Chapter 1 #5
Heat slammed into my body and threw people backward in a screaming wave. The Bronco’s windows burst out in glittering teeth. Fire climbed like it had been waiting for permission.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then everyone moved.
Screams ripped through the desert.
People ran. Phones dropped. Someone was crying. Someone shouted for water. Someone yelled to call 911. The music still played, stupid and cheerful under the chaos, until somebody killed it and the sudden silence made the panic sharper.
Tris hit me from the side, grabbing my jacket with both hands. “What did you do?”
I stared at the burning Bronco.
It was beautiful.
That was the worst part.
Orange flames curled around white paint, turning Brielle’s perfect car into something alive and furious. Smoke rose black into the stars. Heat washed over my face. My ears rang.
“I gave them fire,” I whispered.
Jake grabbed my other arm. “We have to go. Now.”
But I wasn’t done.
The thought was terrible.
It was also true.
Something had broken open, and behind it was every whisper, every insult, every adult who didn’t ask enough questions, every Rourke watching from a distance, every dead woman who left me to carry a name everyone spat on.
I pulled free.
“Destiny!” Tris screamed.
I moved through the parked cars like a ghost with teeth.
A key appeared in my hand. Mine? Someone’s?
I didn’t know. I dragged it along the side of a glossy black truck and laughed when the sound shrieked louder than the people.
A bottle shattered near my feet. Alcohol splashed dark across dirt and rubber and chrome.
Someone tried to stop me, then stumbled back when I turned on them with fire in my eyes and nothing left to lose.
“They wanted trash?” I screamed. “They wanted biker trash?”
Faces blurred.
Brielle sobbed near the fire, Carter holding her back as if I was the monster.
Maybe I was.
Maybe I had always been.
“They wanted a fucking desert fire,” I shouted, voice tearing out of me. “I’ll give them hell.”
Another match flared.
Then another.
Not clean. Not controlled. Nothing like the movies. Fire didn’t obey me. It jumped wrong, caught where I didn’t expect, died where I wanted it to burn, then roared up somewhere else like it had its own plans and I was just the idiot who opened the door.
The party became smoke, screams, headlights, and running bodies.
Tris was crying now. I could hear her.
“Jake, do something!”
“I’m trying!”
Hands caught me from behind, strong around my waist. Jake dragged me back, boots scraping dirt.
I fought him like a wild thing.
“Let me go!”
“No,” he snarled in my ear. “You’re going to prison!”
That word sliced through the haze.
Prison.
For one second, I saw it.
Not fire.
Not revenge.
Consequences.
Edge’s face when the cops called.
Regan’s voice breaking.
Tarak looking at me like Mandy had finally won.
The haze flickered.
My stomach dropped.
“Oh,” I whispered.
Jake shook me once. “Bike. Now.”
Tris was already running for the truck, sobbing into her phone or maybe just sobbing. Naya—no, not Naya, there was no Naya here, just faces, too many faces—someone screamed my name behind me. Maybe Brielle. Maybe the desert. Maybe my mother.
I stumbled toward Edge’s bike.
The fire made everything too bright. Red strobed across chrome. Smoke stung my eyes. My burned palm throbbed now, pain rushing back in waves. My head spun so hard the ground tilted.
Jake grabbed my shoulders. “Can you ride?”
“Yes.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I said yes.”
Tris appeared, face streaked with tears. “Destiny, come with us in the truck.”
“No.” Panic surged through me, sudden and huge. “The bike. Edge will know. I have to get the bike back.”
“Edge is the least of your problems!”
“He’s my father,” I snapped, and then my voice broke. “He’s my father.”
That shut them both up for one fatal second.
In that second, I swung onto the bike.
Jake cursed and lunged, but I kicked it alive. The engine roared under me, louder than screaming, louder than sirens in the distance, louder than common sense. Tris shouted something I couldn’t hear. Jake slammed a hand against the handlebar, trying to stop me, but I twisted away.
The bike shot forward.
Too fast.
Wrong angle.
The world smeared.
Fire on my left. Bodies on my right. Headlights swinging. Smoke burning my throat. The desert rushing up black beyond the clearing.
Someone screamed, “She’s leaving!”
Good.
Let me leave.
Let me vanish.
Let me get the bike back before Edge knew.
Let me crawl into my bed and wake up in a world where none of this happened.
The road out of the clearing was not a road.
