Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
She saw me.
And now she's dead. And Havoc's dead. And Brick's dead. And thirty-six bodies are buried in Montana clay with my fingerprints all over the shovels.
The Feds will come.
Not local cops.
Not the sheriff with his one cruiser and his Ashby paycheck.
The FBI. ATF. Maybe fuckin' Homeland if they wanna make it a show.
Five of their agents are in the ground right now, includin' Brandy, and the United States government does not just shrug that off.
They come in heavy.
They come in with helicopters and tactical teams and warrants and cameras, and they turn it into a goddamn television event so every citizen in America can watch the bad guys go down.
Seventy-two hours. Maybe less.
That's what I got. Three days max before they trace the missin' agents back to Badlands. Before somebody talks, or somebody's wife calls a contact, or the surveillance Brandy was runnin' pings a server somewhere and men in suits start drivin' toward Terry, Montana with enough firepower to level the compound.
Three days to breathe.
Three days to figure out if I'm runnin', fightin', or just waitin' to die.
The wind hits harder and I lean into it, lettin' the cold eat through me, because the cold is honest. It doesn't pretend to be somethin' it isn't.
It's here.
Deal with it.
Badlands is dark in the distance when I turn onto the dirt road. Dark the way a held breath is dark—not empty, just waitin'. The road winds around the base of the wind-torn mountain and I ride it slow, feelin' every rut and loose stone.
The bike's loud out here, louder than she oughta be, her exhaust bouncin' off the striated canyon walls and comin' back at me like an accusation.
When I come around the last outcropping and the gate swings into view, it's already openin' for me before I even slow down. Dusty and Crow are mannin' it. Both of 'em standin' in the heaviness that comes from havin' a high-powered rifle across your chest and knowin' you might need it before sunrise.
Dusty's too eager on a good night so tonight he looks like a coiled spring somebody forgot to release.
Crow don't look like nothin'—just a still shadow with that air of I'm ready, but I'm not sure for what. Like breathin' is a risk he maybe can't afford.
I roll through without stoppin'. They know I'm back. That's enough.
The chain link closes behind me and the hard metallic clatter is a final-sounding clank that feels like a seal on my fate.
The garage is dark. Ratchet's bay doors are shut, and the lights are off, and the whole structure just squats there in the compound like something that's been holding its breath, waitin' to exhale.
When I left, that place was loud. Now it's quiet enough that I can hear the wind comin' off the flats.
I count the bikes without meanin' to, the way you count exits when you walk into a room or faces before you figure out which one's gonna be a problem. It's reflex now. Pure survival math. Three years in Whitefall taught my eyes to do math before my brain even asks the question.
Half. Maybe a little less than half. Where fifty machines stood this mornin' lined up like soldiers fixed for war, there are maybe twenty-somethin' now. The gaps between 'em are wrong. Too much space. Like missin' teeth. Like a row of men where some of the men aren't comin' back.
When you kill a biker you gotta get rid of his ride same as his body. Same urgency. Same paranoia. Same cold math. I can still hear Ratchet this mornin', voice bouncin' off the garage walls like a round off concrete.
"Not a single fuckin' part." He said it slow. The way a man says somethin' he's said before and has to say again because somebody didn't listen the first time. "Not a goddamned grip, not a motherfuckin' peg, not a seat, not a carburetor, not even a fuckin' bandana—do you little girls hear me? It all goes in the pit."
And he meant it.
'Cause an outlaw's bike is a fingerprint. It's not a machine, it's a record.
Every mod, every custom part, every piece of leather or chrome a man bolted on 'cause it spoke to him—that's evidence. That's a trail. I don't care how small the piece is, I don't care how unlikely the odds, that shit carries a man's identity the same way his face does.
One day, three years from now, you're gonna think ya got away clean. You're gonna be standin' in some parking lot somewhere out in the world, feelin' light, feelin' free, feelin' like the past is buried so deep it's hit the water table. And then some motherfucker is gonna walk up to you with that look—that slow recognition crawlin' up from his jaw to his eyes—and ask where you got that seat.
A seat.