Chapter 7 Ambush #2
Irish's voice cut through the aftermath like a knife, high with panic. I turned and saw them thirty feet away—Irish crouched beside a figure on the ground, his hands pressed against something dark and wet.
I ran.
Ghost was on his back, face pale as milk in the moonlight, his hands pressed against his thigh where blood was seeping between his fingers in steady pulses.
His jeans were soaked with it, the denim gone black, and the smell hit me before I reached him—copper and salt, the particular scent of life leaving a body.
Not the femoral. Please not the femoral.
I dropped to my knees beside him, my hands finding the wound by instinct. Entry and exit—the bullet had gone clean through the meat of his upper thigh, missing the bone but tearing through muscle and vessels. Blood welled up around my fingers, warm and urgent.
"Hold pressure." I grabbed Irish's hands and positioned them. "Right here. Don't let go."
"It hurts." Ghost's voice was young, too young, the voice of a kid who'd thought he was invincible until sixty seconds ago. His eyes were too wide, his breathing too fast, shock starting to settle in around the edges. "Tank, it really hurts—"
"I know. You're going to be fine." I stripped off my belt, looping it above the wound, pulling it tight enough to make him cry out. "The bullet went clean through, and you're too stubborn to die from a leg wound. You hear me? Too goddamn stubborn."
"Can't feel my foot—"
"That's the tourniquet. It's supposed to do that." I cinched the belt tighter, watched his face contort with pain. "Where's Rosa's team?"
"On the way." Hawk's voice came from somewhere behind me. "Axel called it in. Five minutes."
Five minutes. Ghost could survive five minutes. People survived worse than this every day.
I stayed with him, one hand keeping pressure on the wound, the other gripping his shoulder hard enough to anchor him. His blood was warm on my fingers, soaking into my jeans, pooling on the asphalt beneath us in a spreading dark mirror that reflected the stars.
"Stay with me, kid. Talk to me."
"About what?" His laugh was weak, shaky, turning into a groan halfway through.
"Anything. Tell me about that Ironhead you've been rebuilding. The one in the back bay."
"The '72?" Ghost's face flickered with something that wasn't pain. "She's—she's got this crack in the primary case, man. I've been trying to weld it but the metal's so thin, and the carb's shot too, but I found this guy online who's got the original Bendix, and I—"
He kept talking. I kept listening. The blood kept flowing, but slower now, the tourniquet doing its work.
Tyler appeared at my side, his hands already reaching for the wound.
"I've got field training. Let me see."
I shifted to give him access. He examined the injury with quick, sure movements—checking the tourniquet tension, probing the wound's edges with fingers that didn't flinch at the gore.
"You're lucky." Tyler's voice was calm, clinical. "Missed the femoral by about an inch. Tore up some muscle, maybe nicked the lesser saphenous, but nothing that won't heal. You're going to have a hell of a scar, but you'll walk."
Ghost laughed again—stronger this time, relief mixing with lingering fear. "Chicks dig scars, right?"
"So I hear."
The SUV arrived four minutes later—two of Rosa's infirmary workers, young guys she'd trained to handle field extractions.
Rosa herself was too valuable to risk outside the compound walls; Hawk's standing orders.
They moved with the efficiency of people who'd drilled this scenario a dozen times, loading Ghost onto a stretcher with quick, sure hands.
"Irish, ride with him," I ordered. "Keep pressure on the wound, keep him talking. Rosa will handle the rest once you're back."
Irish climbed into the back without argument, his hand finding Ghost's shoulder, already starting to talk about nothing—bikes, beer, anything to keep the kid's mind off the blood soaking through his jeans.
The SUV disappeared down the mountain, taillights swallowed by the darkness, and we turned our attention to the van.
The cargo was pharmaceuticals.
Cases of them, packed in foam, labeled with batch numbers and lot codes that meant nothing to me but clearly meant something to Tyler. He crouched in the wreckage of the van, pulling containers into the moonlight, his expression growing darker with each one he examined.
"OxyContin." He held up a bottle. The label was crisp, official, the kind of packaging you'd see in a pharmacy.
"Fentanyl patches. Hydrocodone. All Schedule II.
" He checked another case, then another, lining them up on the asphalt like evidence at a crime scene.
