Chapter 37-Sawyer
Right after we locate the gas station.
Five minutes.
That’s the only grace I give myself — five minutes to make sure the men who touched what’s mine pay in whatever currency I decide.
Micah’s voice is a calm cut through the roar of the SUV.
“Thermal’s locked. They’re at the north pump. Two standing, one with her.”
His fingers dance the drone feed across my phone.
I watch Lil Bit slumped, small against the bathroom wall, and the engine in my gut flips from cold to hot.
Benji’s already beating his hands against his knees. “Give me a name and a place to put the first one down.” He’s all edge, like a coiled wire.
We move like a machine.
Me and my boys have the only exit from the north side cut off.
Micah’s been busy the last few seconds, rerouting traffic cams. One blink and the highway goes from a river of taillights to a still pool of opportunity.
I don’t want lights, sirens, or witnesses.
I want the three of them gone from the timeline, from the fucking face of the earth, and I want Lil Bit back in my arms.
We slow off the shoulder and tuck the SUV behind a stand of pines. I can taste ozone and diesel.
My hands are steady on the wheel because the part of me that learned to do this when sleep was a rumor does not shake.
“Ready?” I ask.
Alex looks green, but he nods.
Benji’s grin is two teeth and a promise.
“Always.”
Micah’s drone dips low, a silent bird painting heat signatures on my HUD.
There—Roach’s shape steps back from the convenience door, lighting a cigarette like a man with nothing left to lose.
Then he’s grabbing something? A key tied to something big. Probably for the bathroom.
The other two guys tilt toward Benji’s weight and Micah’s shadow to the east.
They think they have control. They don’t.
We hit them in a seam — quiet and fast. Benji comes in on the flank like a ghost, Micah drives in bumping the trash can to cause a distraction for the attendant and any wayward customers.
I go for Roach.
Everything narrows to the sound of my boots on concrete and the slap of leather.
He sees me, and the laugh he gives is too small to fill the space. He reaches. I move first.
Soldier memory takes over.
Step, balance, close, and close some more.
“She was mine first,” he grunts.
Then, my hand lands on his throat not as a lover but as a judge.
I don’t want him to look away from me when I break him.
I want him to hear everything he took echo off the inside of his skull.
He scrabbles and slaps, clutching for breath, for leverage.
Benji takes the second guy down in three precise strikes.
Micah leaves the storefront, comes around back and is likely disabling the bikes. The other guy goes down, trying to run away, but he don’t make it.
It’s clean. It’s ugly. It is necessary.
Roach is sputtering. He’s slapping at me, but too weak from loss of oxygen to do much more.
He looks at me, and his eyes show the same slow dawning that he probably saw on one or more of his victims. The moment someone realizes the ledger’s been balanced. And it’s their line being crossed.
I lean down and murmur roughly in his ear, “She was never yours.”
Then I squeeze harder.
Because there’s nothing stopping me from writing the rest of this story in blood and putting a period where a life used to be.
The part of me that was forged in conflict wants it.
The other part—the part that still remembers how her smile looked curled up on my couch, how she said my name like every other sound in the world went quiet—that part fucking demands it
I reach for my push knife, the one sheathed at my back, and I use it.
I shove it into his neck, cutting through his major arteries, wiggling the blade to make sure they’ve all been nicked clean.
And I watch as realization dawns in his muddy eyes.
I keep looking as the light goes out.
I bear witness as this useless piece of shit dies.
Blood spurts and dribbles down his body, some of it gets on me.
Then, I drop him on the piece of plastic Benji strategically laid on the ground.
We make quick work of cleanup. Plastic, rope and duct tape, the kind of knots you learn not to be sloppy with.
He isn’t struggling, so it’s easy. Benji spits on him for good measure, and Micah searches their pockets for phones.
We haul them to the side of the gas station that leads to a field, and Micah ties their bodies to the back of one of the bikes.
“I’m gonna drag them out of here. Get ‘em situated right quick.”
He means chemicals. The kind that dissolves skin, bone, and blood and all that pesky DNA evidence that might tie any of us to what happened here.
The funny thing is that where war has weighed heavily on all of us a time or two—this here? This won’t even keep me up.
Because these motherfuckers were bad news. And they deserved everything they got.
“We got the other two bikes,” Benji says, and taps Alex’s shoulder.
Poor kid. He got an education tonight he won’t be able to forget.
I nod, heading for the bathroom door.
For my Lil Bit.