Chapter 10
The flatbed engine woke Roughcut at four in the morning.
He knew the sound of heavy equipment at idle the way most people knew their own heartbeat. The deep rumble cutting through the pre-dawn silence was wrong—too close, too deliberate, approaching from the compound's single road with the grinding inevitability of machinery meant to break things.
He was out of the truck cab and moving before his eyes fully opened.
Elise stirred beside him, reaching for warmth that was already gone. "Sam—"
"Get dressed. Now."
The urgency in his voice cut through her sleep-fog. She was pulling on clothes before he finished speaking, years of bar-circuit survival instincts kicking in without conscious thought.
Roughcut grabbed his cut from the dash and shrugged into it, then reached for the shotgun he'd stashed behind the seat. Through the garage's high windows, he could see headlights cutting through the treeline—multiple vehicles, coming fast.
The flatbed hit the compound gate like a battering ram.
Metal screamed. The reinforced barrier that had stood for a decade crumpled inward, and the stolen truck ground forward over the wreckage with the unstoppable momentum of twenty tons of steel. Behind it, two SUVs poured through the gap, disgorging men with weapons before they'd even stopped moving.
"Contact!" someone shouted from the main building. Whiteout's voice, sharp and commanding.
Gunfire erupted across the compound.
Roughcut grabbed Elise's arm and pulled her toward the back of the garage, toward the heavy steel workbench that had stopped rounds before. "Stay down. Don't move unless I tell you."
"Give me a weapon."
"Elise—"
"I shot a man three nights ago." Her voice was steady, her eyes clear despite the chaos erupting around them. "Give me a goddamn weapon."
He pressed the shotgun into her hands. Grabbed a rifle from the rack on the wall. No time to argue, no time to do anything but move.
The garage's side door burst inward.
Roughcut dropped the first man through with two rounds to center mass.
The second stumbled over the body and Roughcut closed the distance, using the rifle as a club, feeling bone crack under the impact.
A third came through the gap and the shotgun roared behind him—Elise, braced against the workbench, putting buckshot into flesh like she'd been doing it her whole life.
"Flank clear!" she shouted.
Pride surged through him, hot and fierce. His woman. Fighting beside him.
"Main building!" he called back. "We need to link up with the brothers."
They moved through the chaos together.
The compound had become a war zone. Muzzle flashes lit the darkness in strobing bursts.
Bodies lay in the yard—some in Savage cuts, most not.
The flatbed had ground to a halt against the main building's reinforced wall, its engine still running, headlights illuminating the carnage like stage lights.
Roughcut spotted Tundra behind an overturned vehicle, laying down suppressive fire while Ironside dragged a wounded brother toward cover. Whiteout was somewhere in the treeline—Roughcut could tell by the distinctive crack of his rifle, precise shots that dropped attackers mid-stride.
"How many?" Roughcut shouted over the gunfire.
"Ten, maybe twelve!" Tundra's voice was ice-calm despite the bullet holes appearing in the metal above his head. "Professional crew—Duluth muscle plus whatever Wennberg had left!"
Duluth muscle. That meant Sandoval had called in the escalation specialists. The kind of men who burned vans and broke fingers for a living.
A figure emerged from behind the flatbed.
Pete Sandoval moved with a foreman's calm, directing his crew with sharp gestures even as bullets flew. Wiry and quick, a sound engineer's ear and a fixer's morality—the man who controlled Wennberg's booking schedules and turned threats into economic destruction.
But tonight he wasn't destroying bookings. Tonight he was trying to destroy the Savages.
And Wennberg wasn't here. The coward had sent his operational brain to do the dying for him.
"Sandoval!" Roughcut roared.
The booking manager's head snapped toward the sound. Recognition flickered across his face—the prospect who'd killed Kovich, the one protecting Wennberg's lost investment.
Sandoval raised his weapon.
Roughcut was already moving.
He crossed the open ground in a dead sprint, bullets kicking up dirt around his boots.
Elise's shotgun boomed behind him, covering fire that dropped an attacker trying to flank.
He felt the wind of rounds passing close, felt the particular kiss of death that came from being in the open during a firefight.
None of it mattered.
Sandoval fired twice. The first shot went wide. The second caught Roughcut in the shoulder—a line of fire that barely registered through the adrenaline flooding his system.
