Chapter 13
She was in the compound kitchen, drying the last of the dinner plates, when Loretta's number lit up her screen. The older woman never called this late. Never called at all, really—Loretta was the kind who showed up in person or didn't bother.
"Jolene." Loretta's voice was thin. Controlled. The same kind of steady Jolene recognized from her own throat the night she'd called the clubhouse with men circling her café. "I need help."
"What's happening?"
"There's men outside my diner. Four, maybe five. They've got rifles and they just came from your place—I saw the smoke from the highway. They lit up what was left of the Dusty Rose and now they're here."
Jolene's hand tightened on the phone. The plate she'd been drying slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor.
What was left of the Dusty Rose.
They'd burned it again. Gone back to the ashes and wreckage of everything she'd built and set it on fire a second time, like once wasn't enough, like they needed to make sure there was nothing left to rebuild.
"Are you inside?" Jolene asked.
"Barricaded in the back with three of my waitresses. Got my rifle, but there's too many of them and they're spreading out." Loretta's voice cracked—just for a second, just enough to hear the fear underneath the grit. "They're circling, Jolene. Like they're looking for a way in."
"Don't open anything. Don't go near the windows. I'm coming."
"Jolene—"
"I'm coming."
She hung up and ran.
Tornado was in the main room with Shadow and Striker, maps spread across the bar top, planning something she didn't have time to ask about. He looked up when she burst through the kitchen doorway, and whatever he saw on her face put him on his feet before she said a word.
"Loretta. The Crossroads Diner." Jolene was already moving toward the door. "Pruitt's crew just torched what was left of my café and now they're surrounding her place. She's got three women barricaded inside."
The room went electric.
Shadow was off his stool and reaching for his cut. Striker was already keying his radio, barking orders to brothers across the compound. Tornado crossed the room in three strides and caught Jolene's arm.
"How many?"
"Four or five. Armed. Rifles."
"Pruitt himself?"
"She didn't say. But who else would it be?"
Tornado's jaw hardened. That look she knew—the one that wasn't patience, wasn't calm. Calculation. The machinery behind his eyes spinning up to speed.
"Striker, I need six brothers mounted in three minutes. Shadow, you're with me." He turned back to Jolene. "Stay here."
"No."
"Jolene—"
"Loretta is my friend. Those waitresses—Jenny, Marie, Diane—I've known them for years. I used to make deliveries to that diner every Thursday. I know the building, I know the layout, I know the service entrance that doesn't show up on any floor plan." She pulled her arm free. "You need me."
"I need you safe."
"You need me useful. And right now, useful means getting those women out while your brothers handle the guns."
Tornado stared at her. She watched the argument play out behind his eyes—the part of him that wanted to lock her in his room versus the part that knew she was right.
"The service entrance," he said. "Tell me."
"South side. Behind the dumpsters. There's a steel door that opens into the kitchen storage room. Loretta keeps it locked from inside, but I know the knock—three fast, two slow. She'll open it for me."
"And if Pruitt's got a man on the south side?"
"Then I'll need someone covering me. But that entrance is hidden behind a concrete wall and two dumpsters. You'd have to know it was there to watch it."
Tornado's hands curled into fists at his sides. She could see him fighting it—the need to protect her warring with the tactical reality that she was offering something none of his brothers could.
"You stay behind me until we reach the diner," he said. "You don't move until I clear the south side personally. And the second those women are out, you're in a truck and heading back to the compound."
"Deal."
"I mean it, Jolene."
"I know you do." She grabbed his cut and pulled him close, pressing a hard kiss to his mouth. "Now let's go get my friends."
They were on the road in four minutes.
Jolene rode in Tornado's truck, wedged between him and Shadow, while six brothers on bikes flanked the vehicle in tight formation. The convoy ate highway at ninety miles an hour, headlights cutting through the Panhandle darkness like blades.
Twenty miles to the Crossroads Diner. At this speed, twelve minutes.
Jolene's phone buzzed. A text from Loretta.
They shot out my front windows. Still holding.
She showed it to Tornado. His knuckles went white on the steering wheel.
"Shadow," he said. "When we get there, I need you on the highway side. Pin them against the building. Striker takes the east with three brothers. I'll clear the south side for Jolene."
"And Pruitt?"
"If he's there, he's mine."
The Crossroads Diner appeared out of the darkness like a ghost—chrome and neon, the kind of roadside relic that looked like it had been plucked from another decade and dropped in the middle of nowhere.
The neon was dark tonight. The front windows were shattered, glass glinting on the parking lot asphalt like scattered diamonds.
And circling the building, moving in the shadows with rifles slung low, were five men.
Tornado killed the headlights a quarter mile out and coasted to a stop on the shoulder. The bikes pulled up behind him, engines cutting to silence one by one.
