Carver crouched in front of him. With deliberate care, he weighed the fallen bodyguard’s weapon in his hand. Jones hauled Valdivia upright and shoved him toward the trees, away from the other pursuits, away from radios and eyes and help that was already moving farther out of range. Valdivia stumbled, arrogant to the last, lifting his chin like he expected his due respect.
“Do you know who I am?” he demanded, his voice laced with fury.
Carver smiled as he followed the sound of gunfire and shouting fading behind them. “Oh,” he said softly. “We know exactly who you are, and exactly what you’re worth.”
Jet shifted, quivering under her command of him, muscles bunched and trembling with coiled energy, sensing the hunt ahead as much as she did. Blair sat deep in the saddle, a statue of focus amid the bedlam. She saw the frantic scramble of armed, mounted bodyguards, the menacing weave of the Hell's Eight bikes, and at the center of it, Torres.
Hector Manuel Torres broke exactly where she expected, angling for the brush line where the ground buckled and narrowed. It was a smart move, forcing the fight into terrain that favored his harassers and negated her overwatch. Four men rode with him, disciplined and close. Beyond them, engines screamed as Hell’s Eight riders peeled off, dirt bikes surging into position, aggressive and fast. Those men deferred to him without a word, space opening where he moved. The King of the North rode like he owned the very ground beneath his horse's hooves, bequeathed by royal decree.
A cold fire ignited in her chest. "Torres is breaking south-southeast," she snapped into her mic. "Armed mounted bodyguards. Menacing Eights." The moment the words left her lips, she tightened her hold on the reins, leaning forward.
One moment Jet Relevé was a taut wire of contained energy, the next he was pure, unbridled force. His massive haunches flexed, gathering every ounce of his strength, his back hooves digging divots into the earth as his front end lifted. He didn't ease into a gallop. He attacked the horizon, a thundering war machine of muscle and will, his hooves striking the ground with the rhythmic, brutal power of a battering ram, each stride a declaration of his unstoppable charge.
The world was a blur of green and brown, a tunnel of motion torn through the Canadian wilderness. Blair was fused to Jet, a single, perfect note of speed and fury. She adjusted for the explosive coil and release of his haunches with every stride, the piston-like drive of his legs devouring the ground. His breath was a hot bellows against her calves, his heart a frantic, powerful drumbeat echoing through the saddle and into her bones. This was his element, a primal symphony of chaos.
Ahead, the chase was a hectic storm. Hector Torres was the eye of that storm, his horse a frantic engine of escape, but he wasn’t alone. The pack of Hell’s Eight bikes fractured. Two peeled off in a coordinated scream, becoming Torres’s personal hellhounds on the flank. The others spread wide, a skirmish line of snarling engines and rooster tails of flying dirt, their only purpose to crowd, confuse, and break the chase.
“Tyler—parallel left,” Blair ordered. “Beef—cut the angle. Don’t let him widen.”
“On it,” Tyler replied, already moving. Beef didn’t answer.
The bikes fell back, spitting chaos. One swerved viciously toward Beef, its engine a scream. Beef’s mount, Sundance, a sturdy quarter horse, jackknifed away with a scream of defiance, its haunches sliding in the loose dirt.
Beef was a rock in the saddle, his weight shifting instantly, using his strong legs to anchor himself and a sharp rein check to straighten the animal, shoving back into the chase without losing a stride.
Simultaneously, another biker kicked gravel toward Tyler. A shotgun-wielding bodyguard on a galloping horse took aim, but Tyler was already moving. He saw the kick, dropped his shoulder, and his horse, Blue, a scrappy roan, pivoted on its forehand, turning the spray into a harmless cloud. The shotgun blast went wide, and Tyler kicked his horse back into his lane, the correction so fluid it was barely a hesitation.
Jet stretched into his stride, a seamless fusion of power and grace. The drumbeat of his hooves was a physical force, a rhythm that vibrated up through the saddle, into her bones, and resonated in her teeth. Eating ground, picking his footing with brutal intelligence, body steady even as chaos erupted around them.
A crack split the air, and a tree branch just ahead of Blair exploded into a shower of splinters. She didn't flinch. She just leaned lower, pressing her cheek to Jet's neck, murmuring a single word into his twitching ear. "Go." The horse responded with a surge of speed so violent it stole her breath, closing the gap with a predator's focus.
Then a different sound cut through the chaos, the sharp, clean thwump of a rotor blade from above, a promise of absolute precision. "Blair, move left," Breakneck's voice was calm in her ear, a god's-eye view in the middle of hell.
She didn't look. She trusted. She just shifted her weight, a silent command, and Jet cut hard left, his hooves skidding on loose earth as a bullet ripped through the space horse and rider had just occupied. In that same instant, a single, heavy round took out the biker behind her. He went down in a tangle of shrieking metal and flesh.
"Torres is breaking for the trees!" Tyler yelled, his voice tight with strain.
42
Breakneck hung from his harness at the open door, body braced, boots locked against the skid as rotor wash tore at everything that wasn’t bolted down. Dust spiraled upward in violent columns, stinging his eyes, vibrating through his bones. The noise was absolute, engine, wind, gunfire, but inside his head there was only distance, trajectory, and timing.
Math.
The world below the helicopter was chaos, measured in angles and speed. He watched as Torres broke from the compound, watched his magnificent Blair give chase on that spectacular beast. Beef and Tyler, riding roughshod over her, taking on the wind and the danger.
His job was to keep them safe.
Blair’s contingent cut across broken ground at full gallop. He tracked Jet automatically, the big horse’s stride etched into his awareness as clearly as any grid line. He knew her vector. Knew Tyler’s. Knew where Beef would be in three seconds because that was how men who survived did this, anticipation.
The helicopter bucked in a thermal, a sudden, violent lift that tried to tear the rifle from his shoulder. Breakneck flowed with it, his body a fluid shock absorber, his eye never leaving the scope. The world was a shaking, roaring tube of chaos below, but through the glass, it was a grid of probabilities and threats. He wasn't a man in a helicopter. He was a firing platform, and the hunter in him had taken over, reducing the world to a crosshair and a heartbeat.
Blair. The thought was a flicker of white-hot heat, quickly contained. He saw the flash from a shotgun, saw the spray of dirt kick up just ahead of Jet. The rage was a physical force, a tidal wave in his blood, but he forced it down, compressing it until it became a cold, hard diamond of focus in his gut.
Two rear bodyguards flanked Torres, their horses pounding in near-perfect sync, carbines held at the ready. They were the immediate threat.
The first target presented itself for a fraction of a second as his horse crested a rise. Breakneck’s finger tightened. The helicopter lurched. He rode the movement, leading the target, compensating for the wind, the speed, the vibration. He exhaled. The crack of the rifle was lost in the roar of the rotors. Below, the henchman on the left simply slumped, pitching sideways out of the saddle and hitting the ground like a sack of meat.
One.
