“I am genuinely here because I can paint and because…”
She stopped.
Then tried again.
“Because Luther used to talk about this place. About the people here.”
Another stop.
“And when things got… when I needed somewhere to land, I thought…”
She exhaled.
“I thought maybe you’d know who I was. That’s all.”
Her voice got quieter.
“I thought maybe somebody would know who I was.”
Gregory stared at her for a long time.
Then he turned toward Jimmy.
Jimmy Rourke had a policy about strays.
The policy was simple and unambiguous.
He did not take them in.
He had kept that policy through many situations that tested it.
Now he stood looking at Skyla Hart’s face and conducting a very short internal argument with himself.
“Get a tank,” Jimmy said.
He pointed toward the back.
“One of the Dyna shells we haven’t prepped yet.”
Then he looked directly at Sky.
“You’ve got two hours. You can use whatever’s in the supply cabinet.”
He paused.
“If what you put on that tank matches what’s in that portfolio, we talk.”
Another beat.
“And somebody get this kid a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t need…”
“It wasn’t an offer,” Jimmy said.
He picked up his socket wrench again.
“It was a test. Let’s see if you can accept something without arguing.”
Sky stared at him.
“I’ll take the coffee.”
“Good.”
Jimmy returned to the Softail.
Devlin went to get the tank.
Rico, who had still not picked up the socket wrench he dropped after hearing Luther’s name, finally bent down and retrieved it.
Then he looked at Gregory.
Gregory gave him a slow nod.
Yes.
I know.
I know exactly what this is.
Sky placed her backpack on the floor.
Then she removed a zippered brush case.
The brushes inside were organized, labeled, and meticulously maintained.
They were the opposite of nearly everything about her outward appearance.
She unzipped the case and ran one finger along the handles the way a musician might check strings before a performance.
Slowly, the garage began making noise again.
Wrenches.
Engines.
A radio turning back on somewhere near the rear.
Ordinary sounds knitting the place together again.
But there was something running underneath all of it now.
Luther Hart’s little sister was standing at a workbench in the chapter garage organizing her brushes.
Every man in the building was watching out of the corner of his eye.
Whether he admitted it or not.
Devlin returned with a bare Dyna tank.
No primer art.
No scratches arranged into a design.
Nothing.
He placed it in front of Sky without speaking.
She stared at the tank for a moment.
Not like it was empty.
Like it was already full of something she needed to uncover.
She picked up a brush.
No preliminary sketch.
No tracing.
No layout marks.
She simply began.
The first line rose from the lower curve of the tank.
Clean.
Decisive.
It looked as though the line had always been there and Sky had simply revealed it.
Jimmy was not watching.
At least, that was what he told himself.
Thirty seconds later, he realized he was watching.
He forced himself to turn back toward the Softail.
Twenty seconds after that, he looked again.
The line had become the spine of something.
A shape beginning to emerge.
Jimmy could not identify it yet.
But he could feel it.
There was something about the line quality.
The confidence.
It matched the portfolio.