Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rookie
Ruger doesn't speak for a long time after I show him the screen.
We're in the kitchen. It’s just past dawn. The same counter, the same coffee, the same two mugs.
Except this morning the laptop between us has Sarah Boyd's name on a utility bill in Clarksburg, West Virginia, next to a man named Cody Skaggs who's been gutting our network for weeks.
Ruger stares at the screen. His jaw works once. Twice.
"Porter doesn't need to hear this yet." His voice is barely above a whisper, and the control in it is more frightening than any shout I've ever heard. "Not until I've confirmed it. Not until I know how deep it goes."
I nod. "Krypton can confirm the access trail. Every login Skaggs used came through Sarah's credentials."
Ruger closes the laptop and presses both palms flat on the lid.
"One problem at a time." He looks up at me. "And tonight, the first problem is Dale Creedy."
* * *
Church convenes at noon.
I stand in the hallway where I've stood for the last three years, except this time the door is open and Ruger is looking directly at me.
Ruger is standing at the head of the table, both palms flat on the wood. "Get in here, Prospect."
I step inside, and the table is full.
Bloodhound at Ruger's right. Ounce to the left. Coin, Porter, Bracken, Maddox, Daemon, Wraith, Decorum, Saytr. Every patched member who can ride.
I don't sit. There's no chair for me. I stand at the end of the table with my hands at my sides and wait.
"Rookie's woman has been stalked by a man named Dale Creedy." Ruger's voice carries the flat authority of a president issuing an order, not opening a discussion. "Former cellmate of her father. Did twelve years for aggravated assault. Two counts. Both women."
The room absorbs it.
Maddox's fists curl on the table.
Daemon's expression goes blank, which is worse than anger.
Coin is motionless, calculating.
"He's approached her mother at home, at a gas station, and now at her workplace." Ruger's jaw tightens. "This last time, he put hands on the mother. Grabbed her arm and delivered a threat."
He pauses. "He's also been circling Backroads. Showed up in the parking lot after close and confronted Saylor directly, multiple times now."
Porter shifts in his chair. His eyes meet mine across the table, and I see something in them I haven't seen from him before.
Recognition.
One man looking at another and understanding exactly what it feels like when someone threatens the woman you'd bleed for.
"The code is clear." Ruger flattens his palms on the table. "No man puts hands on a woman connected to this club."
His gaze sweeps the room. "Creedy has been warned. By the girl. By her mother. By our prospect."
He lets the silence sit for two seconds. "He didn't listen."
He looks at Bloodhound. The SAA nods once. A single movement that carries the weight of a verdict.
"Tonight." Ruger stands. "Bloodhound, Ounce, Maddox, Prospect. You ride at ten."
My chest expands. Not with air. With purpose, heavy and iron-hard.
"Prez." I step forward. "Thank you for letting me be there when it happens."
Ruger studies me. The same assessing look he's been giving me for the last few years, except now there's something else underneath. Respect isn't the right word. Acknowledgment.
"You earned it." He nods once. "Be ready."
* * *
At ten we all get into one of the club’s big black, dually trucks. The temps have been below freezing, and we can’t be too careful this time of year.
The air is brutal. Twenty-eight degrees, wind cutting through leather, the roads dark and empty between Morgantown and Clarksburg.
Ruger stays behind. The president doesn't ride on operations like this. He sends his SAA, his enforcer, his muscle, and the man whose woman was threatened.
My jaw is clenched so tight my molars ache, and I haven't unclenched it since Church.
Nobody speaks. Nobody needs to. Every man on this road knows what we're riding toward and what we're going to do when we get there.
Krypton gave us the address. Maple Street, Clarksburg. A two-story house with peeling siding and a chain-link fence and a dark truck parked in the driveway.
The same dark truck that sat outside Saylor’s mom’s gas station.
The same truck that idled in the Backroads parking lot while Creedy smiled at Saylor and used her father's name like a crowbar.
We kill the engines a block away and walk the rest.
Boots on frozen pavement, breath visible, the neighborhood asleep around us.
Bloodhound takes point.
He moves with the fluid silence of a man who's done this before, more times than I want to count.
Ounce is behind him, six-five and filling the sidewalk, a shadow with shoulders.
Maddox flanks left. I flank right.
The house is dark except for a blue glow in the front window. Television. Someone's awake.
Bloodhound doesn't knock. He tests the door handle. Locked. He looks at Ounce.
Ounce puts his boot through it.
