5. KNOX
KNOX
The man who had stolen the first four years of my son’s life stood in our headlights and smiled at me.
Rook had been an Iron Flames prospect for eleven months before he disappeared. Quiet, useful, always ready to take the security shifts nobody else wanted. We had assumed he lacked the guts to earn his patch and slipped away rather than admit it.
All that time, he had been learning our rooms, our roads, and every weakness we let walk through the clubhouse door.
Including Sarah.
“Stay down,” I ordered.
“Finn—”
“You wanted beside me. That’s where you are. Now trust me to handle the part I know.”
I opened my door and stepped out with my gun held low against my thigh.
The SUV that hit us had stopped twenty feet behind, hemming us between two vehicles and at least six armed men.
Gunner and Axel should have been closing the distance, while Hawk’s team waited farther up the road, but nobody moved until Rook gave the signal.
He had always liked pretending power belonged to him.
Rook laughed. He looked older than the skinny prospect who used to sweep the garage, with a beard hiding half his face and a Black Thorns patch where our colors should have been, but the eyes were the same. Empty, watchful, and pleased by other people’s fear.
“You’ve gotten sentimental, Knox.”
“You broke into my rooms.”
“You gave a prospect the security rotation and used the same six numbers for every lock you owned. Wasn’t much of a challenge.”
“You threatened Sarah with my knife.”
His gaze slid to the windshield. “She ran exactly like I told her to. I always wondered if she’d stayed gone because she loved you or because she was too stupid to realize one man couldn’t watch every road forever.”
The gun in my hand wanted to rise. I kept it down because three men in the trees had rifles aimed at the SUV, and Sarah was still inside.
“Rafe wants the yard,” Rook said. “Open the back door, send the boy over, and I’ll let Sarah watch you make the right choice this time.”
“Come get him.”
Rook’s smile faded.
The duffel containing the transmitter lay beneath the blankets in the back seat, its signal moving exactly where Rafe expected Noah to be. If Rook wanted to see inside, he would have to leave the protection of his men.
He took one step forward.
Gunfire cracked through the trees.
The rear window exploded, glass showering the empty blankets. I dropped behind the engine block and fired twice toward the muzzle flash. A man went down in the ditch as Axel’s truck came around the bend without headlights and slammed into the SUV behind us.
Hawk’s men opened fire from the northern tree line.
Rook threw himself behind the blockade, shouting orders while the Black Thorns scattered for cover. The road filled with smoke, shattered glass, and the hard snap of bullets striking metal. I moved around the front of our SUV, firing at the man nearest Sarah’s side before he could reach her door.
He fell, but another came out of the trees behind him.
Sarah saw him before I did.
She shoved her door open with both feet. The metal edge struck his knees and dropped him hard enough to send his gun skidding beneath the vehicle. He caught the door before she could close it and reached inside, grabbing the front of her vest.
I shot him through the shoulder.
He released her with a scream. Sarah drove her boot into his face and slammed the door shut, blood splashed across her cheek but her eyes clear and furious.
“I said stay down!”
“He was trying to shoot you!”
“Argue later. Floor. Now.”
This time she listened.
Gunner advanced from behind, controlled and precise, while Axel dragged the wounded man away from Sarah’s door. The Black Thorns had lost the road within thirty seconds, but Rook was already running through the trees.
I went after him.
Branches tore at my face as I followed the sound of his boots down the slope. He fired once over his shoulder and missed. I fired back, catching him high in the arm, but he kept moving until the ground dropped into a dry creek bed.
He landed badly and fell to one knee.
I hit him before he could stand.
We went down hard in the dirt. His gun disappeared beneath the leaves, and I drove my fist into his mouth, then again, every blow carrying a year I had lost. Rook slashed upward with a knife.
The blade opened my side beneath the edge of my vest, but pain had stopped mattering the second I saw Noah’s eyes through that gate.
I caught Rook’s wrist, broke it against a rock, and closed my other hand around his throat.
“You watched her carry my kid alone,” I said, tightening my grip. “You knew where they were. You knew what you’d taken.”
Blood coated his teeth when he smiled. “Rafe didn’t know about the boy until last week.”
My fist stopped above his face. “Who told him?”
“You really think that little microphone was his only ear inside your club?”
“Name.”
“Ask your brothers. One of them knows exactly how much a family is worth.”
I slammed his head against the ground. “Name him.”
“You’re still chasing the wrong threat, Dad.”
My phone vibrated against my chest.
Rook looked at it and laughed.
“Better answer.”
I drove my forearm down across his throat and reached for the phone with my free hand. Diesel’s name lit the screen.
“Talk.”
Gunfire sounded through the speaker before Diesel’s voice reached me. “Compound’s taking fire. Two trucks hit the west fence and another tried the garage entrance. Kids are in the panic room with Callie and Eloise. Reaper’s holding the main hall.”
My blood turned to ice. “Noah?”
“Secure. Scared, but secure. They ain’t getting near him.”
Rook moved beneath me.
I caught the flash of a second blade too late. He drove it through the gap above my vest, cutting across my ribs. My grip broke long enough for him to throw me aside and scramble up the bank toward the road.
I raised my gun, but Sarah was coming down after us with the weapon she had taken from the man beside the SUV. Rook reached her first.
He grabbed her around the waist and pressed his knife against her throat, using her body to shield his while she kept both hands locked around the gun.
“Drop it, Knox.”
Sarah’s eyes found mine. She was terrified, but beneath the fear was an order.
Trust me.
I lowered the gun by an inch.
Sarah slammed the back of her head into Rook’s nose and drove her elbow into his wounded arm. He cursed, releasing her for half a second, and she dropped flat to the ground.
I fired.
The bullet caught Rook beneath the collarbone and spun him into the creek. He disappeared through the brush as an engine roared on the service road beyond the trees. By the time I reached the bottom, a motorcycle was tearing away into the dark with Rook hunched behind the rider.
I aimed after them, but the shot was gone.
“Finn.”
Sarah stood behind me with blood on her face and a red line across her throat where the knife had touched. I wanted to keep running. Wanted to tear through every backroad until I found Rook and finished what I had started.
Then I remembered Diesel’s voice.
Noah was under attack because I had left him.
I went to Sarah instead.
My hands closed around her face, checking her throat, her vest, every part of her Rook had touched. “You hurt?”
“No. Your side—”
“Ain’t important.”
“It is to me.”
She pressed both palms over the blood spreading beneath my vest. I covered her hands with mine and forced myself to breathe.
“Rook knew Noah wasn’t in the SUV,” I said.
“How?”
“Somebody warned him.”
Gunner appeared at the top of the bank. “We have two alive. Hawk’s taking them to the garage.”
“The compound was hit,” I told him. “They used us to pull security away.”
His expression hardened. “We go back now.”
Sarah and I ran for the road.
Rook had never been the trap.
We were.