Chapter 23
CATCHER
Church has been going for two hours, maybe longer.
Time gets strange inside this room when business sits heavily on the table.
The world outside the clubhouse keeps turning, the Mississippi keeps rolling past, but in here, everything narrows to names, routes, guns, debts, and the kind of trouble that doesn’t disappear just because it goes quiet for a while.
Quiet has been the problem for weeks now. It’s been too damn quiet. No sign of Crowley’s men in New Orleans, and no movement from Baton Rouge that screams they’re coming. Just silence. The kind a man wants to trust but is smart enough not to. Quiet like that is just a snake coiled under leaves.
Riggs sits at the head of the table, calm as ever, but there’s nothing relaxed about him tonight. His fingers rest near the stack of papers Wick printed out of names and addresses and grainy stills from cameras.
I’m sitting near the middle of the table with my phone face up beside my fist, the screen black.
Normally, phones don’t sit on this table during church.
Normally, nobody touches one. Tonight, mine stays where I can see it because Ruby is at home.
I left her there two hours ago after Riggs called us in, and because even with the silence hanging over everything, I still don’t trust quiet enough to turn my back on it.
“Easy says Crowley’s people are moving differently,” Riggs says, voice even. “Not through their usual Baton Rouge routes. They’ve shifted out toward the old industrial roads, smaller vehicles, fewer drivers, more caution.”
“They outnumber us,” Wick says.
My hand tightens. And that right there is why we haven’t done shit to eliminate the threat lingering over our fucking heads.
The one person they want is still breathing because his sister still holds out hope for the asshole.
Robby has been breathing clubhouse air for weeks, locked in that bare room with no phone, no freedom, and nothing but the weight of his own choices to keep him company.
Ruby asks about him daily. He’s alive, only because she asked, not because he deserves it.
Lockdown lifted a couple of weeks ago, at least officially, but none of us eased up. Not really. Families started moving around again, and I’ve been sleeping at Ruby’s every night since she came home.
Life looks different.
That thought hits me in the quiet moments, usually when I’m driving back to her house after club business or when I wake before dawn and find Ruby curled against my side, one hand tucked under her cheek, her stomach showing the growth of our child beneath one of my shirts.
The room always feels different in those seconds—darker, softer, like the whole damn world finally shut up long enough for me to hear her breathing.
Sometimes, I lie there and watch the rise and fall of her chest, the way her hair spills over my arm, the weight of her pressed into me as if she trusts I’ll still be there when morning comes.
That kind of trust does something ugly and holy to a man like me.
Different in ways I never believed I’d get again.
“You with us, Catcher?” Riggs’ voice brings me back.
I lift my eyes. “Yeah.”
He studies me for half a second, then nods.
“Word on the streets is he still wants his debt paid and his pride stitched back together. Men like him don’t take a public hit and walk it off.
They bleed somebody for it. They make an example, leave bodies where people can find them, and call it business. That’s how bastards like him climb.”
“They want Robby,” Fender says in an even tone.
“We all know this bastard wants more,” I say. All eyes come to me, but my voice stays level, even though the thing under it isn’t. “They’re waiting, watching, and staying quiet for a reason.”
Wick nods slowly. “They want leverage that comes with makin’ a move on Kings’ turf.”
The room stills.
My phone rattles hard against the table—one sharp buzz, then another, loud enough in the sudden quiet to sound like a gun cocking.
It’s a notification from the Security app.
My gut knots before I even look. When I do, the words on the screen hit like a blade sliding between my ribs—Security Breach.
For one second, everything in me locks up.
My lungs forget how to work. My pulse slams so hard I feel it in my teeth.
Heat drains out of my hands while something cold and vicious opens in my chest. Then I’m on my feet so fast the chair flies backward and smashes into the wall hard enough to split the room wide open.
I’m already calling Ruby. It goes straight to voicemail.
No.
I call again while I’m moving for the door, damn near dropping the phone because my hand won’t stop shaking, straight to voicemail.
My stomach drops so hard it feels as if something inside me tears loose.
I call her father next, the line rings once.
Twice. “Come on,” I snarl, shoving through the clubhouse doors like I can outrun what’s waiting for me. “Pick up the fuckin’ phone.”
