Chapter 89
-Logan-
The bike engine vibrated up through my spine and into my teeth.
155 vouchers
It wasn’t just a machine… it was a part of me. A second pulse synced to the one hammering in my chest. My leg ached, but I welcomed the pain.
We carved a path through the outskirts of Riverstone. The world was reduced to the growl of six engines. I led, River on my left flank, Monty on my right. In my mirrors, the others held the line.
There was no talk on the comms. None of us were the chatty type, and right now words were just noise.
My mind was loud enough. It kept replaying Hailey’s mouth on mine. The way her fingers dug into my cut. The thought of her… of what they’d do if they got their hands on her… that wasn’t fear. Fear was a shaky–hand, weak–knee thing. This was colder.
A clarity… that this entire fucking warehouse needed to be burned to ash. For her. For the club. For Benny left rotting on a dock post. There was no room for nerves, only for the weight of what had to be done.
My eyes flicked to River. My cousin. A fucking ghost on a bike, all lethal intensity. He would fight until there was nothing left.
Monty, solid and steady as a fucking rock.
Further back, Link and Mason… quiet and sharp.
Bringing up the rear, Dex. My old man’s age, with no less fuel in him. Our mad bomber, probably already calculating blast radius in his head.
They were my brothers. My crew. I trusted them with my life because I’d already done it a hundred times
over.
We were a single beast tonight.
Burnsville’s industrial sprawl started to bleed into the landscape against the sky. The glow of security lights in huge empty lots.
– bleak buildings, skeletal outlines of cranes
The target was getting close. I could feel the air change. The subtle flex of my muscles, the way my focus narrowed from the wide–open road to the next hundred yards, then the next fifty.
The mission was everything now.
I tapped my earpiece. “Comms check. Sound off.”
“Loud and clear,” River’s voice came back calm.
“Here,” from Monty.
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Chapter 89
A series of affirmatives from the others. No static. No problems.
“Copy that,” I said. “Eyes sharp. We’re almost there.”
The line went dead silent again. My only focus was the single, driving thought in my
head:
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Time to fuck up some Russians.
We killed the engines a half–mile out. Left the bikes in the shadow of an old rail car.
The warehouse loomed ahead. A giant slab of concrete and corrugated steel. A few lights cast piss–yellow pools on the asphalt, creating more shadows than they prevented. Perfect.
My eyes tracked automatically. Two guards visible at the main vehicle entrance, slouched against a concrete barrier. Sharing a cigarette. That was cute. Two more on the roofline walking a slow, bored perimeter.
Four cameras I could see from here. Old models. Probably feeding to a single monitor inside that some other fucker was ignoring.
I felt it… the calm. Every detail snapped into hyper–focus. The crunch of gravel under our boots. The steady rhythm of my own breathing.
This was where I belonged. Not at a bar, not at the clubhouse. Not on the open highway, though that was a close second.
Here. In the dark. On the edge of violence. Aside from balls–deep in Hailey, it was the only place where the roaring in my head finally went quiet.
The six of us formed a tight huddle behind a stack of pallets.
“Right,” I murmured, my voice barely carrying. “River, Monty, you’re on the roof rats. Link, Mason, the front door. Wait for my signal. Dex, you’re with me. We find the main distribution point, you plant your presents. Ten–minute timer once we’re in position. Questions?”
A series of negative grunts. No bravado, no jokes. Just the job.
“Good. Move out.”
We broke apart, melting into the landscape. River and Monty snuck toward a fire escape on the adjacent building, a better access point to the roof.
Link and Mason disappeared into a deeper pool of darkness near the front gate.
Dex and I watched the rooftop guards drop. “Nicely done, boys,” I murmured into the comms as we moved along the fencing,
I pulled the wire cutters out of his backpack, snipping a neat slit through the chain–link. We slipped through into the inner yard, using stacks of shipping containers as cover.
The place felt… dormant. Not abandoned, but sleeping. The lack of activity was a little too noticeable, even for a shift change. Viktor’s intel said fifty men. This felt like a skeleton crew.
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Chapter 89
命
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I pushed the thought down. Maybe we’d gotten lucky. Maybe they were all inside, clustered around a heater.
It didn’t matter. The objective was the same.
We reached a side door – a personnel entrance, supposedly less monitored. Dex pulled a set of picks out of his cut. The lock gave with a soft, satisfying “click“. He looked at me, and I nodded,
I drew
my Glock. I loved the weight of this thing with the suppressor attached. I took a final look behind me at the too–quiet yard. The sense of something being *off* was nagging at the back of my skull. I stomped it down.
Dex pushed the door open, and we stepped into the dark.
The inside of the warehouse was stale and cold. We moved through a maze of shelving units stacked with cardboard boxes. It was quiet as fuck in there. Where the hell was everyone?
We found two more guards playing cards in a makeshift break room. They didn’t even look up before I put them down with two quick shots. It was clean. Quiet.
Too fucking easy.
The other four guys joined us, and they all looked equally perturbed. This wasn’t right.
This wasn’t a distribution point. It was a storage facility. A front.
Viktor’s intel had been specific. High activity, at least fifty bodies. We had encountered six, total, and they’d all gone down without so much as a shouted warning.
Their complacency was a fucking insult.
–
Dex located what looked like a central hub – an open area with newer–looking crates stacked on pallets.
“This is it,” he muttered, already shrugging off his pack. “Primary support column. This goes, half the roof comes down.” He started assembling his charges.
The rest of us set a perimeter, watching the gloom. The silence was oppressive. My knuckles were white on the grip of my Glock.
Every nerve was screaming at this point.
AD
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
