Pitfall's Obsession (Mountain Reapers MC #27)

Chapter One

The mine swallowed them both thirty feet past the entrance, black so complete it pressed against Pitfall's eyes like a physical weight.

He kept moving.

Behind him, maybe fifty yards back, Cody Branham stumbled and cursed, the beam of his flashlight jerking wild across the tunnel walls. Idiot was broadcasting his position like a goddamn lighthouse. Made tracking him almost too easy.

Pitfall didn't need light. He'd spent three days in a shaft just like this one when he was sixteen—no flashlight, no rope, nothing but seep water and raw fingers and the kind of stubborn that refused to die.

You learned things in the dark that long.

Learned how to feel the air currents that told you where the passages opened up.

Learned how to read the texture of stone under your palms. Learned that panic was just another way to stop breathing.

The tunnel curved left. Pitfall pressed his shoulder to the wall and followed it, his boots finding the rail ties by feel. Old coal hauling track, probably hadn't moved product since the seventies. The wooden ties were rotted soft in places, solid in others. You had to know which was which.

Branham didn't know shit.

The flashlight beam ahead flickered, then steadied.

Branham had stopped moving. Pitfall could hear him breathing hard, the ragged wheeze of a man who'd been running scared for the better part of an hour.

Should've picked a different hole to hide in.

Should've remembered that the Reapers had a prospect who'd crawled out of the earth once already.

"I know you're back there." Branham's voice echoed off the stone, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The acoustics in these old shafts played tricks. "We can work this out, man. I got money. I got—"

"You got product moving through Reaper territory." Pitfall kept his voice flat, let it carry. No point hiding now. "Without permission. Without tribute. That's not a money problem."

"I didn't know! Nobody told me those roads were—"

"Everybody knows."

Pitfall moved while he talked, closing the distance in the darkness beyond Branham's flashlight reach. The dealer was turning in circles now, the beam sweeping the tunnel like he could spot danger coming if he just looked hard enough. Didn't understand that danger was already here.

"The club," Branham tried, voice cracking. "I can talk to your president. Reaper, right? I can explain—"

"You had three warnings." Pitfall was close enough now to smell the man's fear-sweat, sharp and sour under the mineral dampness of the mine. "Grit delivered the first one personal. You remember Grit?"

The flashlight beam went still. Branham remembered.

"That was a conversation ," Pitfall continued. "Friendly. Educational. Then you moved another shipment anyway, so Sledge came to see you. Big guy. Quiet. Probably told you what happens to dealers who don't listen."

"I was going to stop. I was—"

"Third warning was your truck burning in your driveway while you watched from your living room window." Pitfall let that sit for a second. "You still didn't stop."

The flashlight dropped. Branham ran.

Pitfall followed.

The tunnel branched ahead—left toward a flooded section, right toward a vertical shaft that dropped forty feet into nothing.

Branham went left, splashing into knee-deep water that had been collecting since before either of them was born.

Bad choice. The water slowed him down, and the cold shocked the air right out of his lungs.

Pitfall hit the water without hesitation, driving forward while Branham floundered and gasped. His hand closed on the back of the dealer's jacket, yanking him around just as Branham tried to swing—wild, desperate, the kind of punch a man throws when he knows it's his last.

It missed.

Pitfall's didn't.

The impact was wet and solid, knuckles against jaw, and Branham went down into the black water with a splash that echoed off the stone like thunder. Pitfall hauled him back up by the hair before he could drown, slammed him against the tunnel wall hard enough to crack teeth.

"Here's what happens now," he said, getting right up in Branham's face even though neither of them could see shit.

"I drag you out of here. You tell Grit everything—who supplies you, who you sell to, which roads you've been using.

All of it. Then the club decides whether you're useful enough to keep breathing. "

Branham was crying now, wet choking sobs that mixed with the water streaming down his face. "Please. Please, I'll talk. I'll tell you everything."

"Yeah." Pitfall shifted his grip to the man's collar, started dragging him back toward the entrance. "You will."

The night air hit different after an hour underground. Sweeter. Colder. Pitfall sucked it in while his eyes adjusted to moonlight that felt bright as noon after the total darkness of the shaft.

