Rookie's Shot (Saint's Outlaws MC: Morgantown, WV #4)

Prologue

Rookie

Three Years Ago…

Forty minutes.

Forty minutes at the checkpoint and not a single headlight on the road.

No rumble of pipes. No call, no text, no radio crackle.

The brothers were supposed to pass through here on their way back from the warehouse op, and the road is empty in both directions.

I check my phone again.

Nothing from Ruger. Nothing from Ounce or Bloodhound.

Nothing from anyone.

My bike idles beneath me, engine vibrating through my thighs, and the silence around it is wrong.

Not peaceful wrong.

Not small-town-late-night wrong.

The kind where your body knows something your brain hasn't caught up to yet.

I kill the engine and dial Ruger.

It goes straight to voicemail.

I dial Ounce, and the same thing happens.

I go through each officer in the club. Their phones either go to voicemail, or they just don’t answer.

All of them unreachable at the same time.

My thumb hovers over Kinsey's name, almost out of habit.

She'd know what to do with the panic crawling up my throat.

She'd say something steady and smart, and I'd believe her because I always believe her.

Because she's the only person in this town who makes me feel like I'm not faking my way through every conversation.

I don't call her.

Not because of instinct. Because of pride.

We had a fight two days ago, and I'm still being stubborn about it.

Instead, I fire the bike back up and pull a U-turn toward the compound.

The ride takes eleven minutes.

I push ninety on the straightaway and take the curves too fast, my knee damn near kissing asphalt on the switchback past Coopers Rock.

The mountain air smells like pine and woodsmoke with something metallic underneath, like a storm coming in, but the sky is clear.

The compound gate is open when I get there. Not unlocked. Open. No one manning it.

My stomach folds in half.

I roll through slowly, scanning the yard.

Ellie's car. Sarah's sedan. Tildie's little hatchback. Porter's truck is gone—he rode out with the others.

So did Ruger, Ounce, Maddox, Coin, Bracken, Daemon, and Wraith.

The entire officer line and most of the full patches, all headed to a warehouse on the south side of town for a joint op with the Grim Vultures.

The women are here. The girls are here… and the gate is wide open.

I park and swing off the bike, boots hitting gravel too loud in the silence.

Through the clubhouse window, I can see movement. Figures gathered. Tense postures.

Ellie is the first one out the door, reading my face before I've said a word.

Sarah, Tildie, and Kinsey follow.

Wrenleigh and Sadie Jo hover in the doorway behind them. Coin's girls. Fifteen and almost thirteen. Barefoot in pajamas.

"Any word?" My voice comes out scraped raw.

Tildie shakes her head. "Nothing. What's happened?"

I run a hand through my hair hard enough to sting my scalp. "I was supposed to meet them at the checkpoint. They never showed. Tried calling—no answer. None of them."

Sarah's voice is steady. Steadier than mine. "Could they have changed routes?"

"Maybe." Even I don't believe it. "But Prez was clear about checking in. Something's not right."

The words hang in the air for maybe ten seconds before another engine breaks the silence.

Louder than mine. Faster. Coming up the drive like the road personally offended it.

Bloodhound kills his bike in the middle of the yard, doesn't bother with the kickstand, and lets the Harley drop sideways into the gravel as he swings off.

His face is a mask carved from stone and fury.

Every set of eyes locks onto him.

"We've been played." Three words. They land like grenades.

Ellie speaks first. "What do you mean?"

"Warehouse was empty. No Striker, but the Vultures showed. Striker left a fuckin' note." Bloodhound's eyes sweep the group, landing on Tildie. His jaw flexes once. "'Goodbye, nephew. By the time you read this, I'll have what I came for.'"

Tildie goes white. "Marco's coming here."

"Already on his way." Bloodhound doesn't soften it. "Viper was the one to warn us. Striker's been playing both sides longer than anyone thought. Signals are jammed. I broke off to get here while Ounce and the others try to circle back."

The compound goes from still to electric in the space of a breath.

And somewhere in the back of my skull, behind the adrenaline and the fear, a thought starts forming. Small at first. A whisper.

The warehouse op. The joint operation with the Vultures.

