I nodded slowly and deliberately. The hair on my neck prickled. Even the “normal” jobs around here tended to go off the rails.
He slammed the bottle on the table. “Meeting adjourned. Go do something useful.” The officers peeled off in pairs, most heading for the bar or the attached garage where Shivs had rigged up a listening post out of an old police scanner and a nest of laptop wires. Canon lingered, shot me a sideways glance, then drifted out, the vape cloud trailing him like a ghost.
Toolie passed me on his way out, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let him bite your head off, Sarge,” he said, using the old rank, the one from before. I knew he meant Vin, but sometimes I wasn’t sure.
I stood, stretching the tension out of my back. The leather creaked under me, threatening to split at the seams. My cut felt too tight across the chest, like the jacket itself was reminding me who I answered to, no matter how many times I tried to shrug it off.
Vin stayed behind, arms crossed and eyes narrowed to slits. I walked over and leaned on the edge of the table. We held the pose, two animals with too much in common to see eye to eye.
“Something on your mind, Prez?” I said. My voice was low enough that it wouldn’t carry.
Vin rubbed a hand across his jaw, the fingers thick and scarred from decades of broken knuckles. “I need you sharp, Moab. Not distracted. If there’s something you wanna talk about—” He left the rest unsaid, a kind of challenge.
I stared at the old wolf for a few seconds, wondering how honest he actually wanted me to be. The words curdled in my mouth, too raw for the room. “Nothing that’ll get in the way,” I said. “You’ve got my loyalty, same as always.”
He grunted. “Don’t bullshit me. Not when the club’s on the line. Whatever you’re dealing with, you get it handled, or I’ll find someone who will.”
My jaw tightened, but I let it go. “Copy that.”
Vin nodded and turned back to the paperwork on his lap. The conversation was over.
I walked out into the main bar, where Shivs and Toolie were already taking bets on how long it would be before the Ghouls made another move. The jukebox warbled some classic outlaw tune, barely audible over the buzz of fluorescent lights and old men arguing about football. I poured myself a shot from the bottle behind the bar, then tossed it back and let the fire sink to my gut.
My fingers kept drumming, even when I tried to hold them still.
When I caught Canon’s gaze through the glass window to the garage, he looked away, pretending to fix something on the carburetor of a Triumph that hadn’t run since last Christmas. I’d have to check in on him later, make sure he wasn’t spiraling. He worried more than he let on, which was probably why Vin kept him around.
I stepped outside, into the raw evening. The parking lot was gravel and cracked blacktop, lined with bikes that all looked the same to outsiders but spoke volumes to the ones who rode them. My Harley was there, same spot I left it, chain still glinting in the last of the sun.
A cigarette found its way between my lips, and I lit it with the battered Zippo Edda gave me for my thirty-fifth. I inhaled, held the smoke, and tried to shake off the club’s stink. It didn’t work, not really.
The wind carried the sound of an ambulance in the distance, and for a second, I wondered what it would be like to run, really run, and leave all of it behind. Then the thought passed, and I was just Moab Williams, Sergeant at Arms, and my orders were clear.
Tomorrow I’d hit the perimeter, see if the Ghouls had left anything for me to chew on. Tonight, I’d try to sleep, or at leastconvince myself I wasn’t being watched by every set of eyes in the pack.
As I finished my smoke, I felt the ghost of Vin’s stare on my back, not suspicion, not yet, but the certainty of someone who knew how close you could get to the edge before you took the rest of the pack with you. Although loneliness rarely affected an outlaw biker, I was there, carrying it like unwanted baggage. Pussy was pussy when you were new to the club life, but I wasn’t new and had been through my fair share. Now, I wanted more. An old lady who understood what the club meant to me and what I could mean to her.
I flicked the butt into the dark and watched the ember burn out before I turned to my bike.
***
The road out past the perimeter was a dead vein, old county blacktop patched so many times it looked like a stitched-up corpse. Most people took the interstate, but I liked the sidewinder, the way it cut through the pines and climbed into the cold, the way it made a man feel like he’d fallen off the map. Nobody would be out here, not after sunset. Except me, the human error, riding a murder of steel through someone else’s bedtime silence.
I hit the gas and let the night swallow me. The Harley was an animal under my hands, low and mean, every cylinder kick a shot to the spine. Out here, the air was different, less oil, more sap, sharp with the green spit of the woods. I sucked it in and exhaled everything else, remembering Vin’s warnings, Rowan’s eyes, the sense that tonight’s assignment was less about Ghouls and more about whether or not I could still be trusted to run alone.
After three miles, the last of the daylight bled out, leaving the sky the color of a healing bruise. The moon was up but useless, filtered through so much pine needle that all it did was throw stripes across the road. The wolf inside me called out to be set free.
My headlight drilled the dark, casting long, fast-moving shadows that looked a lot like wolves if you squinted just right. I knew these turns like scars. Each was a test, pushing the angle, trusting the grip, riding the edge between thrill and hospital. I leaned into a banked curve, foot scraping sparks, and for a second, I felt free. Maybe even clean.
Somewhere past the old logging sign, the road narrowed, and the trees pressed close enough to drag fingertips across my shoulders. I let up on the throttle, let the Harley coast, and listened to the chain whine. The hush was sudden, as if the woods themselves wanted a word.
That’s when she stepped out.
She didn’t run or flinch. She just appeared, like a deer conjured by headlights. She wore a floor-length white dress, as white as a hospital sheet, with dark patterns inked into the sleeves and hem. It took half a second for my brain to catch up, to realize that nobody in 2026 dressed like that unless they were running from a themed wedding or a cult. Her hair was pale, loose, and wild. Her arms were bare, and she looked at me with a face full of confusion and, underneath, the start of something like terror.
I dropped the clutch and yanked the bars. The back tire broke loose. The world bucked left, then right, then up over the edge of the road entirely.
The impact was a lesson in kinetic violence. First came the hit, a body slam against a guardrail that wasn’t there, just thorny scrub and packed dirt. Then the roll, my back against the ground, my jacket torn open at the shoulder, skin scraping rawas I skidded into the underbrush. Somewhere in the spin, the Harley lost interest in following and tumbled off to die with a clatter and a hiss.
