Chapter 4
Jolene was out of bed before her eyes were fully open, muscle memory carrying her toward the nightstand where she kept the pistol her father had given her when she'd moved out at eighteen. Her hand closed around the grip as headlights swept across her bedroom window.
"Jolene!" Tornado's voice. Rough. Urgent. "Open the door. Now."
She was at the front of the house in seconds, throwing the deadbolt, yanking the door open. Tornado stood on her porch in the wash of his truck's headlights, and the look on his face stopped her cold.
"Get dressed. Grab your daughter. We're leaving."
"What—"
"The café's burning. Renteria's crew hit it twenty minutes ago." His hand closed around her arm, pulling her back into the house. "They're on their way here next. We've got maybe ten minutes."
The world tilted.
The café's burning.
Seven years. Sixteen-hour days. Every dollar she'd ever saved, every dream she'd ever had, every promise she'd made to her daughter about their future—
"Jolene." Tornado's hands were on her shoulders now, his face inches from hers. "I need you to move. Can you do that?"
She nodded. Couldn't speak.
"Good. Where's your daughter?"
"Neighbor's house. Two doors down. She stays there on school nights."
"She's safe there for now. We'll send someone. Right now, I need you dressed and in my truck in three minutes."
He released her and Jolene's body took over. She pulled jeans over her sleep shorts, shoved her feet into boots, grabbed the go-bag she kept by her bedroom door. Old habit from the years when eviction notices came without warning.
The bag held clothes. Cash. Her daughter's favorite stuffed rabbit.
She was halfway to the door when she stopped.
"Wait."
"Jolene—"
"One second."
She ran to the kitchen, yanked open the drawer by the refrigerator, and grabbed the folder she kept there. Insurance paperwork. The deed to the café. The only proof that everything she'd built had been real.
Tornado was waiting at the door, his body filling the frame. "We need to go."
"I'm ready."
Outside, the night was cold and dark and smelled like smoke. Jolene couldn't see flames from here—the café was twelve miles east—but she could see the glow on the horizon. Orange and angry against the black.
Her whole life, burning.
Rascal materialized from the shadows of her yard, a rifle held loose and ready in his hands. "Truck's clear. No movement on the street yet."
"Stay on the neighbor's house," Tornado said. "The daughter's there. No one touches her."
"Understood."
Tornado's hand found the small of Jolene's back, guiding her toward the truck. The touch was firm, possessive, brooking no argument. She let herself be steered into the passenger seat, let him close the door behind her, let herself breathe.
The café's burning.
The truck roared to life and Tornado pulled out of the driveway fast, tires spitting gravel. The rental house shrank in the side mirror—small, shabby, the only home she'd been able to afford while pouring everything into the café.
"Where are we going?" Her voice came out steadier than she expected.
"Mother Road Motel. Club property. Safe for now."
"And my daughter?"
"Rascal will bring her to us once we're secure. She won't be out of his sight."
Jolene's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs, willing them to stop. The insurance folder sat on her lap, the edges already soft from how many times she'd handled it.
It's just a building, she told herself. Buildings can be rebuilt.
But it wasn't just a building. It was proof. Proof that she could make something from nothing. Proof that a single mother with no family and no money could carve out a place in the world.
Headlights appeared in the rearview mirror.
Tornado's eyes flicked to the mirror, then back to the road. His jaw tightened.
"Company."
Jolene twisted in her seat. A black SUV was coming up fast, maybe a quarter mile back. No lights except the headlights. No license plate visible.
"Is that—"
"Yeah. Hold on."
Tornado floored it.
The truck lurched forward, engine roaring as the speedometer climbed. Seventy. Eighty. Eighty-five. The highway was empty at this hour, nothing but flat desert and the faded center line stretching toward Tucumcari.
The SUV kept pace.
"They're gaining," Jolene said.
"I know."
Ninety miles an hour now. The truck shuddered with speed, the steering wheel vibrating in Tornado's grip. The SUV was close enough that Jolene could see faces in the windshield—two men, maybe three.
"What's the plan?"
"Working on it."
"That's not reassuring."
"Wasn't meant to be." Tornado's voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came before violence. "There's a curve coming up in about a mile. Sharp left around a rock formation. You ever see someone take that curve at speed?"
"No."
"Good. Don't watch."
The rock formation appeared out of the darkness—a jagged outcropping that forced the highway into a hard left turn. Warning signs flashed yellow in the headlights.
Tornado didn't slow down.
