Bedrock's Rage (Mountain Reapers MC #28)

Chapter One

The dealer's scream echoed off the concrete walls of the abandoned gas station, swallowed by the Appalachian darkness pressing in from all sides.

Bedrock didn't flinch. Didn't hurry. Just applied steady pressure until the radius gave way with a wet snap that cut the scream short, leaving only ragged whimpering in its wake.

"That's one," he said, his voice flat as bedrock itself. "You got two arms. Math says you're halfway to understanding."

The dealer—some tweaker piece of shit named Pruitt who thought distance from the compound meant distance from consequences—sagged against Slag's grip.

Blood and snot streaked his face, tears cutting channels through the grime.

Twenty-three years old, maybe. Old enough to know better.

Young enough to think he was invincible.

Wasn't nobody invincible in Reaper territory.

"I didn't know," Pruitt gasped. "Swear to God, I didn't know this was your—"

"Slag." Bedrock didn't raise his voice. Never needed to.

Slag shifted his grip, pinning the dealer's other arm against the rusted pump housing. The VP's face showed nothing—military discipline carved into features that had seen worse in Afghanistan and found it wanting compared to what corporate America did to his hometown when he came home.

"Please." Pruitt's voice cracked on the word. "Please, man, I'll leave. Tonight. You'll never see me again."

Bedrock studied him the way he'd once studied rock faces underground, reading the pressure points, the fault lines, the places where things would give if you pushed right.

Fourteen years in the mines had taught him patience.

Taught him that rushing got people killed.

Taught him that some collapses couldn't be prevented, only managed.

This wasn't a collapse. This was pest control.

"You came into our territory," Bedrock said, stepping closer. His boots crunched on broken glass, and Pruitt flinched like the sound was a gunshot. "Selling pills to our people. Kids in Harlan. Families we protect."

"It wasn't—I was just—"

"You know what pills did to my brother?"

Pruitt's mouth opened. Closed. Whatever excuse he'd been building died in his throat as he finally—finally—read the situation correctly.

"I don't give speeches," Bedrock continued. "Don't care about your reasons. Your supplier. Your sad story. I care about one thing."

He grabbed Pruitt's remaining good arm, felt the dealer's whole body seize with anticipation of what was coming.

"You understanding that Reaper territory is closed to your kind."

The second break was cleaner than the first. Practice made perfect, his old man used to say. Joseph Pennington, who died in a collapse that the company called unavoidable and the miners called murder. Third generation to go underground. Third generation to never come back up.

Bedrock was fourth generation. He'd been smarter. Got out before the mountain took him too.

Now he just took other people.

"Drag him to his truck," he told Slag. "Make sure he can drive. Barely."

Slag hauled Pruitt up like the man weighed nothing, ignoring the sobbing and the pleas and the blood dripping from where compound fractures had turned forearms into angles God never intended. The VP had done two tours overseas. A crying drug dealer didn't even register.

Bedrock watched them go, then crouched to examine the pills scattered across the concrete.

Oxy. Fentanyl. The same poison that had taken Danny four years ago, his little brother nodding off on a borrowed couch and never waking up because the mines closed and the work disappeared and the pills were the only thing that made the nothing feel like something.

He crushed them under his boot. Ground them into powder and dust and nothing.

Behind him, an engine coughed to life. Headlights swept across the abandoned pumps, illuminating rust and decay and the blood smears Pruitt had left during his crawl toward salvation.

The truck fishtailed on gravel, then found the road and disappeared into the darkness, taillights swallowed by the mountain like everything else that didn't belong.

Bedrock pulled out his phone. "Done."

"Clean?" Reaper's voice came through flat and businesslike. President didn't waste words any more than Bedrock did.

"He'll spread the message. Both arms, no permanent damage except to his pride and his typing speed."

A grunt that might have been approval. "Get back to compound. Slag's got the cleanup."

"Copy."

The ride back took forty minutes through switchbacks that would kill anyone who didn't know them by heart.

Bedrock had been riding these roads for six years now, since the last mine closed and took the final piece of his old life with it.

Since he'd found the Reapers—or they'd found him—and discovered that the same skills that kept men alive underground kept them alive in other ways too.

The compound emerged from the mist like a fortress, which was exactly what it was. Former coal company headquarters converted into clubhouse, garage, and home for thirty-odd brothers who'd all lost something to corporate greed and found something else in chrome and leather and brotherhood.

Bedrock pulled into the garage, killed the engine, and sat for a moment in the quiet.

His knuckles throbbed. There'd be bruising by morning, purple and green and ugly against his scarred hands.

Fourteen years of rock and equipment had left those hands looking like relief maps of hard living.

Tonight's work was just another ridge on the terrain.

The clubhouse was loud when he pushed through the doors. Saturday night meant prospects behind the bar, old ladies scattered among the tables, brothers playing pool and talking shit and living the life they'd carved out of corporate America's corpse.

He headed for the washroom first. The evidence came off his knuckles in pink swirls that circled the drain and disappeared. He'd done worse. Hell, he'd done worse this month. But something about tonight felt heavier than usual.

Danny would have been thirty next week. Thirty years old, probably still working some shit job if the mines hadn't closed. Probably still struggling. But alive. Breathing.

Bedrock dried his hands and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. Thirty-eight years old. Six-two, miner's build gone solid from years of enforcement work instead of digging. Eyes that had seen tunnel collapses and overdoses and every shade of loss these hollers could offer.

Fourth generation. Last of his line.

Nothing left to lose except the brothers out there who'd become the only family he had.

He found Slag at the bar when he came out, the VP already three fingers into a whiskey that caught the dim light like liquid amber.

"Pruitt make it out?"

"Drove himself to the hospital in Pikeville. Called ahead to make sure someone met him who understood the situation." Slag took a drink. "He won't be back."

Bedrock signaled the prospect for a beer, settled onto the stool next to Slag, and let the noise of the clubhouse wash over him.

Laughter from the pool tables. Switchback telling some bullshit story about a run that got more dangerous every time he told it.

Beth talking to Rachel near the kitchen, the schoolteacher and the nurse comparing notes on something that made them both laugh.

Normal Saturday night. Normal life, if you didn't count the blood still drying under his fingernails.

"You good?" Slag asked, not looking at him.

"Always."

"That's not what I asked."

Bedrock took a long pull of his beer. The silence stretched between them, comfortable in the way of men who'd bled together enough times that words became optional.

"Danny's birthday coming up," he finally said.

Slag nodded. Didn't offer condolences or platitudes. Just acknowledged the weight and let it sit between them like another brother at the bar.

"You need anything," the VP said, "you know where to find me."

"I know."

Slag finished his whiskey, clapped Bedrock on the shoulder, and headed toward Rachel, his old lady lighting up at his approach in a way that still surprised Bedrock every time he saw it.

Love, real and earned and lasting—something Slag had found after the war took everything except his ability to serve something bigger than himself.

Bedrock watched them together. Watched the other old ladies with their men, the easy intimacy of couples who'd survived enough chaos to appreciate the quiet moments.

Beth curled against Sledge's massive frame.

Casey giving Switchback shit about something while he grinned like an idiot.

Hannah and Timber in a corner booth, her wildlife rehabilitation reports spread across the table while he pointed at something that made her laugh.

Family. The kind you chose when blood ran out.

He drained his beer and signaled for another, settling into the waiting that defined most of his life now. Waiting for the next job. The next threat. The next chance to prove that this life hadn't broken him the way it broke his father and grandfather and brother.

The noise of the clubhouse washed over him, and Bedrock let himself become part of it, solid and immovable as his name suggested.

Whatever came next, he'd handle it.

He always did.