Chapter 24
Jasper
I shoot off a quick text to the brother who sorts out our cuts, asking him to make a property cut for Tessa. He’s in the clubhouse today, so I’m not surprised when he tells me that he’ll have it ready in a couple of hours and will put it in my office.
Onyx and Slate are waiting for me in the back lot, so I rush back to meet them.
Onyx’s stripped down to the waist, his skin streaked with grease and sweat.
He’s washing off under a shower head attached to the back of the clubhouse.
He doesn’t bother looking up when I roll in, so I shout, “You look like you got into a wrangle with your oil pan and lost, brother.”
He growls, “Fuck all the way off with that shit, Jasper.”
Slate’s propped against his bike, polishing his handlebars with slow, methodical strokes. It’s the kind of attention to detail that defines everything he does. It’s why he’s our Sergeant-at-Arms. He glances up when I approach.
“Goddamn, it’s ‘bout time you showed up, Jasper. Was startin’ to think that pretty woman of yours bewitched you.”
I spit on the ground between our bikes and tell him in no uncertain terms, “Ain’t no woman who can hold me in her thrall, but this one comes damn close.”
Slate chuckles under his breath, barely lifting his gaze. “Hell, Jasper, I never thought you’d be the fucking first of us to fall. You never seemed like the settling down type.”
I swing a leg over my bike, ignoring the jab. “Shows you don’t know me very fuckin’ well.”
Onyx walks up, pulling a clean shirt over his head. “We ready to ride?”
“Yeah, we’re doing a perimeter check, just like we planned. We need to keep our eyes sharp because I have a bad gut feeling about this situation.”
Just then our phones jingle and we all pull them out. I read the message from our old man. The scouts in town report the Hyenas all upped stakes and pulled out. They’re riding west in one big convoy, taking their heavy equipment with them. Rather than being elated, I’m more concerned than ever.
Onyx mutters, “Well those fucking assholes didn’t last long.”
Slate is more suspicious, “Why would they leave? We didn’t even give them a good beat down yet.”
“Well, I’d like to think they took one look at our setup on that fancy drone they sent yesterday and decided we were too powerful to mess with, but nothing in our lives is ever quite that easy.”
Slate sighs, turns off his phone and puts it away. “Our brothers have had a few run-ins with them over the last month, and they came out on the losing side every single time. Maybe they’re moving on to greener pastures.”
Both of my brothers look at me with hopeful expressions, but I shake my head. “Hell no, this is setting off warning bells in my head. What if the ignorant fucks have decided they can take us in a fair fight?” Glancing off into the distance, I say, “They could be coming here.”
Slate’s temper flares. “I can’t believe they’d be that ignorant—to think they can swarm and take our clubhouse by force.”
I type out a message on my phone as I talk, “I’m texting our old man to put the clubhouse on lockdown for now and double the guards at the gate and put brothers on perimeter watch for the next few hours in case they come here.”
Putting my phone away, I tell them grimly, “We need to go ahead and scout the area around the clubhouse to make sure they haven’t prepositioned weapons and shit.”
“Let’s get the hell moving,” Onyx says, starting his bike.
We head out at a steady pace, because we might miss something important if we speed around. The secondary road loops around the outer ridge of the property. It’s paved but rough. The farther we go, the quieter it gets. We don’t even see birds flying about. It’s totally unnerving.
Not catching sight of anything alarming like a staging area for them to attack, we ride until the road tapers off into a mountain trail that skirts the edge of the bluff.
This part of the land has been left wild on purpose. The thickets and brush serve as natural barriers, a built-in warning system that keeps most people away.
Onyx takes the lead as the trail narrows and turns into a gravel road. He slows, lifts a fist, and then rolls to a stop near a thicket of blackberry bramble. We kill our engines and follow him on foot. He points upward, towards the canopy.
About twenty feet up, there is a clearing in the thick pine.
I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing. There is some kind of drone docking station attached to the tree.
It’s cleverly done, matte black with a low-profile antenna and a camouflage netting that blends perfectly with the branches.
You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it.
Onyx pulls out his binoculars and gazes at it.
I ask, “Am I seeing what I think I am?”
“Yeah, it’s a drone nest of some kind,” he says, his voice low.
