Chapter 16
AXLE
O ur destination was fifteen miles past the last place anyone sensible would want to stop.
As we neared the property, the road narrowed and the scrub thickened into a tangle of pine and saw palmetto.
We rolled in silent—four bikes, lights killed, and engines idled down to a purr.
The moon threw silver across our tanks, and the night air carried a bite of iron and damp concrete.
We cut our engines and coasted the last fifty yards until the tree line swallowed the busted chain-link fence. Beyond it was a small concrete building. No signage or exterior cameras were visible. A single rusted steel door and a low concrete lip suggested a stairwell beneath.
The decommissioned server farm had the charm of a grave. Somewhere under our boots, a generator hummed—old, steady, and tired.
Kane swung off his bike first, boots soundless on the packed sand. Like the rest of us, he wore black—dark tee, dark jeans, and his cut snug to his back. Edge joined him, flipping his knife open and shut as he looked around. It was a tic instead of a threat.
“Think I’ll get to kill a motherfucker tonight?” he drawled.
Nitro’s mouth tugged in that crooked line he got when he wanted someone to give him a reason to be dangerous.
I adjusted my gloves as my mind wandered— ridiculous timing —to Ashlynn’s swollen mouth when she’d fallen asleep this afternoon after one of our many rounds of celebrating.
The way she’d murmured my name against my throat before her breathing leveled out would probably live in my bones until I died.
My woman. My baby.
For fuck’s sake. Focus, Novak.
Edge leaned in to examine the keyed pad beside the steel door and slid a pick from a leather sleeve. Jax had texted the manufacturer earlier—third-party, installed by Helix when they still claimed the place. Not networked. Local power only.
Nitro snorted softly. “How ’bout I ask it nice first?”
Wanting to blow shit up right off the bat wasn’t surprising coming from our sergeant at arms. Nitro was an explosives expert, which was how he’d gotten his road name. He could be unpredictable and volatile.
“You blow that latch,” Kane murmured, “and the whole fucking county’s gonna hear the echo. Let him work.”
Nitro shrugged, clearly disappointed, but accepting the necessity of going in quietly.
I eased to the corner, and my gaze swept around. The pines rustled in the wind. An owl stitched a dark line from one tree to another. I rolled my shoulders once, cleared my mind, let my breath sink low, and listened for anything besides the generator and our heartbeats.
Edge got the pad to chirp in under thirty seconds.
The lock clicked, and Kane gestured for me to go first. My hand landed on the steel, pressed, and the door sighed inward on old hinges that hadn’t been properly oiled since before I could walk, the screech making me wince.
It wasn’t exactly helping us to remain stealth.
The hot, muggy August air shifted to cool and damp as we entered the concrete stairwell. LEDs under wire cages lined the walls every third step, most were burned out, but a few were dim and flickering. Stale air lifted up. This place would make a killing as the set of a horror flick.
I went first, gun low, shoulders angled so the stair’s inner curve didn’t crowd my swing.
At the bottom, the room opened, and the hum got louder.
Rows of server racks filled a bay behind a mesh cage.
Half the machines were gutted, and the ones still alive showed their age in the blink pattern—slow and irregular, not the crisp rhythm of modern stacks.
To the right, a narrow corridor cut toward the back of the bunker.
Kane flicked two fingers at Nitro, who followed the cage’s mesh fence line to check the far door. Edge slid along the racks, eyes cutting through the gaps. I took the corridor.
The third door on the left had been jimmy-barred from the inside.
Someone had screwed a steel plate across the frame and then lag-bolted it to the wall, a poor man’s reinforcement.
I rapped my knuckles lightly—once, twice—but the hum swallowed the sound.
I was about to try again when a voice, dry and hoarse, came from behind the steel.
“No deliveries.” The words scraped like a person who hadn’t spoken in a long time. “No visitors. No tours.”
Edge had drifted up behind me. He mouthed Leek ?
I gave him a dry glance and whispered, “No. A fucking raccoon with an attitude.”
He winked and flipped his knife open and shut. “Long as I get to kill something…never said it had to be human.”
