Chapter Sixteen
The gavel hit the table and the chapel went quiet, and Teagan understood for the first time what church really meant.
She was standing against the back wall because old ladies didn't sit at the table—Carmen had told her that without apology, and Teagan hadn't argued because she recognized a rule that existed for a reason.
The chapel was smaller than she'd expected.
Egg-crate foam on the walls, the mesquite gavel at Tornado's elbow, club colors hanging behind the President's chair like a flag over a throne.
The air smelled like cigarette smoke and leather and the particular tension of men about to go to war.
Every officer was at the table. Tornado at the head, Shadow at his right, Diesel and Rascal flanking the middle, Hatchet and Ridge down at the end. And Striker—standing at the head of the table opposite Tornado, a laptop open in front of him, Fenton's seized road atlas spread beside it.
He looked different in here. Not different from the man she slept beside—different from every other version of him she'd seen.
In the yard, he was charming. In her corral, he was warm.
In the arena at Canyon, he was lethal. But in the chapel, with the brothers around him and a plan laid out on the table, he was something else entirely.
He was the Warlord. And watching him own it made her pulse kick.
"Pollard's staging at a rented ranch property outside Childress.
" Striker tapped the laptop screen, and Teagan could see a satellite image—buildings, a vehicle line, the flat brown sprawl of West Texas ranchland.
"Fenton's laptop gave us everything. Lease records, crew rosters, payment schedules.
The property's forty miles south, accessed by a single county road with no cross traffic after dark. "
"How many men has he got left?" Shadow asked.
"After the motel, the compound, and Canyon?" Striker's mouth curved. "Eight. Maybe ten if he pulled from his Oklahoma contacts. He's running out of crew and he knows it."
"A cornered animal's the most dangerous kind," Tornado said.
"A cornered animal is a predictable animal." Striker turned to Teagan. "Tell them about the staging pattern."
Every eye in the room swung to her.
Teagan pushed off the wall and stepped forward. She didn't sit—there was no chair for her—but she planted her feet and met the table's gaze the way she met everything. Head-on.
"Pollard follows the circuit," she said.
"Has for two years, maybe longer. He stages his crew at a base camp two days before each event, works the fairground, collects his money, and moves on.
" She pointed at the atlas, at the highlighted routes Fenton had marked in red ink.
"These are his roads. I-40 corridor east-west, Highway 287 north-south.
He uses fairgrounds as hunting grounds, but his base camps are always private property—rented ranches, abandoned homesteads, places with enough room to park trucks and house men without drawing attention. "
"And this one outside Childress?" Diesel leaned forward. "That's confirmed?"
"Fenton's lease runs through the end of the month.
The next event on the circuit is a rodeo in Vernon, four days from now.
Pollard will stage at Childress before moving his crew to Vernon.
" She tapped the atlas. "He always arrives two days early.
That means he's there now, or he will be by tonight. "
"How do you know his timing?" Ridge asked.
"Because I've watched him do it three times.
" Teagan's jaw set. "Lubbock, Amarillo, Canyon.
Same pattern every time. His crew shows up two days before the event, sets up at the base camp, and fans out to work the vendors and competitors.
Pollard stays at camp with his personal security while his lieutenants handle the face-to-face. "
"His lieutenants are dead," Shadow said with a grin.
"Which means he's got nobody between him and the door." Teagan looked at Striker. "He's alone in there. Whatever muscle he's got left, it's hired and scared and not getting paid enough to die for a man whose whole operation just fell apart."
Something hot moved behind Striker's eyes. Pride, maybe. Or hunger. He held her gaze for a beat too long, and she watched the corner of his mouth lift before he turned back to the table.
"We hit the staging camp tonight." He closed the laptop and spread a hand-drawn map over the atlas—the ranch property, sketched from the satellite image with positions marked in red and blue.
"The property has a main house, two bunkhouse trailers for crew, and a vehicle line along the south fence.
One road in, one road out. The terrain's flat for half a mile in every direction, which means no cover for runners. "
"Breach plan?" Hatchet asked. He was already doing math behind his eyes—Teagan could see it, the way he calculated angles and ammunition the way she calculated barrel approach speeds.