"These batch numbers—they're federal seizure codes.
This product was supposed to be destroyed. "
"Supposed to be?" Hawk crouched beside him.
"When the DEA confiscates controlled substances, they're supposed to be incinerated under supervision.
Logged, witnessed, documented. Chain of custody from seizure to destruction, every step recorded.
" Tyler set the bottle down, his jaw tight.
"Someone's been pulling product before destruction and recycling it back into circulation.
Millions of dollars worth. Maybe tens of millions. "
"The Wolves are drug runners." Blade's voice was flat. "That's not news."
"This isn't street-level distribution." Tyler stood, gesturing at the cases.
"This is institutional. Federal seizures, redirected through official channels before they reach the incinerator.
You'd need people inside the DEA, or working with them.
People with clearance, access, the ability to falsify destruction records.
" He picked up another bottle, turned it in the moonlight.
"These pills should have been ash six months ago.
Instead, they're on their way to dealers who'll cut them with God knows what and sell them to addicts who won't know what they're putting in their bodies. "
"The same people backing Cross."
"Yeah." Tyler's voice was flat. "The same people backing Cross.
This is why they need the Wolves. This is why they're willing to back an MC with federal resources.
They're not expanding territory—they're building infrastructure.
Distribution networks, protection routes, a whole shadow supply chain operating under the cover of legitimate law enforcement. "
The scope of it hit me then. This wasn't just Cross hunting Tyler. This wasn't just a turf war. This was something bigger, something that reached into the institutions that were supposed to protect people.
And Phoenix had just stolen a piece of it.
We loaded what we could carry into our saddlebags and the storage compartments of our bikes.
The pharmaceuticals were worth a fortune on the street, but that wasn't why we took them—they were evidence, proof of what the Wolves were moving, what the network was doing.
The rest we photographed, documented, and left for the authorities to find—along with the wounded Wolves, zip-tied and disarmed.
An anonymous tip to the highway patrol would bring them running within the hour.
Evidence. Witnesses. The beginning of something larger.
Hawk surveyed the scene one last time—the overturned van, the scattered cargo, the groaning men who'd thought they were untouchable an hour ago. "We got what we came for. Let's move."
The clubhouse was quiet when we returned.
Most of the club was still out—Axel in the medical bay with Ghost while Rosa worked on his leg, Irish getting his arm stitched, Hawk and Blade debriefing with our contacts about what we'd found.
The main building was dark except for the security lights, the lot empty except for our bikes and the prospect on gate duty who nodded as we passed.
I parked near the garage and killed my engine.
The silence after hours of riding felt thick, heavy, pressing against my ears like a physical weight.
My body was starting to register the aftermath—sore muscles, bruised ribs where I'd hit the tank during a hard maneuver, the dull ache of exhaustion settling into my bones.
Tyler pulled in beside me.
We dismounted without speaking. The adrenaline was fading now, leaving behind the hollow feeling that always followed violence. My hands were still stained with Ghost's blood, dried to a rusty brown in the creases of my knuckles.
"I need to clean up."
"Me too."
We walked toward the garage. Not the clubhouse, where showers and clean clothes waited. The garage, where the Shovelhead sat in her bay, where the smell of oil and metal might drown out the smell of blood.
Inside, I flicked on the work light and stood in its pool of illumination, staring at my hands.
Tyler moved to the utility sink against the far wall. I heard water running, heard him scrubbing at his skin, washing away the evidence of what we'd done.
"You saved my life." The words came out before I'd decided to say them. "That Wolf coming out of the van. I didn't see him."
"You would have."
"I didn't. You did." I turned to face him. He'd finished washing, was drying his hands on a shop rag, his face half-shadowed in the uneven light. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"
"Quantico. Practical Pistol Course, then advanced tactical training." He set the rag aside. "Cross used to say I was the best shot in our unit. Before—" He stopped. Shook his head. "Before."
"You don't talk about it much. What you could do."
"Doesn't usually come up." Tyler moved closer, stopping a few feet away. Close enough that I could see the flecks of blood still clinging to his collar, the exhaustion in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders that hadn't released even now. "Tonight was the first time since Chen that I've had to—"
He stopped again. His throat worked.
"First time you've had to be that person again."
"Yeah."
"How does it feel?"