Grit was waiting by the truck, leaning against the tailgate with his arms crossed and his face carved from the same stone as the mountains around them. The Marine had a particular way of standing that said I've been patient, but my patience has limits , and that's exactly how he looked now.

"Took your time," Grit said.

Pitfall shoved Branham forward, letting the dealer stumble to his knees in the dirt. "He ran deep. Had to convince him coming out was better than staying in."

Grit's eyes moved to Branham, assessed, dismissed. "He talk?"

"Says he will. Once he stops shaking."

"Good." Grit pushed off the tailgate and walked over to where Branham was trying to get his legs under him. One boot in the center of the dealer's back put him face-first in the mountain dirt. "Stay down. You move, I break something you need."

Branham stayed down.

Grit looked back at Pitfall, and something in his expression shifted—still hard, still assessing, but with an edge of respect that hadn't been there before. "You know those tunnels?"

"Some of them." Pitfall wiped mine water and worse off his hands onto his jeans. "Enough."

"Useful." The word carried weight coming from Grit. The enforcer didn't hand out compliments like candy. "Get him in the truck. We'll take him to the compound, let him spill his guts where cleanup's easier."

They loaded Branham into the truck bed, wrists zip-tied behind his back and a strip of duct tape across his mouth. He'd stopped crying, at least. Now he just looked hollowed out, a man who'd finally understood that running was never really an option.

Pitfall rode in the back with him, watching the mountain roads unspool beneath the stars while Grit drove.

Ten months he'd been prospecting for the Reapers.

Ten months of grunt work and shit details and proving himself every single day to men who'd been riding these mountains since before he could grow a beard.

He wasn't patched yet. Wasn't even close. But tonight felt like a step, like one more rung on a ladder he'd been climbing since he was sixteen years old with torn hands and nothing but stubborn keeping him alive.

The compound lights appeared around a bend, the converted coal company headquarters glowing warm against the dark bulk of the mountains. Home, or the closest thing to it he'd ever had. Pitfall watched it grow closer and felt something loosen in his chest.

The garage doors opened as they pulled in, brothers emerging from the main clubhouse to see what Grit had brought back.

Sledge appeared first, six-foot-four of quiet muscle, followed by Switchback and a few others.

They gathered around the truck bed, looking down at Branham like he was something unpleasant they'd found stuck to their boots.

"He give you trouble?" Sledge's voice was a low rumble that came from somewhere around his knees.

"Tried to hide underground." Pitfall hopped out of the truck bed, boots hitting concrete. "Didn't work out for him."

"Underground." Switchback grinned, quick and sharp. "Wrong move against this one."

They dragged Branham toward the workshop, where the interrogation would happen in a room with a drain in the floor. Pitfall started to follow, but Grit caught his arm.

"You're done for tonight."

"I can help with—"

"You did the hard part." Grit's grip was firm, final. "Go clean up. This next bit's earned, not prospected."

Pitfall wanted to argue. The words were right there, pushing at the back of his teeth. But he looked at Grit's face, saw the immovable certainty there, and swallowed them down.

"Yes, sir."

Grit nodded once, released his arm, and headed for the workshop. The door closed behind him with a solid thunk.

Pitfall stood in the garage for a long moment, mountain night pressing in through the open bay doors, engine grease and chrome surrounding him like a promise. He could hear voices from the main clubhouse—brothers drinking, music playing low, someone laughing at a joke he couldn't make out.

This was what he'd been reaching for since he crawled out of that mine shaft at sixteen.

A place where strength meant something. Where stubborn wasn't a flaw but a feature.

Where men who'd lost everything to corporate betrayal and government indifference had rebuilt themselves into something that couldn't be broken.

He wasn't there yet. Still climbing, still reaching, fingers still bloody from the effort.

But he was closer than he'd ever been.

Pitfall headed for the washroom to scrub mine dust and Branham's blood from his hands, the night settling into the kind of quiet that felt earned. Behind him, the workshop door stayed closed, and whatever sounds came from inside got swallowed by the mountain darkness.

Some things were better left underground.