Chapter 16
They put her at the table.
Not behind it. Not in a chair against the wall where she could listen and nod and stay out of the way. At the table, between Forge and Cargo, with a map of Fayetteville spread in front of her and seven men waiting for her to talk.
Amy had never been inside the chapel room.
The door was heavy—blast-resistant, Trauma had told her, though she hadn't asked why a motorcycle club needed blast-resistant doors.
The walls were brick, the table scarred oak, the air thick with leather and gun oil and the particular weight of men who'd decided to end something.
Recon stood at the head of the table with a laptop and a face that gave away absolutely nothing.
"Seven crew members still active," he said. "Down from fourteen. They're operating from a rental on the south side—2240 Clover Street. Kyle rotates through, never staying more than two consecutive nights."
He pulled up surveillance photos on the laptop. A single-story ranch house, chain-link fence, overgrown yard. Two vehicles in the driveway. Blinds drawn on every window.
"Problem is the rotation," Recon continued. "Kyle sleeps in crew members' vehicles, moves between locations, never establishes a pattern we can—"
"Yes he does."
Every head turned.
Amy felt the weight of their attention—seven men, all of them capable of violence she'd only glimpsed, all of them looking at her like she'd interrupted a sermon.
She didn't care.
"Kyle has a pattern," she said. "He's had one since I met him. He thinks he's unpredictable, but he's not. He's compulsive."
Legion leaned forward. "Explain."
"Kyle can't abandon a plan. Once he decides on something, he sees it through no matter what.
It's not discipline—it's ego. He can't admit a plan failed, so he keeps executing it even when the circumstances change.
" Amy looked at the map. "He planned to take the diner.
Trent's dead, Clint's dead, Jarrett's dead, and I guarantee he's still planning to take the diner. He hasn't pivoted. He can't pivot."
"That's personality," Recon said. "I need logistics."
"Fine. Logistics." Amy pulled the map closer.
"Kyle drinks. Every night, without exception.
He told himself it was social, but it's compulsive—same as the planning.
He starts around eight and he's useless by midnight.
Whatever crew house he's at, he's not leaving after ten PM because he's too drunk to drive and too proud to let anyone see it. "
"So we hit late," Ghost said.
"You hit late and you hit on a night when he's committed to being somewhere.
" Amy tapped the south-side house on the map.
"He has a tell. When Kyle's about to do something big—a job, a confrontation, anything he's been building toward—he gathers his people the night before.
Not to plan. To drink. To talk about how smart he is, how the plan's going to work, how everyone who doubted him is going to regret it. "
"A pep rally," Cargo muttered.
"Exactly. He did it before every job during our marriage. The night before he robbed the pawn shop on Skibo Road. The night before he beat up the guy who owed him money on Person Street. The night before—" She stopped. "The night before he put me in the hospital."
Silence around the table.
Trauma's hand found her knee under the oak. She didn't look at him. If she looked at him right now, she'd lose the steel in her voice, and these men needed the steel.
"Kyle's lost three lieutenants in two weeks," Amy continued. "He's angry, he's scared, and he's going to do something stupid to prove he's still in control. That means a gathering. That means drinks. That means everyone in one place on a night he's chosen for whatever he's planning next."
"How do we know which night?" Legion asked.
"Because I know how he thinks." Amy met the president's eyes.
"Kyle's superstitious. He doesn't start things on even-numbered days.
Doesn't do business on Thursdays—his mother died on a Thursday.
And he always, always makes his move on a weekend because he thinks weekends mean people have their guard down. "
"That's Sunday," Recon said.
"That's Sunday."
Recon looked at Legion. Legion looked at Amy.
"You're certain," he said. Not a question.
"I was married to that man for five years.
I learned his patterns the way you learn a minefield—step by step, because the cost of getting it wrong was everything.
" Amy folded her hands on the table. "He'll be at the south-side house Sunday night.
He'll be drinking. He'll have his crew around him.
And he'll be planning something he thinks is going to fix everything Kyle Lawson has broken. "
"It won't," Trauma said quietly.
"No," Amy agreed. "It won't."
Legion sat back in his chair. His fingers drummed the table—that tell she'd noticed, the one that meant the gears were turning.