Ruger planned it based on intel.

Intel about Striker's movements.

Intel about security weaknesses and patrol gaps and which nights the compound ran a skeleton crew.

Intel someone fed to Striker in the first place.

The whisper gets louder.

Kinsey's voice in bed, two weeks ago, fingers tracing lazy patterns on my chest. “So how does security work when the officers ride out? Who stays behind?”

She'd asked it the way she asked everything—curious, easy, like she was making conversation.

And I'd answered because she was warm against me and her hair smelled like vanilla, and I was too fucking stupid to hear the interview underneath the intimacy.

Four prospects. That's who stays behind. I told her four.

A distant rumble rolls through the trees. Not thunder. Engines. Too many to count, coming from beyond the ridge.

"Get inside." Bloodhound's voice drops into something I've never heard from him. Command stripped of everything but survival. "Rookie, rally the rest of the prospects. Sarah, get the women to safety."

My mouth moves before my brain can stop it. "There's only four of us. Not enough to hold them off if it's a full crew coming."

Four prospects. The exact number I gave her. The exact number she gave Striker. The exact number Marco is counting on.

Bloodhound doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. We both know four prospects aren't a defense. We're a speed bump.

Sarah takes over with the women.

I catch a glimpse of her guiding them back inside, toward the hallway where the storage room is, toward the tunnels.

My hands go numb.

"Rookie!" Bloodhound's bark snaps my head up. "Move!"

I move.

Shots, Beats, Lock—the other three prospects.

I find them scrambling out of the bunkroom, half-dressed, wide-eyed.

Shots has a shotgun. Beats is empty-handed. Lock is pulling on boots without socks.

None of them are ready for what's coming.

None of us are. We're prospects.

We wash bikes, run errands, and take shit from brothers who've earned the right to give it.

We’re not soldiers.

We’re not equipped for a full tactical assault on a compound we're barely trusted to guard.

But the women are in the tunnels now, and they need time to disappear, and time is what we're here to buy.

I grab a pistol from the lockbox behind the bar and check the magazine.

It’s full.

My hands are steady, and I hate them for it.

Steady hands belong to men who've done this before.

Mine are steady because they don't understand yet how bad this is going to get.

The first vehicle tears through the gate at speed, headlights cutting the dark, tires spraying gravel.

A second behind it, then a third.

Black SUVs with tinted windows, the kind of vehicles men use when they don't plan on being identified.

Marco's crew.

They spill out fast and organized.

Eight, ten, more behind them.

Tactical gear. Rifles. Flashlights sweeping the yard.

Against four prospects, a Sergeant at Arms, and a prayer.

Bloodhound fires first.

The crack splits the night open, and one of Marco's men drops behind an SUV door.

Everything after happens in fragments.

Muzzle flash from the tree line—Shots found a position.

Glass shatters in the common room. Beats screams something unintelligible from the east hallway.

Return fire chews into the compound walls, plaster and wood exploding above my head.

I fire from behind the bar doorway, aiming at shapes and muzzle flashes, pulling the trigger like someone operating on adrenaline and nothing else.

A round punches through the doorframe six inches from my face, and I feel splinters bite into my cheek.

They're pushing forward. Coordinated. Professional. They've done this before, and we haven't.

Radio crackles. Bloodhound's voice, strained: "Fall back. North tunnel. Now."

He's giving up the clubhouse.

Letting them have it so we can get underground and buy the women more distance.

The women who are running through tunnels whose locations Striker handed over to Marco on a golden platter.

I fire two more rounds to cover Lock's retreat down the hallway, then follow, running low, the sound of boots and shouts behind us as Marco's men breach the main entrance.

We hit the north tunnel access at a dead sprint, Bloodhound slamming the reinforced door behind us, throwing the bolt.

It won't hold long. It's not meant to. But it’ll give us enough of a head start.

The tunnel is black except for one flashlight between the five of us.

Bloodhound leads. I take the rear, pistol aimed at the darkness behind us, listening for the sound of the door giving way.

We run. Rock walls pressing close, air damp and mineral, my boots slapping wet stone.

Lock is breathing hard next to me, the kind of ragged gasping you hear from someone who's never been shot at and is realizing what it means.

