"That's why the dosing is inconsistent. They're cutting it locally."
"And they don't give a shit about quality control because the end users are expendable." Ounce's voice is flat, but his eyes aren't.
There's something in them that looks like the ghost of the man he used to be—the one who moved product himself, before he found his way to this club and this life.
He knows this world from the inside.
That's what makes him valuable and what keeps him up at night.
"Ruger wants to hit the stash house?"
"Ruger wants to send a message. I want to map the full network first—stash house, distribution routes, the crew running it. If we hit one property and they've got three more, all we did was piss them off."
"And if kids keep dying while we map?"
He looks at me. Doesn't flinch. "Then we move faster."
I nod. There's nothing else to say.
Two threats, two fronts, and my club stretched between them like a rubber band that's about to snap.
I head for the parking lot.
Bloodhound is already there, leaning against my truck with his arms crossed and his keys in his hand.
"I'm following you home," he says.
"You don't have to?—"
"I'm following you home, Coin."
I don't argue.
There's no point arguing with Garrett Mercer when he's decided something, and the truth is I don't want to argue.
The truth is that driving home alone with those photographs in my pocket and six hours until my girls come through the front door sounds like the kind of silence that would eat me alive.
"Okay," I say. "Yeah. Okay."
We drive in a two-vehicle convoy through Morgantown—my truck, Bloodhound's bike behind me, the October sun cutting through the windshield and the mountains blazing red and gold on every side.
Beautiful. Always beautiful.
Even today, when the world feels like it's closing in, West Virginia is so goddamn beautiful it almost hurts.
I pick the girls up at three. Both schools, same order—Wrenleigh first, then Sadie Jo.
Bloodhound stays at the house.
Wrenleigh is in a mood.
Not the normal Wrenleigh mood—the sixteen-year-old-with-a-boot kind, all fire and complaining.
This is quieter. Sharper.
She's sitting in the passenger seat with her arms crossed and her jaw set, staring out the window.
"What's going on?" I ask.
