9. Luke
LUKE
“Uh, Riot,” Mason starts.
“Yeah?” I grip the wheel and keep on the fucker’s ass.
“There’s a one-lane bridge ahead.”
Huh. I didn’t know that. “Relax, Ace. I have a plan.”
Jake snorts.
Mason clears his throat. “Your plans usually end in explosions.”
“Well.” I glance toward the rifle propped beside me. “Everyone has their preferences.”
The truck ahead swerves slightly.
The driver noticed me.
I grin. There we go.
Adrenaline hums low in my bloodstream as I ease closer, keeping parallel with the van.
The windows are blacked out. Illegal as hell.
I think about what could be hidden back there.
It could be anything. We’ve been tracking Cole Turner and his operation, and he’s into bad shit.
Drugs, guns, women—you name it. He hasn’t been running women through his ranch for the past couple months, but it was only a matter of time before he started again.
We haven’t figured out how to stop Turner, but this tonight? This I can do.
I slip into fight mode, where shit gets done.
The driver jerks the vehicle toward me without warning.
“Oh, that’s rude.” My tires hit dirt and my truck swerves before I wrench it back under control.
Jake’s voice turns deadly calm. “Luke.”
“He started it,” I say as I wrench the steering wheel left.
Bullets explode through my passenger window. Glass showers across the cab.
Mason curses viciously in my ear. “Sounds like there are two passengers in addition to the driver. You’re outnumbered.”
I’ve been outnumbered all my life. “Well,” I mutter. “Now everybody’s overreacting.”
Harper’s still back there. I catch the flash of her patrol SUV’s headlights in my rearview—too close, way too fucking close to the gunfire. My chest tightens for half a second before I shove the feeling down and focus.
“Shoot at the van and you risk hitting women, if they’re carrying any,” Mason points out.
“Yeah, that’s a slight problem.” I reach for my Glock. “One that I’m sure I can solve.”
I slam the gas pedal to the floor. Wind tears through the cab as I pull alongside the delivery van again, close enough now to see the passenger hanging halfway out the window with an AR. Big guy. Bald. Terrible aim.
I flash him a grin. Then I lift my Glock and shoot him in the face.
Blood sprays across the side of the van. His body collapses, hanging out the window.
The delivery van swerves violently.
I shoot the driver next—one clean shot through the side window. It’s the only way to stop the gunfire. The only way to stop this.
The driver’s head snaps back.
The van lurches hard left and punches through the old steel railing like the barrier is made of paper, and for one crystalline moment I watch it sail out into the darkness above the ravine.
“Oh shit.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
There could be women in that van—trapped women—and I just sent them off a bridge.
Harper saw it. She saw all of it—the shots, the blood, the van going over. She’s watching me right now, and I can’t take it back.
“Luke!” Mason’s voice cracks through the radio. “What the hell—”
But I’m already slamming on my brakes, my truck screaming to a halt past the broken railing. I put my truck in park and am out the door, running down into the black void below.