Chapter 12
Twelve
Valkyrie
The knocking dragged me out of sleep like a punch.
For a second everything was a smear—the low lamp glow, the dark walls, the line of knives on the shelf—and my brain tried to insist I’d only closed my eyes for half a heartbeat.
Then my neck ached, my spine popped, and I realized I’d actually been out.
Fuck.
The blanket over me was the next thing I felt. Warm. Tucked more carefully than I ever bothered with myself.
I turned my head.
Jersey Boy was on the air mattress, one arm flung over his chest, boots off, breathing slowly. No blanket. Just leather, ink, and exhaustion.
Yeah. It didn’t take a genius.
The pounding hit the door again. Sharper.
I shoved the blanket off like it had burned me and pushed up, bare feet hitting the floor. My body protested the sudden movement; yesterday’s sleepless night and adrenaline had sunk its teeth in deep.
By the time I yanked the door open, my scowl was fully awake.
Rosé stood in the hall. Ponytail high, cut on, phone still in her hand. Her gaze flicked over my face, down to the bed I’d just vacated, then to Jersey on the floor, then back.
She didn’t leer. Didn’t smirk about the sleeping arrangement she already knew about. But something in her eyes shifted—like she’d just watched two planets wobble a little closer in their orbit.
“Weird seeing a man in your room,” she said. “What took so long to answer the door? Is he fake sleeping and just jumped onto that thing?”
“Nothing’s happening,” I snapped back too fast.
Her brow twitched, like, Relax, I didn’t ask. Then she jerked her chin over my shoulder.
“Liberty wants the both of you,” Rosé said. “Now. In her office.”
I turned away before she could read more off my face. Since when was I wearing my shit that clearly? Since when did someone else see… whatever the hell that was between us, before I did?
Behind me, the mattress shifted. Jersey groaned himself awake.
“Morning,” he muttered, voice sandpapered.
“Up,” I told him, already grabbing my boots. “We’re wanted.”
He sat up, blinked blearily, then seemed to remember where he was and what day it was all at once. His jaw tightened. He shoved his own boots on without arguing.
Good. Cause I didn’t have the patience for soft.
We crossed the hall and cut through the main room. The clubhouse was in that early lull—some girls still in bunks, some already posted up on their rotations. Coffee smell, low music, the metallic drag of the gate outside shifting as Indigo checked it.
Liberty’s office door was cracked. Mink’s voice filtered through, fast and low, before cutting off mid-word.
Liberty hit end on the call as we stepped in. She leaned back in her chair, elbows on the arms, fingers steepled. Rosé slipped past us and took up her usual post against the filing cabinet.
Indigo was there too, shotgun propped in the corner within arm’s reach, arms folded. Her eyes slid to me, to Jersey, then back to Liberty.
“Good, you’re both vertical,” Liberty said. “Sit if you want. This won’t take long.”
I didn’t sit. Neither did Jersey. We just moved far enough into the room to be accounted for.
“Talk,” I said.
Liberty’s gaze cut to Jersey, then back to me. “Mink’s been combing chatter since last night,” she said. “Two things popped.”
She lifted one finger.
“One—Miami’s wrecked bike got logged,” Liberty went on. “It’s sitting in a junkyard on our turf, stamped and tagged, waiting its turn with the crusher. Paper trail says it’s scheduled to be processed today. Noon-ish.”
Jersey went still beside me. You’d miss it if you weren’t watching him.
“And?” I asked.
“And someone else asked about it,” Liberty said. “Not a cop doing inventory. Some ghost on a line leaned in and wanted to make sure that specific wreck existed, where it was stored, and when it was getting flattened.”
She held up a second finger.
“Two,” Liberty said, looking to Indigo. “Tell them.”
“Blacked-out SUV from last night came by again at dawn,” Indigo said. “Same shape. Same lazy crawl. Roll-by only. Didn’t stop, didn’t circle the block. Just made sure the fence and gate were still where they left ‘em.”
“Plates?” Jersey asked.
“Still can’t get shit through the tint and angle,” Indigo replied. “No stickers, no plates, no obvious dents. Just ‘generic government or organized crime asshole’ package.”
I rolled my shoulders, trying to bleed off the itch crawling up my spine.
“So,” I said. “We have a wreck in a yard in our territory with a clock on it, people sniffing around it, and at least one unknown doing drive-bys. What are we thinking? Vincinos? Steel Serpents? All of the above?”
“We’re thinking we can’t assume Miami got everything out of that bike,” Liberty said. “He was running scared. He grabbed what he found but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something else buried in that frame. Something our friends in suits would love to put their hands on.”
