Chapter 7 Wrecker
WRECKER
Cap didn’t need to spell it out.
Church had ended with assignments moving quietly through the room.
There were no speeches and no debate. Our mission was recon rides.
We wanted every detail we could before we went in there guns blazing to get Scout and Sunshine.
Eyes on every corridor Amanda had flagged.
Follow the trafficking lanes. And most importantly, don’t engage unless forced.
So when Ranger gave the signal just after one, nobody asked why.
We rolled out right after one in the morning. Engines low, lights off, the kind of formation you didn’t break unless you wanted Ranger’s boot up your ass.
Fog clung to the tree line off the access road, thick enough to hide a small army. The night felt wrong. Too still. Too expectant.
Ranger took point, head dipped, shoulders loose, but every inch of him coiled.
Brutus followed on the Harley with the chopped pipes that normally rattled your ribs, but tonight he kept it silent as he could.
I slotted in behind them, running quiet, jaw grinding as we left the compound and Amanda behind the upstairs window.
I didn’t look back twice.
Once was enough.
Ghost didn’t ride.
He never did unless he had to.
He was in Ranger’s truck a hundred feet back, headlights off, rolling like a shadow. Smoke’s ears were visible in the window, tracking every shift of dark like he was born for this shit.
The road curved south into industrial zoning that should’ve been dead at this hour.
It wasn’t.
Ranger signaled slowly twice.
Up ahead, a warehouse yard glowed under a security floodlight, like someone wanted it seen from the road. A single semi sat backed into the dock, engine cold. No other trucks. No rotation.
Men in reflective vests moved pallets by hand, fast and quiet. No forklifts. No radios. No dock doors opening and closing.
Brutus grunted. “That’s not a night shift.”
“Too clean,” I muttered. “And they’re breaking it down instead of cycling it through.”
Ranger’s head dipped. “Staging point.”
Ranger rolled closer and stopped behind stacked shipping crates near the fence line. We killed our engines and moved on foot, boots quiet in gravel.
Ghost pulled the truck around the back of the yard and angled it into a pocket of darkness so deep it swallowed the vehicle whole.
He stepped out with his laptop tucked under one arm, mask catching the faintest shine from the floodlight.
Smoke hopped down and sat at Ranger’s knee, vibrating with energy but staying still because Ranger’s hand hovered at his collar.
Ranger lifted a finger to his lips.
Silence.
We watched them load pallets stamped with disaster relief logos. The kind of shit that made people look the other way. Charity. Donations. A good deed on paper.
They worked fast, but sloppy. Too sloppy for real volunteers.
And then I saw it. The plates on the cab of the semi. The same state code Amanda had told me about from the hub. The same route she’d mapped out before everything went sideways.
My stomach went cold.
Ranger murmured, “That’s them.”
Ghost typed something one-handed, eyes never leaving the yard.
Brutus pointed at the men. “You wanna hit ‘em now?”
“No,” Ranger said. “We’re blind. We take a swing like that, we don’t see what comes back.”
Charging in got you killed.
We weren’t here to die.
We were here to learn.
One of the workers paused mid-step and glanced at his phone. Not casual. Sharp. Like he’d just gotten a ping he didn’t expect.
He didn’t look back toward the dock.
He looked outward.
Toward the tree line.
The hair on the back of my neck lifted.
Ghost’s mask angled. “Movement off the perimeter,” he murmured. Not guessing. Calling it.
I still didn’t see it. Not at first.
Ranger tapped Smoke’s harness twice.
The dog shifted instantly, nose dropping, body low. Ranger followed without a word. Brutus peeled off to flank, moving heavy and quiet, using the stacked crates for cover.
I stayed with Ghost, eyes scanning the dark beyond the yard.
“There,” Ghost said. Barely audible.
A shape moved along the edge of the pines. Not standing still. Sliding from shadow to shadow. Hood up. Phone raised briefly and then gone.
Not security. Not staff. Not some random hiker that was lost.
