Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
It’s not about me being the rat. It’s about me being a hold out after this meeting’s over.
"Three runs gone sideways in a month,” Brick goes on. Continuing with the charade. “That’s no coincidence, brothers. That's…” He pauses, lets the moment drag on. “That’s incompetence.”
Incompetence, huh?
Not a rat, then?
Not yet, at least. But it’s set up that way.
Brick stares directly at me, his gaze cold as Montana winter. I remember when those eyes held something like pride. When he'd clap my shoulder after a successful run, call me "the future of this club."
Those days are gone. Ever since I brought Savannah here, something changed in him.
I thought it was about her family. Their influences. And maybe some of it is.
But that’s not the real reason.
Then I thought it was the drama.
And that’s definitely part of it too.
But only in a second-cousin kind of way.
Drama equals attention. Attention equals eyeballs.
Eyeballs Brick, and his little posse of Feds, don’t need right now.
There is no “National Association of Outlaw Bikers”. Not officially, anyway. But word travels, and drama this big, travels fast.
They need to balance this attention, and they need to do it quick.
And they’re gonna use me to do it.
The only one that hasn’t agreed to be a rat.
That’s what Brick is lookin’ for. He wants me to be a sellout, like everyone else.
And I get it, the brothers don’t have much of a say if their prez goes rogue and cuts a deal. Either they have his back, and the protection he’s negotiating, or they don’t, and end up dead, or in prison, or worse.
The brand on my chest throbs, the scar tissue still angry and red. Brick holds that against me too—that I let it get infected. Like I did it on purpose. Like I wanted to end up at the Ashby ranch, recovering in a bed where every passing minute made me feel like an invalid.
His eyes are different now. Harder. Emptier. The eyes of a man who's made a decision about you before you've opened your mouth.
I've seen those eyes before. In Whitefall. Right before someone got shanked in the yard.
They didn't used to be this way—at least, not when he was looking at me.
But that's not really true, is it?
My mind flashes back to that first meeting with Brick—out in Makoshika with a shotgun for huntin' turkeys.
I don't know what you think you just saw, so I'm gonna tell you what you just saw to make sure we're clear. You saw a gun deal. You saw our hidey hole. You saw something you should not have. So you've got two choices, kid. One—I'm a liar and that's not what you saw at all. Or two—they find your body out here when the snow melts in spring.
Back then, I thought it was theater. A show to scare a kid straight. I spent years after that day trying to find my way into his world, believing that threat had just been part of the performance.
I was wrong.
The gun was real. The threat was real. And the look in his eyes now is the same one I saw that day in the brush. The look of a man deciding whether you live or die.
Only this time, there's no shrubs to hide in. No home to run back to. Just a president who looks at me like I'm already a ghost, and a bunch of men who don't seem to be my brothers anymore.
Brick leans forward, folding his hands on the table. "Demon Kane," he says, using my club name like it's already been stripped away. "Three jobs. Three failures. All on your watch."
The accusation hangs there. Sharp and poisonous.
“First run—you showed up thirty minutes late to the drop point, costin’ us ten grand and a truck full of product. Said you got the time wrong.”
I didn't. The instructions came from him directly. Ten p.m. at the old quarry. I was there at 9:45, watching headlights that never came because someone tipped off the buyers not to show.
“Second run—you took the north route when the orders said east through Makoshika. You led two vans straight into a patrol checkpoint.”
That's a lie too. Brick pulled me aside before that run, grabbed my cut, and said, "North route. Through the badlands. Don't deviate."
"Third run—last night. You insisted on taking Butch instead of Hammer, even though the manifest clearly stated Hammer was assigned."
Bullshit. Pure bullshit. There was no manifest. Brick came to my room at 4 a.m., told me to take Butch and Dusty and make the exchange at the abandoned gas station off Route 12. I don’t even know Hammer. He doesn’t even live here. Couldn’t pick him out in this room if I tried.
The room feels like it's shrinking. Every man watching, waiting. Some confused. Some already decided.
"You want to explain yourself, Demon?" Brick asks, but his tone says he doesn't expect an answer. Doesn't want one.