Chapter 17 #2
He doesn’t take offense. “When you find her,” he states, voice low, “you call it in. You don’t go hero. My territory, my vengeance. My rules and my way.”
My laugh is sharp, humorless. “You don’t know me.”
Wrath’s eyes don’t waver. “I know men like you. And I know what love does to you.”
My throat tightens.
Wrath squeezes my arm once, hard. “Bring her home. That’s the mission. Not revenge. You got my word I’ll end any man who touches your woman, but that shit doesn’t taint you or touch what you got buildin’ with her.”
I nod, but make no promises because if I speak I might break something.
We hit the road.
The Arkansas air is colder now, wind cutting through my clothes. My bike’s engine feels like an extension of my heartbeat—fast, relentless.
Smoke rides beside me, slightly back, scanning the world like he’s looking for a reason to shoot it. We start where the van could have gone.
Warehouses. Storage units. Back lots behind closed diners and feed stores. Dirt roads that curve into woods. Places that like to hide secrets. We stop at gas stations. Ask questions with eyes that don’t invite lies.
“White cargo van,” Smoke shares at one stop, voice flat. “Dent in the rear.”
The attendant shakes his head too fast. “Don’t know.”
Smoke leans in, just a fraction reading the man the same way I am. “You sure?”
The attendant’s Adam’s apple bobs. “I ain’t seen nothing.”
We don’t waste time calling it in for Grinder and Dove to hack the security feed there. We keep moving. My phone stays in my jacket pocket, heavy. Every time it buzzes, my whole body flinches.
It’s never her.
It’s updates.
Nothing solid.
Then, an hour into the search, Grinder calls.
I answer on the first ring. “Talk.”
“I got a hit on the second prepaid,” he begins, voice quick. “The one the burner called. That second phone lit up again ten minutes ago.”
My breath catches. “Where?”
“Tower ping near a rural pocket—twenty minutes northeast of you,” he says. “Sparse area. Few houses. Some hunting cabins. One abandoned property listed under an LLC.”
“Send it,” I snap.
“It’s already on your phone,” he says. “Miles—listen. It pinged for twelve seconds. It might not ping again.”
“Then we go now.”
“Now,” Grinder agrees. “And Miles—”
“What.”
“I pulled local chatter. There’s been tension between an outlaw support crew and another club running through here. Not Outlaws. Not Hellions.”
My blood runs colder.
“Who.”
Grinder hesitates half a beat. “I’m still confirming.”
Smoke hears enough to snarl. “Another club?”
“Just ride,” Grinder says. “I’ll text what I confirm. And I’ll send it wide so everyone can make their way in that direction.”
The call ends.
I don’t think.
I don’t hesitate. I twist the throttle until the world blurs. Smoke stays on my flank, bike roaring like an angry animal. The road narrows from highway to two-lane, then to cracked asphalt lined with trees. Houses thin out. Mailboxes become rarer. The sky lowers, gray pressing into the woods.
My phone pings with Grinder’s text.
LLC property: “Pine Hollow Holdings.” Registered agent ties to known associate of “Iron Soldiers” support network.
Iron Soldiers.
The name means nothing to me personally, but the way Smoke’s posture changes when I shout it over the wind tells me it means something he’s heard before.
“Problem?” I yell.
Smoke’s voice is grim. “They ain’t friends.”
Good. Because I’m not planning on being friendly. We turn onto a dirt road that looks like it doesn’t want to be found. Mud splashes up under the fenders. Trees close in. The air smells like wet bark and old leaves.
The map dot Grinder sent sits ahead.
A mile.
Half mile.
My pulse hammers.
I’m so focused on the road that I almost miss it—faint tire tracks veering off into the brush, where someone’s driven over the edge of the path and tried to hide the trail.
Smoke sees it too. He points.
We cut into it, bikes bouncing over roots and ruts until the trees open up into a small clearing.
And there it is maybe a quarter of a mile in the distance.
A house.