Sometimes I wasn’t quite sure when the dude was joking.
Kane’s voice was calm and gravelly. “Elias Leek,” he said through the door, not quite loud, but not bothering with pretend courtesy. “Open it.”
Silence. Then metal rasped, a chain being unhooked, and a bolt slid. The steel plate gave an inch, and the door cracked just enough for a single bloodshot eye to peek out.
He was gaunt and dirty, with patchy stubble as if he’d been shaving without a mirror.
The door widened another inch, and behind him, I caught sight of a thin mattress on the floor, a laptop on a milk crate, and a tangle of coax cable coiled like a sleeping snake.
Then we were staring at the muzzle of a pistol.
The cheap polymer and thirty-round stick mag were notched toward my chest.
“Back up,” he croaked. “If she sent you, you can tell her she’s already too late.”
Nitro appeared at my flank—one breath, he wasn’t there, and the next, he was. Neither Kane nor Edge moved at all. The fastest way to spook a cornered animal was to look like you wanted it to run.
“She?” I used a nonchalant tone as if we were trading the weather. “Bellatrix Creed?”
His eyes narrowed, sweeping over us, and his grip wobbled. “You work for her or the Broken Skulls. Tell me and see if it keeps you alive.”
“Not a chance.” I kept my weapon pointed at the floor, palm open on the frame. “We’re not hers or Skulls. We’re Redline Kings. Came to get you out, not put you in the fucking ground.”
“Prove it,” he demanded, and though the gun shook, his voice gathered a hard vein underneath. This was a man trying to sound like he could still decide his own ending.
I slid a look at Kane. He gave the slightest nod.
“We’re here because of Ashlynn.”
He could hear the truth in my voice.
The barrel dipped a fraction. That bloodshot eye went wide.
“Ashlynn?” He sucked air like he’d dropped something heavy on his foot. “She’s?—”
“Alive,” I confirmed. “And safe.”
The gun stuttered lower, then lifted again like habit was heavier than hope.
“I didn’t…I never meant—” A swallow worked down his dry throat, and he blinked so hard that he swayed on his feet.
We didn’t want to spook him anymore, so both Nitro and I slid our pistols into their holsters, and Edge put away his knife.
The door scraped as Elias opened it. He stepped into the corridor just enough for the fluorescent light to show a haggard man in an overwashed T-shirt, jeans that had seen too many days, and bare feet gone gray with dust. A lanyard hung around his neck with a small black fob at the end, scuffed, edges worn—the kind of hardware key a man wore to bed when he didn’t trust his surroundings.
Kane’s voice was quiet steel. “Gun, Elias.”
He was making it clear that nothing else would be said or done until we were no longer being threatened.
Elias looked at the pistol like he’d forgotten it, then placed it on the floor with deliberate care and nudged it toward Nitro with his toe. Nitro scooped it up, weighed it with a face that said tragic, then cleared the chamber and pocketed the mag.
Elias sagged back against the jamb, both hands braced behind him like the door was the only thing keeping him vertical.
“Start at the top.” Edge’s voice was almost gentle, which is a trick if you know him. “Who’s the she you’re terrified of? How did we get here? And if I like the answers, you get shoes and something hot that isn’t ninety-day-old coffee.”
“Bellatrix Creed,” he spat, the name like a pitch-black pit he couldn’t see the bottom of.
“Chief compliance on paper. Functionally? Queen of rot. She built a private market out of fear.” He pushed off the jamb and gestured with two fingers at the humming racks.
“They call it The Ledger because this country loves a polite lie. It cataloged weaknesses. Debts, secrets, pressure points. The access was supposed to be ring-fenced. Legal would call it liability control. Internal language. Guardrails. She loved that word. Guardrails.” His laugh went thin, all edges.
“What she built were rails for a cattle chute.”
Nitro had stepped just inside the room. He set a fallen office chair upright with a toe, then dropped onto it, elbows on knees, eyes steady on Elias. Combat-patient—which was Nitro’s version of a hug. “How does a ledger turn into a blackmail factory?”