20. Ethan
Ethan
Prez has me and Knuckles running a supply pickup two towns over, parts for the bikes and cash for a debt owed, it’s nothing that should take more than a couple hours there and back.
I almost argue when he assigns it. I have an itch under my skin telling me to stay close to the compound, but Prez wants eyes on the mole, and pulling me off routine duty would tip our hand to whoever's watching. So I go.
We're loading the last of it into the truck bed, Knuckles is counting the cash twice the way he always does, when my phone goes off. Brax. Something in the first half second of his call tells me the world just ended.
"Ethan. You need to get back. Now."
"What happened?" My hands have already gone cold around the phone.
"Compound got hit. Brick's down, shot, they've got him in the back of Rosie's car heading for the hospital right now. And Ethan." A pause that lasts too long to be good news. "Cassie's gone. They took her."
The world tunnels down to a single point of white noise. "Say that again."
"I'm not saying it twice, brother. Get back here."
I don't remember the ride home. I remember Knuckles' hand clamped on my shoulder at some red light, telling me to breathe, telling me getting us both killed on the highway doesn't get her back any faster.
I remember screaming into the cab of the truck the rest of the way, because it's the only place I've got left to put it, and I remember Knuckles never once telling me to quiet down, just staying close enough the whole way that I could feel him there even through the noise.
The compound looks like a war happened in our own back yard.
There’s blood on the porch steps, dark and already drying.
Spent shell casings are scattered across the gravel.
Cam's sitting on the ground with her back against the porch rail, shaking, Meg's arms wrapped around her.
Cash and Ramsay are already moving through the tree line with rifles, methodical, checking every angle a second time even though the threat's long gone, because that's what this club does with fear, it turns it into motion instead of letting it sit still and rot.
"What happened?" I'm not asking anyone in particular. I just need somebody to make this real in words I can hold on to.
"I had two of them down, Ethan, I swear to God I did, I was fast enough for two of them.
" Cam's voice comes out thin, shredded, and not really answering the question so much as arguing with herself out loud.
"Then Brick stepped in front of the third one's gun, and I just, I stopped.
For one second. That's all it took." Her eyes fill again, and whatever else she starts to say dissolves into something wordless and broken.
My knees nearly go out from under me. "Is he going to live?"
"Rosie's with him at the hospital. Prez went straight there too." Meg's voice is steadier, but her hands aren't. "It doesn't look good, Ethan. I'm sorry."
I press the heels of my hands hard against my eyes, trying to force the world back into some shape I recognize. My father took two bullets meant for my wife, and I wasn't here for either of them.
"Where's Nerd?" The question comes out of nowhere and everywhere at once, some part of my brain that's been quietly building this case for days finally saying it out loud.
Cam and Meg look at each other. "Nobody's seen him since this morning," Cam says slowly. "He said he had a supply run of his own. Said Prez cleared it."
"Prez didn't clear shit. Prez has been in Church half the day." My voice comes out somewhere I don't recognize, low and flat and cold in a way that scares even me a little.
Brax comes around the side of the clubhouse at a dead run, his phone still in his hand.
"Camera caught him. Ten minutes before the hit, on foot, headed for the tree line where they came through.
He knew the blind spot because he's the one who mapped our own security rotation two weeks back.
I gave him that assignment myself." His jaw is a hard, ugly line. "This is on me."
"It's on him." Shadow, appearing from nowhere the way he always does, his voice colder than I've ever heard it. "We find him. We find her. In that order, because he's the only lead we've got to where she went."
Pops arrives on the porch just then, moving slower than the rest of us but no less certain, resting a heavy hand on my shoulder for a second before addressing the yard.
"Whoever's not needed for the hunt, you're on the compound, doors locked, eyes open.
We don't leave anybody exposed twice in one night. "
Brothers scatter to their assignments without needing to be told twice. The entire club is shifting into something I've never witnessed before. Grief and fury both turned into pure, disciplined motion.
"Then we find him." I'm already moving toward my bike, and every brother left standing on this compound falls in behind me without a single question asked.
Knuckles grabs my arm before I get there. "You're no use to her dead from riding blind in rage, Ethan. We do this smartly, or we don't get either of them back."
"Then help me do it smart." My voice cracks clean in half on the last word, and I don't care who hears it. "Please. I can't lose her. I might already be losing my father tonight. I can't lose both of them on the same day."
Knuckles' face doesn't soften, not exactly, but something in his grip on my arm changes, steadies. "Then let's go get your wife back."
Cash falls in on my other side, his rifle already slung across his back, there’s no jokes left in him tonight, just a hand briefly on my shoulder before he swings onto his own bike. Ramsay nods once, and that says more than most men's speeches.
Behind us, sirens wail somewhere off toward the highway, carrying my father further away from me with every second, and all I can do is climb onto my bike and pray to a God I've never once talked to that I'm not about to lose everything that matters in the space of a single night.