Chapter 7
Splinter heard the trucks before he saw them.
Three vehicles, maybe four, grinding up the mountain road with engines pushed too hard by drivers who didn't know the terrain. He was on his feet and moving before the sound fully registered, instinct taking over where thought couldn't keep up.
"Ivy."
She was awake instantly, maternal reflex overriding sleep. "What—"
"Company. Get Mae to the back bedroom. Bathroom has no windows—put her in the tub and stay with her."
"Splinter—"
"Now."
She didn't argue. Scooped Mae from the couch where she'd fallen asleep and was moving before the little girl fully woke, her daughter's confused murmur cut off by the sound of a door closing hard.
Splinter grabbed his phone, fired off a text to the emergency number Timber had given him. Two words: Safehouse. Now.
Then he went to work.
The cabin wasn't built for defense, but wood was wood, and he knew what it could take. He'd spent yesterday checking the structure while Mae played—noting which walls were solid, which doors could be reinforced, where the sightlines were good and where they were shit.
Heavy dresser against the front door. Kitchen table braced against the side entrance. Windows shuttered from the inside, the old-fashioned kind with iron bolts that would hold against anything short of an axe.
He had maybe three minutes.
He used two of them turning the cabin into a fortress.
The third minute, he spent loading the shotgun he'd found in the shed and positioning himself where he could see both doors.
Headlights swept across the windows.
Doors slammed. Voices—too many, too confident. Someone laughed, the sound carrying through the mountain dark like a promise of violence.
"Ivy Caudill!" The voice was loud, used to being obeyed. "We know you're in there. Come out nice and easy, bring the kid, and nobody has to get hurt."
Splinter didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"Last chance, sweetheart. My boys get bored easy, and bored men do stupid things."
The front door shuddered as something heavy hit it. The dresser held, but wood groaned in protest. Another impact—a boot, maybe, or a shoulder. The frame cracked but didn't give.
"The hell—"
"Door's barricaded." Different voice, surprised. "She's got it blocked."
"Then go through the goddamn window."
Glass shattered.
Splinter fired.
The shotgun roared in the confined space, the blast catching the first man through the window square in the chest. He flew backward, taking another man with him, both of them crashing through what remained of the glass in a tangle of limbs and blood.
Screaming. Cursing. The sound of men who'd expected easy prey finding something else entirely.
"She's got a fucking gun!"
"It's not her." Another voice—the confident one from before, but the confidence was cracking. "There's someone else in there."
Splinter racked another shell. Waited.
The side door exploded inward, the kitchen table holding for one impact before splintering under a second. Two men came through, and Splinter put the first one down before he cleared the threshold. The second dove for cover, firing blind with a pistol that punched holes in the ceiling.
Return fire. Splinter felt something burn across his shoulder—a graze, maybe worse—but the pain was distant, irrelevant. He was already moving, using the cabin's layout the way he'd planned, drawing them into spaces where numbers didn't matter.
The dresser finally gave way.
Three men poured through the front entrance, tripping over each other in their eagerness to get inside.
Splinter caught the first with the shotgun stock across the face, felt bone crunch, pivoted to slam the butt into the second man's gut.
The third got his hands on Splinter's arm, trying to wrestle the weapon away.
They went down together, rolling across the floor in a tangle of fists and fury.
The man was bigger. Heavier. Had the kind of bulk that came from gym work and easy meals. But Splinter had grown up scrapping in hollers where fighting dirty was the only way to survive, and he fought that way now—headbutt to the nose, thumb in the eye socket, teeth finding the soft meat of an ear.
The man screamed and let go.
Splinter retrieved the shotgun and ended him.
The sound of bikes split the night.
Splinter was bleeding from his shoulder and his forehead, surrounded by bodies and the acrid smell of gunpowder, when the Reapers arrived. Timber came through the ruined front door first, weapon up, sweeping the room with eyes that had seen worse and would see worse again.
"Status."
"Three down inside. Two through the window." Splinter gestured toward the back of the cabin. "Ivy and Mae are in the bathroom. They're okay."
"And outside?"
"Don't know. Heard running. Some of them scattered when the bikes showed up."
Grit appeared in the doorway, blood on his knuckles and murder in his eyes. "Found two more in the treeline. They're not running anymore."
"How many total?"
"Eight came up the road," Splinter said. "Nine, counting whoever was giving orders."
"The one giving orders." Timber's voice went flat. "He still breathing?"
A groan from behind the overturned couch answered the question. Splinter had forgotten about the man he'd put down with the rifle stock—forgotten because the fight had moved past him, left him bleeding on the floor like yesterday's trash.
