11. Falcon
Falcon
The compound feels wrong after Cara leaves.
It’s not quiet, exactly, the Saint’s Outlaws are never quiet for long, but the noise has changed it’s frequency.
Brothers move between the clubhouse, the garage, and the damaged fence without the banter that usually carries them through a bad night, prospects are carrying equipment where they're told, radios are crackling with updates from the hospital and the perimeter every few minutes.
Somebody's already taken Carrot's bike off the rack outside the garage and wheeled it into the back bay, out of sight, because nobody could stand looking at it parked where he left it.
I stand in the middle of the yard longer than I should.
That's probably the first problem. Usually, I move first and think later.
Tonight every instinct I've got is pulling me in a different direction.
Go after Cara. Check on Emily. Find the men who hit the house.
Do something, anything, that isn't standing here with a dead nineteen-year-old's blood still on my jeans.
Instead, I stay where I am, because for once I understand that movement isn't automatically useful, and because I'm not sure my legs would take me anywhere that mattered.
Cara said she was done, not forever. That should help, but it doesn't, because she was starting to trust me, and I made the exact decision she was afraid I'd make, and this time it didn't just cost trust. It cost a name I taught to ride toward gunfire because I told him showing up mattered more than anything else.
Boots on gravel behind me. I know who it is before he speaks.
Vulture stops beside me and remains silent.
That’s one of the reasons he has kept this club standing for as long as he has. He knows when words will help and when they’ll only get in the way.
“You planning to stand here all day?” he asks eventually.
“Maybe,” I reply.
“Is it useful?” Vulture asks.
“No,” I admit.
“Then you probably shouldn’t,” he says.
I glance at him. “Did you come out here to give me another motivational speech?”
“No,” Vulture answers.
There’s no humour in his voice this time.
“Hustler is with Knox,” he continues. “He has cuts from the glass and bruised ribs, but his mouth is working fine.”
“Good,” I say, releasing a little of the tension in my chest.
Vulture doesn’t say anything about Carrot.
He doesn’t need to.
Carrot’s death sits in the space between us, the way a body remains in a room long after someone has carried it away.
“The police picked up the man you left at the industrial yard,” Vulture tells me. “He has a gunshot wound to the leg and a false identity. He’s in the hospital under guard.”
“What about the SUV?” I ask.
“Rook thinks it’s the same one that’s been watching the south road,” Vulture replies.
That doesn't surprise me. Vulture looks toward the damaged north fence. "Condor's pulling everything he can. Sterling's talking to the warehouse contact about how those men got Rachel's prescription route."
I frown as I work through the timeline. “That’s what bothers me too. The ambush wasn’t improvised. They knew exactly where I was going. They could have followed us from the pharmacy.”
“They could have,” Vulture agrees.
“But they attacked the compound at the same time,” I point out.
“It looks that way,” he says.
Cold settles in my stomach. “It was coordinated.”
“Maybe,” Vulture replies.
For once, neither of us has enough humour left to make a joke about the word.
“Someone knew we would leave,” I say.
“Maybe,” he repeats.
Then his expression hardens. “Do you want to tell me why you ignored a direct order?”
There’s no warm-up, he goes straight for the throat.
I look away. “The SUV boxed us in near traffic. There was a minivan beside us with kids in the back. I moved the fight away from the civilians.”
“You did that after I ordered you to hold the route,” Vulture reminds me.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Do you have an excuse?” he asks.
“No,” I answer.
"Good, saves time." He doesn't say it cruelly. He says it like a man who's already decided how this ends and doesn't see the point in drawing it out.
"You think I don't know I fucked up?" I say anyway, because some part of me still wants the fight instead of the verdict.
"I think knowing's the easiest part." The words land harder than I want them to. "Carrot knew you were on that road because he heard it over the same channel I did. He made his own call too. Doesn't make yours smaller."
I don’t have an answer for him, because there isn’t one.
“Church,” Vulture says. “Ten minutes.”
“Now?” I ask.
“Yes, now,” he replies.
“Emily is in the hospital,” I remind him.
“And this club is still standing because half your brothers were where they were supposed to be,” Vulture says.
My gaze shifts toward the women’s house.
Vulture notices. “Cara isn’t there.”
“I know,” I reply.
“Are you going to chase after her?” he asks.
