Chapter 12 Pursuit #2
Every head came up when I walked in.
I raised my hands. Palms out. The Ka-Bar on my belt, the Desert Eagle holstered. Hands empty and visible.
"No soy su enemigo."
I am not your enemy.
My accent filled the room. The Mexican Spanish my mother had given me, the one thing she'd passed on that no amount of distance or violence had been able to strip away. The workers’ eyes locked onto me.
Every pair. The sound of their own language spoken by a man who looked like them, who carried their geography in his face, landing in a room where no one had spoken to them like anything other than inventory for months.
"Me llamo Diego. Estoy luchando contra las personas que los esclavizaron. Ya hemos contactado a las autoridades. Pronto vendrá alguien a ayudarles."
My name is Diego. I am fighting against the people who enslaved you. We have already contacted the authorities. Soon, someone will come to help you.
Silence. The bulb subtly swinging. Shadows moving across the bunks and the faces.
"Si nadie llega en veinticuatro horas, váyanse. La puerta estará abierta. Tomen el camino del este, busquen el pueblo más cercano, pidan ayuda al sheriff."
If no one arrives in twenty-four hours, leave. The door will be open. Take the east road, find the nearest town, ask the sheriff for help.
I paused. Let the words settle into the room the way water settles into dry ground—slowly, resisting to soak through.
"Quisiera poder decirles más. Pero confíen en mí. Esto se va a acabar."
I wish I could tell you more. But trust me. This is going to end.
"Y una cosa más: por favor, no mencionen haberme visto hoy. Ni a mí ni a nadie más."
And one more thing: please, do not mention having seen me. Not me, and not anyone else today.
A man stepped forward from the group near the back wall. Thin, mid-thirties, the white long sleeves pulled to his wrists. His voice came out hoarse—cracked from disuse, or from sustained fear that had closed his throat and left it raw.
"?De verdad se va a acabar?"
Will it really be over?
I held his eyes. The eyes of a man who'd heard promises before. He was searching mine for the lies—the flicker, the glance away, the micro-expression that would confirm what experience had taught him.
I didn't look away.
"Muy pronto. Solo tengo que ocuparme de una cosa más."
Very soon. I only need to take care of one more thing.
I turned. Walked out. Left the door open behind me.
The bikes were where we'd left them, staged at the far edge of the ranch road where the grassland started and the fences ended.
Kai and Rosa were there. Their SUV idling beside Tank's, the medical supplies visible through the rear window—bags of saline, gauze, the organized efficiency of Rosa's preparation.
Kai's face went tight when he saw the blood on Irish's sleeve—a graze from the firefight that none of us had noticed because the adrenaline had been burning too hot.
Rosa's dark eyes were already moving over every man in the group with the assessment of a combat medic who never stopped labeling injuries.
We loaded fast. Tank and Tyler in one SUV, plus five patched members.
Axel, Declan, Kai and Rosa in another, accompanied by another four brothers.
Three members less than before, now that Reyes, Colton and Vasquez were making sure the cattle ranch does not look like a human slaughterhouse. Ghost, Irish, and I moved to the bikes.
The engines caught one after another. Ghost's first, the sound sharp and clean.
Then Irish's, a lower rumble. Then mine—the borrowed Harley vibrating through my hands and up my forearms and into the hollow space in my chest where the rage was living, compressed now, dense and hot, waiting for a target.
The throttle responded under my right hand. Not my bike. But close enough.
Three bikes riding in the front. Two SUVs behind. The convoy formed on the main road heading east, and the throttles opened.
Dawn was approaching. The sky ahead of us shifting from black to deep blue, the first pale gray washing the eastern horizon where the hills would appear when the light was strong enough to reach them.
The road was empty—no headlights, no traffic, the predawn silence of a landscape where the nearest city was two hours away and the people between here and there were still sleeping. Our engines filled the silence.
We rode at maximum speed. Three bikes and two SUVs cutting through Montana at velocities that turned the center line into a continuous blur beneath our wheels.
I rode point. The wind flat against my chest, pressing through my jacket and against my skin with a pressure that stripped everything but the essentials: the road ahead, the throttle under my hand, the calculations running in my brain.
The Wolves' convoy had a head start—ten minutes, maybe more—but they were driving vans loaded with human cargo.
