16. Ethan
Ethan
Prez briefs the ride two days before we leave, all of us crammed into the kitchen after hours, maps of Spring Vale spread across the table like something out of a war room instead of a clubhouse.
"This isn't like anything we've done before." Prez taps the map, three locations circled in red. "We're not defending anything this time. We're taking something. Different feeling, going in on offense instead of protecting what's already ours."
"Feels the same to me, Prez." Knuckles shrugs. "Just means we hit first instead of hitting back."
"Maybe." Prez doesn't look convinced, not entirely, and something about that honesty settles better with me than false confidence would have.
I spend the two days leading up to it in a strange, low hum of nerves I don't fully understand yet, not having done this kind of run before.
I check my gun more than I need to. I ride the same stretch of road twice just to clear my head, and both times I end up circling back toward Cassie instead of anywhere useful.
"You're quiet tonight," she says, the evening before we leave, curled against my side on the porch swing.
"Got a run coming up. Bigger than the usual stuff." I don't tell her more than that, not because I don't trust her, but because some of what this life asks a man to do isn't something you hand a woman before you've had to live with it yourself first.
"Are you scared?"
"A little." Admitting it out loud costs me something, but lying to her would cost more. "Never done anything like this before. Prez says that's normal, first time out."
"You'll come back to me." She says it like a fact, not a hope, and something in her certainty steadies me more than anything Prez or Brax could have offered. "You always do."
"Every time." I kiss the top of her head. "Whatever happens out there, that part's not negotiable."
We ride out at dawn, meeting Harte of Steele's crew a half mile outside Spring Vale, and Bear's already got a torn map spread across the hood of somebody's truck by the time we roll up, marking positions with a stub of pencil like he's done this a hundred times, because he probably has.
"Three locations," he says without preamble, and lays out the plan same as Prez did back home, except this time it's real, this time there's no going back to a kitchen table once we start moving.
Cash leans against his bike beside me, working a toothpick between his teeth, watching me check my gun for what's probably the fourth time in ten minutes. "First real run, huh, Shotgun?"
"That obvious?"
"You've checked your gun four times in the last ten minutes." He grins, though there's something steadier underneath it tonight, less joke than usual. "Everybody's like that the first time. Ramsay nearly threw up his lunch his first run. Didn't you, Rams?"
"Absolutely did not." Ramsay doesn't even look over, but the corner of his mouth twitches. "That's slander."
"It's memory." Cash claps me on the shoulder. "You'll be fine. Stay close to Prez, do what he says, and by the time the sun's up you'll have earned something you can't get handed to you no matter how many years you spend around this life."
Bear runs the final briefing low and fast, mapping out who's holding which corner of the operation on a torn sheet of paper by flashlight.
"Three locations. Main house where product's getting cut and stored, a corner crew running street level two blocks over, and a lieutenant's place we hit last, make sure nobody runs word ahead of us.
Hawk and Shadow take the house. Knuckles, Brax, you're with me on the corner crew.
Shotgun, you're with Prez and Tank on the lieutenant. "
"Copy that." My mouth's dry saying it. This isn't a bar fight or a standoff with guns raised for show. This is the real thing, the part of this life nobody talks about at Christmas parties, the part that gets a man his patch and asks him to carry something heavier for it afterward.
Prez catches my eye before we split. "First time doing something like this. How you feeling?"
"Uneasy." No point lying to him.
"Stay close to Tank and me. You do exactly what we do, when we do it.
Nothing else." His voice doesn't leave room for argument.
"Anybody in there who's not a threat, we don't touch.
Anybody who is, we handle it fast and clean.
This isn't about cruelty, Shotgun. It's about making sure this town's not bleeding kids and families dry with product coming through it unregulated by anybody who gives a damn what happens to the people using it. "
I nod, though the line between clean and cruel feels a lot thinner standing here in the dark than it did back home over a beer.
We move into position as the last of the light drains out of the sky, and somewhere behind me I hear Shadow and Hawk peel off toward the house without a word passing between them, two men who barely know each other already moving like they've trained together for years.
That's the thing about brothers, I'm starting to understand.
It doesn't take long to trust a man once you've watched him choose the right thing under pressure, even once.
I check my phone one last time before we move. Nothing from Cassie, which means she's asleep, which is exactly where I want her tonight, safe and warm and a hundred miles from whatever's about to happen in this quiet, tired little town.
Prez taps my shoulder once. "Ready?"
"Ready."
We move.