"Recon. Can you confirm her assessment with surveillance?"
"I can have eyes on the house by tomorrow afternoon. If she's right about the gathering, we'll see the vehicles Friday or Saturday."
"She's right," Trauma said.
"With respect, brother, I verify before I commit men to an assault."
"Then verify." Trauma's voice was steady, but his hand tightened on Amy's knee. "But she knows him better than any camera."
Recon nodded once. Professional. No argument, no ego—just the acknowledgment of a man who understood that intelligence came from sources you didn't always expect.
"Sunday night," Legion said. "Contingent on Recon's confirmation. Full strike team. Same composition as the warehouse—Ghost and Forge on the front, Trauma and Cargo on the back. I coordinate the perimeter."
"Rules of engagement?" Ghost asked.
"Kyle Lawson doesn't walk out of that house."
The words landed on the table like a gavel.
Amy felt them in her chest. Not horror. Not guilt. The cold, clear recognition that the man who'd broken her ribs and fractured her eye socket and promised through his lieutenants to burn her diner to the ground was going to die on Sunday night.
Because she'd told seven men exactly how to find him.
"The crew?" Forge asked.
"Anyone holding a weapon is a combatant. Anyone who surrenders gets zip-tied and left for the aftermath. But Kyle—" Legion's eyes were hard. "Kyle is the objective. Everything else is secondary."
"Understood," Trauma said.
Amy looked at him. He sat beside her with one hand on her knee and the other flat on the table, his body still, his expression the same focused calm she'd seen when he stitched wounds and installed cameras and carried flour bags like they weighed nothing.
But his eyes were different.
His eyes were already in that house on Clover Street.
"Amy." Legion's voice pulled her back. "You've given us what we need. Thank you."
A dismissal. Polite, respectful, but clear—the briefing was over and the rest was club business.
She didn't stand.
"I want to know," she said. "When it's done. I don't want to hear it secondhand or piece it together from bloodstains and silence. I want someone to call me and tell me he's dead."
Legion held her gaze for a long beat.
"Trauma will call you," he said. "The moment it's confirmed."
"Thank you."
Now she stood. Pushed back from the table, walked to the door, felt every set of eyes in the room follow her across the chapel. She paused with her hand on the blast-resistant steel.
"One more thing."
"Yes?" Legion said.
"Kyle keeps a shotgun. Mossberg 590. He's had it since before we were married. He sleeps with it close—under the bed, behind a door, wherever he can reach it in five seconds." She looked back at the table. "Whoever goes through the back of that house should know that."
Trauma's jaw tightened.
"Noted," Legion said.
Amy walked out.
The compound lot was quiet. Late afternoon sun slanted through the pines, casting long shadows across the gravel. She made it to the picnic table by the garage before her legs gave out.
She sat down hard, put her hands flat on the splintered wood, and breathed.
Sunday night.
Two days. Two days and the man who'd haunted her for eight years—five married, two imprisoned, one unleashed—would be dead. Two days and the word MINE scratched on her door would be the last thing Kyle Lawson ever claimed.
The chapel door opened behind her. Boots on gravel. The creak of the picnic bench as Trauma sat beside her.
"You okay?"
"I just told a room full of men exactly how to kill my ex-husband." She stared at her hands. "I should feel something about that."
"What do you feel?"
"Ready."
He put his arm around her. She leaned into him—into the leather, the warmth, the solid weight of a man who would walk into that house on Sunday and finish what Kyle had started three months ago.
"The shotgun," Trauma said.
"Behind the bedroom door. He's right-handed. He'll reach for it the second he hears the breach."
"I know."
"Christopher." The name came out fierce, the way it only did when she needed him to hear her. "You come back to me. Whatever happens in that house, you walk out of it."
His arm tightened. "I'm coming back."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
"Swear on my aunt's pie."
He laughed—short, rough, surprised out of him. "I swear on your aunt's pie."
"Then I believe you." She pressed her face into his shoulder and breathed him in. "Sunday."
"Sunday."
The sun dropped behind the pines. The compound settled into evening. And somewhere across Fayetteville, in a house on Clover Street, Kyle Lawson was drinking and planning and telling his crew how he was going to take back everything that belonged to him.
He had two days left to believe it.