Chapter 4
AMANDA
Wrecker didn’t let go of my hand until we were fully inside the church room. Even then, he stayed close enough that our shoulders brushed each time I breathed.
The room was already filling. Brutus stood by the far wall, arms crossed over his chest like he was daring someone to test him.
Ranger took the chair closest to the door, leaning back like he was relaxed, except his eyes kept flicking toward every window.
Ghost sat in his usual corner, mask tilted down toward a laptop he must’ve dragged in here, fingers tapping fast.
And Scout’s chair, empty, patched, waiting, sat like a wound in plain sight.
No one sat near it.
Not because Cap had said anything, he hadn’t, but because no one needed to be told.
The space around Scout’s chair stayed clear, like the absence itself demanded respect.
Some of the guys wouldn’t look at it at all.
Others glanced at it and then away, jaws tight, shoulders stiff, like acknowledging it too long might crack something open they didn’t have time for.
I tracked it all automatically. Who shifted. Who stayed still. Who watched the door instead of the table.
This room wasn’t just where decisions got made. It was where losses were counted. Where names stopped being abstract and became something you carried with you.
And somehow, impossibly, I was sitting in the middle of it.
Ariel slipped in behind me and hovered for a second, looking small even though she squared her shoulders the same way I did. Someone, Coyote, I think, muttered, “Should the girls even be in here?”
Cap didn’t even look up as he said, “Yes. They’re part of this. Both of them.”
The room reacted without anyone saying a word.
A couple of the older guys shifted in their seats.
Not hostile. Just recalibrating. Like the rules had moved half an inch and they were adjusting their footing.
Brutus didn’t react at all. He just kept his arms crossed, expression carved from stone.
Ranger’s mouth twitched like he’d expected the call before it was made.
No one argued.
That mattered more than the comment ever could.
Ariel exhaled slowly beside me, the sound barely there but loaded. I matched it without thinking, grounding myself in the fact that Cap hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t softened it. He hadn’t justified it.
We were here because we belonged here.
Ariel sucked in a breath. I did too.
Wrecker pulled out the chair beside him, and I sat without thinking, grateful for the solid wood under my palms. My heart still beat too fast, but the familiar rumble of Wrecker lowering into the seat next to mine helped more than I wanted to admit.
Cap waited until the door shut and the room quieted before he spoke.
“Alright,” he said, voice steady. “We’re calling this what it is now.”
Every man at the table straightened.
“The ring didn’t just move girls through that logistics hub,” Cap said. “They crossed into our territory. And when they did, they clipped one of ours.”
The room went still. Not quiet, still. Like everyone felt the same shift hit at once.
Ranger nodded, jaw tight. “Scout was running recon through the same counties those shipments kept surfacing in. Same timing windows. Same corridors.”
“And the same goddamn smell,” Brutus added. “You ride past one of those vans, you don’t forget it.”
My hand slid under the table, brushing Amanda’s fingers. Just enough to let her know I was there. She curled her hand into mine and held on.
Cap leaned forward, forearms braced against the table. “When Scout’s transmission cut, we knew it wasn’t terrain. Too clean. Wrong carrier bled across the channel.” His mouth tightened. “But knowing something happened isn’t the same as knowing what.”
Ghost lifted his head slowly, gaze drifting to Scout’s empty chair.
“He didn’t vanish,” he said quietly.
The words settled heavy between us.
“He was intercepted,” Ghost continued. “That wasn’t an accident.”
Cap nodded once. “That’s the conclusion we reached. No proof yet. No location. No faces.” He paused, then said, “But the way they moved told us enough.”
Ranger exhaled through his nose. “They didn’t reroute. Didn’t dump the cargo. Didn’t go dark.”
“They held their ground,” Brutus said.
Cap’s eyes swept the table. “Exactly. Which means this wasn’t about the girls.”
A beat passed.
“They weren’t protecting the shipment,” Cap said. “They were protecting the lane.”
The words landed hard.
Ghost’s jaw tightened. “So Scout crossed into space that wasn’t supposed to be visible.”
“And they reacted,” Cap said. “Fast. Clean. Like they’d done it before.”
I felt Amanda’s grip tighten.
“And that’s why this doesn’t stop with Scout,” Cap added. “That lane’s still active. And now they know we’re close enough to threaten it.”
Silence followed, but it wasn’t uncertainty.
It was resolve.
My throat tightened. I remembered Scout laughing at me for calling a carburetor a “metal doodad.” I remembered him sliding a mug toward me at the clubhouse coffee machine and refusing to tell me which button did what because “you’ll learn faster if you screw it up.
” I remembered him teasing me about needing a booster seat on Wrecker’s bike.
He’d been here. Alive. Loud. Whole.
And now…
Now he was just a chair.
Cap flattened his hand on the table. The sound cut through the room.
“There’s something else,” he said. “And this part affects every single one of you.”
The shift was immediate. Chairs creaked. Someone near the back muttered, “Here it comes.”
Ghost’s fingers stilled over the keyboard.
“We’ve had movement near the compound,” Cap continued. “Not random. Not drunk locals. Controlled passes. Same vehicle profile, different plates. Twice in one night.”
