Shadow's Protection (Route 66 Outlaws MC #2)

Chapter One

The Mother Road stretched east under a sky the color of old bone, heat shimmer turning the horizon into a mirage that promised nothing and delivered less.

Shadow rode the center line because he could, because the asphalt belonged to the club and anyone who didn't like it could take the matter up with his fists.

Sixty miles of nothing between Amarillo and the coordinates Tornado had given him—a woman's distillery on land the Crenshaws apparently thought they owned.

His phone had buzzed that morning during breakfast: Protection request. Woman walked into compound. Assess and report.

Tornado didn't send his VP on milk runs. Which meant this was either serious or about to become serious, and either way, Shadow intended to handle it before it became a problem.

The distillery appeared on his right after he'd been riding long enough to taste dust in his teeth.

Low-slung buildings, copper gleaming through open barn doors, a hand-painted sign reading VICKERS WHISKEY that had seen better decades.

Pretty land, if you liked the kind of pretty that came with isolation and a whole lot of nothing between you and anyone who might hear you scream.

Two trucks sat in the dirt lot. Neither belonged there.

Shadow killed his engine at the property line and listened.

Voices. Male, plural, with the particular tone of men who thought they were in charge. And underneath that—a woman's voice, steady and sharp, cutting through their noise like a blade through fat.

He swung off his bike and walked toward the barn.

The scene inside would've been funny if it hadn't been about to turn bloody.

Three men in ranch clothes were pulling copper fittings off a still that looked like it had been built with more love than money.

Salvaged metal, hand-soldered seams, the kind of craftsmanship that came from someone who couldn't afford to do it wrong.

A fourth man—bigger, meaner, with the swagger of someone who'd never been told no—was reaching for more copper while a woman held a rifle on all of them from twenty feet away.

She was something.

Sun-streaked hair pulled back hard, jaw set like she'd been born stubborn, arms steady on the rifle like she'd done this before. Not shaking. Not screaming. Just standing there with murder in her eyes and the patience to wait for her shot.

Shadow walked between the rifle and the big man like neither posed any threat worth mentioning.

"Drop the copper," he said.

The big one—Boyd, had to be Boyd Crenshaw based on Tornado's brief—turned with the slow arrogance of a man who'd never met anything he couldn't break. Six-five, ranch-strong, hands like sledgehammers. He looked at Shadow's cut, at the Route 66 Outlaws patch, and his lip curled.

"This ain't club business, biker. Walk away."

"Club business is whatever I say it is." Shadow smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "And I say drop the copper."

Boyd's crew had stopped working. Three sets of eyes darting between their boss and the stranger who'd just inserted himself into a situation that had been going their way. Behind Shadow, the woman hadn't lowered her rifle.

Smart. He appreciated smart.

"You don't know who you're dealing with," Boyd said. "My uncle runs the eastern Panhandle. Has for thirty years. This land—" He jerked his chin at the barn, the still, the woman. "This land belongs to us. Debt owed and coming due."

"Funny thing about debts." Shadow took a step closer, putting himself inside Boyd's reach, daring the bigger man to swing. "They're only worth what someone's willing to pay. And this woman doesn't look like she's paying."

"She'll pay. One way or another."

"No." Shadow's smile widened. "She won't."

Boyd swung.

Shadow had been waiting for it—had been hoping for it, really, because the day was hot and the ride had been long and sometimes you needed to remind people what happened when they fucked around. He slipped the punch, caught Boyd's wrist on the follow-through, and twisted.

The crack of breaking bone echoed through the barn like a gunshot.

Boyd screamed. Actually screamed, high and breathless, all that ranch muscle reduced to nothing by a joint that now bent the wrong direction. His crew moved forward on instinct, then stopped when Shadow's free hand went to his belt, to the knife that lived there like an old friend.

"Pick him up," Shadow said. "Put him in the truck. Drive away."

The men looked at each other. Looked at Boyd, still whimpering, his wrist already swelling purple. Looked at the stranger who'd just dismantled their boss in three seconds flat.

They picked him up.

