If no one arrives in twenty-four hours, leave. The door will be open. Take the east road, find the nearest town, ask the sheriff for help.
I paused. Let the words settle into the room the way water settles into dry ground—slowly, resisting to soak through.
"Quisiera poder decirles más. Pero confíen en mí. Esto se va a acabar."
I wish I could tell you more. But trust me. This is going to end.
"Y una cosa más: por favor, no mencionen haberme visto hoy. Ni a mí ni a nadie más."
And one more thing: please, do not mention having seen me. Not me, and not anyone else today.
A man stepped forward from the group near the back wall. Thin, mid-thirties, the white long sleeves pulled to his wrists. His voice came out hoarse—cracked from disuse, or from sustained fear that had closed his throat and left it raw.
"¿De verdad se va a acabar?"
Will it really be over?
I held his eyes. The eyes of a man who'd heard promises before. He was searching mine for the lies—the flicker, the glance away, the micro-expression that would confirm what experience had taught him.
I didn't look away.
"Muy pronto. Solo tengo que ocuparme de una cosa más."
Very soon. I only need to take care of one more thing.
I turned. Walked out. Left the door open behind me.
The bikes were where we'd left them, staged at the far edge of the ranch road where the grassland started and the fences ended.
Kai and Rosa were there. Their SUV idling beside Tank's, the medical supplies visible through the rear window—bags of saline, gauze, the organized efficiency of Rosa's preparation. Kai's face went tight when he saw the blood on Irish's sleeve—a graze from the firefight that none of us had noticed because the adrenaline had been burning too hot. Rosa's dark eyes werealready moving over every man in the group with the assessment of a combat medic who never stopped labeling injuries.
We loaded fast. Tank and Tyler in one SUV, plus five patched members. Axel, Declan, Kai and Rosa in another, accompanied by another four brothers. Three members less than before, now that Reyes, Colton and Vasquez were making sure the cattle ranch does not look like a human slaughterhouse. Ghost, Irish, and I moved to the bikes.
The engines caught one after another. Ghost's first, the sound sharp and clean. Then Irish's, a lower rumble. Then mine—the borrowed Harley vibrating through my hands and up my forearms and into the hollow space in my chest where the rage was living, compressed now, dense and hot, waiting for a target. The throttle responded under my right hand. Not my bike. But close enough.
Three bikes riding in the front. Two SUVs behind. The convoy formed on the main road heading east, and the throttles opened.
Dawn was approaching. The sky ahead of us shifting from black to deep blue, the first pale gray washing the eastern horizon where the hills would appear when the light was strong enough to reach them. The road was empty—no headlights, no traffic, the predawn silence of a landscape where the nearest city was two hours away and the people between here and there were still sleeping. Our engines filled the silence.
We rode at maximum speed. Three bikes and two SUVs cutting through Montana at velocities that turned the center line into a continuous blur beneath our wheels.
I rode point. The wind flat against my chest, pressing through my jacket and against my skin with a pressure that stripped everything but the essentials: the road ahead, the throttle under my hand, the calculations running in my brain. The Wolves' convoy had a head start—ten minutes, maybe more—but they were driving vans loaded with human cargo. Heavy. Slow on the curves. Careful on the road because theirinventorywas fragile and replacement was expensive.
We had to be faster. The math had to work. The thought was the only thing keeping me from twisting the throttle past the redline and leaving the SUVs behind.
Logan was in one of those vans. Bleeding from the graze. His throat crushed. Unarmed. Surrounded by people who were scared enough to be silent and a driver who worked for the man who'd almost killed him in the dirt. I thought about the flannel shirt on the chair in my room. The way he'd looked at me across the kitchen table. The way his body had curved into mine last night like distance was a habit he'd finally decided to break.
I twisted the throttle harder. The speedometer climbed.
The landscape blurred. Grassland giving way to rolling hills, the road curving through shallow valleys where the drainage ditches ran dry this late in the summer. Ranch fences appeared and disappeared. Ghost rode tight on my right, his lean steady, his hands relaxed on the grips. Irish on my left, the riding style unmistakable—the loose, confident posture that made the bike look like an extension of his spine, the body flowing with every curve instead of fighting it. Behind us, the SUV headlights bounced and swayed with the road.
The sky brightened. The deep blue lifting to steel gray. The first definition of the hills ahead—dark shapes becoming contoured, the ridgelines sharpening, the world assembling itself for the day that was coming.
At around ninety minutes into the ride, I saw them.
Taillights. Multiple vehicles in loose formation, a quarter mile ahead on the two-lane. Two vans and an SUV. The Wolves' convoy, moving east, slower than us. The van at the rear riding heavy—I could see it in the way it sat on the road, the suspension compressed, the turns taken wide and careful.
My heart rate spiked. I keyed the comms.
