Knox's Target (Highwall Kings MC #2)

1. Nora

Nora

The fifth false invoice puts a twenty-five-ton wrecker on a road where it couldn’t make the turn.

That’s either fraud or stupidity. The signatures are too clean for stupidity.

I park my rental outside the first gate at Highwall Recovery & Customs and photograph the sign through the windshield. Weathered copper letters. Black fence. Cameras aimed at the road, the customer entrance, and every approach to the impound lot.

Thin sleet taps the glass.

Five theft files sit inside the locked case bag on my passenger floor. Each one contains a Highwall invoice, a vehicle-condition report, and a release record for a truck or SUV that reappeared under a copied VIN.

Five expensive vehicles. Five insurance payouts. One mountain recovery company printed across the paper trail.

My work phone asks me to confirm that I’ve arrived safely.

I tap the check-in button, pull on my coat, and take the bag with me.

The pedestrian gate opens before I reach the intercom.

The man holding it looks at the credentials clipped to my lapel before he looks at my face. Close-faded light hair. Blue eyes. Lean through the waist and heavy enough across the shoulders to make the gate seem narrow.

His tattooed fingers curl around the steel frame.

My attention stops there a second too long.

“Photographing my trucks?” he asks.

His voice is dry and exact. No welcome in it.

“The public side of your property.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It was the answer you’re entitled to.”

One corner of his mouth nearly moves. The rest of him stays still.

I hand him my identification. “Nora Whitlock. Special investigations.”

“Insurance.”

“Fraud.”

He reads the card, studies the photograph, then checks my face again. Attraction settles low in my body before professional judgment can object.

It objects anyway.

“Levi Danner,” he says. “Knox here.”

The road name fits the hand on the gate better than Levi does.

“Vice president?”

“Fleet manager.”

A black leather cut hangs from a wall hook behind him. Weathered copper rocker. Bone-white mountain split by a switchback. A small VP patch beneath it.

He answered the business question and ignored the one I asked.

“Both,” I say.

His gaze narrows. “The members own the company. My job on its paper is fleet.”

“And off the paper?”

“Vice president of the Highwall Kings.”

I file the distinction in my head. Company records. Club authority. Same man standing between me and both.

“I need your dispatch records for five recoveries.”

“You need authority and a reason.”

“I have both.”

“Show me one.”

He doesn’t invite me through the second gate. He takes me into the dispatch office instead, where a wide window faces four shop bays and the secured lot beyond them. A black rollback crosses the yard. The driver looks toward Knox before backing under a raised door.

Everyone here knows where he is.

Knox stands on the other side of a scarred desk while I remove one copied invoice from the bag. I keep the other files locked.

“Your company name.” I set the page between us. “Your fleet. Your signature.”

He doesn’t touch it.

His gaze tracks the invoice once. Date. Time. VIN. Unit. Load. Signature. I know the order because his eyes stop in each place.

“Where did you get this?”

“Claim file.”

“Which one?”

“I’ll disclose policyholder information after I verify whether the record is yours.”

His blue eyes lift. “Date?”

“November 3.”

“Time?”

“2:14 in the morning.”

“Truck?”

“Your integrated wrecker.”

“Load?”

“Ram thirty-five hundred.”

“That unit didn’t move.”

“Memory isn’t evidence.”

His eyes narrow with something close to approval. It irritates me more than a smile would.

“Good,” he says.

“Good?”

“You ask for proof.”

“Dispatch log, gate footage, and mileage sheet.”

“Anything else?”

“The original work order and every photograph attached to it.”

He finally puts two fingers on the copied signature. His right forearm tightens beneath black ink.

“This isn’t mine.”

“It looks like yours.”

“That’s the point of copying it.”

“Then the records will clear you.”

“They’ll clear my truck. We’re still discussing who sent you onto my property with part of a case.”

“No. You’re discussing it. I’m verifying documents.”

My work phone vibrates against my hip.

FIELD SERVICES UPDATE fills the screen. Evan Baird’s desk has confirmed the physical inspection I requested this morning. The suspect vehicle is waiting on a private service road eleven minutes north of town.

I open the address.

Knox reads it from across the desk.

“That isn’t a storage site.”

I lock the screen. “Do you usually read other people’s phones?”

“When they hold bad addresses in my territory.”

“It’s an assigned inspection.”

“That road ends at an empty produce shed.”

Useful, if unverified.

I slide the invoice back into my bag. “Have the records ready when I return.”

“You’re not going there.”

The order lands hard enough to make heat move under my coat.

I hate that he can do that with four words.

“You’re on my list of possible participants,” I say. “You don’t control my fieldwork.”

“Whitlock.”

I stop at the door and look back.

He braces both hands on the desk. “If a black rollback is waiting, don’t get out of the car.”

“Highwall owns two.”

“Mine don’t need magnets on the doors.”

I leave before that answer can change my plan.

The sleet thickens north of Harrow Gap. It ticks beneath the rental and turns the service road dark and slick. My phone marks me on site, starts the safety timer, and gives me fifteen minutes to complete the first check-in.

The produce shed sits behind a locked chain gate.

No vehicle waits inside.

I slow without stopping.

A black rollback pulls from a gravel cut ahead and swings across both lanes. HIGHWALL RECOVERY & CUSTOMS covers the door in copper and white.

The rectangle around the lettering catches the light.

A magnetic panel.

I hit reverse.

A pickup moves in behind me and closes the road.

Two men get out. One comes toward my passenger side. The other points at my windshield.

“Company phone and the file,” he shouts.

Not the car. Not my wallet.

Me.

I lock the doors, lean on the horn, and take three photographs through the windshield. The first man covers his face. The second runs faster.

I throw the rental into reverse and cut the wheel. The rear bumper hits the pickup’s front corner. Metal folds. The pickup rolls back half a car length, opening a strip of muddy shoulder beside it.

I aim for the gap.

The man at my passenger door swings a steel punch. Glass bursts across the seat and my hands.

His arm comes through the broken window.

I grab the metal flashlight from my inspection kit and drive it into his wrist.

He curses and loses the punch.

The rental’s tires spin in mud. The man behind me yanks the driver’s door open before I can hit the lock again.

I keep the case strap across my chest, twist out beneath his arm, and run for the uphill ditch.

He catches the back of my coat. Fabric tears. My palm hits gravel, and glass cuts deeper.

An engine comes hard around the lower bend.

The man from the black pickup releases me first.

A Highwall wheel-lift wrecker fills the road behind it. No magnetic sign. No copied copper. The real name is painted into the door.

The driver’s door opens.

Knox steps into the sleet with a pistol held low beside his thigh.

He looks at the men once.

Then he looks at me.

His face goes still.