Chapter Twenty-Two
THE DESERT HEAT baked the road, waves of glare rising off the asphalt as the four of us thundered down the highway.
My cut clung to the sweat on my back, grit stinging at the edges of my vision, but I didn’t ease up.
Warden rode point, steady as a damn rock.
The twins ran side by side behind him, bikes growling like animals with a mind for blood.
I kept scanning the horizon. Nothing but scrub and rock stretched forever, but my gut wouldn’t settle. That note in my cut burned like a brand. Someone wanted Wren dead. Whoever left a message like that had to know Venom was keeping her locked up.
That meant someone who had been here before. Someone tied to Venom.
The house came into view past the ridge: sagging roof, windows like empty sockets, the barn half-collapsed beside it. I’d hoped walking away from this place once would close the door. Instead it felt like we were following the echo of something that shouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.
We rolled to a stop and killed engines until the silence pressed in. Hex swung his leg over, grinning the way he always did when trouble smelled like work. “Place looks like shit,” he said, half-laughing.
“Shit isn’t a good enough word,” Rex answered, voice that same low rasp, same blond hair, same gray eyes, same bulletproof build. Little things marked them apart, but anyone could tell they were twins in a crowd, mirror images with different minds.
I pulled my gun free before I even put a boot down. “Stay focused. Whoever left that note knew too much.” My voice was flat. Warden gave a tight nod and we fanned out.
The ground crunched under our boots, dry dirt, glass, bits of old life. Inside the house the air was cooler, old and stale. The closet where I’d found Wren was open, a hollow that tightened my chest like a noose. I pushed past it, scanning every corner, every shelf, every shadow.
Hex crouched at a window, sweeping a finger through the dust. “Someone been back,” he said.
Rex dropped to his knees and pointed. “Boot prints. Fresh.” He brushed at the edge of a print, the dirt showing the tread like a fingerprint.
Warden’s hand lifted slow and held up a cigarette butt, the tobacco still carrying a faint stale curl. “They were here recent,” he said. Quiet. Direct.
Then the silence snapped.
Crack.
A round slammed into the wall beside Rex’s head, wood splintering and spitting. He cursed and dropped, gun coming up in the same motion.
“Cover!” I barked, shoving Hex toward the nearest overturned table as glass exploded behind us.
The house turned into thunder. Bullets chewed through walls, dust sheeted down in a gray curtain. Warden ducked behind the doorframe and fired back in measured bursts. Hex and Rex leaned out opposite windows, trading lead with movement at the tree line.
I pressed to the plaster, heartbeat a hammer, eyes hunting for any flash of metal. A glint caught the sun off a scope and my finger squeezed the trigger.
“Ridge, two o’clock!” I called. My shot sent a spray of dirt where the shooter had been and he ducked.
Rex reloaded with a curse. “Two shooters—maybe three!”
“Four,” Warden said, voice steady as ever, punching another burst into the scrub.
Another slug screamed past, tearing the sleeve of Hex’s jacket. He barked a laugh, raw and wild. “Shit shots.”
“Keep laughing and you’ll be a dead one,” I snapped, hauling him down as another spray bored into the stud where his head had been.
For a few minutes the world narrowed to the drum of gunfire, the sharp report of our returns, the ragged breathing of the men I’d chosen to bleed with. We moved like muscle memory—angles, return fire, cover, reposition.
And then just like that it stopped.
The desert came back, empty and stupid and indifferent. Metal ticked and cooled. My ears rang. Warden eased up first, scanning. Nothing. The ragged horizon. Then, far off, a thin column of dust where a truck fled across the flats.
“Cowards,” Rex muttered, wiping at the fresh cut on his cheek.
“They weren’t here to win a fight,” I said. It wasn’t a question. The certainty coiled through my bones. “They were here to make sure we knew they could reach us.”
Hex spat in the dirt and tapped the side of his pistol with a grin. “Message received. And delivered.”
I didn’t grin. Couldn’t.
This wasn’t random. Whoever knew Wren was alive, and under our roof. They wanted to let us know we couldn’t keep her safe, that they’d kill us before they spared her.
My hands tightened on my gun until my knuckles hurt.
Let them try.
I would bury every last one of them before I let anyone lay a hand on her.
Warden moved in, already thinking three steps ahead.
“We pull the perimeter tighter. Rotate watches. No lone riders. Split up the checks on the ridgeline. Run plates on anything that’s been in the area in the last week.
” His voice had the clean bite of orders given when the atmosphere went from bad to dangerous.
I looked at the twins. They nodded like they’d signed up for blood, but the worry was raw under it. This hit different when it wasn’t someone else’s fight. This was Wren. That note pulsed under my skin like a second heartbeat.
We left the house that way, guns low, minds higher, the sun burning the world to a flat glare. The ride back to the clubhouse had a different feel; the bikes sounded meaner, like they knew the score. Dust in my mouth tasted like warning.
Whoever had slid that note across my seat had lit the match. Now the fire was on us. And I meant to make sure whoever struck first paid in blood.