Then Roughcut was on him.
They went down in a tangle of limbs, Sandoval's wiry frame no match for equipment-operator muscle.
Roughcut slammed the man's gun hand against the frozen ground once, twice, until the weapon skittered away.
Sandoval twisted like a snake, trying to create space, trying to reach for something at his belt—
Roughcut caught his wrist. Squeezed.
Bone cracked. Sandoval screamed.
"Your boss sent you to die for him," Roughcut growled. His free hand closed around Sandoval's throat. "How's that feel?"
"Wennberg will—" Sandoval choked out.
"Wennberg will be next."
Roughcut's hand tightened.
The booking manager's struggles grew frantic, then weak, then stopped entirely. His eyes bulged, fixed on something Roughcut couldn't see. His heels drummed against the frozen ground in a dying rhythm.
Then nothing.
Roughcut held on for another five seconds. Making sure.
He let the body drop and pushed himself to his feet.
The gunfire was dying down. The attackers who hadn't fled were being finished by brothers emerging from cover, the brutal efficiency of men who'd survived worse than a pre-dawn assault. Tundra was already moving through the yard, checking bodies, confirming kills.
"Clear!" Ironside's voice echoed across the compound.
"Clear!" Whiteout, from somewhere in the trees.
"Clear!" Coldstart, from the garage.
Roughcut turned to find Elise.
She stood near the workbench where he'd left her, shotgun still braced against her shoulder, barrel tracking the yard for threats that weren't coming anymore. Her face was pale in the gray dawn light, spattered with something dark—blood or oil or both—but her hands were steady.
His woman.
He crossed the distance between them in three strides and pulled her against his chest.
"You're hit," she said, her voice muffled against his cut. Her hand found the wound on his shoulder, pressing hard.
"It's nothing."
"It's a bullet hole."
"It's a graze." He pulled back just enough to look at her face. Check her eyes. Make sure she was still there, still whole, still his. "Are you hurt?"
"No." She met his gaze. "I'm not hurt."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure, Sam." His name in her mouth, soft and certain. "I'm okay."
The adrenaline was still pounding through him. The need to touch her, hold her, confirm she was real—it was overwhelming, almost violent in its intensity. He'd just killed a man with his bare hands. Again. For her. Because of her.
He'd do it a thousand more times if that's what it took.
"Roughcut." Tundra's voice cut through the moment. "We need you."
He forced himself to let go. To step back. To become the prospect again, useful and present and doing what needed doing.
The compound was a mess. The gate was destroyed. The flatbed had punched a hole in the main building's wall that would take weeks to repair. Bodies lay scattered across the yard—nine attackers dead, two wounded and being secured by brothers with zip ties and cold expressions.
And two Savage cuts among the fallen.
Coldstart knelt beside one of them, his grease-stained hands pressed against a chest that wasn't moving anymore. The mechanic's face was carved from stone, but his shoulders shook with something he wouldn't let become sound.
"Reno and Hatchet," Tundra said quietly. "Good men. Prospect and newly patched."
Roughcut felt the weight of those words settle into his bones. Two brothers dead. Two families that would need to be told. Two patches that would never be worn again.
Because Wennberg had sent men to kill them over a woman who just wanted to play music.
"Where's Permafrost?" Roughcut asked.
"Main building. Already calling church." Tundra's eyes were cold. Colder than the Minnesota dawn. "Wennberg wasn't here. Sent his dog to do the dying. That means he's still out there, thinking he's untouchable."
"He's wrong."
"Yeah." Tundra looked at the bodies scattered across the yard. "He is."
Elise appeared at Roughcut's side. She'd set the shotgun down, her hands empty now, but she didn't look empty. She looked like a woman who'd seen the worst this world had to offer and refused to break.
"What happens now?" she asked.
Roughcut turned to look at her. At the blood on her face and the steel in her eyes and the way she stood like she belonged here, beside him, in the aftermath of violence.
"Now we bury our dead," he said. "And then we go hunting."
The sun was rising over the compound, painting the carnage in shades of gold and red. Somewhere in the treeline, a crow called out—harsh and mocking and utterly indifferent to the lives that had ended on the frozen ground.
Wennberg had wanted to make an example.
He'd made one, all right.
Just not the kind he'd survive.