I pull out my phone and take a few photos from different angles, then scale the tree carefully and retrieve the unit. It’s light, lighter than the last one, and the casing’s cool to the touch. Still fresh.
I make a note of the GPS coordinates in my phone and we move out again, cutting across a dry ravine and following a deer trail that runs parallel to the fence line.
A mile out, Slate spots something tucked into a pile of rocks.
From a distance, it looks natural, just another crumbled outcrop.
But up close, you can see that someone stacked the stone deliberately.
Onyx kneels beside it and pulls free a flat slab of shale. Beneath it, a hidden panel flicks open, revealing a small docking station with an embedded power cell. The tech is clean, the panel smooth and dust-free.
“Someone placed this very recently or they’ve been maintaining it,” I say, crouching beside him. “This isn’t a drop-and-forget setup.”
“Which means they’re coming onto our property regularly,” Slate adds. That’s very risky because there is only one road in and out, which is within view of our main gate.
We keep going. The third site puts a bitter taste in my mouth.
It’s positioned beneath a rural county maintenance sign.
From the front, it looks like any other road marker.
But the back’s been gutted and rebuilt with a launch tube and a thin solar panel.
There’s even a heat sink rigged to the metal to keep the electronics from frying.
“Hyenas are gettin’ bolder and smarter,” I say quietly, tracing the welds with one gloved hand.
Slate frowns. “You think they’re breaching our security and coming onto our property?”
“I think they’ve got someone on the inside, someone they’re paying who’s already got access and could come and go unnoticed.”
Before we can pull the rig for evidence, a soft, high-pitched whine cuts through the trees. We all freeze, our heads snapping towards the sound. Just beyond the ridge, drifting between the trunks, is a drone. This one’s not docked. It’s live, airborne, and scanning the area.
It’s smaller than the one I downed before. No larger than a football, sleek with an angular chassis and whirring rotors that whisper instead of buzz. It dips low, then climbs, tilting erratically like it’s struggling against the wind.
I step forward, unslinging the shotgun from my back. I track its movement, waiting for the brief moment it pauses to reorient. When it does, I fire.
The blast is a single shot that echoes through the valley. The drone explodes midair, plastic and metal fragments tumbling to the dirt off to our left.
Onyx lets out a low whistle, impressed. “That was one hell of a shot.”
I move towards the wreckage, the smell of gunpowder still clinging to the air. “They’re not just watching anymore. They’re studying us, looking for weaknesses, testing chinks in our armor.”
I squat down and pick through the shattered casing, thinking I blew up my one opportunity to get to the SIM card. One piece is still blinking. I see a small red light and realize there might yet be a chance of salvaging information from this heap of scrap.
“We need to call out every brother,” I say, straightening. “Before they get here.” I get on the phone and have a short conversation with our old man, explaining our situation.
Onyx and Slate help gather the biggest pieces while I call Striker. He shows up twenty minutes later in a battered work van with Mitch in tow. I approach to greet them, Mitch goes straight for the blinking unit, pulling on gloves, he hooks up a cable to his tablet.
“It has a hidden data cache,” he mutters, tapping away. “Separate from the main flight software. Smart little bastards learned from the last one we cracked.”
Striker leans over his shoulder. “That’s not just flight logs. Look at this. They’ve got thermal imaging and it’s picking up heat signatures from inside the compound. The Hyenas have professional grade equipment—that’s not the sort of rig you’d get off the rack. It’s a custom build.”
I move to stand behind them. The images are clear. Too clear. One shows someone pacing in our meeting room. I can tell by the way he walks that it’s my old man. Another shows someone in the kitchen. They’ve been watching the interior, tracking movement, learning our routines.
“Somebody’s sharing intel with them,” Striker says, his voice hard. “No drone can get that detail through these walls unless they know where to aim.”
Mitch flips through the logs, eyebrows pulling together. “There’s metadata—indicating internal markers. This one’s got upload points from inside the clubhouse.”
“Which means whoever is betraying us is someone with access,” I say. “Not just hangin’ around outside like a delivery person or an invited guest that sticks with whatever brother’s hosting them. They’re someone with enough freedom to roam around and to tag the rooms.”
Striker looks up. “Could be a patched-in brother, a prospect, one of the club girls, or someone hiding.”