“You’re not comin’,” I say, before my brain catches up with my mouth. “It’s too fuckin’ dangerous.”
Her head turns, and the look she gives me is stone cold. “I didn’t ask to come. I volunteered to show you.”
When I walk across the room, she lowers her voice so only I can hear. “You want to pick my brain and then shove me in a room while the men handle it.”
“I’m not tryin’ to be controllin’,” I tell her quietly. “It’s just that you would be a beautiful distraction that might get in the way of completing the mission safely.”
She studies me for a long moment before responding. “I’ll help you,” she says. “You know I will. But I want you to do me a favor back. Instead of pacing in my room, worrying myself sick about you, let me sit with Striker tonight so I can see the drone feed and hear the comms. I might turn out to be useful in the heat of battle. And anything that gives you and your clubbrothers a better chance of making it home alive should be a no-brainer.”
“Done,” Jasper says before I can even think about answering.
Nora walks us through everything she remembers. The second building has no power and no plumbing. They haul water in and run the whole operation, security included, off a generator. Striker’s face lights up, and he starts typing away on his keyboard, mumbling, “A generator means one power source. And one power source means one point of failure.”
Yeah, I guess. Only I can’t see how that matters in a smash and burn mission. When Jasper brings down his gavel to end the meeting, we gear up and head out to the courtyard. It’s still dark outside.
I take a minute with Nora. It’s times like this that make a man think about the future and what would happen if he were to fall in battle. We stand by my bike, away from the others. I dig into the inside pocket of my cut and press something into her palm. It’s a silver ring made from a Morgan dollar I’d been saving for something special. “This is a little something to remember me by, in case I don’t come back.”
Her expression falls. “Don’t even think that, much less say it out loud. You are coming home because I can’t stand the thought of living without you in my life.”
“Look,” I say, before she can panic. “I made it a while back. I just wanted to make you a little piece of pretty to wear with my cut.”
She turns it over in her fingers, and her bottom lip trembles. I know she’s thinking about the other ring, the one Stripe gave her, the one that came with a threat instead of a choice. This one comes with no expectations. I watch all that click into place in her expression.
She slides it onto her right hand and jumps onto her toes to kiss me. “Come back home safely and let’s make a life together,” she murmurs against my mouth. She suddenly pulls back, turns and fast-walks away, like she doesn’t want me to see her fall apart.
I’m grinning the whole time I’m putting on my helmet. She basically just fuckin’ claimed me. I love hearing her say she wants to make a life with me.
***
Twelve of us roll out in staggered pairs, a couple of minutes apart. We don’t form up into a column until we’re past the city limits. The cannery sits right where the map says, where I remember it being. We use the tree line as a staging area, just like we planned. Striker’s voice squawks through my earpiece. “I hacked their feed and am killing their cameras in three, two, one.” The little red lights along the fenceline stop blinking, one by one.
We come over the back fence, hustling towards the second building. It’s exactly where Nora said. There are two brothers standing out front. They’re sharing a smoke and a conversation rather than guarding the building. That makes it easier to sneak up on them. I put one in a sleeper hold before he knows what hit him. Slate’s stun gun drops the other one. We stop long enough to zip tie them and drag them out of sight.
Inside is everything we hoped to find and more. Franken-bikes line the back wall and hang off ceiling chains. We can now see they put junk paint jobs over racing engines, just like Nora told us. A workbench runs down the middle of the room. It’s mostly covered in drone frames, all in various stages of assembly. I fast-walk to the back shelf because I see something I recognize. Everything they stole from us and haven’t used is stacked neatly on one shelving unit. My hand runs across the shelves. Our GPS trackers, dash cams, and signal boosters are just waiting for us to reclaim them.
A door bangs open near the rear of the building, and a Hyena walks out still zipping his pants. It stinks, which tells me they’ve got a toilet rigged up back there. He gets one yell off before Merc puts him down with one mighty punch to the chest. That fucker has muscles sitting on muscles.
Unfortunately, that one sound is enough to alert the others. Three more come running out of a room that looks like it might be an office. There are two Hyenas and a third man in slacks and a button-up shirt.
We’re on them in seconds. I zero in on the guy in the button-up shirt because he might be their cartel connection. I plant my boot on the side of his knee. A sickening crunch later and he’s on the ground screaming. Unfortunately, I’m all out of shits to give for these fuckers. When he grabs the leg of a sturdy workbench to pull himself up, I kick him back down and pull out another zip tie. He fights me hard. I catch an elbow over my eyebrow, feel the skin split, and warm blood drips down into my brow. Doesn’t matter. I’m bigger and stronger and manage to get the job done in under two minutes.
When I get to my feet, I can see that the fight is not going well for the Hyenas. One of the Hyenas grabs a tire iron off the bench and slams it into Scar’s temple before Onyx plows into him with one shoulder, knocking him off his feet.
Onyx is already in the office, yanking drawers and stuffing his empty duffel with paperwork. Slate grabs a folder off the workbench and shoves it inside his vest.
That’s when headlights start sweeping across the front windows. Bikes, lots of them, are swarming the place.
“Striker, talk to me,” I say into my mic. “We found what we came for and need an exit solution.”
“Our drone is in the air. I see twelve bikes surrounding the building and another ten inbound. The dockside road’s still clear. Time to light the place up and get the fuck out of there.”
“Jasper, Onyx! The dockside road is clear.”
“Jasper responds, “I heard.”
Onyx yells over his shoulder, “I’ve one more drawer to check!”
Jasper’s already walking around the room with a gas can, dousing the benches, the bikes, and all the half-built drones. Their whole chop operation is about to go up in flames. Two brothers drag my zip-tied cartel friend and the others towards the back door.
