PROLOGUE
Rookie
Three Years Ago…
Forty minutes.
Forty minutes at the checkpoint and not a single headlight on the road.
No rumble of pipes. No call, no text, no radio crackle.
The brothers were supposed to pass through here on their way back from the warehouse op, and the road is empty in both directions.
I check my phone again.
Nothing from Ruger. Nothing from Ounce or Bloodhound.
Nothing from anyone.
My bike idles beneath me, engine vibrating through my thighs, and the silence around it is wrong.
Not peaceful wrong.
Not small-town-late-night wrong.
The kind where your body knows something your brain hasn't caught up to yet.
I kill the engine and dial Ruger.
It goes straight to voicemail.
I dial Ounce, and the same thing happens.
I go through each officer in the club. Their phones either go to voicemail, or they just don’t answer.
All of them unreachable at the same time.
My thumb hovers over Kinsey's name, almost out of habit.
She'd know what to do with the panic crawling up my throat.
She'd say something steady and smart, and I'd believe her because I always believe her.
Because she's the only person in this town who makes me feel like I'm not faking my way through every conversation.
I don't call her.
Not because of instinct. Because of pride.
We had a fight two days ago, and I'm still being stubborn about it.
Instead, I fire the bike back up and pull a U-turn toward the compound.
The ride takes eleven minutes.
I push ninety on the straightaway and take the curves too fast, my knee damn near kissing asphalt on the switchback past Coopers Rock.
The mountain air smells like pine and woodsmoke with something metallic underneath, like a storm coming in, but the sky is clear.