Shelves stripped bare. Dusty outlines on the desks where monitors would have been. Wyatt’s eyes scan every corner. His gaze catches on a single metal bracket still bolted to the wall, where something heavy used to be mounted. He reaches out, touches it, then drops his hand.
“Well, shit,” he mutters. “They sure were thorough.”
Billy’s office is the same story. Biometric lock gone dark, faceplate shifted with a neat little wound of tampering. The desk drawers are dumped. Cabinets yanked open. Papers scattered everywhere. We don’t linger. Wyatt circles slowly, lifts some papers up with the edges of fingers and shakes his head. Our whole little group heads out and walks through the center of the hangar to the back doors, the old ladies watching us as we pass.
Outside, the cold stings my cheeks. The sun makes me squint.
The barracks sit behind the clubhouse hangar. Two low wooden outbuildings, built beside each other in parallel lines. They were built after I first left, while I was living with Ryder and the guys, and they’ve never been used. I don’t know what their purpose is, but I assume they were intended for storage of some kind.
We reach the first barracks door, and it’s locked. Cipher steps forward and pulls a key ring from his pocket, trying a few until he gets the right key and it turns. The lock clicks open.
The air inside is stale. The barracks is a long hallway with doors on both sides. Empty rooms, most with bunk beds. Halfway down, Wyatt stops at a closed door that doesn’t match the others. It has a new lock that requires a code for entry.
“I don’t have the code for that,” says Cipher with a shrug.
Wyatt leans in, studies it, and frowns. “You got a flat bar?” he asks Cipher.
“In the shop,” Cipher answers.
“Go get it.”
Cipher turns and jogs back down the hall.
While he’s gone, Wyatt crouches, checks the bottom edge of the door, the frame, and the hinge pins. When Cipher finally comes back, breathing a little harder, Wyatt takes the bar and wedges it between the door and the frame, right beside the lock.
“They always cheap out somewhere,” he says, and puts his weight into it. The frame groans, wood cracking, and then there’s a pop as the bolt tears free, the doorjamb splintering.
The room inside is small and organized.
A cot. A desk. A rolling chair. A metal cabinet bolted to the wall. A cheap rug on the floor.
Wyatt crosses the space, eyes locked on the cabinet, and tests it. Locked.
He does a quick scan, then crouches, running his hands over the desk legs, the underside of the chair, the edge of the rug—then he flips the corner of the rug back, and there it is: a key taped to the floorboard.
“Jesus,” Cipher mutters. “Not bad.”
“Silas probably didn’t actually expect anyone to come looking back here,” Wyatt explains.
He peels the tape off, slots the key, and turns it. The cabinet opens with a soft metal click. Inside is a hard black case that Wyatt lifts out carefully and sets on the desk, flipping the latches to open it. It’s lined with fitted foam, holding several metal drive cases labeled in a neat hand, along with a small black brick fitted with a port.
Knox leans closer, looking at the drives in the case. “What is it?”
“They’re storage drives,” says Wyatt. “Probably footage, audio recordings, maybe notes, emails. Who knows?” He taps one of the drives with a knuckle. “This looks like it might be his special treasure, given the effort he put into hiding it. Maybe it’s a curated collection.”
“Fucking freak,” hisses Pluto.
Wyatt tilts his head at him. “Ironically, Silas’s pervy little hobby might be our only chance to redeem this motorcycle club.”
We file back to the clubhouse in silence, cutting across the dried autumn grass. Wyatt carries the case in one hand, knuckles straining. It looks heavy. I hope the effort isn’t hurting his ribs.
We walk down to the bar area and Wyatt swings the heavy case onto a table beside the old ladies.
“We found something,” Cipher tells them.
Babydoll points at the case. “That all his little videos in there?”
“Not by half,” says Wyatt. “But with any luck this is the stuff he thought was valuable. The shit that senator really hopes no one finds.”
