He just lifted one corner of his split lip. It was the closest thing to a genuine smile he’d shown the entire afternoon.
Brandon swallowed hard, a profound sense of awe washing over him. He turned his back, put his head down, and started walking away again.
Behind him, Hank’s voice rang out, carrying across the empty lot.
“Son.”
Brandon stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
“We don’t forget,” Hank said softly.
Brandon turned his body, opening his mouth to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, but Hank was already pulling his heavy black helmet down over his head.
The Panhead kicked over on the first try. It roared to life with a concussive sound like distant thunder rolling violently over dry hills. Hank gave Brandon one small, solemn nod, kicked the heavy kickstand up with his heel, and rolled out of the gas station, tearing down Fifth Street in a blur of chrome and red paint.
Brandon stood there entirely alone in the sweltering heat, cradling his bandaged arm against his ribs, watching the cherry-red tank disappear into the evening traffic.
Then, he turned and started the long walk home.
Inside the Sunoco station, behind the bulletproof glass, the young clerk waited. He waited until the motorcycle was completely gone. He waited until the bleeding kid had turned the corner. He waited until the parking lot was entirely empty.
Then, his hands shaking, he picked up the landline phone and dialed a local number he had not dialed in many, many years.
When a gruff voice answered on the third ring, the clerk kept his voice to an urgent whisper.
“Yeah, it was him. Callaway. Yeah, the one from the magazine covers. Six guys jumped him. But some kid... some local kid pulled him out of the fire. Just a kid, skinny guy. Works at Hartman’s Auto over on the East Side, I think. Yeah. You better tell the President.”
He hung up the phone.
Brandon unlocked the apartment door at 6:40 PM.
Maylene was sitting at the small kitchen table, the dim overhead light casting long shadows. Her notebook was open, a glass of tap water sweating beside it.
She looked up.
In a fraction of a second, her maternal radar scanned him. She saw the dark blue bandana tied tight around his forearm. She saw the grease and dirt ground into the knees of his jeans. She saw the subtle, painful way he was favoring his right leg, shifting his weight.
She set her pen down. The silence in the room was deafening.
“Brandon.”
“I caught my arm on a chain-link fence walking the shortcut home, Grandma. It’s totally fine.”
She looked at him. She looked at him for a very long, very slow moment.
She did not believe a single word he had just said.
Brandon could see it in her eyes. He could see her not believing him.
But she was deeply tired. The numbers in her blood-sugar notebook were wrong again, her joints ached, and her boy was home, alive and standing in front of her.
“Sit down,” she commanded softly. “Let me see it.”
He sat at the table.
She carefully unwrapped the blue bandana, her gentle fingers tracing the edges of the ugly, purple contusion swelling on his forearm. She cleaned the skin gently with a warm washcloth and rewrapped it tightly with clean white gauze from their meager medicine cabinet.
She took the blue bandana, folded it into a perfect square with deliberate care, and set it on the table right beside her notebook.
She didn’t ask him for the truth again.
He didn’t offer it.
That night, Brandon lay flat on his back in his small, stifling bedroom, staring up at the familiar, sprawling water stain on the ceiling plaster.
His arm throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The scrape on his shoulder burned.
But he wasn't thinking about the pain. Three simple words kept circling endlessly through his exhausted mind, over and over again like a skipping record.
We don’t forget.We don’t forget.We don’t forget.
By the time the sun came up the next morning, three massive gears had already started turning across the city.
Brandon didn’t know about a single one of them.
The first gear was turning inside a heavy, armored SUV winding its way up a private, winding road deep into the wealthy hills just outside the city limits.
Wyatt Donovan was sitting in the passenger seat. Everyone in the underworld, and the custom bike world, called him Preacher. He was a mountain of a man covered in faded ink.
Preacher was on his cell phone, and he was absolutely not smiling.