Timber walked over and looked down at what remained of Floyd Ratliff.
The debt collector was a mess. Broken nose, blood streaming from his mouth, one arm bent at an angle that said it wasn't going to straighten without surgery. He looked up at Timber with eyes that were starting to understand how badly he'd miscalculated.
"Do you know who I work for?" The words came out slurred, desperate. "Garland Messer. He'll burn this whole mountain down if you—"
"Garland Messer." Timber crouched, putting himself at eye level with the broken man. "Debt collector out of Pikeville. Preys on widows and single mothers. Sends men to threaten little girls in their sleep."
Floyd's face went pale. "I was just—it's business, man. Just business."
"Business." Timber stood, looked at Splinter. "This the one who's been targeting your woman?"
Your woman.
The words landed in Splinter's chest like an anchor finding bottom. He thought about Ivy's trembling hands. Mae's nightmares. The rock through the window and the fire in the dumpster and the terror of a five-year-old who'd learned to watch for monsters.
"Yeah," he said. "This is him."
Timber nodded once. Stepped aside.
Splinter understood the invitation.
He walked over to where Floyd Ratliff lay broken on the cabin floor, and the man's eyes went wide with sudden, desperate understanding.
"Wait—wait, I can tell you things. Messer's operation, his routes, his—"
"Don't care."
Splinter brought his boot down.
Floyd Ratliff died the way he'd lived—confused about how he'd ended up on the wrong side of someone he'd underestimated.
The bathroom door opened slowly.
Ivy emerged first, a kitchen knife clutched in her white-knuckled grip, her body positioned between the hallway and whatever threat might be waiting. Her eyes swept the room—the bodies, the blood, the brothers standing among the wreckage—and her face went pale.
But she didn't scream. Didn't cry. Didn't fall apart the way someone who'd never seen violence might.
She just tightened her grip on that knife and said, "Is it over?"
"For now." Splinter moved toward her, drawn by something stronger than conscious thought. "They're dead or gone. You're safe."
"Mae—"
"Is she okay?"
"Scared. But okay. She stayed in the tub like you told her." Ivy's voice cracked on the last word. "She kept asking if you were okay. If the loud noises meant the bad men got you."
Splinter's chest constricted. He reached for Ivy without thinking, his bloody hands finding her shoulders, pulling her close. She came without resistance, the knife clattering to the floor as her arms wrapped around him.
"I'm okay," he said into her hair. "I'm right here."
"I heard the shots. Heard the fighting." She was shaking now, the adrenaline crashing hard. "I wanted to help, but Mae—I couldn't leave her—"
"You did exactly right." He held her tighter, breathing in the scent of her, feeling her heartbeat against his chest. "Protecting her was the job. You did the job."
Behind them, Timber cleared his throat.
"Compound's the move. This location's burned—Messer will know where to look now, and he'll send more men." The Road Captain's voice was gruff but not unkind. "Get the woman and the girl. We roll in ten."
Splinter nodded without releasing Ivy. "I need to get Mae."
"I'll get her." Ivy pulled back, and he saw the steel behind her eyes—the backbone that had drawn him from the first moment he'd seen her. "She needs her mama right now. Can you—" She gestured at himself, at the blood soaking his shirt. "Clean up? She doesn't need to see you like this."
My woman's telling me what to do, Splinter thought, and something warm spread through his chest alongside the pain. And she's right.
"Yeah. I can do that."
Ivy disappeared into the bathroom. Splinter heard Mae's small voice asking questions, heard Ivy answering in tones too soft to make out.
Grit appeared at his shoulder, offering a rag that might once have been white.
"She handled that well. Most women would be losing their minds right now."
"She's not most women."
"Noticed that." Grit watched the bathroom door with something like respect. "She grabbed that knife and put herself between the door and her kid. Didn't flinch when we came through covered in blood. Either she's got ice in her veins or she's exactly the kind of woman who belongs with a Reaper."
Splinter didn't answer. Didn't need to.
The brotherhood had seen what Ivy was made of. And when they rode out ten minutes later—Mae wrapped in a blanket in Ivy's arms, the convoy of bikes surrounding the truck like an honor guard—Splinter knew something had shifted.
This wasn't just about protection anymore.
This was about claiming.
And the men who'd attacked his woman and her daughter had just learned what happened when you threatened something a Reaper called his own.
The survivors—two of them, running on foot through the dark—would carry that lesson back to Garland Messer.
Let him choke on it.