“And if there is, and the yard rats find it, they’ll call our SUV friends,” Rosé added. “Either way, it’s bad.”
“Exactly,” Liberty said. “So, we go.”
She said it simple. Like deciding to pick up milk.
“We’re going to go to that junkyard,” Liberty continued. “We find the wreck, strip it down, make sure there’s nothing left inside worth killing for, and then we make sure it dies on our terms, not theirs.”
I nodded. “Who’s we?”
“Valkyrie, you take point,” Liberty said. “Jersey goes with you. He knows what the bike looks like. Indigo, Medusa, and Diamondback for teeth and eyes.”
“And you?” I asked.
She smiled, slow.
“Thought that was implied,” Liberty said. “I’m not sending my girls into a possible hit box while I sit on my ass. I’m coming too. You run the ride, I watch the angles.”
She rose from her chair, the conversation already closed in her head. “Gear up,” she said. “Ten minutes.”
We moved.
Outside, the compound woke the rest of the way when word trickled out that Liberty was rolling with us. That always raised the stakes.
Diamondback was already strapping on her vest by the time I hit the yard, hair twisted up messy, eyes bright.
Medusa slung her spiked bat across her back and checked the pistol at her hip hidden beneath her cut like she was hoping for an excuse to use it.
Indigo loaded shells with the kind of casual efficiency that said she’d been doing it half her life.
Jersey stood near his bike, helmet in hand, watching how the Vipers flowed around him without ever fully turning their backs.
“What are we walking into?” he asked as I approached.
“Not who,” I corrected. “What. Could be Vincino errand boys. Could be Steel Serpents playing fetch for their masters. Could be that SUV and friends. Be ready for all of it.”
He nodded once. Serious, no quip. I respected that more than any joke. Business when it mattered most.
The gate groaned open as Liberty came out last.
Cut on, hair pulled back, helmet hooked on her fingers, she looked like every woman who’d ever told a man to bury her with her bike and meant it.
For a second I thought she was going to hand off the run to me and stay, the way it sometimes went when she decided her presence would stir more trouble than it solved.
Instead, she walked straight toward us and swung a leg over her bike. This confirmed to me that she was riding into the unknown with us.
“No change of plans?” I asked to confirm, voice raised over the idle of engines.
“None,” she said. “I’m not letting my girls be the only ones breathing junkyard air on this one.”
And that was that.
We rolled out.
The road to the yard wound through parts of town most tourists never saw. Old warehouses. Lots choked with weeds. Cars on blocks in front of sagging porches, men on stoops who knew when not to stare.
I led. Jersey sat on his bike right beside me. Liberty’s presence was a heat at my back, steady and sure.
By the time we turned down the narrow lane that led to the junkyard, I’d already built three different versions of this ending in my head. Only one of them didn’t involve bullets.
The gate was half-open when we got there.
Chain-link sagging. Rust-eaten sign hanging crooked from two bolts, the name of the yard faded almost unreadable. No barking dogs. No yelling owner waving a clipboard.
We killed the engines inside the fence and let the silence fold over us.
“Creepy,” Medusa muttered.
“Stay sharp,” I said. “We’re not alone.”
You could smell the place—oil and rust and old rubber. Cars were stacked three, four high in teetering rows, frames stripped, windshields punched out. It was a graveyard of other people’s bad days.
“Liberty and Jersey with me,” I said. “Indigo, Medusa, take flanks. Diamondback, watch our backs and the high spots. If anybody twitches up top, I want to know about it before they sneeze.”
We moved toward the little office shack near the front. The door stood half-open. A cheap metal sign that once said “OPEN” lay face-down in the dirt.
My skin crawled.
Inside, the air was stale and hot. Papers littered the floor. A mug lay shattered near a rolling chair knocked on its side.
“Clear,” I said quietly as we swept the small front room.
“Back here,” Liberty’s voice called.
I followed her into the rear office.
The yard owner was slumped in the corner, behind his desk. Eyes bulged. Face mottled. The phone cord was looped twice around his neck, digging deep, plastic handset on the floor a foot away.
I felt my jaw tighten.
“Strangled with his own line,” Liberty said, voice flat. “Old-school.”
“He didn’t come out to greet us because he was already dead,” I muttered. “They didn’t want witnesses when they came asking about the bike.”
“Or they didn’t like his answers,” Jersey added. His hand flexed once at his side. He looked like he wanted to hit something.
Liberty stared at the dead man for a beat, then let out a long breath through her nose. “Take it in,” she said. “Then let it go. We can’t do anything for him now.”
Footsteps crunched on metal and gravel outside. More than one set.
Liberty’s head snapped toward the door. So did mine.