Chapter 20
They staged two blocks east of the Ace High in the lot behind the shuttered body shop where Devane's cars had parked a week ago, and the irony wasn't lost on Switchback — the enemy's ground turned to theirs, the same geometry reversed.
The formation killed their engines in sequence and the boulevard went quiet. Seven bikes and the tow rig, cooling in the dark, and the only sound was the distant hum of the one working streetlight on Nora's block and the faint buzz of the Ace High's fluorescents carrying on the cold air.
"Gather in," Switchback said.
The brothers formed a loose half-circle around the tow rig's tailgate, and Nora stepped into the center of it.
She didn't hesitate. She climbed onto the tailgate and crouched, and in the dark she laid out the Ace High on the steel bed the way she'd laid it out on the chapel table — except this time she used what was there.
A lug wrench for the front counter. Rags for the machine rows. A socket set for the loading dock.
"Front door faces east," she said. Her voice was low and steady, carrying just far enough.
"Plate glass. Vane's at the counter here" — she set the lug wrench — "with sightlines to the door and the window seats where my people are.
His four men will be spread through the machine rows, covering the front approach.
That's what he wants. He wants you coming through the front like the cavalry so his boys can funnel you into the aisles. "
She set down the rags in parallel lines. "Machine rows. Three-foot aisles, steel housings on both sides. Two men can't come through side by side. If you fight in those aisles, you fight single file and his men have the advantage."
"So we don't fight in the aisles," Switchback said.
"You fight behind them." She pointed to the gap between the last rag and the edge of the tailgate.
"Back door. Loading dock. I unlocked it with the spare key six months ago and Darla knows where the key hangs.
I texted her from the road — one word, she knows what it means.
The back door will be open when we get there. "
She laid out the rest. The breaker panel in the utility closet — her weapon, the one she'd used twice, the switch that turned the Ace High from a lit room into a dark maze she knew by feel.
The roll-down security gate that could seal the front entrance behind Vane's men once the brothers drew them toward the back.
The water shutoffs she could use to flood the floor and slow anyone running.
"Vane will be behind the counter," she said.
"When the lights go, his men will move toward the back — toward the noise, toward the fight.
That pulls them away from the regulars in the window seats.
Once they're in the aisles, I drop the gate behind them.
Front sealed, back covered, and they're fighting in the dark in a building they don't know. "
She looked at Switchback. In the faint light from the distant streetlamp, her green eyes were hard and sure.
"Vane's yours," she said. "I'll put you in the dark with him. But the machines are mine."
He held her eyes. The woman on the tailgate, crouched over a lug wrench and a pile of rags, laying out a battle plan on a truck bed — the same woman who'd handed him towels at three in the morning, who'd fixed a compressor no one else would touch, who'd ridden behind him across the basin with her arms around his waist. She was magnificent.
And she was his. And in an hour she was going to walk into a building held by a man who'd spent weeks trying to destroy her, and she was going to be the one who brought the lights down on his head.
"I need a wrench," she said to the group. "Something heavy. For the gate mechanism."
Bustout reached into the tow rig's toolbox and handed her a two-foot pipe wrench without a word. She took it, tested the weight, and nodded.
Switchback turned to the brothers.
"Bustout and Viper, you're through the back door first. Clear the aisles, pull Vane's men into the machine rows and keep them there.
Blizzard, you're on the loading dock — nobody leaves through the side.
Slick, you're with Jackpot at the front.
When the gate drops, you come through the plate glass. "
Jackpot stood at the edge of the group, his gray eyes moving across the improvised map on the tailgate.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The president had given the green light in the chapel and now the Road Captain was running the approach, and the trust between the two positions was a thing that didn't need words.
"Nora goes in through the back with Bustout and Viper," Switchback said. "She gets to the breaker panel, kills the lights, and drops the gate. That's the signal. Everything after that is us."
"And you?" Viper asked. The first words Switchback had heard from him all night.
"I go through the back with Nora. When the lights drop, I go for Vane."
The formation held for a beat. Seven men and one woman in a dark lot behind a shuttered body shop, the plan laid out on a tailgate in rags and socket sets, the Ace High glowing two blocks away like a lighthouse on a dead shore.
"Gear up," Switchback said.
The tow rig's toolbox became an armory. Tire irons, pipe wrenches, the heavy tools that did the work when the work needed doing.
Bustout took a length of chain and wrapped it around his fist like a man putting on a glove.
Viper took nothing — Viper never needed more than his hands and his patience.
Blizzard pulled on a pair of heavy work gloves and bounced on his toes like a fighter before a bell.
Nora stood beside the tow rig with the pipe wrench in her right hand and her hair pulled tight and her jaw set, and Switchback crossed to her and put his hands on her face the way he had on the concrete pad the night they'd killed Rourke.
Blood on his knuckles then. Clean hands now. The same woman looking up at him.
"When the lights go," he said, "you move for the gate and you don't stop. Don't look for me. Don't wait. Drop the gate and get to the regulars."
"I know the plan."
"I know you know the plan. I'm saying it because—" He stopped.
His thumbs moved on her cheekbones. "Because after tonight, this is over.
Vane's done. The block is yours. The Ace High is yours.
And I need you walking out of that building, Nora.
I need that more than I need anything else in this fight. "
She turned her head and kissed his palm. Pressed her lips against the callused skin where his hand gripped the handlebars and the pool cues and her hair and the pieces of the life they'd built in three weeks that felt like years.
"I'll be walking out," she said. "Right next to you."
He kissed her. Hard, fast, the kind of kiss a man gives when he's about to do something dangerous and the woman kissing him back is about to do the same thing. Then he let go, and the space between them was cold and necessary, and the plan was the only thing left.
The formation moved.
Quiet. No engines. They walked the bikes through the industrial blocks behind the boulevard, pushing them in neutral through the alleys and the empty lots, moving like ghosts through the dead-hour dark.
Switchback led, reading the ground the way he'd always read ground — the puddles that would reflect light, the gravel that would crunch, the gaps between buildings where a sentry might see them.
They staged in the alley behind the Ace High's loading dock.
The steel door was there — the heavy service entrance that Nora had built into her plan like a cornerstone.
She moved past the brothers to the door and put her hand on the handle and pulled, and it opened.
Darla. The key. The word she'd texted from the road.
Warm air spilled out of the building. Dryer heat. Detergent. The smell of the Ace High, the smell of Nora's world, the place that had started everything.
Switchback looked at the brothers. Bustout, massive and ready. Viper, still and dark. Blizzard, coiled. Slick and Jackpot, circling to the front. Nora, with the pipe wrench in her hand and the building at her back.
The formation was set. The ground was hers. The enemy was inside.
Switchback put his hand on the back of Nora's neck one last time — the claiming touch, the one he'd made in the compound and the chapel and every room they'd shared — and then he let go, and the hand on his woman became the hand that reached for the door.
"Go," he said.