I’m not afraid of this clubhouse or the men in it or the locked doors I don’t open.
I’m afraid of eleven o’clock. I’m afraid of the knock. Every night he stands in that doorway, I want him to step through it. And I’m afraid that every night, he won’t.
CHAPTER 6
SABER
The text comesin at four in the morning. Five words.
Razor: Four Crimson Warriors. County line. They asked about Shelby.
I’m out of bed and dressed in under a minute. Cut on. Boots on. Glock in the waistband.
I bang on Joker’s door. He opens it already dressed, gun in his hand.
“How many?” he asks.
“Razor says four bikes.”
He slips his gun into his waistband. “What about Nitro?”
“Unknown.”
We take the stairs fast. Duke is in the common room, boots up on the table, cleaning a knife. He doesn’t ask what’s happening. He stands, slides the knife into his belt, and falls in behind us.
I stop at the foot of the stairs. Shelby’s room is directly above me. She’s behind a locked door, asleep, with no idea that the men who want her are sitting miles from this building.
My fist tightens at my side. If they get past me, if they get to that door, if they put one boot on those stairs—I’ll kill every lastone of them and mop their blood off the floor before she wakes up.
They won’t get to her.
Not tonight. Not ever.
I push through the front doors and into the gravel lot. My bike is where I left it, and the engine catches on the first kick. My guys surround me. Our Harleys tear down the dirt road and hit the highway, and the desert swallows everything behind us.
The county line marker is a green sign half-eaten by rust, bolted to a post that leans fifteen degrees south. Ash Valley starts here. My territory starts here. And four Crimson Warriors are parked on the wrong side of the line.
Razor is thirty yards ahead of them, sitting on his bike with the engine off. A cigarette dead between his lips, unlit. He’s been watching them, and they’ve been watching him, and nobody’s made a move.
I pull up next to him. My other guys spread wide. Headlights off. Engines idling.
The four Crimson Warriors are standing beside their bikes. Three I don’t recognize—young, wide-shouldered, disposable muscle. The fourth is older with a gray beard. His road name is stitched on his cut: Deacon.
Nitro didn’t even come himself. He sent his VP.
I swing off my bike and walk. Not fast. Not slow. The gravel crunches under my boots, and the sound carries across the empty highway.
Deacon steps forward. His hands are visible, palms up, signifying he’s come in peace. But I call bullshit. My hand rests on the handle of my gun.
“Saber.” He says it like we’re old friends. “Nitro sends his regards.”
“Nitro can come deliver them himself.”
“He could have, but he sent me.” Deacon glances at my guys, then back to me. “We’re here for two things. Our man. And the girl. The waitress.”
“Bull pulled a gun on me. Your boy Edge is dead because Bull can’t shoot for shit and put a round in his own man. That’s your mess, not mine.”
“Your woman was in that lot.” One of the young ones. Shaved head, neck tattoo, and a mouth that’s about to get him killed. “Nitro wants her. She answers for what happened to Edge.”