Chapter 18
Church was a closed-door meeting, and Debbie walked through the door anyway.
The chapel was a converted foreman's office at the heart of the compound—heavy oak doors, a long table scarred with cigarette burns and knife marks, chairs for every patched member.
Pitt sat at the head. Hollow to his right.
Gibbet, Parkway, Ash, Shiv down the sides.
Every officer, every enforcer, every man who wore the Steel City Outlaws patch on his back.
Every one of them looked up when she walked in with Jimmy behind her.
"This is a closed meeting," Pitt said. Not hostile—just fact. The President's voice carried the weight of a man whose word was the last word on everything.
"I know." Debbie pulled out an empty chair and sat down.
Jimmy hesitated at the door until she looked at him, and then he sat too.
"Jimmy spent six months inside Sykes's operation.
He knows the warehouse layout, the shift schedules, the routines.
You need what's in his head, and he's not going to give it to someone he doesn't trust."
"He trusts us," Ash said.
"He trusts me. I translate." She looked at Pitt, held his gaze. "I'm not asking to ride along. I'm asking to be in this room while you plan, because my brother's information is the difference between walking in smart and walking in blind."
Silence. The brothers exchanged looks—the wordless communication of men who'd been reading each other for years. Hollow was watching her with an expression that mixed pride and amusement in equal measure, his mouth twitching at the corners.
Pitt looked at Hollow. "Your woman?"
"My woman." Hollow leaned back in his chair. "And she's right. We need Jimmy's intel, and he talks better when she's here."
Pitt studied Debbie for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and turned to Jimmy.
"Talk."
Jimmy talked.
He was nervous at first—voice thin, hands fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. Debbie put her hand on his arm and he steadied, the way he always did when she anchored him. Then the information started flowing, and the brothers leaned in.
The main warehouse sat in the Mon Valley industrial corridor, a converted manufacturing building with a loading dock on the north side and a personnel door on the south.
Jimmy had spent six months walking those floors, stripping cars under fluorescent lights, learning the layout the way prisoners learn their cells—every crack, every shadow, every exit that might be an escape if the moment ever came.
"Office is upstairs," Jimmy said, pointing at a rough sketch Parkway was drawing on a napkin. "Sykes runs everything from there. Metal stairs on the east wall, only way up. He keeps the door locked, always has a man outside it."
"How many men left?" Parkway asked.
"Hard to say. He had eighteen before you started—" Jimmy glanced at Hollow, then away. "Taking them out. Now? Maybe eight, ten. Some of them are just kids like me. Scared. In debt. Not fighters."
"They'll fight if Sykes tells them to," Gibbet said.
"Some will. Some will run the second they see a way out.
" Jimmy's voice got stronger as he talked, the fear being replaced by something that looked like purpose.
"The real muscle is gone. Durkin, Pruitt, Locke—they were the ones who kept everyone in line.
Without them, Sykes is holding it together with threats and habit. "
"Weapons?" Pitt asked.
"Sykes keeps a pistol in his desk. Couple of the guys carry knives. Nothing heavy—they were car thieves, not soldiers."
Debbie watched the brothers process the information, watched the plan take shape in the spaces between words.
Parkway was already mapping approaches on the napkin, his pen moving with the precise focus of a man who thought in routes and angles.
Gibbet sat motionless, absorbing everything, his face as blank as a wall.
Ash was leaning forward with his elbows on the table, vibrating with the particular energy that meant he was already imagining the breach.
And Hollow. Hollow sat beside her with his arm on the back of her chair—not touching her, just there, a declaration of position that every man in the room could read. His woman, his chair, his space. Anyone who had a problem with her being here could take it up with the arm draped behind her.
"Shifts," Parkway said. "When's the warehouse lightest?"
"Overnight," Jimmy said. "After midnight, it's Sykes, his office guy, and whatever crew is finishing a strip job. Maybe five, six total. The day crews don't come in until eight."
"How does he know we're coming?" Pitt asked.
The table went quiet. Jimmy looked at Debbie. She squeezed his arm.
"He knows," Jimmy said. "He has to know. You've taken out everyone around him. He's either packing up to run or he's digging in."
"If he runs?" Ash asked.
"He won't run." Hollow's voice was flat, certain. "His whole operation is in that warehouse. Equipment, inventory, records. A man like Sykes doesn't walk away from half a million in assets. He'll fortify, call in whatever favors he has left, and try to wait us out."
"Then we don't wait." Pitt looked around the table. "Tonight."
No argument. No discussion. The word landed like a gavel and the room shifted from planning to preparation.
Parkway started laying out the approach—north side, loading dock, the fastest route from the road to the door.
Ash would handle the entry. Gibbet and Hollow through the main floor.
Shiv and two prospects on the perimeter, catching runners.
Debbie listened to it take shape and felt the weight of what was about to happen.