He was counter-surveillance. A lookout.
The moment Brutus broke cover, the figure bolted.
Brutus hit him like a freight train, shoulder driving into his ribs and slamming him into the dirt hard enough to knock the wind clean out of him. The guy wheezed, hands scrambling, panic setting in before he could even think about fighting back.
Ranger was on him immediately, knee between his shoulder blades, zip-ties snapping tight around his wrists.
That was when Smoke arrived.
Not charging.
Not barking.
Just appearing.
Low growl rolling out of his chest as he circled, teeth flashing inches from the man’s face. Controlled. Waiting.
The guy froze.
“Easy,” Ranger murmured to Smoke, not pulling him back. Just letting the man hear how close that line was.
I reached into his pockets and grabbed his phone.
The screen lit up. I quickly held it in front of the lookouts face and smiled when the password unlocked.
“That’s why you don’t use your Face ID fucker,” Ghost said lowly.
I quickly scanned through the phone’s recent text messages. The latest one had an image sent that made my blood run cold.
It was our clubhouse gate. Taken from the woods. I looked at the date that the image was taken and tightened my jaw when I realized it was earlier this evening.
Ghost leaned in. “Zoom.”
I did.
There, blurred through the upstairs window, was a smear of red.
Amanda.
This wasn’t just surveillance. This was a threat.
The man felt the shift before we said a word.
Brutus crouched beside him and drove a fist into his gut that was hard and precise. Not rage. Brutus hadn’t gotten to that point yet and this fucker probably wouldn’t survive if he did.
The guy gagged, body curling.
“Who’s your handler?” Ranger asked calmly.
Silence.
Smoke let out a bark next to Ranger. “Hold,” Ranger said deeply without taking his eyes off the lookout. Smoke let out a low growl and sat next to Ranger’s legs.
Brutus grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him halfway upright, then slammed him back down.
“You don’t get to decide when this gets worse,” Brutus said. “We do.”
The man sucked in a broken breath. “I—I don’t know names.”
Ghost grabbed the phone from my hand. “Text went out five minutes ago.”
“To who?” I asked.
The guy shook his head frantically. “The phone is a burner. I just send.”
Brutus reached his arm up and punched the guy in the face. I heard the telltale sign of his nose breaking as blood started to rush down his face.
“Pressure,” Ranger said and Smoke stood up and stepped closer letting out another low growl.
The man swallowed, eyes flicking to Smoke like he was measuring his odds. “He wanted confirmation,” he said. “He doesn’t like loose ends.”
Amanda’s face flashed through my head. Her face was pale, shaken, standing on the porch wrapped in my hoodie like it was armor. The way her hands had trembled when she grabbed my vest. The way her eyes had searched mine like she needed to know I was real.
Heat raced through my body and up my neck. My fists clenched, knuckles burning. Ending him would be easy. Too easy. One second of pressure and this threat would stop breathing.
Ranger’s voice cut sharp. “Wreck.”
I stopped.
Ghost straightened. “This wasn’t scouting,” he said quietly. “It was a message.”
Ranger nodded. “And if we kill him—”
“They know we heard it,” Ghost finished.
Ranger jerked his chin. “Strip him. Phone stays.”
We dragged the man deeper into the trees, zip-tied him to a trunk, and stepped back.
Smoke stayed planted in front of him, growling low until Ranger gave a sharp hand signal.
Only then did the dog move.
We left the man alive. Alive on purpose. Killing him would’ve been so easy. But letting him live would hurt them longer.
Smoke jumped back into the truck’s rear seat without being told. Ghost slid behind the wheel. Ranger mounted his bike. Brutus revved his, eager for violence he didn’t get to deliver.
I stared at the warehouse yard one second too long. At the disaster relief logos. At the men moving pallets full of lies.
If they had Amanda’s face on a list…
I was going to kill every last one of them.
Ranger looked over. “Wreck. Mount up.”
I climbed onto my bike and gunned the engine harder than I meant to.
We rode back in silence.
