"You earned it." He nods once. "Be ready."
* * *
At ten we all get into one of the club’s big black, dually trucks. The temps have been below freezing, and we can’t be too careful this time of year.
The air is brutal. Twenty-eight degrees, wind cutting through leather, the roads dark and empty between Morgantown and Clarksburg.
Ruger stays behind. The president doesn't ride on operations like this. He sends his SAA, his enforcer, his muscle, and the man whose woman was threatened.
My jaw is clenched so tight my molars ache, and I haven't unclenched it since Church.
Nobody speaks. Nobody needs to. Every man on this road knows what we're riding toward and what we're going to do when we get there.
Krypton gave us the address. Maple Street, Clarksburg. A two-story house with peeling siding and a chain-link fence and a dark truck parked in the driveway.
The same dark truck that sat outside Saylor’s mom’s gas station.
The same truck that idled in the Backroads parking lot while Creedy smiled at Saylor and used her father's name like a crowbar.
We kill the engines a block away and walk the rest.
Boots on frozen pavement, breath visible, the neighborhood asleep around us.
Bloodhound takes point.
He moves with the fluid silence of a man who's done this before, more times than I want to count.
Ounce is behind him, six-five and filling the sidewalk, a shadow with shoulders.
Maddox flanks left. I flank right.
The house is dark except for a blue glow in the front window. Television. Someone's awake.
Bloodhound doesn't knock. He tests the door handle. Locked. He looks at Ounce.
Ounce puts his boot through it.
The door splinters inward with a crack loud enough to split the night open.
Cold air rushes into the house and collides with the stale warmth inside—cigarettes, old carpet, the sour-sweet smell of a man living alone without opening a window.
We're inside in a matter of seconds. The hallway is narrow. The blue glow comes from the living room, where a TV plays late-night cable to an empty couch.
A sound from the kitchen. Chair legs scraping linoleum. Someone standing up fast.
Creedy appears in the kitchen doorway. Sweatpants, no shirt, a beer in one grip.
His eyes go wide when he sees the cuts, the boots, the four men filling his hallway.
For one second, the practiced smile flickers across his face. Muscle memory, I suppose. The charm offensive starting up on autopilot.
Then he sees me and the smile dies.
"You." He sets the beer down on the counter behind him.
His hands come up, palms out.
The same mock-surrender gesture he's used on Saylor, on her mother, on every woman he's ever cornered.