Chapter 1
The suburbs hate the sound of a Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine. To the people living in these cookie-cutter houses with their manicured lawns and HOA violation notices, the roar of my bike doesn’t sound like engineering perfection. It sounds like trouble. It sounds like property values dropping. It sounds like a past they desperately try to gate themselves away from.
But to me? That rumble rattling my teeth is the only song that matters. It sounds like oxygen. It sounds like I’m finally, actually breathing again.
Three years.
That’s a thousand and ninety-five days if you count the leap year. I counted every single hour. Inside the grey walls, time doesn’t move in a line; it moves in a circle. You wake up, you survive, you sleep, you repeat. “State-sponsored vacation,” the guys in D-Block called it. My lawyer called it a “miracle plea deal.” Manslaughter dropped to aggravated assault. Good behavior. Overcrowding. The whole legal dance that spits you out just when you think you’ve forgotten what the sun feels like.
I didn’t go to the clubhouse when I walked out of those steel gates this morning. I didn’t go to the dive bar on 4th to get a shot of whiskey that doesn’t taste like toilet water. I didn’t even go get a real steak, despite hallucinating about a medium-rare ribeye every night on a cot that smelled like mildew and other men’s despair.
I rode straight to Oak Creek Middle School.
The vibration of the handlebars was the only thing keeping my hands from shaking. I’m not a man who gets scared. I’ve stared down the barrel of a snub-nose .38 without blinking. I’ve patched up stab wounds with superglue and duct tape in a gas station bathroom. But riding toward that red brick building? I was terrified.
I checked my reflection in the chrome mirrors as I idled at a red light, two blocks away from the school zone. I looked like a nightmare to the woman in the Prius next to me. She was staring, eyes wide, gripping her steering wheel like I was about to carjack her.
I couldn’t blame her.
My “cut”—the leather vest—was weathered, the leather cracked in places like old, dried earth. The “Iron Dogs” rocker on the back was faded from years of sun, rain, and road grit, but it was still holy ground to me. My arms were covered in ink that told stories nobody in this zip code would understand, let alone forgive. My beard was greyer at the chin now than it was three years ago. My eyes were harder. They had that “thousand-yard stare” you get when you’ve had to watch your back every second of every day.
But my heart? It was beating out of my chest for one person.
Lily.
She was ten when the cops kicked down our door. She was screaming, clutching that raggedy stuffed bear I won for her at the county fair, while they cuffed me. That was the last image I had of her. A terrified little girl watching her superhero get dragged away like a villain.
She’s thirteen now. That’s a lifetime for a kid. Does she still like purple? Does she still listen to Taylor Swift, or is she into something edgy now? Does she still think I’m a hero?
Or does she hate me?
That thought was a cold spike in my gut. Does she hate me for leaving her? For being a criminal? For being “Zero”—the Sergeant-at-Arms—instead of just “Dad”?
The light turned green. I gunned the engine, maybe a little louder than necessary, just to drown out my own doubts.
I killed the engine at the back of the school lot, backing the bike into a spot near the dumpsters. The sudden silence was heavy. I swung a leg over the seat, my heavy boots crunching on the gravel.
I could feel the eyes on me immediately. It’s a physical sensation, like ants crawling on your neck.
It was pickup time. The lot was a sea of white SUVs and minivans. Mothers in yoga pants were chatting by their open trunks. Fathers in business casual were checking their watches, annoyed at the inefficiency of the dismissal bell.
When I took my helmet off and hung it on the handlebar, the conversation nearest to me died instantly.
I heard the distinct click-click of automatic locks engaging on a Lexus to my left. A woman hurriedly ushered her toddler to the other side of her car, shielding him from the sight of the big, bad biker.
I lit a cigarette. I know, not allowed on school grounds. There was probably a sign somewhere telling me I was violating code 404-B or whatever. But I’ve never been big on rules, and right now, I needed the nicotine to keep my knees steady.
I leaned back against the sissy bar, crossing my arms over my chest, covering the patch that said “Sgt. at Arms.” I just wanted to see her walk out. I wanted to see if she walked like me—that heavy, purposeful stride. I wanted to see if she looked happy.
The bell rang.
It was a shrill, piercing sound that cut through the humid afternoon air. It sounded exactly the same as it did when I was a kid. Some things never change.
The double doors burst open.
Chaos ensued. It was a flood of backpacks, shouting, laughter, and teenage angst. It was a sensory overload. I scanned the faces, my eyes darting back and forth. Too many kids. Too much noise. It was a sea of unfamiliarity.
I felt a pang of panic. What if I didn’t recognize her? What if she walked right past me?
And then, the crowd shifted.
It happened organically, like water flowing around a stone in a river. The stream of students split.
Near the bike racks, about fifty yards from where I was standing, a circle had formed.
I knew that formation. I knew it from the prison yard. I knew it from the bar fights. It was the universal geometry of violence.
I wasn’t interested. Kids fight. It happens. It builds character, usually. Or at least, that’s what I told myself to ignore the instinct that said move. I flicked my cigarette butt away and turned to leave, figuring I’d catch her walking home. Maybe it was better that way. Less of a scene in front of her friends.