Motion explodes around me. No bullshit. No questions.
Just men moving. Riggs is already barking orders behind me, but I barely hear them over boots pounding, chairs scraping, and weapons getting grabbed.
I’m out first, down the hall, through the clubhouse.
The night hits me wet and hot when I barge outside.
My bike roars to life under me, and I’m gone before the others are fully mounted, tires spitting gravel as I tear toward the gate.
Behind me, the Kings come alive, a pack of thunder rolling into the New Orleans night.
The streets blur, dark pavement slick beneath streetlights, neon bleeding off wet buildings, people jumping back from crosswalks when we blow through.
I ride fast, but not fast enough. My mind doesn’t stay in New Orleans.
It goes back years, to another driveway, another house, another night when I knew something was wrong before I opened the door.
My hand clamps so hard around the throttle, pain shoots through my fingers.
Not again.
Ruby’s street comes up quickly and too slow all at once. I turn hard, the back tire sliding for half a breath before it catches. Her house sits ahead of me, dark because the porch light is off. The front door is ajar.
The whole world narrows to that crack of black. For one second, I’m not breathing. Then I’m off the bike with my gun in my hand.
Boots hit wet grass, then porch boards slick with rain. The door creaks inward when I shove it, and the scent of copper punches me straight in the chest. The furniture is overturned, a lamp is smashed against the wall, and Ruby’s throw blanket is partially dragged off the couch.
“Ruby!” My voice tears through the house and comes back wrong off the walls. No answer. There on the living room floor is Ruby’s dad, and beneath him a large pool of blood.
My brothers pour in behind me, silent and lethal.
They move through the house, room by room, guns raised.
My heart feels heavier in my chest with every breath I take.
Everywhere I glance shows pieces of a struggle, like a broken picture frame, a smear of blood near the hallway, one of Ruby’s shoes lying on its side.
Wick kneels, checking Ruby’s dad. “Pulse,” he snaps. “But it’s faint.” He rolls him enough to see the wound and curses. “Knife. Deep. He’s bleeding out.”
“The house is empty,” Kiwi shouts.
My vision darkens around the edges.
“Call it in,” Riggs orders. “He needs to get to the hospital.”
Fender already has his phone out. “On it.”
A sound comes out of me that doesn’t feel human.
This can’t be happening.
A phone rings, cutting through the noise in my head.
I glance around, feeling like I’ve left my body.
Then I see Ruby’s phone lying face down near the hallway wall.
I rush over and pick it up. The screen lights up with a text message from an unknown name.
I swipe and open the message. It’s my woman lying unconscious on a dirty concrete floor, hair spilled across her face, wrists tied in front of her body.
Her shirt is torn at the shoulder. Bruising shadows her cheek.
Blood marks one corner of her mouth. My hand tightens around the phone until the case creaks.
For a heartbeat, I can’t hear anything but the roar inside my skull.
Then another message comes through from the same unknown caller.
It’s a video, so I tap play. The camera circles Ruby’s still body too slowly, like whoever is holding the phone wants me to see every helpless inch of her.
A boot steps into frame near her side. A man chuckles, and the sound turns my skin cold.
“You Kings got a habit of putting your noses where they don’t belong.
” The camera lowers closer to Ruby’s face.
Her lashes don’t move. Her body is too still.
“Pretty thing, ain’t she?” he says. “Be a shame what happens if you make me wait.” A hand reaches down and brushes hair off her cheek, and I see pure fucking red.
“Her life for yours,” he says. “And that little pissant brother of hers. You bring me, Robby. You bring me yourself. No law. No tricks.” The camera tilts, showing the cracked concrete beneath her.
“You’ve got until dawn. At sunrise, I start cutting pieces off her while she’s still breathing.
Maybe I’ll send the baby first, just so you understand what it means to lose twice. ”
The phone nearly slips from my hand.
The man laughs softly. “Old fertilizer plant off River Road. East service road past the abandoned silos. Come ready to pay what’s owed.” Then the video cuts out.
I stand there staring at the black screen, and for one awful moment, I’m sucked back into the black hole of my past, and the universe is bending down to take everything I love with both hands again.
The cold creeps into my chest until it feels as though my ribs are filling with frost, and I can’t breathe around it.
Then something shifts.