Chapter 4 — Knox
I sit in the dark living room with my boots still on and my cut draped over the back of the couch.
The house is cold from the AC running all day but sweat still clings to my neck, my back, the fabric of my jeans where they stick to my thighs.
The club church ran three hours. Cain had intel from his source inside what's left of Marrow. They're planning something but the source doesn't know what, just that Dutch has been making calls and Victor Crane is done being strategic.
Now we're waiting for them to make the next move and I hate waiting. Hate sitting still while someone else decides when violence happens.
But Clint was clear: we hold position, we watch, we don't give them an excuse to say we started it.
I pull off my boots and drop them by the couch. My body is wired, adrenaline still running through me even though nothing happened tonight beyond talking and planning.
This is what the MC life does. Keeps you ready for something that might not come but probably will.
Instead of sleeping I think about Francis standing in my kitchen asking why I didn't come after her. Think about the way her body looks in that green shirt, the fabric clinging to her breasts, showing me exactly what I've been trying not to think about for two days.
I haven't wanted anyone since her. Told myself I didn't need it, didn't miss it. Built a life that worked without it.
Seeing her walk across a driveway makes me realize how much of that life was about not having her.
The clock on the wall reads 2:47am when I feel it.
Something's wrong.
I don't know what. Just that the quality of silence outside has changed in a way my body recognizes before my brain catches up.
Twelve years in the military taught me to read atmospheres, to know when quiet means safe and when it means someone's waiting.
This is the second kind.
I'm off the couch and moving before I've consciously decided to. Pull my boots back on, grab my cut, check the Glock in the lockbox by the door. It's loaded.
I slide it into my waistband and move to the window, staying back from the glass where I can see without being seen.
The street is empty. Francis's house is dark. Everything looks normal.
But it's not.
My phone buzzes. Tate.
"Perimeter breach," he says when I answer. "South entrance. Multiple bikes."
"I'm coming."
"Clint's calling everyone in."
I hang up and I'm already moving toward the door when I hear the first gunshot.
Not close. But sound carries in the dead quiet of 3am and I know that sound like I know my own heartbeat.
I'm on my bike and riding before I've processed the decision. The engine roars loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood.
Francis's bedroom light comes on as I pull out of the driveway but I don't look back.
When I get to the clubhouse I can see headlights ahead, other brothers converging.
The sound of gunfire is louder now, sporadic but ongoing. Not automatic weapons. Handguns, maybe a shotgun.
I kill my headlight before the final turn and approach in the dark. There are bikes in the trees off the access road.
Three of them, which means at least three men already breached.
Maybe more.
I park and move through the trees toward the clubhouse. The security lights are out. Someone cut the power. Smart. Makes it harder for us to see them coming.
Also makes it harder for them to see us.
I reach the south perimeter where the fence was cut. The gap is wide enough to walk through. Fresh cut, wire still bright where it was severed. I move through it low and fast, Glock in my hand, every sense dialed up to the specific frequency of hunt-or-be-hunted.
Inside the perimeter I can see shapes moving near the clubhouse. Three men. One on the porch, two flanking.
They're not trying to breach the building. They're keeping our brothers pinned inside.
Tate materializes beside me. No words. He gestures left, I go right.
We move.
The man on my side doesn't hear me until I'm on him. He turns and I hit him with the Glock across the temple before he can raise his weapon.
He goes down hard. I kick his gun away and keep moving toward the porch.
Gunfire erupts from inside the clubhouse. Glass breaking. Someone shouting. The man on the porch turns toward the noise and that's his mistake.
I come up behind him and put my Glock to the base of his skull.
"Drop it."
He drops the gun. I kick it away and shove him to his knees, hands behind his head. Tate has the other man down twenty feet away, zip-tied and bleeding from his nose.
The front door opens. Clint comes out with Cain and Axel behind him, all of them armed.
Clint takes one look at the two men we've secured and his expression doesn't change but I see the calculation happening.
"There were three bikes," I say. "Where's the third man?"
Cain's already on his phone. "Chuck. Head count."
We wait. Fifteen seconds. Twenty.
Then I hear it. Movement in the trees to the east, someone moving fast and not caring about noise.
"He's running," Axel says.
"Let him go," Clint says. "He'll tell Crane what happened here."
What happened here is that Marrow tried to attack us at our own clubhouse and failed.
We lost nothing, but it was close.
Too close.
