Chapter 29

It’s been a while since I’ve worn Kevlar and combat equipment, but it feels like a second skin. The setup is lighter than my usual motorcycle gear, but that’s because this whole thing was designed to help me move around with athletic agility while also shielding my vital organs from most bullets. It adds a certain gravitas to the whole situation, though, bringing back memories, the kind I worked hard to shove to the very bottom of my consciousness.

But I need to tap into my past version of myself to do what we’re about to do.

We’re gathered outside of Foothill Ranch. There’s a big house in the middle of an open field, surrounded by a plain net fence and flanked by two red barns. According to FBI intelligence, floodlights mounted on the house and on several of the wooden pillars of the fence are motion-sensor-activated.

Dale looks over a blueprint of the property while Kai, Drake, and I double-check our equipment, weapons, and ammunition. There’s an army of SWAT officers doing the same, black vans lined along the side road and out of sight. It’s an abandoned area in an open field, so we’re able to observe any movement.

There are plenty of motorcycles pulled up outside the ranch house, and Colton’s meeting is likely already in progress. The Feds have listening equipment tuned in and are scanning the whole property, constantly updating us on everything.

“I’m surprised that Kessler stayed back for this,” Dale mutters. “I could’ve sworn I’d have to lock him up for his own good.”

“His fighting days are long behind him, and he knows it,” I reply. “Besides, you’ve got the three of us. We’re all you need.”

Dale chuckles lightly. “God, I hope not.” He switches back to serious mode in the blink of an eye and points at the blueprint. “Are you clear on how we’re going to do this?”

“Yes, sir,” I promptly reply.

“No cowboy bullshit,” he insists.

“No, sir,” Kai chimes in. “We’ll let your SWAT boys from team Alpha handle the ranch house. We’ll simply go past it and work with team Beta to tackle the hunting cabin.”

“That’s two miles northwest of the ranch,” Dale reminds us. “You’ll need to be extra careful. If that’s where Colton keeps his victims, then he probably has some kind of surveillance system set up around the cabin. We can’t get a chopper overhead to assist you—not if you want to take him by surprise.”

“Yeah, we know,” Drake says. “We’ll go stealth. The Beta team already briefed us on every movement.”

“Good. And remember, I want Colton alive,” Dale replies.

I hesitate with an approving nod, and he knows I have no intention of letting that fucker live unless his SWAT officers get to him first. “My focus is on getting Nadia out of there alive,” I say.

“You have your heat scanners, right?” Drake asks one of the Beta guys, and he gets a muffled yes in return. “We’ll need every heat signature before we storm the cabin.”

“It’s a shame we don’t have a blueprint for that place, too,” Kai mutters.

“It was built in the early twenties,” Dale says. “Any paperwork pertaining to that entire property hasn’t been digitized or scanned yet, and we simply didn’t have any time left to dig through county hall records.”

“All right, let’s move,” I tell the guys.

Drake pulls me aside for a hot second. “You ready for this?” he asks in a low voice.

“Yeah.”

“Just like the old days,” he says.

“Damn straight.”

A devilish grin appears on Kai’s face. “I think we needed this. It sounds sick, I know.”

“Yeah, we needed this,” I humbly concede.

I just hope it leads somewhere good because the thought of losing Nadia drives me insane. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to envision a future without her in it, especially knowing that we have two new souls on the way. She must be scared out of her mind.

A few minutes later, we’re carefully cutting through the eastern sector of the ranch fence. Using long-distance EMP pulses, the SWAT officers disable the motion sensors and the CCTV cameras while the rest of us dart across the open field, black shadows bolting through the night. Above us, the moon rises, our quiet mistress with her dress made of stars.

I count twenty motorcycles outside the house. I recognize most of them, and I can’t say I feel sorry for what’s about to go down. We tried to help them, and they chose to turn their backs on us. The Sea Snakes, the Black Wolves, the Sabbath MC, the Crimson Knights … they’re all going down tonight. I just hope they’re wise enough not to open fire on six dozen SWAT officers. They may have received orders to keep things as clean as possible, but they will not hesitate to kill on sight if needed.

The adrenalin pumps through my veins as we get closer to the house. The three of us stick together, closely following the lieutenant in charge of team Alpha while his boys stealthily surround the building and prepare for a flashy entrance. Front door, back door, and the side windows are the main points of ingress.

The SWAT lieutenant takes out his heat signature scanner and points it at the house. We watch the small black screen of the device as it comes alive, moving strips of red and yellow catch our eyes. Cicadas chirp in the dry field while a steady wind rises and blows through, chilling my cheeks. My jaw is tense with days’ worth of pressure gathered in an almost painful knot that won’t go away until I have Nadia back in my arms.

This could go either way, and I’ve yet to make my peace with that.

“Eighteen inside,” the SWAT lieutenant mutters.

“But twenty bikes,” I whisper.

He presses a button on his earpiece; its light blinks blue. The message comes through to us, too, as he opens the channel for everyone to hear. “Two DOA behind the ranch,” one of the Alpha boys says in a hushed voice. “Gunshot wounds to the head and chest for both.”

“Do you recognize them?” the lieutenant asks.