It was a dirt trail cut between brush and stone, rutted from trucks, half-hidden by dust and night. I knew that. Some part of me knew that. But knowing and reacting were different things, and my hands were numb, my vision bending, the bike too powerful beneath me.
A siren wailed behind me.
Or maybe it was in my head.
I looked back.
That was all it took.
The front tire hit something hard.
The bike lurched.
My body lifted.
For one breathless second, I was weightless under a sky full of stars.
Then the desert took me.
Pain cracked through my shoulder first, then my hip, then my skull, then everything at once.
Dirt filled my mouth. Brush tore at my jacket.
Something hot and wet slid down my temple.
The bike skidded away from me with a horrible metal scream, then stopped somewhere in the dark, engine coughing, dying, ticking like a bomb that had lost interest.
I lay still.
The sky wheeled above me.
Stars blinked in and out.
The fire glowed behind the brush, orange and wrong, painting the smoke from beneath. People were still screaming. Sirens were closer now. Too close. My ears rang. My hand burned. My ribs hurt when I breathed.
For a few seconds, I didn’t know who I was.
Mandy.
Destiny.
Rourke.
Whore’s daughter.
Biker’s daughter.
Firestarter.
Felon.
The words circled like vultures.
Then my body moved without permission. I rolled onto my side and gagged, coughing smoke and tequila and whatever poison had been in that blunt into the dirt. Tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t think I was crying. My body was just leaking because it didn’t know what else to do.
I pushed myself up.
Bad idea.
The desert spun.
I fell back against a scrub bush, biting down on a cry as thorns caught my jacket and hair.
“Get up,” I whispered.
My voice sounded small.
I hated that.
“Get up, Destiny.”
Somewhere beyond the brush, people shouted. Doors slammed. The first siren cut off, replaced by urgent voices. Red and blue light flickered against the smoke.
Cops.
Fire department.
Ambulance.
Every adult in Santa Fe who loved a scandal.
My stomach dropped so hard I thought I might pass out.
I had to hide.
I had to get up, get to the bike, get away, get anywhere.
The club would hear. Edge would hear. Edge was probably already tearing through town with half the Royal Bastards behind him because his stolen bike had GPS or because he knew me too well or because fathers like him felt disaster in their bones.
My dad was going to kill me.
If the town didn’t do it first.
I laughed once, and it came out broken.
“Oh, I’m so fucked.”
The words floated into the desert, swallowed by smoke and sirens and the distant roar of a fire I had started because a girl with a cruel mouth had said my name wrong one too many times.
I pressed my burned hand against my stomach and looked toward the glow.
They were all going to know now.
Desert Saints.
Santa Fe.
The Royal Bastards.
Edge.
Regan.
Tarak.
Everyone.
No more hiding. No more swallowing it. No more pretending Mandy’s ghost was something other people carried and I didn’t.
Tonight I had given them the story they always wanted.
Mandy’s daughter.
Bad blood.
Fire in her veins.
I dragged myself deeper into the brush, every movement ripping pain through my body, and curled behind a clump of mesquite as headlights swept the dirt trail.
I held my breath.
A truck rolled past slowly.
Voices shouted.
“Check over there!”
“Bike’s down!”
“Someone call it in!”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
The bike.
Edge’s bike.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
For one second, underneath the drugs, the fear, the smoke, the blood, the shame, there was only one clear thought.
Regan had texted me to tell her I was breathing.
I fumbled for my phone with shaking fingers.
The screen was cracked. My thumb smeared blood across the glass. Missed calls covered everything.
Edge.
Regan.
Edge.
Regan.
Tarak.
Edge.
My vision blurred.
I opened Regan’s thread.
For a long time, I couldn’t make my fingers work.
Finally, I typed three words.
I’m breathing. Sorry.
I stared at them.
Then I deleted sorry.
It wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
I sent only the first part.
I’m breathing.
The reply came almost instantly.
Where are you?
I looked toward the fire.
Toward the fallen bike.
Toward the flashing lights and the rich kids screaming and the future I had just set on fire.
Then another message appeared.
Not from Regan.
From Edge.
Destiny. Answer me now.
The screen blurred again.
I pressed the phone to my chest and curled tighter behind the mesquite, shaking so hard the branches trembled around me.
For the first time all night, I didn’t feel like Mandy.
I didn’t feel like vengeance.
I didn’t feel like fire.
I felt seventeen.
Almost eighteen.
Bleeding in the dirt.
And desperate for my father to find me before the rest of the world did.