Chapter 12
Float found the camera at four a.m.
He was running pre-dawn rounds—a habit he'd picked up in the five days since Delaney had started sleeping in his cabin—when something caught his eye on the gate post. A glint of metal that didn't belong. A shape too regular to be natural.
He climbed the post and found it tucked behind the Ridgerunner sign. Small, professional, angled to capture everyone entering and leaving the compound.
They'd been watching. For days, maybe weeks. Mapping movements, cataloging defenses, learning exactly how the club operated.
Float's blood went cold.
He pulled the camera free and sprinted for the lodge.
Still took one look at the device and called church.
Twenty minutes later, every officer was gathered around the table with Float standing at the end, the surveillance camera sitting between them like a bomb.
"How long?" Still's voice was granite.
"No way to know." Proof turned the camera over in his scarred hands. "Same hardware as the rental properties. Same installation style. Professional work."
"Which means they know our patrol routes." Cottonmouth's expression was murder. "They know where we position for defense. They know everything."
"They know where the cameras can see." Float spoke up, and every eye turned to him. "But they don't know where the cameras can't see."
Silence.
"Explain," Still said.
Float grabbed a piece of paper and sketched the compound layout from memory. Gate here. Lodge here. Dock, cabins, garage, armory.
"The camera on the gate post covers the main entrance and the front of the lodge.
But it can't see the river approach, the back of the garage, or the tree line on the eastern perimeter.
" He marked blind spots on his sketch. "If they're planning an assault based on this footage, they'll position their forces to hit where they think we're weakest. Which means we position brothers where the cameras can't see them coming. "
Spillway leaned forward, studying the sketch. "Turn their intel into a trap."
"Exactly."
Still looked at the sketch, then at Float. Something shifted in the President's expression—assessment, maybe. Recognition.
"Cottonmouth, you've got the gate. Let them think the approach is clear, then close the door behind them." Still's voice was calm, controlled. "Spillway, take the dock. Limestone, eastern tree line. Current, you're backup on the river approach."
He turned to Float.
"You spotted this. You understand their angles. Position yourself where they don't expect resistance and wait for my signal."
Float nodded. "What about the lodge?"
"The women and children are already moving to the bunker. The lodge stays defended." Still paused. "Your woman—she any good with that rifle?"
Float thought about the bluff cabin. About Delaney holding her position while men came to take her. About the bodies she'd put down without flinching.
"She's good."
"Then she holds the lodge perimeter with the old ladies who can shoot. Everyone else stays underground until this is over."
Church broke. Brothers scattered to positions.
Float went to find Delaney.
She was already awake when he reached his cabin, pulling on boots with the focused efficiency of someone who'd heard trouble coming.
"What's happening?"
"They're coming." Float grabbed his rifle from the closet, checked the magazine. "Found a camera on the gate post. They've been watching for days, maybe longer. Using the footage to plan an assault."
Delaney's expression didn't change. "How many?"
"Don't know yet. But Still wants you on the lodge perimeter with the women who can shoot."
He expected argument. Got a nod instead.
"Where will you be?"
"Wherever they don't expect me." Float crossed to her and cupped her face in his hands. Five days of waking up next to this woman, and he still couldn't believe she was real. "Stay alive. Whatever happens out there, you stay alive."
"Same goes for you." She kissed him once, hard and fast. "Now go. I'll hold my position."
Float made himself let go. Made himself walk out the door.
The hardest thing he'd ever done.
They came at dawn.
Fourteen men in three vehicles, approaching from the main road exactly where the camera footage said the defenses were weakest. Float watched them from the tree line on the eastern perimeter—a blind spot the cameras couldn't see—and counted heads as they deployed.
Professional formation. Tactical approach. Someone had trained these men, and someone had paid good money for that training.
The lead vehicle was a command van, hanging back while the assault teams moved forward. Float caught a glimpse of the driver through the windshield—heavyset, balding, the same man from Delaney's photos.
Mack Dunaway. The operations manager. The brain that turned voyeurism into profit.
Float keyed his radio. "Dunaway's in the command van. Hanging back from the assault."
Cottonmouth's voice crackled back: "Copy. Let them commit."
