lived everywhere are dead.”

“I want you to pack up your shit and leave.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I’m not leaving. I legally own this piece-of-shit house, and I plan on staying.” She gripped the broom handle and raised it like a weapon—a spear ready to stab me.

I smiled at her. Not a friendly smile, but the kind that says, we’ll see who wins this war. She was crazy if she thought a broom handle would stop me from getting what I wanted.

“It is a piece of shit, so why stay?” I’d heard it was sold years ago, but to my relief, no one showed up. I figured it was just an investor waiting for the right opportunity. This woman was no investor.

“Because it’s my piece of shit, and it’s all I’ve got. I’m not leaving, but you are.”

She attempted to close the door, but I shoved my boot into the opening. I knew I wasn’t making as much sense as I’d like to. But what could I say? I’m still sort of obsessed with the little girl who used to live here, the one I let die? Instead, I told her, “You can’t live here. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.” As if that made all the sense in the world. And then I fisted up and punched the door, leaving a dent and tearing up my knuckles.

The woman showed no fear; she stood her ground like a warrior. It was I who turned and walked away.