I walk back to where my Harley waits in the lot, fishing keys from my pocket while my mind sorts through tactical options. Agent Monroe with her Triumph Bonneville, her callused hands, her combat stance. Federal agent who rides, who knows MC culture, who sees through operational security like it's transparent.
Not some desk analyst I can misdirect with paperwork and professional courtesy—a woman who'll dig until she finds what she's looking for.
Keeping her at a distance should be straightforward. Maintain the VP polish, cooperate within legal boundaries, give her nothing that justifies deeper investigation. Standard operational security.
Except I've already clocked the calluses on her hands. Already assessed her stance, her confidence, the way she moves like someone who's earned her place in a world that doesn't welcome women easily. Already caught myself noticing things that have nothing to do with threat assessment.
The problem isn't the mission.
The problem is what happens when professional distance isn't enough. When I stop relying on surveillance and misdirection and fall back on the methods I learned in Delta Force. The ones that don't leave room for federal authority or legal boundaries or the VP polish I've been wearing since I came home.
The problem is that part of me already knows how this ends... and the darker part doesn't mind at all.
2
SHELBY
The motel room smells like industrial carpet cleaner and stale coffee. Standard federal per diem accommodations—clean enough, cheap enough, forgettable enough. I've stayed in worse. Three years undercover with the Devils MC in Nevada taught me to appreciate basics like locks that work and beds without questionable stains.
Case files spread across the floral comforter in categories that make sense only to me. Weeks of investigation condensed into manila folders and surveillance photos. Photographs of modified weapons seized at gun shows across the Pacific Northwest. Sales records showing patterns of illegal transactions. Vendor booth assignments placing the same players at multiple locations.
And there, in the background of vendor photos from several shows: through the convention center windows, Ironside Customs signage visible on what appears to be their delivery truck at three separate events.
Custom motorcycle parts delivered to gun shows where illegal weapons sales happened within hours. Shipping manifests obtained through subpoena show packages sent from Ironside Customs to convention centers, picked up by vendorslater flagged in weapons violations. Coincidence stretches thin when the pattern repeats across multiple cities over several months.
Someone's using the Iron Brotherhood's legitimate business as cover for weapons trafficking. Either the club knows and profits, or they're being set up by someone with access to their operations.
My job is determining which.
Cole Holloway's file shows a military photo from his service record. A younger version of the man I met this morning, but the predatory awareness was already there in his eyes. Same stillness that reads less like discipline and more like violence held in perfect check. A few more years of weight in his shoulders, but that edge of danger hasn't softened with time.
Army service spanning over a decade. Honorable discharge. The specifics are redacted, likely special operations given the classification level, but those records require DOD cooperation that takes months to secure.
What the file confirms: extensive military training, command experience, a security clearance that suggests operations most people don't want to know about. The kind of background that makes someone either very good at staying legal or very good at doing illegal things the right way.
The kind of man who's done things civilian law wouldn't forgive and learned not to lose sleep over it.
As Vice President of the Iron Brotherhood, he handles day-to-day operations, at least according to the club's business registration and corporate filings. Financial oversight, security systems. A perfect position for someone running a smuggling operation through a legitimate business front.
Also a perfect position for someone protecting a club being used without their knowledge.
Or, and this is worse, a perfect position for someone who operates in the spaces between legal and illegal, who knows exactly where the lines are and how to dance along them without crossing over. Until crossing over serves his purpose.
Coffee sits cold in the mug on the nightstand. I drink it anyway, needing the caffeine more than I need it hot.
Weeks of investigation led to this morning's search warrant. Weeks of tracking shipping records, photographing gun shows, documenting patterns. We found nothing during the search because either they're clean or they're better at operational security than most criminal enterprises I've investigated.
My instincts say it's the latter. Criminals with military training, MC structure, and legitimate business operations rarely leave evidence lying around for federal agents to find during routine searches.
But my instincts have been wrong before.
Another file waits on the bed. Personal. Not part of the official case documentation. Just photos and reports I've kept because forgetting feels like betrayal.
Blake Walsh. Partner for two years with the ATF. Best investigator I've ever worked with, better friend than I deserved. We were tracking weapons modifications moving through the gun show circuit when a buy went wrong. Modified AR-15 with an illegal auto sear, sold by a vendor we'd been watching for months. Blake went in to make the arrest. Vendor pulled a backup weapon, another modified piece with a suppressor, and fired twice before Blake could draw.
Dead before the ambulance arrived. Vendor disappeared into the crowd. Case went cold.
That was eighteen months ago.
