Chapter 25
Bricks
Fifteen Minutes Before
The road’s too quiet. That’s the thing about ambushes most idiots don’t understand.
They think the problem is noise, movement, some obvious sign in the brush or a vehicle sitting where it shouldn’t be.
Sometimes, sure. Men get sloppy. Engines cough.
Cigarettes glow. A bad shooter shifts his weight at the wrong second and turns himself into a target before anybody fires.
Good ambushes don’t feel like that. Good ambushes have silence in them, the kind that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up before my brain finds the reason.
This road has that.
I slow my bike just enough to feel the tires answer under me.
The eastern corridor stretches ahead in a long black line, industrial buildings crouched on both sides like they’re waiting for permission to collapse.
The old mill sits beyond the next bend, half-gutted and ugly under the thin wash of moonlight.
The support truck rolls ahead of me with two riders behind it and another pair spaced farther back.
On paper, this is a normal escort adjustment, visible enough to look like Obsidian is reacting to the Reapers’ pressure and light enough to tempt the Rogues if Canon managed to drag information out of his son.
I’ve never liked paper unless Moth is holding it, and even then, only because Moth can make numbers mean men bleed where they’re supposed to.
My comm clicks once, and Moth’s voice comes through. “North visual is clear. South bend has no heat signatures past the decoy van. Your timing remains intact.”
“Road feels wrong,” I say.
“Good. It’s supposed to.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
I bare my teeth into the wind. “You ever think about saying something normal like, ‘Don’t worry, Bricks, we’ve got this’?”
“No.”
“Worth a shot.”
Moth is quiet for half a second, which is as close as he gets to sighing. “The truck is bait. The support pass is bait. The route correction they may have extracted will be bait, too. If they move where expected, we close around them before they reach the actual product line.”
Some part of me knows that Canon has the information he needs to make this evening go sideways.
My problem is not knowing whether or not it’s because someone talked and they shouldn’t have or they were forced to.
I glance toward the broken windows of the old mill.
“And if they don’t move where expected?”
“Then Canon is smarter than the evidence suggests, and we adjust.”
“That’s your pep talk?”
“That was my optimism.”
I laugh once, the sound disappearing under the engine.
I should be thinking only about the road.
But my mind keeps slipping back to the clubhouse, to Saint’s face when he realized Oisín was gone, to the way the room tightened around a kind of terror nobody knew how to name out loud.
I’ve seen Saint angry. I’ve seen him cold.
I’ve watched him break men with less expression than most people use to order a beer.
What walked out of the clubhouse tonight with Demo at his heels wasn’t the VP Obsidian knows how to survive.
That was a man whose husband had been taken. There’s a difference, and every poor bastard in Rogue territory is about to learn it the hard way.
The comm clicks again. “Bricks.”
“What?”
Moth’s voice drops. “The warehouse distraction wasn’t the only issue.”
My hand tightens slightly on the throttle. “What do you mean?”
“There was no logical reason for the product grab to occur tonight.”
“Stupid men do stupid shit.”
“Not with that timing. Not at that lockup. Not with four men who had no realistic chance of leaving with product unless they expected the internal response to be weaker than usual. Their value wasn’t in success.
Their value was in pulling Saint, you, and Demo away from the clubhouse while Oisín was emotionally compromised and likely to seek distance. ”
My stomach churns as I work through those points, realizing that everything was a little bit too clean not to be planned. Oisín never fucking walks outside like that and even if he did, I would have been with him or at least around. “You’re saying inside help.”
“I’m saying the probability of coincidence is functionally useless.”
“Moth.”
“Yes.”
“Say it like a normal person before I drive off this road just to spite you.”
The line stays quiet long enough for me to hear the support truck’s engine rattle ahead of me. Then Moth says, “Someone helped create the opening.”
I keep my eyes on the road, on the shadowed cuts between buildings, on the decoy van where it sits exactly where it should.
“Who the fuck would knowingly set up Saint’s piece of ass?
” I grimace immediately, because even alone on the bike, even with the road waiting to turn into gunfire, the phrase feels wrong now. “Fuck. I mean his husband.”
Moth doesn’t bother correcting me. That means it’s bad.
“The only person who’d believe he could get away with it,” Moth says.
My laugh dies before it leaves my throat. “You really think Sol would do shit like that?”
“I think someone hates the idea of another club’s blood in his house when he can’t control it.
I think someone is losing his grip on his son and only works in absolutes.
Sol has been testing Oisín as a liability since the wedding.
I think he’d justify almost any pressure if it proved what he already wanted to believe. ”
I look toward the mill again, but this time I’m not really seeing the road.
I’m seeing Saint’s face after Grace left, though I wasn’t there for the beginning of it.
I saw enough of the aftermath over the years to know the shape.
A kid turned quiet too young, learning the wrong lessons from the only bastard left to teach them.
