Chapter 20
STRYKER
Early the following morning, Mara and Dot had Jacqueline settled at the clubhouse kitchen island with a blanket around her shoulders, a mug warming both hands, and enough food in front of her to supply a patrol shift.
Smoke still clung faintly to her hair despite the shower she’d taken at the compound, and exhaustion shadowed the delicate skin beneath her eyes.
But the minute Mara added another biscuit to her plate, Jacqueline gave the older woman the same sweet smile that had already conquered half the club.
I stood behind her stool with my hand wrapped around her nape, listening to Dot explain that surviving an arson attempt qualified a woman for unlimited bacon.
“You’re supposed to eat too,” Jacqueline reminded me, tipping her head back until her braid brushed my wrist. Her gaze traveled over my face as though she could see every violent thought I’d been holding behind it since the barn burned, and the gentle concern there made me want to carry her straight to my room, lock the door, and spend the day proving with my mouth and hands that she was still alive. “Coffee isn’t breakfast, Brogan.”
“Got a meeting, baby.” I bent and pressed my mouth to her forehead, letting the kiss linger while her body softened beneath my hand. “Stay here with Mara and Dot until I’m finished.”
Dot set a bowl of fruit beside the plate already threatening to bury Jacqueline. “She’ll be fine with us.”
I brushed my thumb beneath Jacqueline’s ear and waited until she looked directly at me. “Wraith and Smoke are outside the kitchen, the compound’s locked down, and you don’t leave without me.”
She rolled her eyes playfully. “I remember the part where I’m never out of your reach.”
Her tone was teasing, but I heard the soft note of relief. Knowing she was always near would give us both comfort.
“Good girl.” The praise put warmth into her cheeks despite the old ladies sitting close enough to hear. “I’ll be back.”
Mara said something softly that had Jacqueline’s giggle following me into the hall.
It was sweet despite everything Wade had done.
It loosened a tight place beneath my ribs without touching the rage sitting below it.
I carried both sensations into my office, where Hawkeye, Ghost, Judge, Cipher, Nomad, Zero, Bishop, Skyfall, and Ledger were already waiting around the conference table.
I shut the door, crossed behind my desk, and called Raines before taking my seat.
“We’ve got enough here to keep my evidence team busy for a week,” he reported. “Except the son of bitch responsible. One truck’s missing, along with three machines that arrived within the last month, and nobody left behind remembers where the boss went.”
“Any sign he knew the warrant was coming?” Judge asked, leaning one forearm against the conference table while Cipher worked over the laptop in front of him.
“Place wasn’t cleaned out well enough for that,” Raines replied. “He ran fast, not smart. And his employees are still pretending loyalty will keep them out of prison.”
“They’ll learn,” Ghost muttered, his expression remaining flat while he rotated a coffee mug between both palms.
I gave Cipher a look, and he nodded. His fingers flew over the keyboard, already searching the places that even Raines probably didn’t have access to.
The sheriff exhaled hard enough to rasp through the speaker. “You find him, call me before somebody decides a quarry counts as an unfortunate industrial accident.”
“No promises,” Hawkeye muttered.
“I’m serious,” Raines warned, though exhaustion took most of the authority from his tone. “I can put Wade away now if I get him breathing. Don’t make my job harder than it already is.”
“Then find him first,” I snarled, then ended the call before the sheriff tried to turn the conversation into an agreement I had no intention of making.
Cipher turned the laptop toward me. There were messages flowing across his screen from mechanics, tow operators, feed stores, auction contacts, ranchers, and construction crews throughout our territory.
Wade had spent years believing those people were invisible because none of them wore badges, but the Black Crowns knew who kept cameras over towing yards, who remembered unfamiliar trucks at dawn, and who would answer a brother’s call before a deputy finished writing a request.
He pulled up a grainy traffic-camera image from one of our towing contacts. “Caught this Kessler Hauling truck heading east forty-three minutes ago. Tarped equipment on the trailer, and the escort truck belongs to an employee who disappeared before Raines arrived.”
Nomad traced the route across Bishop’s map and noted that it ended near the abandoned Kessler quarry, where Wade’s father had once owned an equipment warehouse.