"There." Shadow pointed. "Two on the north side, near the front entrance. One on the east, by the propane tanks. Two more on the west, working toward the back."
"South side?"
Shadow pulled binoculars from the glove box and scanned. "Clear. The dumpsters are blocking the sight line from the west pair. If she moves fast—"
"She'll move fast." Tornado turned to Jolene. "When I signal, you go straight for the service door. Don't stop, don't look back. Get inside, get the women, get them out to the back road. Diesel's staging a truck half a mile south on the county road—he'll be waiting."
"I know the way."
"I know you do." His hand found hers in the darkness, squeezed once. "Be careful."
"You too."
Tornado was out of the truck before she could say anything else, moving low and fast toward the diner with Shadow on his left. The brothers spread out behind them—dark shapes flowing across the gravel like water, silent as the desert night.
Jolene counted to thirty. The plan was simple: Tornado clears the south side, signals her, she runs. The brothers engage from the front and east, drawing attention away from her approach.
Simple plans were the best kind. Simple plans had the fewest things that could go wrong.
At twenty-two seconds, gunfire erupted from the east side of the building.
Striker's team had engaged. The sharp crack of rifles split the quiet, followed by shouting—Pruitt's men scrambling for cover, returning fire from behind vehicles and concrete barriers. Muzzle flashes strobed through the darkness like angry fireflies.
Jolene's phone buzzed. One word from Tornado.
Go.
She went.
Out of the truck, across the shoulder, down the shallow drainage ditch that ran parallel to the diner's south wall.
The concrete was cold under her hands as she scrambled through the darkness, keeping low, keeping quiet.
The gunfire from the front was louder now—sustained, overlapping, the brothers pressing hard.
The dumpsters loomed ahead, dark shapes against the diner's back wall. Jolene squeezed between them, the metal cold against her shoulders, and found the steel door exactly where she remembered it.
Three fast. Two slow.
She knocked and waited.
One second. Two. Three.
The lock clicked. The door cracked open, and Loretta's face appeared in the gap—weathered, fierce, a hunting rifle clutched in hands that were shaking but steady enough.
"About damn time," Loretta said.
Jolene slipped inside. The storage room was dark, lit only by the red glow of an exit sign.
The smell hit her—grease, coffee, gunpowder, fear.
Behind Loretta, three women huddled against the far wall.
Jenny, barely twenty, mascara streaked down her cheeks.
Marie, who'd been waitressing at the Crossroads since before Jolene moved to the Panhandle.
Diane, clutching a cast-iron skillet like she planned to use it.
"Is everyone okay?" Jolene asked.
"Scared but whole." Loretta's jaw was set tight enough to crack. "They shot out the windows about twenty minutes ago. Been circling since, trying doors, banging on walls. Testing us."
"They're done testing." Jolene took Loretta's arm. "There's a truck waiting on the county road half a mile south. We go out this door, through the drainage ditch, and straight to it. Stay low, stay quiet, stay together."
"What about the shooting?"
"That's our cover. The brothers are engaging from the front—Pruitt's crew is focused on them. The south side is clear."
Loretta studied her for a long moment. The same look she'd given Jolene the first time she'd walked into this diner seven years ago—measuring, assessing, deciding whether this woman was worth trusting.
"Alright," Loretta said. "Girls, on your feet. We're leaving."
Jenny whimpered but stood. Marie pulled her up, one arm around her shoulders. Diane kept the skillet.
Jolene moved to the steel door and cracked it open. The gunfire was still heavy on the north and east sides—sustained bursts, the brothers keeping Pruitt's men pinned and focused. The south side was dark. Empty. Clear.
She opened the door wider.
And froze.
A voice from the front of the building, audible even over the gunfire. Carrying across the parking lot like it was meant to be heard.
"Burn it! Burn the whole goddamn building!"
Dale Pruitt.
He was here. Not hiding behind his men, not directing from a distance. Here, in the parking lot, shouting orders with the confidence of a man who knew every back road and property line in the Panhandle. A man who burned buildings and enjoyed it.
Jolene heard the sound of glass breaking—a bottle, maybe. Then the whoosh of accelerant catching fire.
Orange light bloomed against the diner's front windows.
"Move," Jolene hissed. "Now."
She pulled Loretta through the door, the other women following in a tight cluster.
They dropped into the drainage ditch and started moving south, bent double, feet splashing through shallow runoff water.
Behind them, the diner's front wall was already glowing, firelight dancing through the shattered windows.
The gunfire intensified. Someone was screaming—not one of the brothers, Jolene told herself. Not one of theirs.
She kept moving. Twenty yards to the edge of the diner property. Fifty more to the fence line. Half a mile to Diesel's truck.
Behind her, the Crossroads Diner was burning.
And somewhere in the chaos of the parking lot, Dale Pruitt was still alive.