She nodded.
“Past the water tower. Blue trailer with a white porch. There’s a broken truck in the yard and a tire swing.”
Luis came back, phone pressed to his chest.
“Sheriff’s office is sending units. EMS too. I told them possible domestic assault, injured, adult female possibly trapped. They want us to stay put.”
Ethan looked at Ava.
She was already shaking her head.
“We can’t stay.”
Luis’s jaw tightened.
“Dispatcher said deputies are twelve minutes out.”
Ava whispered, “He comes home at two-thirty.”
Ethan asked, “Where did he go?”
“To buy beer. He said if Mom moved before he came back, he’d know.”Ethan stood.
His decision settled inside him with a cold click.
“Joe!”
Big Joe came out of the diner with Mason behind him and a woman in a blue apron following them. The woman was in her late fifties, red-eyed, thin, with gray hair pinned messily under a visor.
“That been out here since eight,” she said, voice breaking. “I tried to bring her inside. She wouldn’t come. Said Ray watches the diner sometimes. Said he’d know.”
“Do you know Ray?” Ethan asked.
The woman’s face changed.
Everyone in small towns knows a Ray.
Even when they pretend they do not.
“Ray Cavanaugh,” she said. “Mean drunk. Works odd jobs. Got a temper. Claire used to come in here before him. Sweet girl. Worked doubles at the Dollar Barn. Then she stopped coming around.” She looked at Ava’s face and covered her mouth again. “Lord forgive me, I should have done more.”
Ethan’s voice remained steady.
“You’re doing it now.”
Ava tugged lightly at his vest.
He looked down.
“Please,” she said. “I hired you.”
Seven dollars and forty-three cents.
A swollen eye.
A mother locked in a trailer.
A child who had spent all morning choosing bikers because every official path looked too far away.
Ethan slowly held out his hand.
Ava placed the money in his palm.
The coins were warm from her skin.
He closed his fist around them like a contract.
“Okay,” he said. “You hired me.”
Ava’s lower lip trembled.
“But I need you to understand something. We are not going there to fight. We are going there to make sure your mom is safe until the sheriff gets there. If Ray shows up, we do not touch him unless he gives us no choice. You hear me?”
She nodded fast.
“You ride with Joe in Maggie’s car,” Ethan said.
Ava grabbed his vest tighter.
“No. I want to go with you.”
“Not on the bike, sweetheart.”
“I need Mom to see I came back.”
The sentence nearly broke him.
Maggie stepped forward.
“I’ll drive behind them, baby. You can sit up front with me. You’ll see everything.”
Ava looked at Ethan, seeking permission from the man she believed she had hired.
He nodded.
“Right behind us.”