Not fear—she'd moved past fear somewhere around the second time Hollow came home with blood on his hands.
This was something else. Anticipation. The particular tension of knowing that the end was coming and wanting it to arrive.
"I want to be there," she said.
The table went silent again. Hollow's arm dropped from the back of her chair to her shoulder, his hand settling there with a pressure that was equal parts possession and warning.
"No," he said.
"Not inside. Outside. With the vehicles." She looked at Pitt, not Hollow, because this was a club decision, not a relationship negotiation. "Jimmy and I wait with the transport. Close enough to move if you need to move fast, far enough to stay clear."
"Absolutely not," Hollow said.
"I'm not asking you." She turned to him, and the look she gave him was the same one she'd used across the diner counter a hundred times—the one that said I've made up my mind and your opinion, while noted, is irrelevant.
"I'm not sitting in this compound waiting to find out if you're alive.
I did that once. I'm not doing it again. "
"Debbie—"
"She's right," Pitt said.
Hollow's head turned. "Prez—"
"She's right, and you know it. Vehicles need a driver.
Jimmy knows the area. If something goes sideways, having mobile transport with someone who can actually drive is the difference between clean and messy.
" Pitt looked at Debbie. "You stay with the truck.
Engine running. If I call and say move, you move.
If I call and say go home, you go home. No argument, no hesitation. "
"Understood."
"Hollow." Pitt's voice carried the authority that came with the gavel. "She stays with the truck. You stay on mission. Clear?"
Hollow's jaw worked. His hand was tight on her shoulder, his whole body rigid with the effort of not arguing with his President.
She could feel the war in him—the instinct to protect her, to put her somewhere safe, to wrap her in walls and locks and distance.
And underneath that, the understanding that she wasn't the kind of woman who stayed behind walls.
"Clear," he said. The word sounded like it was being pulled out of him with pliers.
Pitt nodded. "Midnight. Everyone ready by eleven. Dismissed."
The brothers filed out. Jimmy went with them, pulled into a conversation with Ash about something that had him nodding seriously, looking more like a man than the scared kid who'd stumbled into her diner with a black eye.
Debbie stayed in her chair. Hollow stayed in his.
"You're angry," she said.
"I'm terrified." He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were on the scarred table, his jaw tight, his hands flat on the wood. "There's a difference."
"I know the difference." She covered his hand with hers. "I'll be in the truck. Engine running. A quarter mile away."
"A quarter mile is nothing. A quarter mile is a three-minute drive for someone who wants to hurt you."
"A quarter mile is also a three-minute drive for you to get back to me." She turned his hand over, laced her fingers through his. "I need to be there, Hollow. Not to prove something, not to be brave. I need to know. I can't sit in this compound and wait for a phone call. I can't."
He finally looked at her. The fear in his eyes was raw and real, the vulnerability he only showed her, the part of him that lived under the grin and the bravado and the fists.
"If anything happens to you—"
"Nothing's going to happen to me. I'll be in a locked truck with the engine running and my foot on the gas." She held his gaze. "You taught me that. You taught me that the people you love are worth fighting for. Well, you're the person I love, and I'm not hiding while you fight."
The word landed between them—love—and she realized she'd said it for the first time. Not planned, not rehearsed. Just the truth, falling out of her mouth in a chapel full of empty chairs.
Hollow's expression changed. The fear didn't disappear, but something else rose up alongside it—wonder, gratitude, the look of a man hearing something he'd been afraid to hope for.
"Say it again," he said, his voice rough.
"I love you. You impossible, stubborn, overprotective—"
He kissed her. Hard, fast, his hand fisting in her hair, the kiss of a man who'd just heard the only words that mattered. She grabbed the front of his cut and kissed him back, and for a moment the chapel and the plan and the midnight deadline disappeared.
He pulled back, his forehead against hers. "I love you too. In case that wasn't obvious."
"It was fairly obvious."
"Good. I'm not subtle." He took a breath. Let it out. "Truck. Engine running. Quarter mile back. And if I call and say go—"
"I go."
"Promise me."
"I promise." She kissed him once more, soft. "Now go get ready. I need to make sure Jimmy eats before midnight, because that kid forgets to eat when he's nervous and the last thing you need is a fainting navigator."
She stood. He caught her hand.
"Debbie."
She looked back at him—sitting in the chapel, patches on his chest, scarred hands and steady eyes. The man she loved. The man who was going to end this tonight.
"I'll be back for breakfast," he said.
"You'd better be. I'm making your meatloaf."
"It's breakfast."
"Meatloaf is an anytime food. I've told you this." She squeezed his hand and let go. "Come home to me."
She walked out of the chapel and left him sitting there, and the last thing she saw before the heavy oak doors closed was his grin—wide, warm, the real one—lighting up the room like a flare.