“You go surgical. Not feral.”
My jaw tightens. Across the room, Olivia stands. She heard enough. Maybe not words, but the shape of them. I look at her.
She doesn’t move toward me. Doesn’t ask me not to go. Doesn’t pretend she doesn’t understand what this life is anymore. She just watches. Steady. That makes leaving harder. It also makes it necessary.
“Yeah,” I say into the phone.
Logan exhales once. “Meet out front.”
The line goes dead.
I slip the phone away.
Olivia reaches me before I take a full step. Not rushing. Not panicked. Just there. “Something happened?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes search mine. “Bad?”
“Yeah.”
She searches my face for half a second. Then nods. “Come back.” Not be careful. Not don’t go.
Come back.
A better order. One I can follow. My hand comes up to her jaw, thumb brushing once along her skin. Quick. Not enough. Never enough. “I will.”
She believes me.
That matters more than it should.
Then I move.
The ride out is quiet. No banter. No bullshit. Just engines, cold air, and the kind of tension that sits low in the bones because every man knows what we might find.
Shadow rides to my left. Hammer behind him. Joker behind me, his headlight cutting clean through the dark every time I check the mirror. He isn’t smiling. This isn’t a night for smiling.
The warehouse is on the edge of town, tucked behind two vacant lots and a rusting chain-link fence with more holes than security. It belongs to one of the club’s supply lines, legitimate enough on paper, useful enough in practice. Parts. Tools. Storage overflow. Things that don’t look important unless someone knows what they’re looking at. Someone did.
The gate is open when we arrive. Not broken off. Opened. That tells me more than shattered metal would.
Shadow kills his engine first. I roll in beside him and cut mine, boots hitting gravel a second later. Hammer parks angled toward the road, watching the approach. Joker swings off his bike without a word, one hand already near the blade at his belt.
The front door is damaged. Forced, but clean. Not a drunk kick-in. Not panic. Controlled entry.
I step over a bent strip of metal near the threshold and stop inside. The air smells like smoke, oil, burned paper, and something chemical underneath. Not enough fire to destroy the building. Enough to erase. Selective.
Shadow moves left.
Hammer clears right.
Joker drifts toward the rear office with that quiet, unnatural grace that always makes people realize too late he was closer than they thought.
I take the center aisle.
Shelving units line both sides. Some untouched. Others stripped. Boxes opened and emptied. Packing slips scattered. A few crates burned from the inside out, flames smothered before spreading too far. Not vandalism. Inventory selection. They knew where to go.
I crouch near one of the burned piles, lifting the edge of a half-charred sheet with two fingers. Numbers. Partial route. Delivery codes. My phone comes out. I take a picture and send it to Dom. Then another. Then the scorched label on a crate that shouldn’t have been touched if this was random.
