CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BLACK T-SHIRTS pile at our feet, each one stamped with the O.D.’s screaming skull patch in white ink, clear enough to spot from a hundred yards through dust and exhaust. We’ve been folding them for what feels like hours, Cricket stacking, Jade half-assing, and me just going through the motions.
It’s better than being alone. Better than replaying last night, again and again.
Jade’s already drifting. She’s got her phone in one hand, thumb twitchy, chipped nails tapping the screen like she’s trying to summon something better.
“This country’s so fucked,” she mutters.
Cricket doesn’t look up. “You just noticing that now?”
Jade snorts, still scrolling. “These fucking politicians, man. Listen to this: ‘Senator Jack Hargrove found semi-conscious and undressed at the Astoria Grand in Redwater. Paramedics responded to an anonymous call. Hotel room reportedly contained large quantities of GHB as well as several thousand dollars in unmarked bills.’”
My hands go still. Fingers falter. Blood floods my ears.
Jade keeps going, her voice slowing. “Not party doses. Like, industrial quantities. Staff says a young woman ran before EMTs got there.”
Cricket rolls her eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
Then Jade goes quiet.
Her face changes. Mouth tight. Eyes still on the screen.
“‘Sources say items recovered at the scene have heightened suspicions of financial ties between Senator Jack Hargrove and outlaw motorcycle club the Order of Disorder.’”
Cricket’s head snaps up. “What?”
The shirt slips from my hands, my pulse hammers under my collarbone like it’s trying to dig its way out.
Lani, who’s labeling fuel jugs one table over, leans back and peers over Jade’s shoulder.
“No way,” she murmurs. “That real?”
She pulls out her own phone. A second later, so do two more women. The buzz of talk picks up.
Someone at the vending machine says, “Holy shit, that’s the Astoria Grand,” and suddenly three people are huddled around his screen. Another voice cuts in—“Look, it says the Order of Disorder”—and that’s enough. Phones come out of pockets all around us.
Conversations fracture and re-form. Names whispered, sentences dropped mid-word. Everyone trying to confirm what they’re hearing while pretending not to look panicked.
Then—
The office door slams open. Billy storms out, phone clenched in his fist, face pale with fury, with Silas following close on his heels.
There are maybe fifteen people scattered across the floor—old ladies, prospects, patched members. Most of them are holding phones now. A few are whispering. Others just staring at their screens, brows drawn tight. The ones who’ve seen the story are already showing it to the ones who haven’t.
Lani has her hand over her mouth. Cricket’s muttering something under her breath. Jade’s still frozen with her phone in her lap, like she doesn’t trust herself to scroll anymore.
Billy strides straight into it. Grabs a tablet from one guy and hurls it, the crack of plastic on concrete drawing every eye. He snatches a phone from another and throws it hard against a tool chest.
“Off!” he shouts. “Everything. No phones, no earbuds, no fucking signals. Silas, kill the wifi.”
Silas lifts a hand and gestures to a tech prospect near the side door. The kid bolts.
Billy turns in a slow circle, eyes landing on anyone still holding a device.
“One more screen, and I start pulling tongues. Clear?”
The phones disappear. So do the voices.
His stare locks on me.
Then he’s moving—three steps, fast. He grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet, the chair scraping back and crashing over.
“What did you fucking do?” His voice rips through the hangar.
“Nothing!” It jumps out of me, automatic and panicked.
He grabs my shirt and yanks me close.
“Oh, you didn’t do anything? You go see the senator and he ends up ODing with his fucking pants down? Is that a fucking coincidence, Maxwell?”
He releases me with a shove, pacing now in short agitated loops.
“He had our goddamn laundry money in his room. He had our drugs. If he talks, if he cuts a deal, they don’t just come for me, they come for all of us. You get that?”
He spins back, eyes bloodshot.
“I get arrested, the feds swarm the clubhouse. They start pulling apart our routes, our contacts, our fucking history. Every dime we ever laundered. Every deal.”
He steps in again, too close.
“You want to see how fast these men turn on you when survival’s on the line? You think Silas won’t offer you up first, slit you wide and tell them you were the whole fucking op?”
He’s breathing heavy now. Shaking.
“I ought to gut you right here.”
Beside him, Silas stares at me, a glint of pleasure in his eyes.
Billy slams his palm down on the table. “Lock her up. Put her on fucking ice before I kill her where she stands.”
He draws a breath and stands straighter.
“I need time to manage this. Call the lawyer, clean up the shell paperwork. Make sure our bank man doesn’t fucking vanish.”
He’s already turning, phone to his ear, voice rising again—names, threats, orders. He slams the office door shut behind him.
Silas steps in instantly and grabs my arm hard.
The second he touches me, I yank sideways, trying to break his hold, but he clamps down, pulls tighter. I twist again, shove against his chest, drive my elbow into his ribs.
“Get the fuck off me.”
He catches the back of my shirt and yanks me off balance. My feet drag, shoes skidding across the concrete as I fight to plant them.