I’m seeing Oisín with Saint’s ring on his hand, soft enough to look breakable until a man realizes softness isn’t the same as weakness. “Fuck,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Well,” I mutter, shifting my weight as the bend approaches, “I guess we’ll have to prepare for a funeral.”
“That would be premature. We don’t yet have confirmation.”
“Sol wanted one. It’s just not going to be the one he expected.”
The support truck reaches the first marker and continues without slowing. I watch the road ahead, every instinct stretched tight. The decoy van near the mill remains dark. The buildings stay quiet. The night holds its breath.
Then a headlight flickers once from the southern access road.
There you are.
I tap my comm twice, the signal we agreed on before the run.
Ahead, the support truck keeps rolling like nothing happened.
Behind me, one of the Obsidian riders adjusts position by a few feet, smooth enough that a watching enemy might miss it unless they already know what to look for.
The Rogue vehicle turns onto the corridor with its lights low, engine muffled, moving too carefully to be innocent and too confidently to be smart.
Moth’s voice comes through. “Visual confirmed. Rogue vehicle one. Two additional heat signatures on the east side. Hold.”
I slow another fraction, letting the trap breathe.
That’s the hard part. Every violent bone in my body wants to move first, hit first, end the waiting with a shot and a laugh.
But Oisín’s map said Canon would look for reaction.
Moth said the closing angle had to wait until the Rogues committed past the false junction.
So I hold.
The Rogue vehicle rolls closer. Another set of headlights glimmers near the far service cut, barely visible between two warehouses. Canon either got greedy or desperate. Same thing, most days.
“Vehicle two,” I say.
“Confirmed,” Moth replies. “Let them cross the line.”
The first Rogue vehicle passes the painted mile marker where the old city line used to be. The second follows ten seconds behind. Men move near the fence, shadow against shadow, weapons held low. I see the exact moment they think they have the truck boxed.
Poor stupid bastards.
The Rogues fire first, the Obsidian rider ahead of me firing back in response.
The first Rogue by the fence goes down before he finishes lifting his weapon.
The support truck swerves exactly as planned, not away from the threat but into the gap that draws the first vehicle forward.
From the side road, two black Obsidian bikes cut in with their lights off until the last second, engines roaring as they close the back end of the trap.
Gunfire blooms along the corridor, muzzle flashes bright against rusted brick and shattered windows.
A hearty laugh pulls from me. The whole thing is beautiful in the ugliest possible way.
Moth’s angles, Oisín’s pattern, Saint’s orders, all of it snapping shut around men who thought they were using a broken boy’s pain as a map.
The Rogues scatter where they expected Obsidian to panic.
One runs for the mill and gets dropped by the second rider.
Another dives behind the van as bullets chew sparks from the pavement near his boots.
Moth’s voice stays calm in my ear. “Trap is active. East team has containment. South team is moving. You’re clear to disengage.”
“Say that like you’re not having fun.”
“I’m satisfied with the execution of the plan.”
“That’s Moth for horny.”
“Don’t make me regret giving you permission to leave.”
I gun the throttle, the engine snarling as I cut out of formation and take the side road toward the Rogue compound.
I hit the next turn hard enough that the back tire skids for half a second before catching.
The road ahead is dark, narrow, and mean, the fastest cut toward the old Rogue area if my guess is right. I thumb my phone and call Demo.
The kid answers on the first ring, breathless. “Bricks?”
“Where are you?”
“In the SUV with Saint and Ash. Moth sent us a possible location. Saint is about to kill everyone.”
“Good,” I say, leaning into another turn. “I’m on my way.”
Demo makes a strangled noise. “That’s your response?”
“The trap’s set, the Rogues bit, and Moth is ruining their night with math. Saint can have the compound.”
“Bricks, he’s really quiet.”
That makes my grin fade. Quiet Saint is one thing.
Quiet Saint with Oisín missing is something else entirely.
I picture Demo in the passenger seat beside him, probably sitting too straight, trying not to twitch every time Saint breathes.
Poor kid. Hell of a way to learn what devotion looks like when a man has never practiced being gentle with it.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You stay close to him, but not in front of him. If he tells you to move, you move. If he tells you to shoot, you shoot. If he looks like he’s about to do something that gets Oisín hurt, you say Oisín’s name. Not his. Oisín’s.”
Demo is quiet for half a beat. “Will that work?”
“Fuck if I know. But it’s the only leash we’ve got.”
In the background, Saint’s voice comes through, a lethal edge to it. “Who are you talking to?”
Demo swallows audibly. “Bricks.”
Saint says something I can’t make out.
Demo comes back with, “He says ride faster.”
I laugh again. “Tell him I’m old, not dead.”
“I’m not telling him that.”
“Smart boy.”
I cut the call and ride a little faster. Something is about to go sideways. I just hope it involves the Rogues and not the one man Saint ever opened his heart for.