We rode to Ricky’s place. He detoured around the back of the student-housing complex. Sure enough, the car we’d dodged was arriving from the other direction, and there was already a TV van waiting.

As we pulled over, Ricky took out his phone and typed a message for me: They won’t dare come to the clubhouse. And I suspect they can’t easily find Gabriel’s home address.

There was a third option. I sent a text to Gabriel: Media at Ricky’s. Need your advice.

He texted back immediately: There’s only one safe option here, Olivia.

I replied, Cainsville.

Yes, I’ll meet you somewhere and drive you in.

Ricky, who was reading over my shoulder, shook his head and motioned that he wanted to stick close.

I nodded and replied that Ricky would drive me.

All right. I’ll see you both at Rose’s.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cainsville is a cloistered little town, physically cut off from the rest of the world. The highway passes close by, but you have to circle back twenty minutes on a narrow thirty-mile-an-hour road to get there. There is no industry, no tourism, and the housing market is tightly controlled. In short, unless you have good reason to visit Cainsville, you wouldn’t.

As we rode in, I kept my arms around Ricky, my eyes on the back of his jacket. He turned onto Rowan and stopped in front of Rose’s. It wasn’t hard to find, given the “Rosalyn Z. Razvan, Take Charge of Your Future” sign in the window. And it was across the road from my apartment.

I glanced over at the three-story, yellow-gray Renaissance Revival walk-up that had been my home for the past couple of months. My landlord, Grace, sat on the front stoop, perched like one of the town’s many gargoyles, the most forbidding of them all. She made no secret of the fact she was watching me, her sunken dark eyes glued on the motorcycle the entire way from the corner.

After a moment’s hesitation, I pulled off my helmet and said, “I’m going to speak to Grace.”

He nodded and lifted a hand to her in greeting. She acknowledged him with a dour nod.

I crossed the road and climbed the steps. “So,” I said. “You’re a bogart, right?”

“Is that how you’re going to start conversations now?”

“Just in Cainsville.”

She snorted.

“Hey, it’s the only way I’m likely to find out.”

“You bringing him here?” She pointed at Ricky.

“Is that a problem?”

“Not for me.”

I sat on the stone railing. “I’d like to know what the elders have against him. It isn’t because he’s a biker, is it?”