At the last possible second, he yanked the wheel left. The truck screamed around the curve, tires howling, the back end swinging wide. Jolene grabbed the oh-shit handle and held on as the world spun sideways.
Behind them, the SUV tried to follow.
It didn't make it.
The black vehicle hit the curve too fast, overcorrected, and went off the road in a spray of dust and gravel. Jolene heard the crash more than saw it—metal shrieking, glass shattering, the ugly crunch of a vehicle meeting something it couldn't move.
Tornado didn't stop. Didn't even slow down.
"Are they—"
"Don't know. Don't care." His eyes stayed on the road. "They made their choice when they came after you."
Jolene's heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. The insurance folder had crumpled in her grip, and she forced herself to loosen her fingers before she destroyed the only paperwork she had left.
They drove in silence for the next twenty minutes. The speedometer dropped to something approaching legal, and Tornado's grip on the wheel eased from white-knuckled to merely tense.
The Mother Road Motel appeared like a mirage—twelve rooms, a vacancy sign buzzing in the darkness, a parking lot empty except for two motorcycles.
Tornado pulled around back, killed the engine, and was at her door before she could open it herself.
"Stay close to me."
She didn't argue.
The room he led her to was nothing special—queen bed, ugly carpet, a TV that probably hadn't worked since the Clinton administration. But there were steel bars on the window and a deadbolt that looked new, and Tornado checked both before he let her sit down.
"You're safe here," he said, pulling the curtains closed. "This motel belongs to the club. Nobody gets in without us knowing."
Jolene sank onto the edge of the bed, the insurance folder still clutched in her hands.
The café's burning.
She thought about the neon sign she'd repaired herself, standing on a ladder at midnight because she couldn't afford an electrician.
The counter she'd sanded and refinished three times until it was smooth enough.
The regulars who'd become friends, who'd watched her daughter grow up, who'd left bigger tips than they could afford because they knew she needed them.
"Hey."
Tornado was crouching in front of her, his face level with hers. When had he moved?
"They burned my café," she said. The words came out hollow. Empty.
"I know."
"Everything I had was in that building."
"I know."
"Seven years." Her voice cracked. "Seven years of my life, and they just—"
Tornado's hand cupped her face. The touch was gentle, impossibly gentle for hands that had put a man on the ground with one punch.
"We're going to make them pay," he said. "Every single one of them. For the café. For the threats. For making you run in the middle of the night." His thumb brushed her cheekbone. "But right now, I need you to breathe. Can you do that for me?"
She nodded. Drew a shaky breath. Then another.
"Good." He didn't move. Didn't pull away. Just stayed there, close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. "Your daughter is safe. You are safe. That's what matters right now. Everything else, we figure out tomorrow."
"What if tomorrow isn't enough?" She hated how small her voice sounded. "What if they find us here too?"
Tornado's expression hardened. Not at her—at the question. At the threat it represented.
"If they find us here," he said slowly, "then we move to the compound. Full club protection. Armed brothers on every wall. They'd have to go through forty years of Route 66 Outlaws to touch you."
"And if that's not enough?"
"Then I'll burn their whole operation to the ground before I let them lay a finger on you."
The words hit her like a physical force. Not a promise—a vow. The kind of absolute certainty she'd never heard from anyone in her life.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why do you care this much?"
Tornado was quiet for a long moment. His hand was still on her face, his thumb still tracing that gentle path along her cheekbone.
"Because you grabbed a shotgun," he said finally.
"Because you didn't run. Because you stood on your porch and fired a warning shot when any sane person would have hidden.
" His eyes held hers. "I've been riding this road for twenty-five years.
I've never seen anyone fight that hard for something they built. That means something."
"It means I'm stupid."
"It means you're brave." His voice dropped. "And I don't leave brave people to burn."
Jolene didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know what to do with the warmth spreading through her chest, cutting through the cold shock of the past hour.
So she did the only thing that made sense.
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his.
They stayed like that for a long moment—breathing together, close enough to kiss but not crossing that line. Not yet. The motel room was quiet except for the hum of the highway and the buzz of the vacancy sign outside.
"Get some sleep," Tornado said finally. "I'll be right outside the door."
"You don't have to—"
"Yeah." He pulled back, and the loss of his warmth felt like a punishment. "I do."
He stood, crossed to the door, and looked back at her one last time.
"Tomorrow, we bring your daughter here. Then we figure out our next move." His jaw tightened. "And when the motel isn't enough, the compound is next."
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Jolene sat on the bed, insurance paperwork crumpled in her lap, and wondered when she'd started thinking of tomorrow as something that included him.