I didn’t realize I was holding my stomach until we reached the private quarters. My hand was pressed flat against it, a useless little shield over what might, or might not, be growing inside me.
Augustine noticed, but said nothing. He just unlocked the door to a small room—bare cot, old TV, tiny window barred shut. It felt safe. Or safer than anywhere else I’d ever slept.
He closed the door behind us, then leaned back against it, running a hand through his hair.
“You did good,” he said. Not a compliment, more an observation.
I sat on the cot and let my breath out slow. For the first time in days, I didn’t want to run.
“What now?” I asked.
He shrugged, that sad, old-soul gesture. “Now we wait for the next shoe to drop.”
I looked at the door, then back at him. “You’ll keep me safe?”
He didn’t answer right away. He crossed the room, knelt in front of me, and rested his hands on my knees. The scars on his knuckles stood out, white and angry. “I’ll try,” he said. “Even if it kills me.”
I believed him. Even with the world stacked against us, I fucking believed him.
I lay back on the cot, hands folded over my stomach, and waited for sleep to take me. The sound of bikes revving in the parking lot was a lullaby, the burn in my throat a reminder of what I was fighting for.
If this was war, so be it. I had survived worse.
14
Augustine
Church always smelled like mildew and gun oil, but tonight there was a new layer of wet leather, unfiltered cigarettes, the sour sting of fear trying not to look like fear. The Bloody Scythes' patched core trickled in, boots scraping the warped linoleum, and settled around the table—Damron's table—now a war council, not a place for brotherly shit talk. Someone had wiped the surface clean, but the ghost marks of burn rings and spilled whiskey still outlined where old legends had lost their last poker hand. The bullet holes in the edge—three of them, courtesy of a 2008 scuffle with another club—were already being used by a prospect to flick the ends of his spent matches.
Damron, my president and the only guy I’d ever take an order from without bitching, was already standing at the head of the table, the big map of Los Alamos County duct-taped to the wall behind him. He looked like hell had done him a favor and let him crawl out, at least for the night. The scar along his jaw was lit up white, a zipper running from his left ear to the hinge of his chin, and tonight he was letting it do the talking. On the table, two other maps: one of the county line, the other a Google Maps printout of downtown Los Alamos annotated with red and black pushpins. There was a third, blank except for a few crude notes in Sharpie—someone’s idea of a joke. It read, in giant block letters: "ARMAGEDDON?"
I slid in at his right hand, where the Sergeant-at-Arms was supposed to be, and watched the rest of the crew try to pretend they hadn’t just seen me bring a Leatherback princess into our house the night before. Nobody said shit about it. Nobody had to. They all knew, and that knowledge worked through the room like a slow-acting poison.
Damron didn't look at me. He addressed the room, his voice all gravel and authority. "You all know why we're here."
The prospects—three of them, none older than twenty-one—hauled in folding chairs from the back and linedthe far wall, as if they were there to witness a firing squad. They passed around a single bottle of Mr. Boston, the cap long gone, and took pulls like it was the antidote to everything happening outside these walls.
"We got a situation," Damron continued, stabbing a finger at the map. "Saint Etienne wants a war. Cutler is calling in every favor from here to the Oklahoma state line." He moved the finger across town, tapping a cluster of three red pins. "Leatherbacks are mobilizing here, here, and here. That means they're planning a full sweep. They want their girl back."
The mention of "their girl" made a few heads turn my direction, but I kept my face blank and let my fingers drum on the bullet holes.
Damron's eyes swept the room. "Rex's body was found at the Chevron on 84. Execution-style, though they won't say it in the news. He was their enforcer, and now he's a goddamn warning."
I leaned in, voice dry enough to light a match. "We know the Leatherbacks. They never go for subtle when they can go for excessive. This isn’t about Melissa. This is about sending a message."
Damron gave me a hard look, not quite a challenge, not quite an agreement. "The message is received, Sergeant. But what’s your play?"
I reached across the table and stabbed a finger onto the map, straight at the main strip where the Leatherbacks' own bar sat like a boil on the county's ass. "Cut off the head, the snake dies. We hit Saint Etienne before he’s ready. No one expects us to go on the offensive, least of all the 'Backs."
Someone snickered, and I recognized the voice—Seneca Wallace, with his dead-eye stare and the ghost of a smile that said he'd already written the eulogy for half the room. "You planning to walk up and ring the doorbell, Augie?"
I shot him a look that didn’t require a response.
Damron’s voice came in low, but it cut through the laughter. "We’re outnumbered. Three to one, if Durango shows up. This is a numbers game, and we don’t have the numbers."
The room went still. Even the prospects stopped pretending they were invisible.
I shrugged, pulling a smoke from my jacket and lighting it. "Numbers only matter if they know what we’re doing. Hit fast, hit hard, vanish. Blitzkrieg, not trench warfare."
