He didn't look at me. "I'm fine."
"You're not. And that's—" I searched for words that wouldn't sound hollow. "Tank, what you just learned would destroy anyone. You're allowed to feel it."
"I don't have time to feel it." His voice was rough, scraped raw. "Sarah dies tomorrow. We've got prisoners to interrogate, an extraction to plan. Danny's been dead for six years. Another few hours won't change anything."
"That's not how grief works."
"No." He finally turned, met my eyes. The pain there was staggering—a chasm that went down further than I could see. "But that's how I work. I hold it together until the job's done. Then I fall apart. That's the deal."
I understood that. I'd lived that way for years—compartmentalizing, suppressing, doing what needed to be done and dealing with the aftermath later. It was a survival mechanism, and it worked right up until it didn't.
"Okay." I held his gaze. "But when you're ready to fall apart, I'll be there."
Something flickered in his expression. The ghost of something that might have been gratitude, or maybe just surprise that anyone would offer.
"Tyler—"
"Church in thirty." Hawk's voice carried across the lot, cutting through whatever Tank had been about to say. "Everyone. We need to go through what we found."
Tank's jaw tightened. The moment passed. "After," he said quietly. Just that one word, loaded with everything we weren't saying.
"After."
We walked toward the clubhouse together, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, carrying secrets that could tear the world apart.
Church was grim.
The kill list sat in the center of the table like a bomb waiting to detonate. Hawk had read through it twice, his expression growing darker with each pass. Around him, the club absorbed the information in their own ways—Irish's fingers had stopped drumming, Blade's face was carved from stone. Ghost sat at the far end of the table, crutches propped against his chair, fury radiating off him in waves. Three days since he'd taken that bullet, and Rosa had forbidden him from the raid.The frustration of missing the action was written all over his face—but it was nothing compared to what he was feeling now, looking at that list.
Kai sat in the corner, Axel's hand on his shoulder, staring at his own name in black ink.
"They've been operating like this for years." Hawk's voice was flat, controlled in a way that suggested volcanic rage beneath the surface. "Everyone who could connect them to the drug recycling operation, everyone who testified against Chen, everyone who posed a threat to their network—they've been eliminating them one by one."
"Sarah Reyes." I leaned forward, forcing myself to focus on what could be saved rather than what had already been lost. "She's scheduled to die tomorrow. That date on the kill list—it's the same date that was on Cross's envelope. He wasn't threatening me with something vague. He was telling me exactly when he'd kill her."
The room went cold.
"Sarah Reyes. The woman who stood and fought with us against Chen. Tomorrow." Hawk's voice was sharp. "You're telling me we have less than twelve hours."
"The Wolves who mobilized tonight—the ones Axel's contacts reported leaving the warehouse. They went to Pendleton. They're positioning themselves to be there when Sarah's transported in the morning." I spread my hands on the table. "They're going to stage it as a suicide during transfer. Make it look like she tried to run and got shot, or found a way to hangherself in transit. Something that won't trigger an investigation."
"So we intercept the transport." Ghost leaned forward despite his injury, eyes bright with purpose. "Hit them before they can touch her."
"Pendleton's a minimum security facility, but the transport protocols are military-grade. Armed marshals, GPS tracking, check-ins every thirty minutes." I shook my head. "A direct assault on the facility would be suicide. But they won't kill her inside Pendleton—too many cameras, too many witnesses. They'll do it on the road."
"Then we hit them on the road." Hawk's voice brooked no argument. "Where and when?"
"I don't know yet. I have contacts—people who owe me favors from the Chen case. If anyone can get transport schedules on short notice, it's them."
"Then make the calls. Now." Hawk turned to the room. "Everyone else—we plan for a dawn intercept. Best case, Tyler gets us the route and timing. Worst case, we stake out every road leading from Pendleton and pray we get lucky."
Tank hadn't spoken since we'd sat down. He was staring at the kill list, at the page that held his brother's name, and the stillness radiating off him was the kind that preceded violence.
"There's something else." His voice cut through the room like a blade. "Danny Morrison. He's on this list. Resolved. September third, 2019."
Hawk's eyes narrowed. "Your brother."
"Yeah." Tank's hands were flat on the table, knuckles white. "I spent six years thinking heoverdosed. Blaming myself for not seeing the signs, for not being there, for not saving him." He looked up, and the rage in his expression was terrible to behold. "He was murdered. They staged it to look like user error, and I believed it. Igrievedit. And the whole time, it was these people."