“No,” I answer.
His eyebrows rise. There’s no lightness or teasing in his expression this time.
“Good,” Vulture says.
He heads for the clubhouse, and I follow because there's nowhere else useful to be.
Church fills up slowly tonight, there’s none of the usual noise ahead of it. Somebody's left one chair at the end of the table empty rather than filling the gap, and I understand why the second I see it. Nobody's stupid enough to sit in it.
Hustler's not here, Knox kept him back. Digger sits near the far end with yesterday's stitches still visible, staring at the empty chair like it might explain itself if he looks long enough.
Vulture takes his seat, and I sit on his right out of habit, and I can feel every man at the table deciding whether that's still where I belong.
"Status," Vulture says.
Ice Pick answers first. "North breach came through the old utility section. The fence was cut behind the vegetation, they knew exactly where the camera gaps were."
Condor turns his laptop. "The feed was jammed for two minutes forty-eight seconds. The same equipment as the outage at the women's house before."
Rook drops a photo on the table. "Tire tracks north of the road. Two vehicles."
Sterling opens a folder on the table. “There’s one more thing. Rachel’s prescription transfer request entered the system at eight twenty-seven this morning. The second branch location was logged at eight forty-two. Somebody accessed the record at eight forty-nine.”
Every eye in the room turns toward him.
“Who accessed it?” I ask.
“An employee account,” Sterling answers. “The employee wasn’t scheduled to work today.”
“Was the account hacked?” Zip asks.
“Either hacked or compromised,” Sterling replies.
Vulture taps a finger on the table. "So, they knew Falcon was leaving?"
"Not necessarily," Sterling says. "They knew somebody from the club would have to make the pickup."
Harrier sits back, but there’s none of his usual grin in it. "They set the road up before they even knew who'd take it."
I feel sick, because that's worse, not better. Rachel needed her medication, or thought she did because I decided she did, and they used that as an opening either way. "The women were the primary target," I say.
The room goes quiet.
"The ambush kept me and Hustler off the property," I say. "They didn't need to know it'd be me. They just needed officers gone."
Zip nods slowly. "And once they saw it was you, that was a bonus."
Ice Pick's jaw hardens. "So, we've got somebody organized enough to monitor medical records, jam cameras, coordinate two strike teams, and know our blind spots."
"Which means this goes past whatever was left of Vance," Rook says.
I look around the table. "They're not reacting to what we did. They're protecting what's still standing."
Condor's already typing. "I can check whether the feeder companies have any financial link to the pharmacy provider."
Vulture lets the silence sit a second before he brings it back to me. "Now the other thing."
Nobody needs it clarified. I sit up straighter. Vulture looks around the table before turning his attention back to me.
“My VP ignored a direct order during an active threat,” he says, making sure every brother hears him. “A prospect is dead because of that decision.”
Hearing it stated so plainly in front of every man who knew Carrot is worse than I allowed myself to imagine.
“I ignored the order,” I admit. “Carrot is dead.”
Vulture holds my gaze. “Tell the table why you went back.”
“I believed moving the shooters away from the civilians was the right call,” I explain.
“Was it?” he asks.
“No,” I answer.
Vulture leans forward. “Why not?”
I look around at every man at this table.
Because I didn't trust them to get there in time.
Because some part of me still believes protecting everyone means being the one closest to the bullet, and because Knox told me Rachel would rather not wait, and rather not was never a reason good enough to disobey a stand-down order, and I knew that when I did it.
"I made the decision alone," I say. "I had orders.
, my brothers were already moving. I knew backup was coming and I decided I knew better anyway.
And when Carrot heard I was in trouble, he made the same kind of call I did.
He broke off from the group to get there faster because I've spent months telling every prospect in this club that showing up is the only thing that matters, and he believed me. "
Nobody says anything. Digger's staring at the table now instead of the empty chair.
"The public road was a bad position, that part was true," I go on, because stopping now would be its own kind of cowardice.
"What I should've done was hold, hand the club the problem, let us solve it together.
I didn't. And it's not the SUVs that got Carrot killed.
It's every choice I made in the twenty minutes before that put him in a position to think dying for me was the job. "
Ice Pick's jaw works once, and he doesn't argue with any of it.
Vulture doesn't either. He just looks at me a long moment, and then he says the word. "Patch."