A low murmur rippled through the room.
Ranger straightened fully now, relaxed posture gone. “You’re saying they found us.”
“I’m saying they’re testing us,” Cap replied. “Learning patterns. Watching rotations.”
Doc swore under his breath. Someone else, one of the older guys I didn’t know by name, leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You don’t test a place like this unless you’re thinking long-term.”
Brutus’s lips peeled back just enough to show teeth. “They want to see how hard we bite.”
My skin prickled. The walls felt closer than they had five minutes ago.
Ghost finally looked up. “This changes priority,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. “If they’re watching the compound, Scout comes first. Everything else is secondary.”
A few heads nodded around the table.
“Agreed,” someone near the door said. “We can’t split resources with eyes on home.”
Another voice chimed in. “We start chasing ghosts outside our perimeter, we leave ourselves open.”
The room was no longer unified. It wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t settled either.
Cap let the noise ride for a second. Then he spoke.
“There’s one more thing.”
Ariel went still beside me.
“Sunshine was taken during the escape,” Cap said. “She helped one girl get free. Tried to pull another. The window closed, and she didn’t make it out with us.”
The room quieted again. But this time it wasn’t reverent. It was wary.
“She told us to run,” Ariel said, voice tight. “That was it.”
Ghost braced his hands on the table. “And she’s not one of ours.”
The words landed heavy.
A couple of guys shifted. One of them nodded. Another crossed his arms. Not cruel. Just factual.
Ghost turned his masked face away from Ariel when he spoke. “Scout is one of ours. He’s alive. Somewhere. Every move we make splits attention away from finding him.”
Ranger nodded once. “We don’t know what going back in looks like. Or costs. And if they’re watching us—”
“—then we already don’t have the luxury of pretending this stays contained,” Brutus cut in.
Ghost shot him a look. “That doesn’t make it smart.”
Doc leaned forward, forearms on the table. “Sunshine helped get Ariel out. She sacrificed herself giving Cap and Ariel time to get out.”
“That doesn’t make her family,” someone else said quietly.
“No,” Wrecker said. His voice was even, but there was steel under it. “But it makes her ours to protect.”
That got attention.
Doc nodded. “We don’t leave women behind. Especially ones who already paid the price.”
The room split again. This time down a different line.
Cap lifted a hand. Slowly. Deliberately.
“This is why we vote,” he said.
The room stilled.
“Scout is priority,” Cap continued. “No one’s arguing that. But Sunshine isn’t a distraction. She’s a line. If we leave her, we tell every other woman caught in that pipeline exactly what our patch means.”
He looked around the table. Not just at the loud ones. At everyone.
“Those girls move through our territory,” Cap said. “That ring used our land. Took one of ours. And now they’re testing our home.”
Silence stretched.
“We can hunt Scout,” Cap went on. “And we can burn that lane so it never runs through this town again.” His voice hardened. “But we don’t do it by deciding some lives matter less.”
He nodded once. “Vote.”
Silence filled around us. Then hands lifted.
Some immediately.
Some after a beat.
Some reluctantly.
Ghost didn’t raise his hand at first.
Then he looked at Scout’s empty chair.
Slowly, he lifted it.
Cap counted. Once. Twice.
The decision locked in.
Cap exhaled. “We go back. We find Scout. We find Sunshine. And we tear that ring out at the root so it never touches this place again.”
Brutus cracked his neck. “Good. I was getting bored.”
The room didn’t feel divided anymore.
It felt decided.
Chairs scraped back. Men stood. Brutus looked like he was ready to punch through a wall. Doc swore he needed five Advil before tonight’s ride. Ranger clicked Smoke’s leash and the big shepherd immediately glued to his leg.
I stood too fast and swayed. Wrecker’s hand wrapped around my thigh under the table before I even tipped.
“You good?” he murmured.
I nodded, even though my voice wasn’t ready.
Ariel touched my arm gently. “You okay?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
But Wrecker squeezed my thigh, slow and steady, and something inside me stopped spinning.
Cap caught my eye as he passed. “You did right coming in here,” he said gruffly. “Don’t run from this. You’re part of it now.”
I forced the words past the tightness in my throat. “I won’t run.”
Wrecker’s quiet breath beside me sounded like approval.
As the room cleared, I looked back at Scout’s chair one more time.
He wasn’t forgotten.
He wasn’t abandoned.
And neither was I.
Being part of this didn’t feel like safety.
It felt like responsibility.
If I stayed, I couldn’t pretend ignorance. Couldn’t hide behind shock or fear or the excuse of not knowing how bad it really was. These men didn’t gather to talk. They gathered to act. And by sitting at this table, by being named, protected, claimed, I was stepping into the weight of that.
It scared me.
But it didn’t make me want to run.
Wrecker’s hand settled at my lower back, steady and warm. Not steering, just there. Partnership. Presence. The kind that didn’t erase fear but didn’t let it rule either.
I wasn’t just surviving anymore.
I was choosing to stay.
Wrecker touched my lower back, guiding me toward the door.
“Come on,” he said softly. “We stick together.”
I nodded.
Because for the first time since the elevator doors closed on that terrified girl…
I didn’t feel alone.