Page 73 of Property of the Bikers

“Register,” he says. “You’re in early labor. You’re scared. You don’t know what’s coming. Say them again.”

I adjust.

“I need ice chips,” I say. “Where’s my phone?”

“The abort,” Jax says. “Say it like you mean it.”

I look at him. “I want to go home.”

He looks at the table. “Okay,” he says quietly.

Reeve moves through the remaining assignments. Ghost confirms team composition, four men named, positions locked against the floor plan. Doc confirms the simulation timeline. Tomorrow night, ten PM, compound medical room. He’ll monitor through the night and confirm presentation by five AM before the admission call goes in.

Cade puts his hand flat on the map. “Rehearsals today and tomorrow,” he says. “Full scenario both days. Every deviation, every contingency, every abort trigger. We run it until it’s automatic. Nobody walks into that hospital on Friday having run it fewer than four times.”

He looks around the table. “Questions.”

Nobody has questions.

The plan is tight, and everyone in this room knows their part and has known it since before they sat down, and the questions that remain are the ones you can’t answer until Friday morning when the admission goes into the system, and the clock starts.

The meeting closes without ceremony.

Ghost is already on his phone before Cade’s hand leaves the table, texting his team in the shorthand they use when words are slower than the work.

Doc closes his notebook and picks up his bag in one motion, a man whose part is clear and who sees no reason to linger once clarity has been established.

Jax stands and looks at the hospital map one final time, tracing the corridor with his eyes the way Ghost traced it with his finger, and then he turns away without saying anything because there’s nothing left to say.

Reeve stays seated, writing something in the margin of the tabbed page. A small adjustment. Something nobody else caught.

Cade hasn’t moved. Both hands still flat on the map, jaw set, looking at the corridors like he’s going to find something in them he hasn’t found yet.

“I trust you,” I say.

Everyone looks at me.

“All of you. I trust you to run this correctly, to pull me out if it goes wrong, and to do what needs doing when Viktor’s team walks into that corridor.” I look at Cade until he looks back at me. “Trust me to do my part.”

Cade holds my eyes. “Don’t make me regret it,” he says.

Not reassurance. A statement of what we both owe each other.

Reeve looks at the folder and then at me. “One variable,” he says. “The east wing duty nurse rotation on Fridays runs twenty minutes off the standard schedule. I haven’t fully accounted for it in the intercept timing.”

“How much does it affect the window?” I ask.

“Potentially narrows it by fifteen minutes,” he says. “Manageable. Not locked.”

“Fix it before tomorrow,” I say.

“Working on it,” he says.

The plan is tight.

One thing isn’t fully locked.

Viktor doesn’t know what’s coming, and we do, and that’s the only advantage we’ve ever had over a man who plans everything in advance and builds redundancy into every layer of every plan he executes.