I dig my nails into his wrist, but he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even look down. Just exhales, slow and sharp through his nose.
“You should’ve stayed broken,” he hisses. “Would’ve kept us all safer.”
Then he hauls me across the hangar—body braced, arms locked around me like a clamp. My heels catch, my shoulder slams into a doorframe, but he never stops moving.
No one steps in, but everybody watches.
Outside, the sun’s still out but the wind’s picked up. Late September whiplash. Heat in the light, bite in the air.
Silas marches me past the fuel shed toward the far corner of the yard. There, tucked between two steel storage tanks, sits a ten-foot chain-link enclosure with a gravel floor and padlocked gate. It’s usually packed with fuel drums and hazmat signage. But right now, it’s empty.
“I’ve been meaning to clean this out,” Silas says, fishing a key from his pocket. “Makes a decent kennel.”
He unlocks the padlock and the gate groans open.
I try to dig my heels in again. He spins me, grabs both arms, and shoves. I stumble, hitting the ground hard, hands scraping against the gravel as I catch myself. Sharp stones bite into my palms. I hiss through my teeth and push up to my knees.
He slams the gate behind me and clicks the padlock shut.
And then he stays there, fingers curling loosely through the mesh.
“You know what I like about this?” he says pleasantly, the creepy smile tugging the corners of his lips. “I can watch you nice and up close. No grainy camera feeds. Since Ryan moved the bed in your room, I haven’t been able to see anything of interest. But now…”
His eyes crawl over me, slow.
“Now maybe I can.”
He gives a thin, satisfied grin and then turns, boots grinding the gravel, and walks away without looking back.
The sun doesn’t reach the back wall. I curl against it anyway, trying to keep the wind off my spine.
My shirt’s too thin. The gravel digs through my jeans. My palms still sting from the fall.
On the other side of the hangar, engines start up, fade out, start again. Any one of them could be Wyatt.
He should be back by now.
Somewhere out there Jake and Damian could be planning our escape right now. If Wyatt sent his message. If Jake received it. And my voicemail to Leathernecks. They must know we’re here. Surely they’ll come get us.
But my chest won’t settle.
Wyatt would go straight to our room, looking for me, only to find I’m not there.
He’ll come out and save me.
Unless he can’t.
I press my back against the fence and pull my knees to my chest. My teeth hurt from how hard I’m clenching them.
There’s no way to sit that doesn’t hurt.
The sky’s darker now. The sun’s gone. The wind hasn’t let up.
I’ve got my eyes closed, just breathing, trying to block everything out, when I hear boots on gravel.
For a second, just a second, I think it’s Wyatt.
I sit up too fast.
But—
It’s Billy.
He stops just outside the cage, thumb tapping his phone. The flashlight clicks on, beam slicing through the mesh and straight into my face.
I turn away, but he doesn’t lower it.
“Report says a woman fled the scene,” he says. “Staff saw her leaving in a hurry. No name yet, but they’re asking.”
He tilts the light just enough for me to see his face, drawn tight and simmering.
“Our fucking bag is there with that stupid sticker on it. Apparently he had a list of our transactions sitting out.”
He watches me, seething, but I don’t respond.
“You know what Silas is saying? He’s showing me footage. Asking why Ryan took off by himself on the run. Where he really went. Why he didn’t answer his radio for two fucking hours.”
My stomach knots.
Billy’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I trusted that man. Let him touch my bikes. Gave him my lady. Now I’ve got the feds at my throat and Silas whispering in my ear.”
He steps closer. The phone beam lands square on my chest.
“And you?” he says. “You’re the piece that connects it all.”
He kills the light.
Dark floods back in.
“I should bury you right here. Fucking bitch. Traitor.”
He turns and walks off.
The gravel absorbs the sound.
I don’t know what time it is.
The stars are sharp now, uncaring and endless. The cold’s gone deeper. My breath fogs and vanishes before I can hold it. The wind hasn’t let up. It slices through the cage, through my shirt, through my skin.
I can’t stop shivering.
The hangar’s quiet.
I shift, trying to find a position that doesn’t grind bone against gravel but there isn’t one. My shoulders ache from holding tension, my spine’s tight from hours of stillness, and I don’t know how many more I’ll have to endure.
Something rustles by the tanks, low to the ground, but it’s smart enough to keep its distance.
If I had those pills clutched in my hand now, I’d take them. Swallow every last one and let the cold blur into nothing.
But I don’t.
I keep thinking about the way Billy talked about Wyatt—what he implied, what he might already believe.
If he decides Wyatt’s a traitor, he’ll kill him.
And Wyatt…
Wyatt means everything to me.
I try not to picture it, but I do: both of them gone. Ryder already buried in memory. Wyatt folded under Billy’s rage. Two men who loved me, who tried to save me, wiped off the map like they were nothing.
All because of Billy.
He doesn’t just want to keep me. He wants to erase everything that ever held me.
And if it comes down to letting me go—
He’ll kill me too.
In his world, I’m not allowed to belong to anyone but him, and no matter what I do, I can never escape.