Cain hauls the man Tate secured to his feet. Dutch. I recognize him from the descriptions. Six-three, scar on his left cheek, mean eyes. He's bleeding but not badly. Tate didn't hit him hard enough to do real damage.
"Inside," Clint says.
We move Dutch into the clubhouse. The main room has broken glass on the floor from the shot-out windows. Bullet holes in the walls. But no brothers bleeding, no one down. Our defensive positions held.
The restructuring worked.
Cain shoves Dutch into a chair and zip-ties his hands behind his back. Dutch doesn't struggle. Just sits there breathing hard, blood running from his nose down his chin.
"You know what happens now," Clint says.
Dutch spits blood on the floor. "Fuck you."
"Where's Crane?"
"Fuck you!"
Cain steps forward and drives his fist into Dutch's solar plexus. The man doubles over, gasping, trying to breathe through the pain.
When he straightens his face is red and his eyes are watering.
"Where's Crane?" Clint repeats.
"I don't know."
Cain hits him again. This time Dutch vomits, thin and bile-yellow, onto the floor between his feet.
He's shaking when he lifts his head.
"Has a property," Dutch gasps. "Next county. Don't know the address."
"What property?"
"House. Old place. Goes there when he wants to be alone."
Cain looks at Clint. Clint nods once.
"Chuck starts looking," Clint says. "We find that property."
Movement outside. Tate at the door with his gun raised. Then he lowers it.
"It's the other one we secured," he calls. "He's waking up."
We haul the second man inside. Young, maybe twenty-five, scared shitless. He talks fast when Cain stands over him. Confirms what Dutch said. Crane has a property in the next county, uses it when he needs to disappear.
This whole attack was supposed to pull us out, make us vulnerable.
It didn't work.
Clint makes the call. The two younger Marrow members get zip-tied and left for the sheriff with an anonymous call. Dutch stays until we extract everything he knows about Crane's movements, his remaining loyal members, his plans.
By the time we're done it's almost five in the morning and Dutch is being hauled outside by Tate and Axel.
He's not our problem anymore. What happens to him after he leaves here is between him and whatever's waiting.
The clubhouse’s a mess. Glass everywhere, bullet holes, the smell of gunpowder and vomit. Brothers are already cleaning, securing the perimeter, checking weapons.
I'm turning to help when pain registers across my left ribs.
I look down and see blood soaking through my shirt.
"Knox," Tate says.
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding…"
He's right. I pull my shirt up and see the graze. Shallow but long, running from my lower ribs around toward my back.
I don't remember getting hit.
Must've been when I tackled that first man. He got a shot off before I put him down. I was moving fast enough that it just clipped me.
"Sit down," Tate says. "I'll get the kit."
"It's fine."
"Knox."
Clint's voice cuts through my refusal. He's looking at me with that expression that means he's not asking.
I sit.
Tate cleans the wound with antiseptic that burns like fire. The graze is shallow enough that it doesn't need stitches, just gauze and tape.
He works fast, efficient, his medic training making the process quick and impersonal.
When he's done I pull my shirt down and stand.
The wound pulls but it's manageable. Nothing I haven't dealt with before.
"Go home," Clint says. "Get some rest. We meet tomorrow night to discuss next moves."
I nod and head for my bike. The sun is starting to rise, turning the sky pale gray. My body is coming down off adrenaline now, the crash making everything feel heavy and slow.
The ride home is automatic. I park in the driveway and sit there for a moment with the engine off, listening to the tick of cooling metal.
Francis's bedroom light is on.
I should go inside. Should shower and sleep and deal with her later when I'm not running on fumes and adrenaline.
I get off the bike and walk to her door instead.
She opens it before I knock. She's wearing pajama shorts and a tank top, hair loose around her shoulders, eyes wide when she sees the blood on my shirt.
"You're hurt."
"It's nothing."
"Knox."
"Just a graze. I already cleaned it."
She doesn't move out of the doorway. Just stands there looking at me like she's trying to decide something.
"I heard the gunfire," she says. "I thought..."
She doesn't finish but I hear it anyway. Thought I was dead. Thought I wasn't coming back.
"I'm fine," I say.
"You're bleeding through the bandage."
I look down. She's right. The gauze under my shirt is soaked red, blood seeping through the fabric.
"Come inside," she says.
I follow her.
Her place is warmer than mine, the AC struggling to keep up. She leads me to the bathroom and turns on the light.