Razor’s boots hit gravel behind me. He’s off his bike.
I don’t turn around, but I don’t need to. I know the sound of Razor moving, and right now he’s moving the way he does before things get violent.
“She didn’t pull the trigger,” I say. “Bull did. She’s got nothing to do with this.”
Deacon raises a hand. The young one shuts up, but his jaw is grinding, and his fists are balled. He’s going to be a problem in about three minutes.
“Nitro wants resolution,” Deacon says. “Hand over Bull and the woman, and this ends clean.”
I take one step closer. Deacon holds his ground, and I’ll give him credit for that, because the three behind him don’t. They shuffle. Shift their weight. One of them drops his hand toward his waistband, and Razor clicks his tongue from the darkness. The hand goes back up.
I look at Deacon. Then past him, at the three young ones.
“You come to my territory.” My hand closes around the Glock. I pull it slow, let them all get a good look at it. “You threaten me. You make demands about a woman undermy protection. And your boys can’t keep their hands off their fucking guns.”
I level the Glock at the nearest kid’s left knee and squeeze the trigger.
The shot cracks through the desert, and he drops screaming. Gravel sprays. His hands go to his thigh, and he’s writhing on the ground, howling into the dirt.
The second kid bolts. Gets one step. I put a round through his calf, and he hits the road face-first.
Deacon hasn’t moved. His hands are up, palms out, but his face is chalk-white, and the vein in his neck is hammering hard enough that I can see it from here.
The third kid is frozen. Razor and Joker have their guns on him. Duke has his gun pointed at Deacon.
The two on the ground are screaming. Blood pools on asphalt, going black in the headlights.
Good. Scream loud enough for Nitro to hear it from his clubhouse.
I walk straight up to Deacon until the barrel of my Glock is an inch from the bridge of his nose.
He doesn’t breathe.
“Go back to Nitro.” I keep my voice low, steady, and I don’t blink. “Tell him I will kill every single one of you if you ever come into my territory again. Every. Single. One. No warning. No conversation. I will stack bodies on this road until the county has to reroute the highway around them. I haven’t decided what to do with Bull yet. So he stays with me.”
Deacon’s eyes are locked on the barrel. His Adam’s apple bobs.
“And the woman?” His voice comes out thin. Scraped raw.
I press the barrel between his eyes. The metal dents the skin.
“She’s my Old Lady.”
It comes out of my mouth, and the second it does, it’s real. Not strategy. Not a play. A fact that’s been true since she cracked a man in the skull with a water bottle to save my life.
“If anyone touches her—if she gets a bruise, a scratch, or a bad fucking dream because of your crew—I won’t call a meeting. I’ll ride to your clubhouse, shoot Nitro in his chair at his own table, and burn that shithole to the slab. Then I’ll find every man who knew about it and put them in the ground next to him. You understand me?”
He nods. The barrel drags across his forehead with the motion.
“Say it.”
“I understand.”
I drop the gun to my side. Step back. The air between us fills with the sound of the two guys bleeding on the pavement.
“Take your wounded.” I holster the Glock. “Bull stays with me as collateral until Nitro calls me himself.”
Deacon moves fast. He and the uninjured kid drag the two wounded to their bikes. The one with the blown knee can’t swing his leg over, so they shove him forward on Deacon’s seat, and Deacon mounts up behind him, one arm pinning the kid to his chest. The other bleeder gets the same treatment on the second bike, slumped over the tank, the uninjured kid holding him upright from behind.