Chapter 2 #7
“Who said that?”
“Hacker started the trail,” Callum said. “Regan’s cover. Graduation trip.”
JD closed his eyes for one second.
It was not a tired look.
It was the look of a man counting to ten so he didn’t call everyone in the room an idiot out loud.
When his eyes opened, they were cold.
“Stop building anything.”
Hacker’s fingers froze over the keyboard.
Callum straightened.
Nate, standing beside me, muttered, “Here we go.”
JD pointed at the laptop. “No fake manifests. No backdated tickets. No hotel receipts invented out of thin air. No cute little digital trail you think is airtight because you watched two documentaries and know how to spoof a timestamp.”
Hacker looked offended. “I know more than?—”
JD cut him off. “Do you know what happens when a prosecutor finds out you manufactured evidence in a case with arson, property damage, injured minors, and a judge’s daughter as a witness?”
The room went colder.
There it was.
The name nobody had said yet.
Judge’s daughter.
Tris swallowed. “Brielle’s dad is a judge?”
“No,” JD said. “Worse. Her mother is. District court. Civil and criminal overlap through half this town, and her father’s development company owns enough land to make people smile when they’d rather spit. You blew up the wrong girl’s graduation present.”
“She did,” Jake said quietly.
JD looked at him.
Jake did not flinch. “Destiny did. Not us. Not the club. And she was drugged.”
“Good,” JD said. “Hold onto that spine. You’re going to need it.”
Nyla whispered, “Are we going to jail?”
Nobody answered fast enough.
That was answer enough.
JD dragged a hand over his jaw and looked toward the stairs. “Where’s Edge?”
“Upstairs,” Callum said again.
“Get him.”
Nobody moved.
Not because they didn’t hear.
Because dragging Edge away from Destiny right now felt like asking a wounded bear to leave its cub in a room full of knives.
JD looked up the stairs and raised his voice.
“Edge.”
The clubhouse held its breath.
A few seconds passed.
Then Edge appeared at the top landing.
He looked like hell.
Not outlaw hell. Not blood-on-his-knuckles, bodies-in-the-ground hell.
Father hell. His hair was mussed from his own hands, his cut gone, black shirt streaked with Destiny’s blood.
His eyes were red around the edges but dry.
That somehow made it worse. A man like Edge did not waste tears when rage could keep him upright.
“How is she?” JD asked.
“Sleeping. Off and on.” Edge came down two steps, then stopped like the distance from his daughter physically hurt. “Doc’s watching her pulse. Regan’s with her.”
“Good. Then listen.”
Edge’s jaw flexed.
Wrong opening.
Every man in the room felt it.
JD didn’t care.
“This is not a clubhouse cleanup.”
Edge came down another step. “My daughter is not taking the fall for rich kids drugging her and torturing her for years.”
“No one said she should.”
“Then what are you saying?”
JD walked closer until he stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at a man most people had the sense to fear from across a room.
“I’m saying if you do this wrong, you hand them the rope.”
Edge’s face went still.
JD lowered his voice, but not enough to hide the words from the room.
“You can bury a bar fight. You can bury a weapon. You can bury a bike, maybe. You cannot bury a hundred thousand dollars in burning SUVs, insurance investigators, kids with iPhones, a private school full of donors, and a judge’s daughter screaming that Destiny Rourke went full Carrie at a graduation bonfire. ”
Tris made a tiny sound.
Nyla started crying silently.
Jake stared at the table.
Edge’s voice was low. “Careful.”
“I am being careful,” JD snapped. “That’s why I’m telling you the truth instead of letting everyone in this room pretend threats and fake vacation photos solve modern felonies.”
The word hit like a slap.
Felonies.
Plural.
The clubhouse shifted under it.
JD looked around, making sure everyone heard him.
“Arson. Reckless endangerment. Destruction of property. Possible assault if any of those kids got burned badly enough. Motor vehicle theft if someone decides to make the bike part of the story. Fleeing the scene. Drugs. And that’s before the civil suits start. ”
Regan appeared at the top of the stairs.
Nobody had heard her come out.
Her hands were clean now, but I could still see red under one fingernail.
“Civil suits,” she repeated.
JD looked up at her, and for the first time, his expression gentled. “Bet on it.”
Her face went pale.
“She’s a child.”
“She’s seventeen,” JD said. “For one more week.”
The silence that followed was different.
Sharper.
Even I felt it, and I didn’t know New Mexico juvenile law well enough to know exactly where the line cut. But I understood the shape of it.
Seventeen.
Almost eighteen.
Almost safe.
Almost damned.
JD let that settle before he continued.