I know the feeling.

My body is running, but my mind is stuck in a loop, cycling back to the same handful of images like a film strip caught in a projector.

Kinsey's smile. Her hand on my chest. Camera positions. Friday rotation. The blind spot on the southeast fence. The number of prospects who stay behind.

Every answer I gave her.

Every secret I handed over because she was warm and I was lonely.

Nobody warns you when you're freshly eighteen and a few months into a new city that the girl who makes you feel seen might be the one dismantling everything around you.

We emerge from the north tunnel into cold air and moonlight.

The compound is below us, half-obscured by trees, and I can see smoke rising from the east side.

Bloodhound pulls out a burner phone—signal's spotty but functional away from the jammer's range.

He dials and waits.

"Ruger." One word. The relief in it lasts half a second before his voice goes hard again. "Compound's hit. Marco's crew, at least ten. Women are in the tunnels heading for Cabin Two. We're out through the north. Get here."

He listens, nods twice, and ends the call.

"Ounce is twenty minutes out with Ruger and the full patches." Bloodhound's eyes find mine. Something in them I can't read. "Sarah radioed from the south tunnel exit. She's hit."

The ground tilts under my feet.

"How bad?" My voice doesn't sound like mine.

"Kinsey got her to the cabin. She's conscious." A pause. "They were followed through the tunnels. Marco's men knew exactly where to go."

Of course they did.

Striker used to be Prez.

He would know, and Striker told Marco.

A straight line from my mouth to Sarah's blood, with three stops in between.

Sarah. Who brings me a plate every Sunday without being asked.

Whose husband Porter shook my hand last week and told me I’d make a good patch one day.

She's bleeding on a mountain because the boy Porter believed in couldn't tell the difference between a woman who loved him and a woman who was strip-mining him for information.

Beats sits down on a rock, head between his knees.

Lock is staring at the smoke below with dead eyes.

Shots is reloading the shotgun with hands shaking so bad he drops two shells.

I lean against a tree and press my forehead to the bark, close my eyes, and open them. The smoke is still there.

Everything starts here.

Not at Vulture's recommendation.

Not at the prospect vote.

Not the first time I rode through the compound gate on a borrowed bike with a duffel bag from Chicago and a head full of ideas about brotherhood.

Here. On a ridge in the dark with gunpowder on my hands and a woman's blood on my conscience and the knowledge—permanent, branded, mine—that the people I was supposed to protect got hurt because I gave the keys away to someone who smiled while she copied them.

By the time Ruger arrives with the full patches, and the time they retake the compound and pull Marco's crew apart, shit will be hitting the fan.

Ruger already knows the truth about Kinsey Callahan.

Striker's daughter, Ruger’s cousin.

The girl I'd been sleeping with for months, the one I thought was a college student with an engineering major and a curious streak, was a pipeline.

Every word I whispered to her went straight up the chain to a man who used it to burn us.

The hours after blur. Ruger arrives with the full patches. They retake the compound, clear the buildings room by room, and pull Marco's crew apart.

By the time Church is called, every brother who can still stand gathers around the table.

The air in the chapel smells like gun smoke and sweat and adrenaline burning off.

Ruger doesn't yell. He stands across the table, covered in someone else's blood, smoke still in his hair, and looks at me with the one expression I can't survive.

Disappointment.

Ruger is still for a long time. The room is so silent I can hear the fluorescent light buzzing above the table.

"I'm going to give you a chance you don't deserve.

" His voice is low, measured, each word placed like a brick.

"One. You prove to me and every brother in this club you're worth the patch you're chasing.

You earn back what she cost you, inch by inch, and you don't complain about the distance.

" He pauses. "Because it's long. And it should be. "

My chin drops. "Yes, sir."

He walks out. The brothers follow. One by one, until the room is empty and the buzzing light is the only sound left.

I press my palms flat against the table and lean into them until my arms shake. The wood grain blurs.

Never again.

Not one more person. Not one more breach. Not one more time someone looks at me and sees the kid who let it happen.

I push off the table and stand straight.

I will prove myself to the club, if it’s the last thing I do.