“Sea Snakes, sir.”

“He’s starting to execute them,” Kai says. “They’re probably trying to negotiate with Colton, but there’s no negotiating with that psychopath.”

“We’re going in. Ten seconds,” the lieutenant replies, making sure the order is heard throughout the comms network. He receives plenty of beeping confirmations in return as the SWAT crew prepares to breach. “You three will be going with Roger,” he adds, looking at us.

Roger is a stocky dude who catches up from behind, bearing a dark green band on his upper arm. He’s part of team Beta, who are already slithering along the fence line about to cross the northwestern quarter of the property, having just disabled the sensors on that side. “Come on, time to get your girlfriend back,” Roger whispers.

“Good luck, Lieutenant,” I tell the Alpha leader, and he gives me an encouraging nod.

“You, too.”

We leave the Alpha crew in place and follow Roger over to the Beta team. Out here, it’s much darker. The ranch house at least had porch lights that cast a fickle glow around its whitewashed walls, but in the middle of the field, it was different. I welcome the darkness, though. I find comfort in its merciless arms as I run across the dry land and cut my way through the northwestern fence.

Seconds later, just as we begin our two-mile journey into the thickening woods, we hear a flurry of bangs and gunshots from behind. I look back and hold my breath for a moment.

“Holy shit,” Kai mumbles, equally fascinated.

Lights flash inside the ranch house. Smoke rises and fills the whole place as the SWAT officers go in, shouting orders to discourage the MC seniors from retaliating. But they retaliate anyway. And one by one, they go down. They should’ve seen this coming and I don’t feel sorry for any of them.

“Move, move,” Roger orders.

We’re running now, making our way up a narrow trail through the redwood patch. Ancient giants rise around us with their enormous trunks, shielding us from the stars with thick, dark crowns that rustle in the night’s cool breeze. On any other occasion, I would’ve gladly enjoyed a stroll through these woods.

We’re running and listening to a string of updates coming through our earpieces. Some of the club members have surrendered, but six went down fighting.

The closer we get to the cabin, the darker the forest becomes.

There’s still no news about Colton. I give Roger a wondering glance, the hunting lodge rising ahead between the massive redwoods. “They haven’t found him yet?” I ask.

“He wasn’t in the house,” Roger replies, his brow furrowed with grim concern.

We all know what that means, and it makes my stomach churn. I had a hard time pulling away from the opportunity to kill the bastard so I could focus on saving Nadia. If he’s not at the house, then he’s probably up at the cabin—with Nadia.

Fuck.

Kai moves closer and gives me a nudge with his heavily padded shoulder. “We’re ready,” he whispers, then looks at Roger. “The signal jammers are on, right?”

“Yes,” Roger confirms, then raises his fist in the air.

Every Beta officer knows to stop their advance as they await his signed orders. We know the drill, too, recognizing every movement of his hand and understanding our next steps. The first wave of SWAT officers carefully approaches the cabin. Lights flicker inside, silhouettes moving through the windows as our guys prepare the flash bang and smoke grenades.

My heart’s the size of a pea as Drake, Kai, and I tiptoe up the front steps, our automatic weapons locked and loaded, fingers aside the triggers. The others take their positions around the cabin, but unexpectedly, one of the Black Devils henchmen opens a window to smoke and spots us.

A bullet pierces his head before he can run his mouth off.

“Go, go, go!” Roger shouts.

We go hard and fast, knocking the door down with our masks on as flash and smoke grenades break through the windows. Everything unravels fast, so fast that we can barely keep up. Our bodies know to move before our weary minds can register the next order. Muscle memory is an extraordinary tool to have on a night like this.

We move like ghosts, opening fire on anyone who gets in our way.

Drake, Kai, and I make our way through the cabin, past flying bullets and through clouds of thick, grey smoke. We avert our eyes from the grenade flashes as we head to the other side of the ground floor. There are one too many Devils in this place, all armed to their filthy teeth, prompting us to open fire.

A little piece of me dies with every man that we have to take down.

I never enjoyed killing.

“Where the fuck is she?” Kai snarls as he manages to take one of the bikers alive. The skinny, raggedy-looking twenty-something laughs in his face.

“Fuck you.”

Kai smacks him over the cheek with the butt of his Beretta M9. “I’ll break all of your teeth, one by one before anybody can stop me.”

“Where’s Colton?” Drake asks.

But he gets the same reply: cold, careless laughter. These people have gone so far off the deep end for the guy that they’re openly ready to embrace death or worse, and it doesn’t bode well for our mission. Dread threatens to scramble my senses as I anxiously look around.

“There’s a top floor,” I say to the guys.

SWAT boots thud through the whole cabin, an annoyingly large and sprawling residence with one too many rooms. But the more they search, the more Black Devils they take out, the farther away we seem to get from completing our mission favorably. The smoke isn’t helping, either, but that was a risk we were willing to take in order to haze the enemy.

“Fucking hell,” Drake snaps and shoots up the stairs.

We follow, our hearts pounding as we desperately search for Nadia through nothing but mayhem and violence, white flashes and chaos.

Hold on, baby. We’re coming.