Heavy. Slow on the curves. Careful on the road because their inventory was fragile and replacement was expensive.
We had to be faster. The math had to work. The thought was the only thing keeping me from twisting the throttle past the redline and leaving the SUVs behind.
Logan was in one of those vans. Bleeding from the graze.
His throat crushed. Unarmed. Surrounded by people who were scared enough to be silent and a driver who worked for the man who'd almost killed him in the dirt.
I thought about the flannel shirt on the chair in my room.
The way he'd looked at me across the kitchen table.
The way his body had curved into mine last night like distance was a habit he'd finally decided to break.
I twisted the throttle harder. The speedometer climbed.
The landscape blurred. Grassland giving way to rolling hills, the road curving through shallow valleys where the drainage ditches ran dry this late in the summer.
Ranch fences appeared and disappeared. Ghost rode tight on my right, his lean steady, his hands relaxed on the grips.
Irish on my left, the riding style unmistakable—the loose, confident posture that made the bike look like an extension of his spine, the body flowing with every curve instead of fighting it.
Behind us, the SUV headlights bounced and swayed with the road.
The sky brightened. The deep blue lifting to steel gray. The first definition of the hills ahead—dark shapes becoming contoured, the ridgelines sharpening, the world assembling itself for the day that was coming.
At around ninety minutes into the ride, I saw them.
Taillights. Multiple vehicles in loose formation, a quarter mile ahead on the two-lane. Two vans and an SUV. The Wolves' convoy, moving east, slower than us. The van at the rear riding heavy—I could see it in the way it sat on the road, the suspension compressed, the turns taken wide and careful.
My heart rate spiked. I keyed the comms.
"All teams. Wolves ahead. Quarter mile. Two vans, one SUV.
" I scanned the horizon past the convoy.
Two miles east—a compound. Low buildings behind a fenced perimeter, no lights visible yet.
And further beyond, the first structures of Billings catching the gray dawn light, the city waking up in the distance while the road between here and there belonged to us.
"Their compound is close. Two miles. They're almost home.
We hit the rear van now or we lose them behind those walls. "
"Copy." Tank's voice from the SUV behind us.
"Copy." Axel. Flat and ready.
The rear van. The one closest to us. The one they'd loaded at the cattle operation, shoving workers and Logan through the doors while the gunfire covered the screams. That was the one.
"Ghost. Right side. Irish, go with him. I take the left." I dropped lower over the tank, the wind roaring in my ears. "Target is the rear van. We stop it without killing the driver or shooting the tires. An accident at this speed kills everyone inside."
"Understood." Ghost's voice tight through the comms.
"On it." Irish, already accelerating.
The three bikes surged forward, closing the quarter mile in seconds.
The wind roared past my helmet. The road surface blurred to a gray river beneath my wheels.
I dropped low over the tank, the borrowed Harley's engine screaming at peak RPM, the vibration traveling through the frame and into my bones.
Ghost and Irish split right. I rode left.
The van grew in my vision. White panel van, no rear windows. I pulled alongside the driver's door at seventy miles an hour. Close enough to see through the glass.
The driver saw me.
His head snapped left. Eyes wide—young Wolf, mid-twenties, leather cut visible beneath a denim jacket. His mouth opened. His hands jerked on the wheel.
The co-pilot reacted faster. His hand dove beneath the dashboard and came up with a Glock, the muzzle swinging toward the driver's window. Toward me.
The driver wrenched the wheel left. Hard.
The van lurched toward me—three tons of steel closing the gap in a fraction of a second.
I leaned left, the bike tilting, the footpeg nearly scraping asphalt, the van's side mirror passing six inches from my shoulder.
Close enough to feel the displaced air tug at my jacket.
The van straightened. I straightened. Still alive. Still alongside.
The co-pilot had a radio now. Free hand bringing it to his mouth while the Glock stayed aimed through the driver's window. If he transmitted, the rest of the convoy would know. The SUV ahead would circle back. The compound would mobilize.
A single shot cracked from the right side of the van.
Ghost's Glock. The round came through the passenger window at a precise diagonal angle—punched through the radio an inch from the co-pilot's lips and continued through his skull. The radio exploded into fragments of plastic and circuitry.