"Three teams." Striker pointed to the map. "Ridge, you take four brothers and secure the vehicle line. Every truck, every trailer, every set of keys. Nobody drives out of that camp. Shadow, you take four and clear the bunkhouses. Zip-tie anyone who breathes, shoot anyone who fights."
"And the main house?" Tornado asked.
"That's mine." Striker's voice dropped. "Pollard sleeps in the main house with personal security. Two men, maybe three. I'll take Rascal and breach from the front."
The room was quiet. Not uncomfortable—ready. The quiet of men who'd heard plans before and knew what came after.
"Hatchet," Striker said. "Loadout?"
Hatchet stood, and the energy in the room shifted. "Shotguns for the breach teams, rifles for the vehicle line. Sidearms for everyone. I've got flash-bangs for the bunkhouses if Shadow wants them."
"I want them," Shadow said.
"Vests?"
"For the breach team on the main house. Ridge's team won't need them—the vehicle line should be cold by the time they secure it."
"Radios?"
"Encrypted channel, same as Canyon." Hatchet looked at Striker. "Loadout's ready. Been ready since Tuesday."
Striker nodded. Teagan watched his hands on the map—steady, certain, the same hands that trembled when they touched her in the dark.
The same hands that had broken Jessup's neck and Fenton's skull and Boggs's face.
Hands that destroyed and protected with equal precision, and she'd stopped trying to reconcile the two because they weren't separate. They were the same thing.
"We roll at dusk," Striker said. "Forty miles south, county road, no headlights for the last mile. We hit the camp between midnight and one, when the crew's sleeping and Pollard thinks his fence line is the only security he needs."
Tornado stood. The room stood with him.
"This man came onto our territory," Tornado said, his voice carrying the weight of the gavel and the generations behind it.
"He squeezed our people. He hurt animals.
He threatened a woman under our protection and sent men to our walls.
" His eyes moved around the table—Shadow, Diesel, Rascal, Hatchet, Ridge, Striker.
"We end it tonight. Every brother rides back. No exceptions."
"No exceptions," the room echoed.
The gavel came down. Church was over.
The compound became a machine.
Teagan watched from the corral fence while brothers moved with purpose across the yard.
Hatchet had the garage bays open, weapons laid out on a tarp—shotguns, rifles, sidearms, the flash-bangs Shadow had asked for.
Brothers checked their loadouts, tested their radios, pulled on vests.
Ridge's team staged their trucks near the gate.
Shadow's team loaded in the second wave.
She found Striker in his room, pulling on a black shirt and checking his .45.
"I should be going with you," she said from the doorway.
"No."
"I went to Canyon."
"Canyon had injured horses that needed you." He holstered the pistol and turned to face her. "Childress has one thing that needs doing, and it doesn't involve a lead rope."
She wanted to argue. The fight was right there, sitting on her tongue like a hot coal.
But she looked at his face—at the cold focus that had settled over him like armor—and understood that this wasn't the same as Canyon.
This wasn't rescue. This was execution. And her place tonight wasn't beside him on a dark county road.
Her place was here. Waiting. Trusting that he'd come back.
She hated it. She'd never hated anything more.
"Come back," she said.
He crossed the room, took her face in both hands, and kissed her forehead. His lips were warm. His hands were steady. His eyes, when he pulled back, held a promise that wasn't made with words.
"Run your horse in the morning," he said. "I want to watch."
Then he walked past her, down the hallway, into the yard where his brothers were waiting.
Teagan followed as far as the corral. She leaned on the fence—her fence, built with her hands—and watched the trucks line up at the gate. Engines rumbling, headlights cutting the dusk, men she'd shared meals and whiskey and a compound with rolling out to end the man who'd started all of this.
Striker's truck was in the lead. She couldn't see him through the windshield, but she knew he was grinning.
The convoy rolled through the gate and turned south, taillights shrinking to red pinpoints on the highway. Teagan watched until the last light disappeared, until the road was dark and empty and the only sound was the wind and Ginger shifting in the stall behind her.
She pressed her forehead against the fence rail and breathed.
Come back. Come back. Come back.