Not the easy kind.
The kind that crackled like a fuse running out.
Every bump in the road, every stretch of dark forest, my jaw clenched tighter. All I could see was that blurred red shape behind glass.
By the time the compound lights came into view through the trees, something inside me had already decided.
If the ring wanted a fight, they’d pick the wrong fucking club.
And the wrong woman.
We pulled up to the gate and Ranger signaled once and the gate rolled open.
We slid inside fast, engines cut the second we cleared the fence line.
I was off my bike before it fully settled. Boots hit dirt. My eyes went straight to the upstairs window.
The curtains shifted.
A second later, Amanda appeared at the top of the porch steps, wrapped in a hoodie too big for her. Smoke broke from Ranger and bounded toward her like he’d been gone for days instead of hours.
Amanda dropped to her knees and grabbed him, burying her face in his fur.
My chest loosened one notch.
Then she looked up and saw my face.
And whatever was on it made her go still.
“What happened?” she asked, voice steady even though her shoulders were tight.
I started toward her, but Ranger’s hand caught my vest.
“Let me clear first,” he said.
His eyes swept the yard. The porch. The fence line. The dark beyond it.
Only when he nodded did he let go.
I crossed the last few feet and stopped in front of Amanda. Smoke pressed against her leg, alert but quiet.
“We found eyes,” I said.
Her throat worked. “On the warehouse?”
“On us,” Brutus said behind me.
That landed harder.
Ghost stepped in without a sound, holding the lookouts phone. He angled it so she could see without taking it. The screen showed a photo. Grainy. Slightly blurred.
Our gate.
The fence.
The upstairs window.
Amanda’s face.
For a second, she didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Like her brain stalled before the meaning could catch up.
Then her breath hitched.
Someone had been here.
Watching.
Close enough to see her through glass.
Her hand lifted halfway, then dropped back to her side.
“Someone was outside,” she said quietly. Not a question.
“Yeah,” I said. “He must have taken it earlier. When we caught him, he was at the warehouse watching the lane. The picture was sent before we grabbed him.”
Her knees didn’t buckle this time. She just went still, too still, like her body had locked everything down at once.
Smoke growled low, sensing the shift in her heartrate.
“Was he taking pictures of the compound or just me?” she asked.
Ghost turned the phone back towards him and opened up the picture app. “The pictures taken were only of the front gate. So they wanted confirmation.”
“Confirmation of what?” she asked, sharper now.
Ranger answered. “Where you were.”
That did it.
It wasn’t panic.
It wasn’t collapse.
It was the moment she understood she wasn’t a coincidence.
She was a target.
Brutus spat into the dirt. “He called you unfinished business.”
Amanda’s fingers curled into my vest.
I leaned down, voice low. “Look at me.”
Her eyes lifted. Present. Focused. Scared, but here.
“You’re inside the fence,” I said. “They didn’t touch you.”
“Yet,” she said.
The clubhouse door opened.
Cap stepped onto the porch already armed, eyes sweeping the yard before landing on her.
Ranger briefed him fast. “Lookout at the warehouse. Burner phone. Photo of our compound and Amanda sent five minutes before we intercepted him. They’re tracking lanes. Confirming targets.”
Cap’s jaw set.
“Perimeter doubles,” he said. “Now.”
Men moved immediately.
He looked at Amanda. “Just like Ariel, you are never alone again.”
Then to me. “Wrecker’s your shadow.”
My grip tightened around her.
Cap turned back to Ranger. “Status?”
“Lookout’s restrained at the warehouse tree line,” Ranger said. “Alive. No phone.”
Cap nodded once. “Good. Let them wonder why.”
Ghost’s voice cut in quietly. “This wasn’t scouting.”
Cap didn’t look away from the dark beyond the fence. “No.”
“It was a message,” Ghost finished.
Cap’s mouth curved into something sharp. “Then we answer it.”
Amanda’s hand tightened in my vest.
“They know my face,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “And now they know who stands in front of you.”