Chapter Six
They came at eleven, because men like Jessup thought darkness made them invisible.
Striker heard the engines before he saw the headlights—three sets, rumbling up the highway from the east in a loose convoy, moving too fast for casual traffic and too slow for someone just passing through.
He was crouched behind the ice machine on the motel's east flank, shotgun across his knees, the Panhandle wind carrying diesel exhaust and the distant hum of the motor home holding position a quarter mile back on the shoulder.
Command and control. Fenton sitting in his rolling office, running the show from a safe distance while Jessup did the bleeding.
Striker keyed his radio. "Three vehicles inbound. Ridge."
"Service road is blocked. Truck across the lane, strips down. Nobody's flanking us."
"Hatchet."
"East side, behind the dumpster enclosure. I've got Colt and Dawson with me. We're set."
"Teagan."
A pause. Then her voice, steady as a fence post. "Room six. Door's locked, rifle's loaded, horse is behind the trailer. I'm ready."
"Don't shoot unless someone reaches that porch."
"I know the plan, Striker."
He almost grinned. Almost.
The headlights swung off the highway and onto the motel's access road.
Three trucks in a line—gray Dodge dually in front, blue Chevy flatbed second, black Ford crew cab bringing up the rear.
The Dodge was Jessup's. Had to be. The man led from the front because his ego wouldn't let him do anything else.
Striker counted seconds. The tire-shredder strip was laid across the parking lot entrance—a length of spiked chain he'd anchored to the fence posts on both sides, invisible in the dark against the black asphalt.
Ridge had helped him set it at dusk, both of them working fast while Teagan stood watch on the roof with Hatchet's binoculars.
The Dodge hit the lot entrance at thirty miles an hour.
The sound was beautiful—four tires blowing simultaneously, a staggered series of percussive pops like firecrackers strung on a line.
The truck lurched, dropped onto its rims, and slewed sideways across the entrance in a shower of sparks that lit up the parking lot like a welder's arc.
Metal screamed against asphalt. The Dodge ground to a halt ten feet inside the gate, blocking half the entrance and sending its occupants slamming against dashboards and door panels.
The Chevy flatbed braked hard behind it, tires squealing, the driver trying to swerve around the crippled Dodge and finding the fence post on one side and the spike chain on the other.
The Ford crew cab—the smart one, the one with four fresh men from the circuit—slammed into reverse.
Too late.
Ridge's truck exploded out of the service road behind them, headlights blazing, and T-boned the Ford's rear quarter panel hard enough to spin it sideways across the access road. The crack of metal on metal echoed across the empty highway like a cannon shot.
Striker was already moving.
He came around the ice machine at a dead sprint, shotgun up, closing the distance to the third truck while its occupants were still trying to figure out which direction the world had gone. A man tumbled out of the Ford's passenger side, stumbling, reaching for something at his hip—
Striker racked the pump and fired from eight feet.
The blast caught the man center mass and threw him backward into the truck's door panel.
He didn't get up. Striker racked again, pivoted, and put a round through the Ford's windshield that turned the driver's side into a spiderweb of shattered glass.
The driver screamed and dove across the bench seat.
Behind him, the Chevy flatbed had disgorged three men who were scrambling for cover behind their truck's bed.
Hatchet's team hit them from the east flank—muzzle flashes strobing from behind the dumpster enclosure, rounds punching through sheet metal and shattering windows.
One man dropped flat. A second staggered sideways clutching his shoulder, then Colt put him down with a clean shot that spun him into the gravel.
The third man from the Chevy broke and ran—not toward the fight, but away from it, sprinting for the highway with his hands empty and his nerve gone. Dawson tracked him with his rifle and looked at Hatchet.
"Let him go," Hatchet said. "Someone's gotta tell Pollard."
Striker turned his attention to the Dodge.
The crippled truck sat on its rims in the parking lot entrance, steam hissing from a cracked radiator, its headlights casting crooked beams across the gravel.
Two men had crawled out the passenger side and were trying to use the truck bed as cover—one of them bleeding from a gash on his forehead where he'd hit the dash, the other fumbling with a pistol that his shaking hands couldn't seem to point in any useful direction.
Striker walked toward them. Not running. Walking.
The one with the pistol saw him coming and fired twice.
Both shots went wide—panic shooting, the kind that happened when a man who'd only ever pointed a gun at frightened vendors suddenly found himself in a real fight.
Striker didn't flinch. He closed the distance, swatted the pistol out of the man's hand with the shotgun barrel, and drove the stock into his jaw.
The crack of breaking bone was audible over the chaos, and the man crumpled like his strings had been cut.
The second one—the bleeder—raised his hands. "I'm done. I'm done, man, I'm—"
Striker grabbed him by the collar and threw him face-first into the gravel. "Stay down."
Movement inside the Dodge's cab. The driver's door was jammed—bent from the impact of dropping onto the rims at speed—but someone was kicking it from the inside, and Striker could hear cursing through the cracked window.
Jessup's voice.
Striker felt something settle in his chest. Not anger. Something colder. Something that had been waiting since the fairground parking lot, since the bleach in the water trough, since the men in the stabling area trying to hobble Teagan's horse with wire.
He walked to the driver's door, set the shotgun against the truck's fender, and ripped the door open with both hands.
