Chapter 18
Wrecker
Bronc’s truck hit the brakes hard, the belt biting into my collarbone as we skidded to a halt at the back of the Dairyville Dollar King.
I was out before he finished shifting to park.
The parking lot was mostly empty, sun bleaching the paint from the few cars left for the evening shift.
Maddie’s Ford pickup sat by the dumpster, lights off, driver’s side window cracked.
I didn’t want to approach the vehicle. The wolf in me already knew what it meant: prey taken, trail gone cold.
I checked the driver’s seat anyway, hands flat on the door, nose pressed to the glass.
The keys dangled from the ignition. Her purse was on the floor.
Cupholder: Big Gulp, lipstick smudge, quarter-melted ice.
Back seat: Christmas wrapping paper, Target bags, a stuffed unicorn with the tag still on. The door wasn’t even locked.
“She wouldn’t leave it like this,” I said, and the words were a stone in my mouth. Bronc hovered a step behind, scanning the lot, eyes narrowed to slits.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No sign of struggle,” I said, forcing calm. “No blood, no glass, no noise. She either went with them or they took her clean.”
Bronc’s hands were fists. “This is Greenbriar.”
It wasn’t a question. It was what you said when you found a friend’s boots in the yard, but no trace of him anywhere.
It was the old, ugly feeling from four years back—Emma’s hair, caught in a door hinge; Emma’s shoes, found at a truck stop in the panhandle; Emma’s scent, fading off the highway like it had never existed at all.
I slammed the door shut and stalked a slow circle around the truck, head low, letting the wolf take over my senses. There: a faint, sour note, unfamiliar. Someone male. Recent. They’d waited until she was alone, then snatched her quick, silent.
Bronc was already calling the war room. His voice was glass: “They have her. It’s the same as last time. Get everyone in.”
I wanted to punch her truck until the doors fell off.
Instead, I followed him back, heart shaking, fingers burning with the urge to kill.
We drove the back roads to the Iron Valor clubhouse in near silence.
My mind replayed the Emma tape on a loop: the way we played it by the book.
We took it to the Council, knowing that Greenbriar Alpha fuck had taken her after Bronc told him she wasn’t interested in becoming his mate.
The fucking Council “investigation” that turned up nothing.
Then our own investigation that found sweet Emma bound in silver, half starved to death.
She wasn’t the same after. And died three months later.
Greenbriar paid with the death of their Alpha that time. Clearly, that hadn’t been enough. My wolf rattled my ribs, insistent, a thousand-yard snarl inside my chest.
When we turned onto the compound drive, the entire war council was already waiting: Doc, Gunner, Arsenal, Papa, even Pearl’s old sedan at the end of the row.
Half a dozen bikes gleamed under the yellow porch lights.
The clubhouse itself was dark except for the meeting room, where windows glowed like fever eyes.
We filed in. I’d grabbed my club laptop from my office. The table was crowded: maps, coffee mugs, the shotgun always kept within arm’s reach. The air smelled of sweat and gun oil and the faint sweetness of Bronc’s aftershave.
Arsenal spoke first. “Confirmed?”
“Confirmed,” Bronc said. “Wrecker smelled them.”
Papa slid his phone across the table. “Surveillance shows Maddie outside the store at 4:19 p.m., then nothing. No one follows her in. No one follows her out. We checked the tape five times.”
Arsenal’s jaw flexed. “Someone inside her truck?”
“Didn’t see ‘em make entry. Maybe they knew the camera angles,” Gunner said, voice soft as sandpaper. “Makes sense why her truck wound up where it was. No struggle. Just gone.”
“Her purse was on the floorboard, phone still in it.” I told them, rubbing my hand down my face.
I looked at the faces around the table. Every one of us had scars from Greenbriar’s last game. Everyone of us wanted blood.
Bronc said, “Same plan as before. Small team, surgical entry, in and out. We don’t let them see us coming.” He looked at me. “You lead. You remember what worked and what didn’t.”
The war room shifted. My hands stopped shaking. The wolf retreated, replaced by something sharper, colder.
I nodded once.
“Gunner, get ready for your first taste of war. Doc, you’re in backup position. Arsenal, I want your eyes on entry and egress. Papa, you run comms. We’re all on this. All heading out.”
Pearl poked her head in the door, arms crossed, face set in lines of concrete. “Don’t let her die, Bronc,” she said. “She’s not like Emma. She’s not strong that way.”
“I know,” Bronc said. “We’re bringing her home, Ma. Head back to the civic center. That’s where everyone already is.”
We broke to prep.
Thirty minutes: that was all I asked.
In the armory, the lights were cold and blue.
