Page 165 of Reckless

Slate answers with a single nod, as if he’d already accepted the job before Sin ever offered it.

Nobody around this table needs convincing anymore.

Montana isn’t another chapter.

They are the next move.

“Both of us,” Static adds, and it isn’t a question either.

Sin’s eyes move to him, then back to Slate, and something settles between them that doesn’t need a lot of words to seal it. “Both of you,” he confirms.

Anchor speaks up from the wall for the first time, arms still crossed. “What’s the play tomorrow?”

I switch the screen over to the operational layout. “Travis Cole’s channels are already compromised. I have had access for weeks. The meeting request goes out through him and reads like a routine constituent approach. Nothing that raises a flag on Calloway’s end.” I pull up the second image. “Location’s a warehouse Nitro owns through Blackwell. Three layers removed from anything that traces back to this clubhouse.”

Nitro finally speaks, his voice low and even. “Nobody walks that building back to Defiance. Not tonight, not next year, not ever.”

“That’s the point of it,” I say.

Koa studies the layout on the screen, arms folded across his chest. “How many men is Calloway likely to bring?”

“Unknown,” I admit. “I’d plan for more than he needs and be glad if I’m wrong.”

Bear grunts, which from Bear passes for agreement.

Sin’s fingers turn the poker chip over once, twice, the way they do when he’s already three moves past the conversation the rest of the room is still having. “Weapons stay out of sight unless somebody makes them necessary,” Sin says. “This isn’t a fight. It’s a reckoning. I want him walking in thinking he’s still got a hand to play, and I want him walking out knowing he never did.”

“Understood,” I say.

Slate looks over the layout one last time before nodding to himself. “We’ll come in through the east.” He thumbs toward Static. “He rides with me.”

“That works,” Sin says. His eyes land on me. “Soon as Calloway knows we’ve got him, Travis becomes a dead man if he’s still sitting in the same place. Calloway won’t want loose ends.”

“He won’t be.”

Sin tilts his head. “Talk to me.”

I roll my shoulders and nod. “I have a plan for an extraction team. A safe house, new phones. Travis’ gone before Calloway has time to start making calls.”

Sin gives a single nod. “Good.”

Church runs another twenty minutes after that, the details getting sharper with every pass, contingencies stacked against contingencies until even Deek would run out of jokes to make about it. By the time Sin finally sets the chip down flat and calls it, it’s past two in the morning, and every man in the room looks as though they are exhausted.

Slate stands last, offers me a hand across the table before he leaves. His grip says more than a handshake usually does. “Obliged you called us in on this,” he says.

“Wasn’t gonna be any other way,” I tell him, and I mean it.

He and Static get shown to a room down the hall. Nitro claps me on the shoulder on his way out and keeps walking.

I lock the tablet away, shut the last screen down, and look around the room one last time—chairs are shoved back, beer bottles are abandoned on the table, and the planning is done.

Tomorrow we find out if it is enough.

Our room is dim when I get there, one lamp burning low on the nightstand. Sage sits up against the headboard, laptop open across her knees, regulatory complaint documents fanned out across the coffee table beside the bed like she’s been working through them for hours instead of trying to sleep. She looks up the second the door clicks shut behind me, and I can see her doing the same thing I do, reading the room before she reads me.

“Done?” she asks.

“Tomorrow,” I tell her.