The assault teams spread out, approaching the gate from two angles. They moved like men who knew exactly where the defenders would be—because the cameras had told them.
They didn't know about the defenders in the blind spots.
The first team hit the gate and Cottonmouth's crew opened fire. Men scattered, dove for cover, returned fire in controlled bursts. The second team pushed toward the dock, and Spillway's group rose from positions they shouldn't have known about.
Chaos erupted.
Float moved through the tree line, flanking toward the command van. Limestone materialized beside him, face set in grim determination.
"The van," Float said.
Limestone nodded.
They advanced while the compound burned with gunfire.
Dunaway's van was parked fifty yards from the gate, engine running, ready for a quick escape. The man himself was visible through the windshield, watching monitors that showed feeds from cameras the club had found and disabled an hour ago.
He didn't know his eyes had gone blind.
Float circled to the driver's side while Limestone took the passenger. They moved in sync, years of brotherhood coordination making words unnecessary.
The van's door was locked. Float solved that problem with the butt of his rifle, glass exploding inward.
Dunaway screamed and fumbled for a weapon. Too slow. Float hauled him through the broken window and threw him onto the gravel.
"Your assault is failing," Float said, standing over the man who'd mapped the compound's defenses for an attack that had killed no one.
"Your cameras are blind. Your men are dying.
And you're about to answer for every property you wired, every person you watched, every life your operation destroyed. "
Dunaway scrambled backward, blood streaming from cuts on his face. "You don't understand—Garvey will—"
"Garvey's not here." Float advanced on him. "Garvey sent you to die in his place. That's what bosses do with men who become liabilities."
Something broke in Dunaway's expression. The realization that he'd been sacrificed. That the man he served had sent him to a battle designed to fail.
"I have information." Desperation now, voice cracking. "The database—I know where everything is stored. Every file, every piece of footage, every target Garvey's watching. I can give you—"
"You can give me nothing I can't take."
Float shot him in the chest.
Dunaway collapsed backward, body hitting the gravel with a final, meaty thud. His eyes stayed open, staring at the dawn sky he'd never see again.
Limestone appeared at Float's shoulder. "Command van's clear."
"So is he." Float looked down at the body—the man who'd turned surveillance into profit, who'd helped build an operation that threatened everyone it touched. "One down. One to go."
The battle ended in twenty minutes.
Eight of Dunaway's fourteen men died in the compound. Four more were captured, bound and bleeding in the gravel lot near the gate. Two escaped into the hills—Cottonmouth sent brothers after them, but Float knew the odds of finding men in Ozark hollows they didn't know.
No Ridgerunner casualties. Three wounded, none critical.
Float walked through the aftermath with his rifle still warm, looking for the one face that mattered.
He found Delaney on the lodge porch, borrowed camera around her neck, hunting rifle across her back. She was photographing the scene—bodies, brothers, the compound that had survived another assault.
"You're okay." He crossed to her and pulled her against his chest, not caring who saw. "You're okay."
"I'm fine." Her arms came around him, solid and sure. "Two of them tried to flank the lodge. They didn't make it."
Float pulled back to look at her. "You—"
"I did what I had to do." Her eyes were steady, haunted in a way he recognized. "Same as you."
He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. Claiming her in front of the entire compound because he couldn't help himself.
"Dunaway's dead," he said against her lips.
"I know. I heard the shot." She pulled back slightly, studying his face. "Garvey wasn't here."
"No." Float's jaw tightened. "He sent his operations manager to die for him. Stayed safe while his people attacked."
"Which means he's still out there. Still watching."
"Not for long."
Still's voice cut through the morning: "Float. Church. Now."
Float looked at Delaney. She nodded, stepping back.
"Go. I'll be here when you're done."
He made himself walk away, leaving her on the porch with her camera and her rifle and the bodies of men who'd tried to take everything the club had built.
The compound would recover. The wounded would heal. The dead would be disposed of in ways that left no evidence.
But Garvey was still breathing. Still running his operation from wherever he'd hidden while his enforcer died in his place.
Float walked into church with blood on his hands and murder in his heart.
This wasn't over.
Not until the man at the top stopped breathing.