The door splinters inward with a crack loud enough to split the night open.
Cold air rushes into the house and collides with the stale warmth inside—cigarettes, old carpet, the sour-sweet smell of a man living alone without opening a window.
We're inside in a matter of seconds. The hallway is narrow. The blue glow comes from the living room, where a TV plays late-night cable to an empty couch.
A sound from the kitchen. Chair legs scraping linoleum. Someone standing up fast.
Creedy appears in the kitchen doorway. Sweatpants, no shirt, a beer in one grip.
His eyes go wide when he sees the cuts, the boots, the four men filling his hallway.
For one second, the practiced smile flickers across his face. Muscle memory, I suppose. The charm offensive starting up on autopilot.
Then he sees me and the smile dies.
"You." He sets the beer down on the counter behind him.
His hands come up, palms out.
The same mock-surrender gesture he's used on Saylor, on her mother, on every woman he's ever cornered.
Bloodhound hits him before the palms are fully raised.
One punch. Straight to the solar plexus, no windup, no warning.
The sound is a wet, hollow crack—air leaving a body that wasn't braced.
Creedy's mouth opens. His eyes bulge.
A string of spit stretches from his lower lip to the linoleum as he folds.
He hits the kitchen floor on his knees, gasping.
Ounce grabs him by the back of the neck, drags him to the kitchen chair he'd been sitting in, and slams him down.
Maddox produces zip ties from his jacket and secures his wrists to the chair arms before Creedy's lungs have refilled.
The kitchen is small. Yellow light from a fixture above the table. Dirty dishes in the sink. A phone on the counter next to the beer.
Creedy's phone.
I pick it up. Scroll through the messages. Dennis Halstead's name is everywhere.
Texts, calls, a thread going back months. Instructions, details, photographs.
A photograph of Saylor walking to her car after a Backroads shift. Taken from the parking lot. Time-stamped two weeks ago.
A photograph of her mother filling up at the gas station. Taken from the other side of the pumps. The angle of a man who positioned himself deliberately.
A photograph of Saylor's apartment building. The same image that ended up on the true crime forum.
My vision narrows. The phone screen blurs and clears and blurs again.
He didn't find the forum post. He made it.
He took the fucking photographs, posted them online, tagged Saylor's account, and led the true crime crowd directly to her door.
He terrorized her in person and online. She never knew it was the same man.
I set the phone on the table and look at Creedy.
He's breathing hard, wrists straining against the zip ties.
His bare chest is red where Bloodhound's fist landed.
His eyes are moving between us, calculating, measuring, running the same assessment I watched him run in the Backroads parking lot.
Except this time there's no truck to retreat to. No wave through the windshield. No practiced smile to hide behind.
"You took pictures of her." I pull a chair from the table and sit down across from him. Close enough to see the sweat beading on his forehead. "You posted them online. You tagged her account. You gave strangers her address."
He doesn't answer. His jaw is tight, his breathing controlled.
He's been in rooms like this before. Prison teaches you how to take a beating.
Prison didn't teach him how to take what's coming.
"You showed up at her mother's workplace." I lean forward. My voice is low, even, and doesn't belong to the boy who sat in statistics class seven weeks ago struggling with regression analysis. "You grabbed her arm. You told her to stop being difficult."
Creedy's lips peel back, his jaw working. "Dennis asked me to?—"
Bloodhound's hand closes around Creedy's throat. Not squeezing. Holding. The way you'd hold a dog by the scruff when it bares its teeth.
"Nobody asked you shit." Bloodhound's voice is gravel dragged across concrete. "Dennis Halstead is in a cage where he belongs. And you used his name to terrorize two women who spent years putting their lives back together."
He releases Creedy's throat. Creedy coughs, sucks air, his eyes watering.
I stand, walk to the counter, and open the kitchen drawer.
Inside are utensils, a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a roll of duct tape.
I take the pliers and the tape.
Creedy watches me walk with the pliers in one grip and the tape in the other.
His nostrils flare.
The muscles in his forearms strain against the zip ties hard enough for the plastic to creak, and the cockiness drains from his expression like dirty water down a sink.
"You grabbed her mother's arm with your right hand." I sit down again. Open the pliers. "That's what she told me. Your right hand."
His right hand is zip-tied to the chair arm.
The fingers are thick, calloused, the hands of a man who's used them as weapons for decades.
I look at Bloodhound and he nods.
I close the pliers around Creedy's right index finger.
The metal bites into the skin above the first knuckle.