Chapter Forty-Four
Breaker
The car rattles and bucks beneath me, every loose bolt and straining gasket threatening to surrender, but I slam the accelerator anyway, redlining through the mud-streaked back roads with the force of a man whose body is already half grave and half flame.
My right hand is welded to the wheel, knuckles bone-white and tendons straining; my left hangs in my lap, each jolt sending a fresh telegram of agony up my arm, across my battered chest, into the core of what’s left of me that isn’t just anger and panic and a singular, keening need.
My phone is wedged between my shoulder and my ear.
“Officer Alvarado,” I say. My breath comes out ragged, lungs raw from fighting, from running, from the constant anticipation of the next gut-punch. “I need you to run a trace.”
“What kind of trace?” she replies, crisp and clipped. Always professional and by the book. Even now.
“Credit card activity,” I say. “Name on the card is William Hickok. With one ‘c’. Cowboy spelling.”
There’s a pause.
“That’s oddly specific,” she says carefully. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”
“It’s about to get worse,” I say, and there’s probably a laugh in there somewhere, but it would kill me to let it out. The steering wheel jumps in my grip as I swerve around a pothole, the tires skidding on wet gravel. “Just run the trace. Please.”
The silence stretches, heavy with things neither of us is allowed to say. It’s a code I respect, but I want to reach through the phone and shake her, make her understand how every second is a nail in Riley’s coffin if I fuck this up.
“Breaker… what happened?” Her voice cracks, just a little, and that’s enough to undo me.
“He has her,” I say, and everything behind my eyes goes red.
“He took Riley. I found the receipt. I found the fucking bar. She was there. He drugged her and carried her out of there like she was nothing. And I…” My throat closes, remembering the way Riley’s hand shook in mine, the last time I held her.
The way she begged me not to go. “I need your help. Please.”
Silence.
Then Officer Alvarado’s voice returns on the line, steady and sharper. “I’m on it.”
I don’t even get the chance to say thank you before she hangs up.
I grip the steering wheel tighter with my good hand, driving who-the-fuck-knows-where, driving because all I can do is drive, pushing the dying engine harder, willing it not to fall apart before I reach her. Every second stretches like barbed wire. Every heartbeat is a countdown.
The phone vibrates against my thigh, a new text lighting up the cracked screen.
I use my forearm — useless wrist and all — to steer, and snatch up the phone in my good hand.
Alvarado’s name. The words: Found it. One hit.
Address: 118 Pine Needles Ln. I alerted the MC. You’ve got a few minutes alone — move.
The address pops into focus. It’s not far.
I slam my foot on the gas. I barely notice the houses blurring past, the edge-of-town shacks and trailer lots, each more ruined and lonesome than the last. None of them matter.
Only one address matters. The one Officer Alvarado texted, and the one that’s now burning a hole in my brain.
I keep repeating it out loud as I drive, tasting each digit, making it real: 118 Pine Needles Lane, 118 Pine Needles Lane, 118 Pine Needles Lane.
If I say it enough, maybe the universe will bend and put Riley there, alive, waiting, not broken.
The car fishtails as I whip off the main road onto a gravel drive; the engine howling.
The trees shake their branches as if they’re warning me to turn back, but I don’t.
I can’t. Not while she’s out there in the hands of that fucking monster who used to be my brother, and not while every second brings me closer to the point where maybe there isn’t even a Riley left to save.
I spot the house in a sudden clearing, hunched at the end of the drive like a bad memory nobody can evict.
I slam on the brakes, and the car skids sideways and comes to a coughing, lurching halt between two ruts.
The engine rattles, then dies. Smoke drifts from under the hood; it smells sweet, like antifreeze and rot.
I fling the door open and step out into the heavy stillness.
My wrist hangs useless, my ribs burn, and dried blood cracks along my skin.
I don’t fucking care.
Because she’s here, and he’s here.
I draw my gun and move toward the porch with long, determined strides. My boots hit the warped wood like thunder, while my heart is a drumbeat of rage and fear and love.
I plant my heel and kick the door in with everything I have. It explodes inward with a deafening crash, splinters raining across the floor. My voice rips from my chest like a battle cry.
“Viper, it’s over.”
The old house swallows my roar.
“You let Riley walk out alive,” I snarl into the dark, gun raised, breath heaving, “or you die here.”
The silence that answers me is thick, wrong, threatening.
And then, from deeper in the house, comes a laugh.