Chapter 42 #2
The engine seized violently, smoke pouring as the technical fishtailed and rolled, coming to rest in a cloud of dust and flame.
Breakneck stayed on it until there was no movement. Only then did his focus widen again, snapping back to the ground where Blair and the Mounties were still riding full out, alive because the threat was gone.
He watched them for a heartbeat, his own breath coming in a ragged gasp he hadn't realized he was holding. “Stay with them,” he growled.
Valdivia stumbled as Jones shoved him forward. The gunfire faded. The shouting thinned. The forest swallowed sound whole.
Carver stopped near a shallow ravine choked with brush, a place where the ground dipped just enough to hide them from casual sight. He crouched, eye level with Valdivia, studying him like a problem already half solved.
“Where’s the main stash house?” Carver asked.
Valdivia lifted his chin, blood drying stiffly on his cheek. His mouth curved in a slow, contemptuous smile. “You think I would tell you that?” he said. “You are nothing. Bureaucrats with guns. You will be dead before sunset.”
Jones hit him from behind, driving a knee into his spine and forcing him down onto his face. Valdivia grunted but didn’t cry out. He laughed instead, a low, rasping sound that carried more pride than pain.
Carver watched him carefully. “That’s not the right answer,” he said mildly. “I’ll ask it again.”
Valdivia spat into the dirt, then started chuckling.
Carver nodded once, as if confirming something he already knew. He rose, unhurried, and walked a slow circle around Valdivia, boots crunching softly on pine needles and gravel.
“You know what’s interesting about men like you?
” Carver said. “You mistake structure for safety. Titles. Hierarchies. The idea that because you sit at the center of a web, you’re untouchable.
” He stopped behind Valdivia and crouched again, close enough that his voice dropped to something almost conversational. “We’ve already mapped your web.”
Valdivia’s laughter cut off abruptly.
Jones hauled him upright and slammed him back down onto a fallen log. The movement knocked the breath from Valdivia’s lungs, a sharp, involuntary gasp tearing free. His defiance wavered, just for a second.
Carver saw it.
“Your wife,” he said calmly. “Still lives in Monterrey. Same house for twelve years. Your eldest son just started university in Madrid. Likes late nights. Bad neighborhoods.” He tilted his head.
“Your daughter…well. She’s more cautious.
Smart girl.” Valdivia went very still. Carver’s voice never changed.
“We have detailed files on every member of your family. Names. Routines. Patterns. Safe places. Unsafe ones.” He leaned closer.
“We will hunt them down, and when we’re done, they will breathe their last because you chose your money. ”
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
“I know everything about you. I’ve seen you with them, and I’m not bluffing.”
Valdivia surged against the cuffs, a snarl tearing from his throat. “You touch them and I will—”
Jones cut him off with a sharp blow that snapped his head sideways. Valdivia sagged, breath coming ragged now, fury cracking into something rawer, more desperate.
Carver didn’t rush him. He let the silence stretch, let the threat settle into bone.
“Where is it?” he asked again.
Valdivia’s chest heaved. His eyes burned with hatred, then something unhinged slid into them, something wild and glittering, and then he laughed.
It started low, broken, and built into something loud and manic, echoing too sharply in the quiet woods. He threw his head back as far as the cuffs allowed, laughter ripping out of him in jagged bursts.
“You think there is one?” he choked out between laughs. “You think it is that simple?”
Carver’s jaw tightened a fraction.
Valdivia leaned forward, eyes bright, breath stinking of blood and dirt. “I will give you what you want,” he said, the laughter creeping back in around the edges of his words. “Three places. Can’t make it easy for you.”
He rattled them off, one after another. Coordinates. Locations. Each delivered with relish, with a smile that dared them to believe him.
Jones glanced at Carver.
Carver stared at Valdivia for a long moment, searching his face for certainty and finding only chaos and spite.
Valdivia’s laughter finally faded into a harsh, satisfied grin. “Good luck,” he said softly. “I hope you like funerals.”
Carver straightened. “Kill him.”
“What if he’s lying?”
It was Carver’s turn to laugh, cold, deadly, final. “He’s not. One of them is the stash house. He just likes to have the last laugh. Too bad it belongs to us.”
A single shot rang out. The forest swallowed the sound.
Back where the Mounties had fallen, they put the finishing touches on the scene, a buzzing caught his attention and he looked up.