The hinges screamed, metal bending, and the door swung wide to reveal Jessup—face still stitched from where Teagan's lead rope had split his cheek, eyes wild, blood running from a cut above his ear where he'd bounced off the steering wheel.
Striker grabbed him by the front of his jacket and hauled him out of the cab.
Jessup came out swinging—a wild right that Striker slipped without effort, then a left that he caught on his forearm and answered with a headbutt that shattered Jessup's nose flat against his face.
Blood sprayed. Jessup staggered, and Striker hit him again—a right cross to the ribs that folded him double, then an uppercut that straightened him back out and sent him reeling into the parking lot gravel.
Jessup went down on his back. He tried to roll, tried to get his hands under him, and Striker kicked his arms out and watched him eat dirt.
"Get up."
Jessup spat blood and pushed himself to his knees. Striker let him. Let him get halfway to his feet before he drove a knee into Jessup's chest that put him flat on his back again, ribs cracking like dry wood.
"You came to my motel." Striker crouched beside him, his voice conversational, almost friendly. "You came for a woman under my protection. And you thought—what? That ten men and three trucks would be enough?"
Jessup coughed, blood bubbling at his lips. "Pollard's going to—"
"Pollard's not here." Striker stood. "Pollard's never here.
He sends you, and you come running like a good dog, and now here you are bleeding in my parking lot while your crew runs for the highway.
" He looked down at Jessup—at the man who'd keyed Teagan's trailer, poured bleach in a horse's water, sent men with wire to cripple an animal for money.
"You hurt horses, Jessup. You hurt them because it was easy and because the people who loved them couldn't stop you. "
Jessup's hand clawed at the gravel, reaching for something—a knife, maybe, or just the instinct to fight even when the fight was over.
Striker put his boot on Jessup's throat.
The man's eyes went wide. His hands came up, grabbing at Striker's ankle, fingers scrabbling against leather and denim. Striker leaned his weight forward, slow and deliberate, and watched the panic bloom across Jessup's face as his airway closed.
"That barrel racer you threatened?" Striker said quietly. "She cracked you open with a lead rope. And the next time she rides onto a fairground, you won't be there to touch her horse, or her trailer, or anything else."
He pressed down.
Jessup's eyes bulged. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. His legs kicked against the gravel, boots scraping furrows in the dirt. The hands on Striker's ankle weakened, loosened, fell away.
The crack was small. Almost intimate. A sound like a branch snapping underfoot in a quiet forest.
Jessup stopped moving.
Striker held the pressure for three more seconds—because training said confirm, and training was never wrong—then stepped back. The parking lot was quiet now. Steam from the Dodge's radiator. The tick of cooling engines. Distant groaning from the men Hatchet's team had put down.
And then a gunshot from Room 6.
Striker's head snapped toward the motel. The door to Teagan's room was open, light spilling onto the concrete porch. A man was on the ground at the threshold—one of the crew who'd slipped past during the chaos, who'd made it to the porch thinking the woman inside was an easy target.
Teagan stood in the doorway with Hatchet's rifle at her shoulder, barrel still smoking, her face lit by the room's yellow light. The man at her feet wasn't moving.
She lowered the rifle. Looked across the parking lot at Striker. Looked at Jessup's body on the gravel.
Didn't flinch.
Striker crossed the parking lot in long strides, stepping over debris and spent shells and a man who was crawling toward the highway with a shattered kneecap.
He reached the porch and looked at the man Teagan had dropped—center mass, clean hit, the kind of shot that came from years of practice and a nerve that didn't break.
"Reached the porch," she said. Her voice was steady, but her hands had a fine tremor that she was trying to hide by gripping the rifle tighter.
"You did good."
"I did what needed doing." She set the rifle against the doorframe and looked past him at the parking lot—the wrecked trucks, the scattered crew, Jessup's body. "Is it over?"
"This part." Striker took the rifle, checked the chamber, safed it. "The motor home pulled back when the shooting started. Fenton's running—he'll take whatever's left of the crew and regroup."
"So Pollard's still out there."
"Pollard's still out there." Striker looked at the wreckage of the parking lot, at the men Ridge and Hatchet were already zip-tying and dragging toward the truck bed for disposal. "But he just lost his enforcer and half his crew. The next time he comes, he'll have to come himself."
Ridge appeared at the lot entrance, blood on his knuckles and a grim satisfaction on his face. "Six down, three runners. Motor home's gone—headed south on 40. Want me to pursue?"
"No. Let Fenton run. Let him tell Pollard what happened here." Striker turned back to Teagan. "Hitch your trailer. We're moving to the compound."
"Now?"
"Right now. The motel's burned—they know this location, and Fenton will have reinforcements by morning." He caught her eyes, held them. "The compound has walls, cameras, and thirty brothers. Your horse will be safe. You'll be safe."
Teagan searched his face for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and moved past him toward the back lot where Ginger waited behind the trailer.
Striker watched her go—steady stride, straight back, the hands that had been trembling already still again—and thought about what Tornado had said in church.
Don't let whatever's going on between you and this girl compromise the operation.
He looked at Jessup's body cooling on the gravel. At the crippled trucks and the scattered shell casings and the tire-shredder strip that had torn the heart out of Pollard's assault before it started.
Nothing compromised. Operation running clean.
And one less monster between Teagan Duvall and the national finals.