Stay safe. I love you. Come back to me.
I should text back. Should tell her I love her. Should tell her this will be over soon and we can go home.
But something in my gut is screaming that things are about to go sideways.
I look out at the empty lot again.
Nothing. No movement. No headlights in the distance. No sound of approaching bikes.
Just silence.
And that wrongness getting louder in my head.
Phantom walks over to the truck, Damon beside him.
Both men look grim in the headlights, their shadows stretching long across the cracked pavement.
I roll down the window, and the desert air hits my face—cold, dry, carrying dust.
"This doesn't feel right," Phantom says without preamble. His voice is tight, controlled, but I can hear the edge underneath.
Damon nods, arms crossed over his chest. "Could be they're running late. Could be they're setting up an ambush from a distance, waiting for us to drop our guard. Or?—"
My phone rings.
Siren.
My blood turns to ice. Goes from hot rage to cold terror in the space of a heartbeat.
Siren wouldn't call unless something was wrong.
She's supposed to be at the compound with Grace. With Sakura. Safe. Protected.
With Grace.
"Answer it," Phantom says, his voice tight.
He hears it too—the wrongness of this call, the timing, what it could mean.
I answer, put it on speaker with shaking hands. "Siren?"
Her voice comes through panicked, breathless, breaking: "They took her. Copperhead Kings. They came to the compound. We couldn't—there were ten of them—Shadow, they shot one of the prospects—Flint took Grace?—"
The world stops.
Everything goes silent except for the rushing in my ears, like I'm underwater, drowning.
Grace.
They took Grace.
"Say that again," I hear myself say, and my voice sounds far away. Detached. Like it's coming from someone else's mouth.
"Copperhead Kings ambushed the compound," Siren's crying now, words tumbling over each other, frantic. "Flint—he had ten brothers with him—we tried to stop them but they had guns—they shot Pope in the shoulder—Grace tried to run but they grabbed her—knocked her out—put her on a bike—Shadow, I'm so sorry, we tried?—"
I'm out of the truck before I realize I'm moving.
The door slams behind me, the sound distant and muffled.