The county had taken part of the property for back taxes, but the warehouse remained buried in an estate dispute.
Empty on paper, as Judge put it, which was Wade’s favorite kind of empty.
I studied the quarry roads and rough country surrounding it. Wade was a local predator running through territory the Black Crowns knew better than he did, toward a hiding place tied to his own family.
“Confirm the sighting before we move,” I ordered. “Nobody spooks him. Wraith, Smoke, and Reaper stay with Jacqueline. The rest of us roll out when I say. Be ready.”
Hawkeye began coordinating vehicles, Ghost checked his weapon, and Nomad bent over the map with Zero and Falcon to plan the intercept. Every man understood what Wade had done, but I’d spent my career keeping my rage in check to lead without being careless with my brothers’ lives.
The confirmed sighting came shortly before five, when a feed-store owner east of town reported Wade’s truck pulling a loaded trailer toward the quarry with a gray pickup following close behind.
I kissed Jacqueline hard enough to taste her through the first ten miles, her quiet promise to wait for me feeding both the possessive ache in my chest and the erection that had made throwing a leg over my bike briefly uncomfortable.
After one final review of the intercept, I ordered everyone to keep their heads on a swivel, then we rolled out in two club trucks and a staggered line of bikes, using secondary roads until the quarry ridgeline appeared through heat haze and gathering shadow.
Nomad tracked the vehicles from far enough ahead to stay unseen, feeding us clipped updates through the helmet system until Wade came within three miles of the abandoned warehouse.
Zero blocked the narrow bridge with one truck, Ghost closed the road behind the convoy with the other, and the bikes swept down both sides before Wade’s men understood they’d been boxed in.
The Kessler truck braked hard enough to send the trailer swaying, but the escort pickup cut toward Hawkeye and Breach instead of stopping, forcing Ghost to swing the reinforced front quarter of his truck across the shoulder and take the hit.
Metal shrieked as the pickup spun into a stone embankment, folding the passenger door inward. Hawkeye dumped his bike clear, came up moving, and shattered the driver’s window with the butt of his pistol while Breach ripped the damaged passenger door open and hauled the second man out by his jacket.
The driver reached beneath the seat instead of killing the engine, so Hawkeye caught his wrist, slammed it against the frame, and dragged him halfway through the broken window. “Wrong fucking choice.”
The doors of Wade’s truck opened before I reached it, spilling three armed men onto the road while Wade jumped from the driver’s side and ran toward the quarry complex without waiting to see whether anyone followed.
Cal Rusk, Wade’s yard foreman and favorite enforcer, planted himself between us with a tire iron raised in one fist. I kept Wade at the edge of my vision as I ordered Ghost to secure the trailer and sent Nomad and Falcon toward the western cut, making it clear nobody pursued Wade alone.
Rusk swung for my head, recovered from my first counter faster than most men would have, and caught my shoulder with the iron hard enough to send heat down my arm. The blow burned away the last distance from my control without taking the discipline with it.
I trapped his next swing, drove an elbow through his jaw, and kicked the bar away when it hit the pavement.
He lunged anyway and used his weight to slam me against the trailer.
I shifted him past my center, put him face-first into the road, and broke his arm when he came up reaching for the pistol under his vest.
His bellow echoed off the quarry walls as I stripped the gun and pinned him with one knee between his shoulders.
Every part of me wanted to keep going until he could never raise a hand against another person Wade considered weak, but my brothers were still fighting and Wade was disappearing deeper into the complex.
I handed Rusk to Trigger, then swept the road while Zero and Ghost finished the remaining men and Hawkeye and Breach dragged the pickup’s driver through the shattered window.
Nomad reported Wade moving east between the old conveyor structures, while Falcon confirmed the western exit was sealed.
The collision had pulled the tarp from the trailer, exposing a compact excavator and skid steer with fresh paint covering the places where identifying decals had been stripped.
Cipher checked the visible damage and serial locations from Zero’s truck, then confirmed both machines matched the missing-equipment list.
“Wait twenty minutes, then send Raines the location,” I ordered, watching Wade vanish behind a rusted support. “Tell him to bring enough transport for the prisoners and the equipment.”
