"Ounce. What've you got."
Ounce leans forward.
Those dark eyes sweep the table before he speaks, and when he does, his voice is low enough that you lean in without realizing it.
"ODs are up. Way up. Three weeks ago it was a spike—now it's a pattern. Ruby Memorial's ER is getting hit almost nightly. Fentanyl-laced meth, primarily. Some straight fentanyl. The mix is inconsistent, which means the supply chain is sloppy or they don't give a shit who dies. Probably both."
"Source?" Ruger asks.
"Out of state. Someone's using the old mining corridors and the rural routes to move product in. I've got feelers out, but whoever's running this is smart enough to stay off the main roads and dumb enough to cut fentanyl into crystal. That combination makes them unpredictable and sloppy."
"Explain."
Ounce's jaw tightens. "Three hundred percent increase in ODs in six weeks, brother. A sixteen-year-old girl went down last Monday. We're not talking about junkies in trap houses. This is hitting schools. Neighborhoods. It's in the bloodstream of this town, and it's going to kill people we know if it hasn't already."
The room goes quiet. The kind of quiet that has weight to it.
I think about Wrenleigh. About Sadie Jo. About the schools they walk into every morning while something this poisonous creeps through the same streets they walk on, the same hallways they pass through, the same parties they'll start getting invited to, whether I like it or not.
Ruger's eyes move around the table. Landing on each of us. Measuring.
"This is our town," he says. "We don't let it die. Ounce—I want the full picture. Routes, players, stash houses. Everything. Bloodhound, Maddox—start running recon on the rural corridors and the sticks. Bracken, I want eyes on the roads.Anyone moving product through our territory, I want to know about it."
Nods around the table.
This is what we do—not because we're cops, not because we're saints, but because Morgantown is ours and we take care of what's ours.
Ruger turns to me. "Coin, anything from your end?"
"Something I'm keeping an eye on," I say. "Not ready for the table yet."
Ruger holds my gaze. He doesn't push.
That's one of the reasons he's President—he knows the difference between a brother holding back and a brother not ready. He nods once.
"When you're ready."
I nod back.
Church ends. Brothers file out.
The garage comes back to life, the music kicks up, and the clubhouse returns to its usual rhythm—men working, talking, existing in the space between the world that knows about us and the world that doesn't.
I stay in my chair by the window, pull the coin from my pocket and flip it.
Catch it. Flip it again.
The smooth metal warm against my palm, the weight of three generations of Adkins men sitting right there between my fingers.
Nevada plates outside my daughter's school.
A drug pipeline flooding my town.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, in a box I keep telling myself to leave shut—a nurse with a scar that matches mine, crouching down to my youngest daughter's level with the softest voice in the room.
I flip the coin one more time. Catch it. Close my fist around it.
I don't have room for her. Not now. Maybe not ever.