Shadow watched them load Boyd into the truck bed like a sack of feed, watched them climb into the cabs with the careful movements of men who'd suddenly realized they were outmatched.

The engines started, tires spun in dust, and then they were gone—a retreating cloud of red dirt and wounded pride heading east toward whatever hole the Crenshaws crawled out of.

He turned to face the woman.

She'd lowered the rifle, finally, but her knuckles were still white on the stock. Up close, she was even more striking—hazel eyes gone gold in the barn light, a bruise yellowing on her jaw that said Boyd's visit wasn't the first, a fierce set to her mouth that said it might damn well be the last.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked.

"Shadow. Route 66 Outlaws." He nodded at the rifle. "You know how to use that, or is it just for show?"

"I hit what I aim at."

"Then why didn't you aim at Boyd?"

Something flickered across her face. Pain, maybe. Frustration. The particular exhaustion of someone who'd been fighting alone for too long.

"Because there's four of them and one of me, and if I shoot one, the other three don't stop.

" She looked at the copper fittings scattered across the barn floor, at the still they'd been dismantling piece by piece.

"That copper took me six months to shape.

Salvaged it myself, soldered every seam by hand.

They've been taking it apart for sport."

Shadow catalogued the damage. Ripped fittings, dented tanks, the delicate work of months undone in an afternoon. The Crenshaws weren't just collecting a debt—they were making a point.

"How long have they been coming around?"

"Three weeks. Since I refused to acknowledge a debt my grandmother supposedly owed thirty years ago." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I've got the original documents. There was no debt. But the Crenshaws don't care about paperwork. They care about this land."

"Why?"

"Sixty acres away from town eyes. Perfect for whatever Ellis Crenshaw wants to build that he doesn't want authorities seeing.

" She leaned the rifle against the barn wall, finally, and rubbed her hands on her jeans like she was trying to scrub off the adrenaline.

"I'm Ramona. Ramona Vickers. I own this distillery. "

"You walked into the compound this morning."

"Rode. My truck." She met his gaze, steady and unflinching. "I heard the Route 66 Outlaws protect people in their territory. Figured it was worth asking."

"This land's twenty miles east of our usual stretch."

"Club-adjacent," she said. "That's what your President called it. Said he'd send someone to assess."

Shadow looked around the barn again. The still, half-destroyed. The fermentation room visible through a side door, barrels stacked on racks. The aging cellar she'd probably dug herself, because women like this did things themselves when nobody else would help.

Club-adjacent. Tornado's word for "not quite ours, but close enough to matter."

He pulled out his phone and hit the number that never went to voicemail.

"What've you got?" Tornado's voice, steady as plains wind.

"Crenshaws," Shadow said. "Running a debt claim on sixty acres of family land, using muscle to back it up. Boyd just left with a broken wrist and a warning, but he'll be back with more men and worse ideas."

"How's the woman?"

Shadow looked at Ramona. Standing in her ruined barn, surrounded by months of destroyed work, still not crying, still not breaking.

"Tough," he said. "Holds a rifle like she means it."

"The land worth protecting?"

That was the real question. Tornado didn't waste resources on lost causes, didn't send brothers into fights that couldn't be won. But there was more here than strategy—there was principle. The Crenshaws were predators, and the Route 66 Outlaws didn't let predators hunt on their borders.

"The land's not the point," Shadow said. "The Crenshaws are. They've been squeezing the eastern Panhandle for thirty years. That ends when we say it ends."

Silence on the line. Shadow could hear Tornado thinking, weighing options, calculating costs.

"Stay," Tornado said finally. "Assess the full situation. I'll brief church tonight."

"Copy."

The line went dead.

Shadow pocketed his phone and turned back to Ramona. She was watching him with those gold-brown eyes, reading him the way he was reading her—two people taking each other's measure and deciding what came next.

"Your boss going to help?" she asked.

"My President," Shadow corrected. "And yeah. He's going to help."

"Why?"

Shadow smiled again. This time, it was almost genuine.

"Because someone needs to teach the Crenshaws that this stretch of the Mother Road isn't theirs anymore."