Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
“Place wasn’t cleaned out well enough for that,” Raines replied. “He ran fast, not smart. And his employees are still pretending loyalty will keep them out of prison.”
“They’ll learn,” Ghost muttered, his expression remaining flat while he rotated a coffee mug between both palms.
I gave Cipher a look, and he nodded. His fingers flew over the keyboard, already searching the places that even Raines probably didn’t have access to.
The sheriff exhaled hard enough to rasp through the speaker. “You find him, call me before somebody decides a quarry counts as an unfortunate industrial accident.”
“No promises,” Hawkeye muttered.
“I’m serious,” Raines warned, though exhaustion took most of the authority from his tone. “I can put Wade away now if I get him breathing. Don’t make my job harder than it already is.”
“Then find him first,” I snarled, then ended the call before the sheriff tried to turn the conversation into an agreement I had no intention of making.
Cipher turned the laptop toward me. There were messages flowing across his screen from mechanics, tow operators, feed stores, auction contacts, ranchers, and construction crews throughout our territory. Wade had spent years believing those people were invisible because none of them wore badges, but the Black Crowns knew who kept cameras over towing yards, who remembered unfamiliar trucks at dawn, and who would answer a brother’s call before a deputy finished writing a request.
He pulled up a grainy traffic-camera image from one of our towing contacts. “Caught this Kessler Hauling truck heading east forty-three minutes ago. Tarped equipment on the trailer, and the escort truck belongs to an employee who disappeared before Raines arrived.”
Nomad traced the route across Bishop’s map and noted that it ended near the abandoned Kessler quarry, where Wade’s father had once owned an equipment warehouse. The county had taken part of the property for back taxes, but the warehouse remained buried in an estate dispute. Empty on paper, as Judge put it, which was Wade’s favorite kind of empty.
I studied the quarry roads and rough country surrounding it. Wade was a local predator running through territory the Black Crowns knew better than he did, toward a hiding place tied to his own family.
“Confirm the sighting before we move,” I ordered. “Nobody spooks him. Wraith, Smoke, and Reaper stay with Jacqueline. The rest of us roll out when I say. Be ready.”
Hawkeye began coordinating vehicles, Ghost checked his weapon, and Nomad bent over the map with Zero and Falcon to plan the intercept. Every man understood what Wade had done, but I’d spent my career keeping my rage in check to lead without being careless with my brothers’ lives.
The confirmed sighting came shortly before five, when a feed-store owner east of town reported Wade’s truck pulling a loaded trailer toward the quarry with a gray pickup following close behind. I kissed Jacqueline hard enough to taste her through the first ten miles, her quiet promise to wait for me feeding both the possessive ache in my chest and the erection that had made throwing a leg over my bike briefly uncomfortable.
After one final review of the intercept, I ordered everyone to keep their heads on a swivel, then we rolled out in two club trucks and a staggered line of bikes, using secondary roads until the quarry ridgeline appeared through heat haze and gathering shadow.
Nomad tracked the vehicles from far enough ahead to stay unseen, feeding us clipped updates through the helmet system until Wade came within three miles of the abandoned warehouse. Zero blocked the narrow bridge with one truck, Ghost closed the road behind the convoy with the other, and the bikes swept down both sides before Wade’s men understood they’d been boxed in. The Kessler truck braked hard enough to send the trailer swaying, but the escort pickup cut toward Hawkeye and Breach instead of stopping, forcing Ghost to swing the reinforced front quarter of his truck across the shoulder and take the hit.
Metal shrieked as the pickup spun into a stone embankment, folding the passenger door inward. Hawkeye dumped his bike clear, came up moving, and shattered the driver’s window with the butt of his pistol while Breach ripped the damaged passenger door open and hauled the second man out by his jacket.
The driver reached beneath the seat instead of killing the engine, so Hawkeye caught his wrist, slammed it against the frame, and dragged him halfway through the broken window. “Wrong fucking choice.”
The doors of Wade’s truck opened before I reached it, spilling three armed men onto the road while Wade jumped from the driver’s side and ran toward the quarry complex without waiting to see whether anyone followed. Cal Rusk, Wade’s yard foreman and favorite enforcer, planted himself between us with a tire iron raised in one fist. I kept Wade at the edge of my vision as I ordered Ghost to secure the trailer and sent Nomad and Falcon toward the western cut, making it clear nobody pursued Wade alone.