Longer response this time. Mirage’s knuckles whitened around his mug. Spade’s fists tightened. My heart forgot how to beat steadily.
Blackjack closed his eyes for a second, the gray in his beard seeming to go whiter. “Got it,” he said. “Keep me updated.”
He hung up. For a breath he didn’t look at us. Just stared at the scarred wood like he could burn a hole through it by will alone.
“Prez?” I said. My voice sounded rough, foreign.
He lifted his head.
“Miami’s been in a wreck,” he said.
The words dropped like a body.
The air went out of the room. Chairs scraped. Priest swore under his breath. Roadkill made a noise low in his chest, half growl, half prayer.
“What kind of wreck?” I asked. “How bad?”
“Bad,” Blackjack said. “Truck driver coming off the highway found him laid out on the side of the road with that fucking bike in pieces. EMTs were already on scene by the time our guy heard it on the scanner. They’re rushing him into surgery.”
My throatfelt tight. “Is he—”
“Alive,” Blackjack said. “For now. They said critical. Internal bleeding. Broken bones. He’s a mess.”
Quinn’s face flashed in my head. Her laugh. Her hand on the back of Miami’s neck, possessive and soft. The idea of her getting that call made my stomach flip.
“What hospital?” Mirage asked.
Blackjack’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “Shoreline General,” he said.
The name punched through the fear and hit a different nerve.
“That’s up north,” Snake Eyes said slowly.
“North and more inland,” Ace said. “Out past our line.”
I already knew the answer before I asked. “Whose turf is that?”
Blackjack’s eyes met mine, steady and dark.
“Shore Vipers,” he said. “Miami just crashed in Lady Liberty’s back fucking yard.”
The room went dead quiet.
And just like that, every road we’d been riding cracked open under our wheels.
Four
Jersey Boy
Miami in Viper country.
The words hung in the air like smoke that wouldn’t clear.
Nobody said anything at first. Blackjack just stared past us, eyes locked on some point on the wall. The whole room seemed to tilt around his silence. You could feel every man at that table fighting the same urge to move, to act, to fix it.
Priest was the first to break. He shoved his chair back hard enough that it scraped the floor like a gunshot and slammed his fist into the wall. Drywall dented, a little snow of white dust drifting down.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