Hawkeye came alongside me with blood streaking one cheek from flying glass, but his breathing remained even and his weapon steady.
He confirmed Nomad was cutting north, Falcon held the west, and Ghost could secure the road until deputies arrived.
I ordered everyone into pairs, left Skyfall with the wounded and recovered equipment, and took Hawkeye with me toward the processing complex because we didn’t know what Wade had stored inside or whether more men were waiting.
The quarry twisted sound against the rock walls until engines and shouted commands seemed to come from every direction.
Hawkeye and I moved past abandoned machinery, broken concrete, and rusted belts half-buried in weeds, following Wade’s prints through the dust toward the eastern side.
He had abandoned his truck, the stolen machines, and every man who’d protected him without looking back, proving exactly what his version of loyalty was worth once his own skin entered the bargain.
My phone vibrated in my cut’s inner pocket as Hawkeye and I reached the shadow of the main warehouse. Jacqueline’s name showed on the screen, and I answered immediately while keeping my weapon trained on the dark loading bay ahead.
“Talk to me,” I spoke only loud enough to make sure she could hear me.
“I think I found another route.” Her voice carried tension but no panic, and the rustle of paper told me she probably had Otis’s notebook and one of the ranch maps open in front of her.
“There’s an abbreviation beside the quarry entries—ES.
I kept thinking it meant equipment storage, but Grandpa used to haul stone from there when I was little, and I remember him talking about the east service shed. ”
I motioned Hawkeye closer while Jacqueline continued.
“There’s a narrow track along the eastern boundary that doesn’t connect to the main quarry road.
It comes in behind an old maintenance shed near the drainage cut.
Grandpa used it when trucks blocked the scales, and he wrote that the culvert was still passable the last time he checked. ”
With barely a sound, I conveyed the information to Hawkeye who pulled a property map from the pouch inside his cut, found the eastern drainage line, and traced the route with one finger. Then he nodded, affirming her information.
Pride moved through the rage sitting inside me, because Jacqueline had done exactly what a partner should—used what she knew, stayed protected, and handed us information that changed the field without trying to put herself in the middle of the fight. “Thanks, baby. You did good.”
“Be safe.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her tone carried the quiet steadiness that had made me claim her before I knew her name. “Brogan, did you find Wade?”
“Ran into the quarry.” I looked toward the dark interior where a loose sheet of metal moved in the evening wind. “Cutting him off now.” I paused, debating whether to say more. But we were nothing without honesty between us. “Need you to understand something.”
Silence held for one breath on the line, and Hawkeye shifted a few feet away to give me the privacy he could without leaving my flank.
“Okay,” Jacqueline whispered.
“If the Black Crowns reach Wade before Raines does, we’re not holding his hand until deputies arrive.
” I kept my voice level because softening the truth would insult the promise I’d made to keep her informed.
“He tried to kidnap you, burned your barn, opened fire on our home, and sent men to kill you. The justice waiting inside this quarry won’t be lawful. ”
“I understand.” There was no hesitation in her answer, only a quiet sadness that never came close to doubt. “I don’t trust you because I think the Black Crowns are harmless, Brogan. I trust you because you know exactly where to point the part of you that isn’t.”
My grip tightened around the phone while every violent thing inside me went still. Jacqueline understood the man beneath the suit, the cut, and the control, and she accepted that men like mine existed to make predators regret their choices.
“Fuck, I adore you.” The words came out rough and absolute, my body reacting to her acceptance with the same possessive heat she could ignite in the middle of anything. “When this is done, I’m going to remind you exactly what it means to belong to me.”
Her breath caught softly over the line, but warmth entered her answer. “I’ll be there when you come home.”
“Good girl.” I ended the call then turned to Hawkeye and pointed toward the drainage line. “Get Nomad and Falcon onto the eastern track. Zero and Breach take the warehouse’s south side. We close the service shed before Wade reaches it.”
Hawkeye relayed the orders while I studied the route Jacqueline had found. Wade knew the quarry because his father once owned it, but the Black Crowns hunted predators through territory that had been ours long before Wade decided fear made him untouchable.