Not a nice one. Not a trailer. Something in between—an old place with boarded windows and dark sheets pulled tight inside. A truck parked off to the side. A white cargo van with a dent in the rear quarter panel, half-hidden behind the shed.
My whole body goes rigid.
That’s it. That’s the van. Smoke cuts his engine. I kill mine a second later, the silence slamming down like a weight. No need to make things known before we are truly ready.
For a moment, neither of us moves. Because this is the moment. The one where you either find her alive—Or—I swallow hard, forcing the thought away.
Smoke draws his gun. Looks at me. “We calling this in?”
Wrath’s voice echoes in my head, “Bring her home. Not revenge.”
But another voice is louder. Danae’s. Soft in my ear on the phone. I miss you.
I pull my gun from my waistband, chamber a round. “We call,” I state, because I’m not stupid. Not today.
Smoke’s eyebrows lift like he didn’t expect that from me. I dial Wrath. It rings once.
He answers. “Talk.”
“We found the van,” I explain, voice low. “White cargo. Dent. Property northeast. Looks like a house with covered windows. Grinder will send the pin to everyone.”
A beat of silence. Then Wrath responds, “Hold tight, man.”
“I’m not waiting,” I growl.
“You’re not going in alone,” Wrath snaps back. “Two minutes for Stud and Raff. Country Boy can be to you in four with my men. We’re ten out.”
“Ten is too long.”
“Miles,” His voice drops, iron-hard. “If you go in and they scatter with her, you’ll never forgive yourself.”
The truth hits like a fist. I hate it. But he’s right.
Smoke shifts beside me, restless. “We could at least get eyes,” he mutters.
Wrath hears him, maybe through the phone. “You get eyes. You don’t breach.”
I end the call, jaw clenched. We move through the brush on foot, keeping low. The ground is damp, soft under my boots. My breath sounds too loud in my ears. We circle wide, staying in the tree line. A light flickers behind one of the covered windows—like someone moved in front of a lamp.
My heart stutters. I focus on details.
Truck’s warm? Van? I can’t tell from here.
No dogs barking. No music. Too quiet. The house looks dead except the little light.
Smoke nods toward the back. “Shed door cracked.”
I glance. It is. A generator hums faintly somewhere, almost lost under the wind.
Then a tiny light, the glimmer of a cigarette being drawn from, the illumination brighter then dimming out until the next puff.
Voices on the back porch.
Not loud.
Not clear.
But men.
My blood turns to fire. I freeze, every muscle locking. Smoke’s eyes flick to me, sharp, asking if I hear what he does. I don’t answer.
Because I hear it again.
A voice. Muffled.
Female.
My stomach drops straight through the ground. It could be anyone.
It could be—But my body knows before my brain can prove it.
Danae.
Smoke grips my sleeve, hard, holding me back when my feet try to move forward on instinct.
“Seven minutes,” he breathes.
“Fuck seven minutes,” I whisper, barely able to make sound. “That’s her.”
Smoke’s jaw tightens. For all his cynicism, for all his mess, he understands what that means. We crouch lower, watching the house like it might blink and give itself away.
The muffled sound comes again from beneath the window we have approached and rested near, sharper this time, like pain.
I see red. I see blood.
Peeking through the crack in the sheets covering the glass of the window, I get the first glimpse.
I see her wrists bound behind her, blindfolded, scared out of her mind.
Her scrubs are covered in blood. Beside her a man lays out on a make shift bed under a tarp.
His blood everywhere, but a fresh bandage covering part of his abdomen.
So they needed her.
My hands shake so hard I nearly drop my gun. Smoke leans in close enough that I feel his breath. “When they roll up,” he murmurs, “we go like hell.”
My throat burns. I nod once, slow.
Because I can’t go in yet. Not if it means losing her.
So I retreat back into the tree line, every second a torture.
I listen. I watch. And I hold myself back with every scrap of will I’ve got left.
Because every passing minute is an eternity, and it’s also the difference between rescue and regret that never stops eating you alive.