Chapter 2 Kill Order #3
I know exactly how that sounds. I know exactly what I look like in the dark gap between buildings—wet, bleeding, stolen evidence in my pockets, and Eli’s death between me and the only family I’ve got.
Not innocent.
Just not guilty of that.
Mara folds her arms tighter across herself, not for warmth now. For distance. Her chin is lifted, but I can see the pulse beating hard in her throat. “You expect me to go with you after that?”
“No,” I say.
That surprises her enough to show.
“I expect you to decide fast,” I add. “Because they’re coming.”
As if the night wants to prove me right, an engine growls somewhere beyond the machine yard. Then another. Lower. Heavier. Familiar enough that my body identifies the sound before my mind does.
Harleys.
Multiple.
Closing.
Mara hears it too. Her head turns toward the far end of the alley, where rain beads along the chain-link fence under the weak glow of a security lamp.
“Your people,” she says, quieter this time.
Not mocking. Not even angry.
Just afraid.
The machine yard beyond is mostly shadow—stacked pallets, a dead forklift, rusted drums collecting rain. But the street past it is open in strips between warehouse walls, and that’s where I catch the first sweep of white.
Headlights.
Then another.
Then three more.
Moving.
Slow and deliberate, like predators pacing the edge of a trap they already trust.
My jaw tightens.
They’re not just searching. They’re tightening lanes, covering exits, boxing the block the way I would if I were hunting somebody who knows the neighborhood and fights ugly when cornered.
Jax didn’t send amateurs.
Of course he didn’t.
Mara comes up beside me before I can stop her. She keeps just out of reach, like proximity itself has become suspect. Smart woman. The moment her gaze catches the moving lights, all the color drains from her face.
Club bikes.
Iron Titans.
Closing in.
For one ugly second, memory collides with what I’m seeing now.
Nights riding out in formation. Engines rumbling under me like a second pulse.
Brotherhood at my back. Trust so absolute it felt physical.
We used to own streets like this. Used to move through dark industrial blocks with men stepping aside because they knew what it meant when our colors rolled through.
Now those same lights look like a funeral procession coming for me.
Mara whispers, “How many?”
I count the sweeps, the engine notes, the staggered spacing. “At least four. Maybe six.”
“Can we outrun them?”
Not from here. Not if they already have the front and one side sealed. The bike is too far. The alley is too exposed. On foot with a wounded side and a civilian witness? Bad odds.
I don’t tell her any of that.
Instead I scan higher, to the rooflines, the drainage ladders, the narrow cut between our building and the next. Possible routes break apart and rebuild in my head automatically. Up. Across. Down through the storage lofts if the old access bridge still holds.
Not good.
Better than staying.
Another wash of headlights slices through the wall, brighter this time, followed by the unmistakable crunch of tires over gravel as one bike turns into the yard entrance.
Too close.
Mara hears it and steps back on instinct.
Her shoulder brushes mine for half a second before she catches herself and jerks away.
But the contact is enough—warm, real, alive.
A reminder that this woman is here because she got dragged into my mess, and every choice I make in the next minute decides whether she survives it.
She looks up at me, anger and fear and hard intelligence all fighting for space in her eyes. “You said if they saw me with you, I became part of the problem.”
“Yes.”
“So tell me straight.” Her voice is thin with adrenaline but steady enough to matter. “If they catch us, do I get questioned—or buried?”
The honest answer is the only useful one left.
“Depends which brother finds you first.”
She closes her eyes once. Opens them sharper. “That bad.”
“Worse.”
A bike engine cuts off. Then another.
Boots hit wet gravel.
The headlights keep moving, skating across the cracks in the corrugated wall in hard white ribbons. One beam catches the edge of the recessed service door and flares, bright enough that I pull Mara back on pure reflex. She stiffens under my hand but doesn’t fight this time.
Voices drift through the rain. Not clear words at first. Just tone. Men spreading out. Confident. Armed.
Then one of them says my name.
Not shouted.
Called.
The way you’d call a dog you mean to put down.
Something cold slides under my ribs.
Mara hears it too. Her fingers curl once at her sides, empty and furious. “Tell me we have a plan.”
I look at the moving light, the narrowing angles, the yard filling with men who used to call me brother.
Then I look out from the recess into the narrow lane ahead. Stacked pallets. Broken glass. One dark path between buildings before the next sweep of lights finds us.
Ugly route. Only route.
“We go now,” I say.
Before she can ask what that means, I lock my hand around her wrist and drag her out of cover and into the dark.