I slow my bike just enough to feel the tires answer under me. The eastern corridor stretches ahead in a long black line, industrial buildings crouched on both sides like they’re waiting for permission to collapse. The old mill sits beyond the next bend, half-gutted and ugly under the thin wash of moonlight. The support truck rolls ahead of me with two riders behind it and another pair spaced farther back. On paper, this is a normal escort adjustment, visible enough to look like Obsidian is reacting to the Reapers’ pressure and light enough to tempt the Rogues if Canon managed to drag information out of his son.
I’ve never liked paper unless Moth is holding it, and even then, only because Moth can make numbers mean men bleed where they’re supposed to.
My comm clicks once, and Moth’s voice comes through. “North visual is clear. South bend has no heat signatures past the decoy van. Your timing remains intact.”
“Road feels wrong,” I say.
“Good. It’s supposed to.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
I bare my teeth into the wind. “You ever think about saying something normal like, ‘Don’t worry, Bricks, we’ve got this’?”
“No.”
“Worth a shot.”
Moth is quiet for half a second, which is as close as he gets to sighing. “The truck is bait. The support pass is bait. The route correction they may have extracted will be bait, too. If they move where expected, we close around them before they reach the actual product line.”
Some part of me knows that Canon has the information he needs to make this evening go sideways. My problem is not knowing whether or not it’s because someone talked and they shouldn’t have or they were forced to. I glance toward thebroken windows of the old mill. “And if they don’t move where expected?”
“Then Canon is smarter than the evidence suggests, and we adjust.”
“That’s your pep talk?”
“That was my optimism.”
I laugh once, the sound disappearing under the engine. I should be thinking only about the road. But my mind keeps slipping back to the clubhouse, to Saint’s face when he realized Oisín was gone, to the way the room tightened around a kind of terror nobody knew how to name out loud. I’ve seen Saint angry. I’ve seen him cold. I’ve watched him break men with less expression than most people use to order a beer. What walked out of the clubhouse tonight with Demo at his heels wasn’t the VP Obsidian knows how to survive.
That was a man whose husband had been taken. There’s a difference, and every poor bastard in Rogue territory is about to learn it the hard way.
The comm clicks again. “Bricks.”
“What?”
Moth’s voice drops. “The warehouse distraction wasn’t the only issue.”
My hand tightens slightly on the throttle. “What do you mean?”
“There was no logical reason for the product grab to occur tonight.”
“Stupid men do stupid shit.”
“Not with that timing. Not at that lockup. Not with four men who had no realistic chance of leaving with product unless they expected the internal response to be weaker than usual. Their value wasn’t in success. Their value was in pulling Saint, you, and Demo away from the clubhouse while Oisín was emotionally compromised and likely to seek distance.”
My stomach churns as I work through those points, realizing that everything was a little bit too clean not to be planned. Oisín never fucking walks outside like that and even if he did, I would have been with him or at least around. “You’re saying inside help.”
“I’m saying the probability of coincidence is functionally useless.”
“Moth.”
“Yes.”
“Say it like a normal person before I drive off this road just to spite you.”
The line stays quiet long enough for me to hear the support truck’s engine rattle ahead of me. Then Moth says, “Someone helped create the opening.”