“Trev…” He gestured with his chin. “Take care of that.”
Jones took a bead and fired off a shot. The drone dropped from the sky into deep brush.
The treeline was a dark, solid wall rushing to meet them, but the speed wasn't the same.
Jet was laboring now, his big body drenched in sweat, his breaths coming in ragged, heaving gusts that Blair felt in her own lungs.
The explosive sprint was taking its toll, every stride a monumental effort of muscle and will.
She could feel the tremor in his flanks, the subtle flagging of his power, and a cold fear for him began to prickle at the edges of her adrenaline.
But the greater fear was still a fresh, raw wound in her chest. It was the memory of the technical’s heavy machine gun tearing the ground apart, the line of death stitching toward them.
She could still hear the pilot’s clipped warning, the pop of the RPG launcher, and the stomach-dropping lurch of the helicopter as it fought for its life with the man she loved on board, fighting for them.
For a few horrifying seconds, she had thought they were all dead.
Then Breakneck had spoken, his voice a blade of ice in her ear, and the world had changed. She hadn't seen the shots, but she had seen the results. The gunner folding like a doll, the RPG man disappearing, the technical shuddering to a halt in a cloud of flame.
A masterclass in lethality, a display of such cold, absolute precision it was terrifying. It was the culmination of a thousand hours of training, of breathing, of waiting, all distilled into a handful of life-saving shots.
He had been hit, she knew it, she'd heard the change in his voice, but he had ended a threat that should have killed them all.
A wave of heat washed over her, sharp and primal, that had nothing to do with fear.
It was pure, unadulterated admiration for the man who was bleeding in a helicopter miles away and was still fighting to keep her alive.
God willing we survive this, she thought, a fierce vow forming in her heart, I'm not letting him out of my bed for a week.
She pushed it all down, the fear, the awe, the exhaustion. Jet needed her to be strong, to be the leader he was following. Torres was just ahead, his own horse tiring, the sanctuary of the trees only seconds away. The game was about to change.
Torres rode hard, low over his horse’s neck, disciplined even now.
Two mounted bodyguards stayed welded to him, tight enough that their stirrups nearly kissed.
Beyond them, the last of the Hell’s Eight bikers fanned out, engines screaming, angling wide like wolves looking for a throat.
They were a distraction, a chaotic screen to hide the real threat.
Gunfire cracked again. A shotgun blast tore through the air to Blair’s right, the pellets chewing dirt just ahead of Jet’s stride.
The great horse flinched, a powerful shudder of muscle and instinct, but he didn't break.
He corrected, gathering himself and driving harder, his hooves barely missing the cratered ground.
“Easy,” she breathed, the word a sharp command, a promise she had no business making but had to keep.
One of Torres’s rear bodyguards crested a rise. For a heartbeat, he was a perfect silhouette against the sky. Then he vanished. He simply folded sideways and hit the ground hard, his horse bolting free without him, a sudden, terrifying punctuation mark in the chase.
Another shot followed almost immediately.
Blair saw the second bodyguard jerk as if struck by lightning.
His shotgun exploded apart in his hands, the barrel spinning end over end before disappearing into the brush.
The man swore, clutching his bleeding hand, his face a mask of shock as he stared at the empty space where his weapon had been.
He was suddenly empty-handed and very, very aware of it.
Breakneck.
He wasn't just clearing the field for her, he was dismantling their defense piece by bloody piece.
Both remaining Hell’s Eight riders reacted instantly, charging straight at Beef, engines howling, their intent clear. This was a kill run.
“Beef—!” Blair shouted, already knowing it was too late.
One bike clipped the horse’s rear leg as Sundance tried to cut away. The impact wasn’t enough to break bone, but it was enough. Sundance went down in a screaming mass of muscle and tack, hitting the dirt hard.
Beef stayed with him. Blair saw the impact, saw Sundance’s leg give, and watched in horror as Beef hit the ground still mounted, his weight twisted and pinned by the horse’s heavy shoulder.
He wasn't moving. The two bikers skidded to a stop, kicking up dirt, and came in fast, boots hitting dirt, knives already out.
They were moving to finish a downed man.
A cold, sharp spike of terror pierced through her. "Beef’s down," Breakneck’s voice was a tight wire in her ear. “No shot! No shot!”
“I’ve got him,” Tyler snarled, and a heartbeat later, he was hauling Blue around in a sharp, powerful turn, driving hard toward the fight.