Chapter 40 Ash and Iron
Ash and Iron
By the time the Bastards hit the ridge, the sun was nothing but a pale wound over the horizon, bleeding light into the smoke.
The air smelled like burnt oil and scorched rubber.
What was left of the bridge still glowed orange, twisted metal bowing toward the riverbed below.
Eagle was the first to kill his engine. The silence that followed was sharp enough to hurt.
Brick swung off his bike, boots crunching through char and glass. “Christ,” he muttered. “She did this?”
Tater didn’t answer. He just walked forward until the heat licked his boots, eyes scanning the wreckage. Pieces of a black pickup lay scattered across the median—door half-melted, grill crushed, a tire still smoldering where the flare had hit.
“Looks like she was chasing or being chased,” Eagle said, kneeling to pick up a shard of mirror. “Truck came in hot. Lost it right here.”
Tater crouched beside a streak on the asphalt—a curved line where rubber met oil, then vanished into flame. He knew that kind of move. A trap flipped into a weapon.
“She wasn’t running,” he said quietly. “She was teaching.”
Brick gave a low whistle. “Damn that lesson hit hard.”
Tater scanned the road again. “No body. No bike.”
“Could mean she made it out.”
“Could mean they took her,” Eagle said.
Tater’s jaw flexed. “No.”
He stood, stepped past the twisted guardrail, eyes on the riverbed below. Smoke drifted over the rocks like ghosts. Down there, half-buried in mud, something caught the light—small, metallic, deliberate.
He slid down the embankment, boots slipping in the ash, and crouched beside it. A casing. A flare cap burned black at the edges. He turned it over with gloved fingers.
“Red phosphorus,” he murmured. “She lit the fire herself.”
Eagle called down, “You sure?”
Tater looked up at him, the morning sun cutting his face in half. “She always did like a clean message.”
He tucked the cap into his vest and scanned the riverbank again. The mud was a mess of tracks—boot prints, tire marks, one set leading away on foot. Smaller stride. Light step.
Ren.
“Eagle,” he barked. “She might be on foot. Westbound. Still ahead of us.”
Eagle turned to the others. “You heard him! Mount up!”
The Bastards scrambled back to their bikes. Engines roared alive again, echoing against the canyon walls.
Brick rolled up beside Tater, visor down. “If she’s running west, she’s either headed for the truck stop or the freight yard.”
“Golden gate,” Tater said, the words bitter on his tongue. “That’s what she sent in the code. Could be a route marker, not a place.”
Brick frowned. “You really think she found it?”
“I think she’s walking straight into it.”
He kicked his bike into gear and tore up the slope. Gravel spit out from under his tires, smoke curling behind him. The others fell into line, a blur of black and chrome carving through the morning.
The radio crackled as they cleared the ridge.
Eagle’s voice: “Feed’s live again. Sac’s signal came back. You want me to patch him in?”
“Do it.”
Static, then Sac’s voice, harsh and breathless:
Tater’s answer came out low, steady. “She’s alive. u be sure?”
Sac was quiet for a beat. Then:
Tater—you sure she’s alive?”
Tater answered low, steady. “She left me a trail.”
A beat of silence.
“Hell of a woman,” Sac muttered. “You better—”
He cut the line before Sac could argue.
Ahead, the road opened wide, sunlight bouncing off the cracked pavement. Every mile felt heavier than the last.
Brick pulled alongside him, voice raised over the wind. “What’s the play if we find her?”
Tater’s eyes stayed on the horizon. “We don’t find her. We join her.”
Eagle chuckled darkly over comms. “That’s either loyalty or suicide.”
“Same thing,” Tater said.
They hit open country, engines thundering like war drums. The air smelled of sage and smoke. To the east, the fire on the bridge was finally dying, but the heat still shimmered in the distance.
Tater reached down, tapped the flare cap in his vest pocket. It was warm, as if holding a heartbeat that wasn’t his.
He didn’t pray—hadn’t in years—but the thought rose anyway.
Keep her burning, not gone.
The Bastards rode on.