Dark SUV. Engine running, exhaust curling white in the cold. No plates. The mounting frame is bare.
The overlook sits below the highway, sloped down toward the cliff edge. They're facing the harbour, backs to the road. They hear my engine—no way they don't—but a single bike passing on a coast highway isn't unusual enough to turn around for. I keep my speed steady and don't look down.
A quarter mile north I take the fire road. The ridge above the overlook gives me a line of sight from the east, two hundred yards out. I take my phone out and open the camera app and zoom in. The photos are grainy as hell in the dark, but I get whatI need. I photograph the SUV—make, model, colour, the bare plate frame. I photograph the two orcs. One heavyset, bearded, tribal ink on his forearms. The other leaner, the one with the telephoto lens.
I pocket the phone, coast the fire road back to the highway, and ride south with my headlight dark for the first two miles.
Mate.The word rides with me the whole way south. But I've got something solid now—a threat, a target, intel Knox needs. Easier to focus on that than on the woman I left sleeping.
Finn is at the Feral Custom Garage at dawn.
He's got a carburetor spread across the bench, parts laid out in the grid pattern he learned from Knox, bolts left to right, gaskets in sequence, every component accounted for. His coffee steams on the workbench beside a crescent wrench and a rag that used to be white. He doesn't look up when I walk in, but I see his nostrils flare. He's scenting me. Scenting her, bourbon and dark cherries still woven into my clothes, my skin, the leather of my cut.
"You seeing Holly again?"
I don't answer. I grab a shop towel and blot the rain off my jaw.
Finn sets down the gasket he's holding. He leans back against the bench and crosses his arms, taking in the bloodshot eyes, thesoaked jacket, the four hours of road and zero hours of sleep I'm wearing all over me.
"You did it again." He shakes his head. "Brother."
"I've got intel." I pull my phone from my jacket. "Scouts at the overlook north of the cove, parked with a telephoto on the harbour."
Finn's arms uncross. The parts are forgotten. "When?"
"Found a dark SUV parked at the overlook at four a.m. with no plates and two orcs running surveillance on the harbour."
He's already reaching for his phone. "Knox needs to hear this."
"I'm headed there now."
I turn for the door. Finn's voice catches me before I clear the frame.
"Rex." I stop. "You're gonna lose her if you keep fucking around."
I don't turn around. I don't argue. I walk to my bike and ride the six blocks to the clubhouse with Finn's voice sitting on my chest like a cinder block.
I find Knox in his office and slide my phone across the desk. He swipes through the shots one at a time, face giving nothing.
I run through it—the overlook, the SUV, no plates, two orcs with a camera on the harbour. Knox swipes back to the lean one with the telephoto lens and stops.
"They've moved from letters to surveillance," I say.
"Yes, it seems that way. I've seen that same SUV twice in the last month—once on the highway south of Gold Beach, once parked outside the trailhead above the ridge. I didn't connect it until tonight."
Knox goes back to the lean orc. "His stance. The way he's set up behind that camera."
"Military or close to it. I clocked it from the ridge."
"That's how Bloodstone works. Never one scout. Always a pair." Knox knows this because he grew up with it. "They're mapping approach routes. Observation points."
He straightens.
"I need you on this. Track their patterns—routes, schedules, how often the SUV shows, whether they rotate personnel. You know every back road in three states. Use it."
"Done."
I turn for the door.