“That age is the legal tipping point. If this lands on her before her birthday, we have options. Bad options, expensive options, ugly options, but options. Juvenile court. Treatment. Community service. Restitution. Sealed records if we fight hard and get lucky.”
Edge did not move.
Regan gripped the railing.
JD’s voice hardened. “After next week, if someone pushes the adult angle, if a prosecutor wants to make a name, if Judge Carson decides her little princess’s Bronco is worth crucifying yours over, we’re talking adult charges. Hard time becomes a real conversation.”
Regan whispered, “No.”
Edge’s eyes went dead.
“Not happening.”
“I agree,” JD said. “Which is why you stop thinking like a man whose daughter got hurt and start thinking like every person with power in this town is already drawing a map to everything you own.”
Edge’s gaze sharpened.
JD pointed toward the walls around them.
“Look, Edge, I hope every asset you care about is in trusts. The land. The clubhouse. The garage. The house. Everything. Because if this becomes a civil bloodbath, they will come after all of it. They’ll say the club enabled her.
They’ll say the bike proves it. They’ll say the Royal Bastards created the danger, armed the danger, hid the danger, and then intimidated witnesses after the fact. ”
“They can try,” Bullet growled from near the bar.
JD rounded on him. “They will. That’s the point.”
Bullet shut up.
JD turned back to Edge. “Country club Santa Fe has hated this place for years. Most of the town respects the Bastards because they know what you protect, what you handle, who you keep away from their daughters when the law doesn’t show up fast enough.
But that other half? The gated estates, the board seats, the charity luncheons, the judges, the developers, the people who smile at you in restaurants and call you trash in private?
They have been waiting for a clean shot. ”
Regan came down the stairs slowly.
“This gives it to them,” she said.
JD nodded once. “Maybe. If we let it.”
Edge looked like every word was carving something out of him.
“My daughter was bullied for years.”
“Yes.”
“Drugged.”
“Looks that way.”
“Humiliated.”
“Yes.”
“And they filmed it.”
JD’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
Edge’s voice dropped. “Then why am I the one who needs to be careful?”
“Because you’re the one with something to lose besides money.”
That stopped him.
JD glanced upstairs.
Destiny.
“You go old-school on these families, Destiny pays. You fake evidence badly, Destiny pays. You threaten the wrong kid, Destiny pays. You put a hand on a parent, Destiny pays. Everything you do from this second on either protects her or becomes Exhibit A.”
The words landed like hammer blows.
I watched Edge absorb them.
Not like a man agreeing.
Like a man forcing himself not to kill the truth just because it hurt.
Regan reached him at the bottom of the stairs and slid her hand into his.
He held on hard.
“What do we do?” she asked.
JD took one breath.
That was when the room changed.
Fear became plan.
Panic became movement.
“First, the bike disappears properly,” JD said.
“Not hidden in a shed. Not wiped down by a prospect with a towel and a prayer. It comes back here clean, repaired enough not to scream wreck, polished, parked in Edge’s garage like it never left.
If cops get a warrant, they find a bike that hasn’t been hot, hasn’t been near brush, and hasn’t been handled by a bleeding teenager. ”
Hacker lifted his head. “If they get a warrant, they can test?—”
“I know what they can test,” JD said. “That’s why no one touches it stupidly. Get someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Callum said, “My men are with Tarak.”
“Good.”
JD turned to Edge. “Second, Destiny cannot stay here.”
Regan’s hand tightened around Edge’s.
“No,” Edge said.
“Yes,” JD said.
“My daughter is not leaving my sight.”
“She has to leave the clubhouse.”
“No.”
“Edge.”
“I said no.”
JD stepped closer. “They’ll look here first. Cops, lawyers, parents, reporters if this leaks. This place is the obvious center of her world. If she stays here and someone gets eyes on her injured, your Cabo story dies before it breathes.”
Regan’s face twisted. “She’s hurt.”
“I know.”
“She’s scared.”
“I know.”
“She needs me.”
“Yes,” JD said. “That’s why you go with her.”
Edge went still.
Regan looked between them.
“Where?” she asked.
JD’s answer was immediate. “Cal’s ranch.”
Several men shifted.
That meant it was a good answer.
“No one looks for a biker princess at a working ranch,” JD said. “They’ll look at the clubhouse. Edge’s house. The hospital. Airports. Hotels. They won’t look at Cal’s back acreage unless they already know, and they don’t.”
Callum nodded slowly. “Ranch has old trails.”
“Exactly,” JD said. “No main roads if we can help it. No obvious convoy. No phones moving with her. No headlights cutting across traffic cameras. No drones catching a line of bikes playing rescue parade.”
Nate muttered, “Eyes in the sky.”