I went down the row of guns, checking weights, stocks, ammo.
I grabbed the Sig Sauer, loaded the magazine, holstered it on my left side.
Backup piece in the boot. Knife on the belt.
Kevlar on, black T-shirt over top. I checked the radio and the comms twice, then once more for luck.
Gave Parker a call to see if she’d talked to Maddie or seen anything on the cams. She hadn’t yet, but was still checking.
The rest of the crew was a symphony of motion. Gunner and Arsenal loaded the bikes with extra mags, hydration packs, blacked-out helmets. Doc was on the phone with his hospital contact, prepping the back end for a wounded return.
I could hear Bronc upstairs talking on the phone to Juliet. His voice was low, but I caught the edge in it: a mix of fear and fury, the kind you only heard in alphas who loved something more than themselves.
Papa found me at the back door, jacket zipped to the throat, helmet under his arm.
“Wrecker,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He looked down, thumbed the strap of his helmet. “Let’s get her. Don’t go full reaper, though. We’ll need you here after.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
He squeezed my shoulder. “You can do this.”
I wanted to believe him.
Outside, the cold bit straight through the shirt, even with the Kevlar. I pulled on my leather jacket. The bikes lined up under the porch light, black and silent. Gunner handed me a comms set and a tiny packet of salt. “For the shakes,” he said. “Never fails.”
I took it, pressed the earpiece in place.
Arsenal came out last, carrying a duffel stuffed with C-4, detonators, wire. “Just in case,” he said.
We loaded up. The engines rumbled to life, low and angry, the sound of half a dozen heartbeats in unison.
Bronc swung up onto his ride, nodded at me. “You ready?”
I pulled on my helmet, the chin strap digging into the scar there. “Let’s ride.”
We peeled out of the compound, rubber screaming on gravel. The sky was bruised purple, the moon a clipped thumbnail. Wind clawed at my face, pulled the breath out of my lungs. The road ahead was a ribbon of black, straight as a gun barrel.
We rode tight, no wasted space, no daylight between the wheels. Every minute counted. Every second was another that Maddie was out there, alone.
The cold air sharpened my senses. Every mile marker was a drumbeat, every sign another reminder of the last time we’d done this and how close it had come to being a funeral ride instead of a rescue.
This time, I wasn’t going to let anyone die.
This time, my wolf wasn’t going to be in the fight.
This time, the man was enough.
Forty miles outside Dairyville, the plains stretched dead and bare, the only sound the wind howling through my helmet and the drone of Bronc’s engine just ahead. We cut the line close, staggered formation, the way wolves run in a blizzard—tight, fast, ready to pivot at a single yelp.
My comm crackled. Then her voice: “Wrecker? Wrecker, can you hear me?”
Parker. Her voice was wrong—higher than normal, every syllable flayed open. I nearly wiped out, turning up the volume.
“Parker, talk.”
She was already on a roll: “It’s a fucking setup, do you hear me? They’re not keeping Maddie; they’re returning her—they want to bring her back to Iron Valor. They’re going to blow the fucking clubhouse, Eli. They’re going to blow it up.”
The highway blurred. I fought to keep my bike straight, snapped my head to Bronc and gestured: emergency, pull over.
Bronc peeled off, dirt spraying in a rooster tail as we skidded onto the shoulder.
I killed the engine, voice shaking. “Say again, Parker. They’re bringing Maddie back where?”
“To the fucking gate,” she screamed. “They want to leave her at the gate. But it’s not about Maddie; it’s about the explosion. ‘Big boom.’ They said, ‘Big boom.’ It’s a trap.”
Bronc was off his bike, helmet in one hand, phone in the other. “She’s saying it’s a bomb,” I yelled to him, voice ragged.
His eyes went flat, glacier blue. “Where’s Maddie?”
“Unknown. Parker says she’s being dropped at the gate, but I don’t trust it. We have to go back now. We have to beat them.”
Bronc was already dialing Pearl’s number, face gone gray.
My hands shook as I fumbled with the phone, trying to patch Parker through the helmet mic. “Parker, listen. Do not, I repeat, do not go into the clubhouse. If you’re on the property, get out. Do you hear me?”
Her breath was static in my ear. “I have to check, Eli. If Maddie’s inside—if they fucking locked her in—she’ll die. I have to check.”
“NO,” I said, my voice foreign, thin as paper. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I have to. If she’s down there and I didn’t at least try, and something happened to her, I’d never be able to live with myself.
Look, I know I’m not some hero, but I’m the only one who’s here.
If it were me, I’d hope someone cared enough to try to save me.
” She said—and I hated her for it, loved her for it, both at once.