“And if there is, and the yard rats find it, they’ll call our SUV friends,” Rosé added. “Either way, it’s bad.”
“Exactly,” Liberty said. “So, we go.”
She said it simple. Like deciding to pick up milk.
“We’re going to go to that junkyard,” Liberty continued. “We find the wreck, strip it down, make sure there’s nothing left inside worth killing for, and then we make sure it dies on our terms, not theirs.”
I nodded. “Who’s we?”
“Valkyrie, you take point,” Liberty said. “Jersey goes with you. He knows what the bike looks like. Indigo, Medusa, and Diamondback for teeth and eyes.”
“And you?” I asked.
She smiled, slow.
“Thought that was implied,” Liberty said. “I’m not sending my girls into a possible hit box while I sit on my ass. I’m coming too. You run the ride, I watch the angles.”
She rose from her chair, the conversation already closed in her head. “Gear up,” she said. “Ten minutes.”
We moved.
Outside, the compound woke the rest of the way when word trickled out that Liberty was rolling with us. That always raised the stakes.
Diamondback was already strapping on her vest by the time I hit the yard, hair twisted up messy, eyes bright. Medusa slung her spiked bat across her back and checked the pistol at her hip hidden beneath her cut like she was hoping for an excuse to use it. Indigo loaded shells with the kind of casual efficiency that said she’d been doing it half her life.
Jersey stood near his bike, helmet in hand, watching how the Vipers flowed around him without ever fully turning their backs.
“What are we walking into?” he asked as I approached.
“Not who,” I corrected. “What. Could be Vincino errand boys. Could be Steel Serpents playing fetch for their masters. Could be that SUV and friends. Be ready for all of it.”
He nodded once. Serious, no quip. I respected that more than any joke. Business when it mattered most.
The gate groaned open as Liberty came out last.
Cut on, hair pulled back, helmet hooked on her fingers, she looked like every woman who’d ever told a man to bury her with her bike and meant it.
For a second I thought she was going to hand off the run to me and stay, the way it sometimes went when she decided her presence would stir more troublethan it solved.
Instead, she walked straight toward us and swung a leg over her bike. This confirmed to me that she was riding into the unknown with us.
“No change of plans?” I asked to confirm, voice raised over the idle of engines.
“None,” she said. “I’m not letting my girls be the only ones breathing junkyard air on this one.”
And that was that.
We rolled out.
The road to the yard wound through parts of town most tourists never saw. Old warehouses. Lots choked with weeds. Cars on blocks in front of sagging porches, men on stoops who knew when not to stare.
I led. Jersey sat on his bike right beside me. Liberty’s presence was a heat at my back, steady and sure.
By the time we turned down the narrow lane that led to the junkyard, I’d already built three different versions of this ending in my head. Only one of them didn’t involve bullets.
The gate was half-open when we got there.
Chain-link sagging. Rust-eaten sign hanging crooked from two bolts, the name of the yard faded almost unreadable. No barking dogs. No yelling owner waving a clipboard.