Then I heard it.
“Please! Stop! Get off me!”
It wasn’t just a cry. It was a plea. It was high-pitched, terrified, and desperate.
And I knew that voice.
It was the voice that used to sing lullabies with me when she was four. It was the voice that whispered “I love you, Daddy” through the thick, scratched plexiglass of the visitation room three years ago.
I stopped. I froze.
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The warm sun suddenly felt cold on my skin. The ice in my veins that got me my road name, “Zero”—because I have zero tolerance for betrayal, zero patience for nonsense—spread through my body instantly.
I turned back toward the crowd.
I didn’t run. Running shows panic. Walking shows intent. Predators walk.
I moved through the parking lot. The parents who were previously judging me were now ignoring the commotion, safely inside their cars.
As I got closer, I could hear the jeers.
“Drag her! Make her eat it!” one kid shouted.
“Look at her clothes, she looks like trash!” another girl screamed, laughing.
I reached the perimeter of the circle. A kid in a blue polo shirt blocked my way, holding his phone high, filming the center.
“Yo, watch out, we’re filming—” he started, not looking at who he was talking to.
I put one hand on his shoulder. I didn’t shove him. I just moved him. I applied the kind of grip strength you develop doing pull-ups with a forty-pound vest in the yard. He stumbled back, terrified, his phone nearly clattering to the asphalt.
The circle parted.
And there she was.
Lily. My little girl.
She was on the ground. Her jeans were torn at the knees, skin scraped raw and bleeding. Her backpack was dumped out—notebooks and pencils scattered in the dirt.
A boy—thick neck, varsity jacket, looking like he ate steroids for breakfast—had a fistful of her dark hair. He was yanking her head back like she was a ragdoll. He had to be at least a foot taller than her.
“Who’s your daddy now, huh? Where is he? Is he still rotting in jail?” the boy sneered, spitting the words at her face.
Lily was sobbing, trying to hold onto his wrist to stop the pain, her face twisted in agony. “Stop… please… let me go…”
I felt a darkness rise up in me. The kind of darkness that usually puts people in the intensive care unit. The kind of darkness I had spent three years trying to cage, trying to meditate away, trying to pray away.
It was back. And it was hungry.
But before I stepped in, my eyes caught movement to the right.
There was a bench about ten feet away from the fight.
Sitting on it was a man. He was wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt with the school logo. He had a whistle around his neck.
Mr. Henderson. The gym teacher. I recognized him from the school website when I was trying to keep tabs on her life from the prison library computer.
He was leaning against the chain-link fence, sipping a green smoothie.
He looked up.
I saw him look up. He saw the boy dragging my daughter. He saw the violence. He saw the crowd cheering. He saw a thirteen-year-old girl being physically assaulted on his watch.
And then… he looked back down at his phone.
He actually thumbed the screen. He smirked at something he read. A meme? A text? A status update?
He was ignoring a felony assault on a minor because… why? Because it was easier? Because he didn’t want to spill his kale juice? Because Lily—the daughter of the town convict—wasn’t worth the paperwork?
The rage wasn’t hot. It wasn’t a fire. It was absolute zero. It was the vacuum of space.
I stepped into the center of the ring.
My shadow fell over the bully. The smell of old leather, high-octane gasoline, and stale tobacco hit them before I even spoke.
The bully looked up.
He saw the heavy black engineering boots first. Then the dusty jeans. Then the leather vest with the patches. Then the face of a man who had nothing left to lose.
He froze. His hand was still tangled in my daughter’s hair.
“Let. Her. Go.”
My voice sounded like gravel grinding in a cement mixer. Low. Vibrating. It wasn’t a request.
The boy blinked, trying to regain his composure in front of his audience. He tried to puff out his chest. “Back off, old man. This is school business. She needs to learn her place. Her dad is a—”
“I ain’t here for school business,” I said, taking a step closer. I loomed over him, blocking out the sun. “I’m here for family business. You have three seconds to release that hair. If you don’t, I’m going to fold you like a lawn chair. One.”
The boy’s arrogance evaporated. He saw the look in my eyes. It wasn’t the look of a suburban parent upset about a bad grade. It was the look of a man who knew exactly how much pressure it took to snap a wrist.
He let go.
Lily scrambled back, gasping for air. She looked up, terror in her tear-filled eyes, until she focused on me.
Her face changed. Confusion. Disbelief. And then, a flicker of hope.
“Dad?” she whispered.
“I’m here, Lil,” I said, my voice softening instantly, the monster receding just enough to let the father through. “I’ve got you.”
Then, Mr. Henderson decided it was time to be a hero.
“Hey! You! Hey!”
The teacher jogged over, phone finally in his pocket, smoothie abandoned on the bench. He was waving his arms like he was flagging down a taxi.
“You can’t be here! No gang colors on campus! I’m calling the resource officer! You’re trespassing!”
I turned slowly to face him. The bully took the chance to scurry away into the crowd, disappearing like a rat in a sewer. But I didn’t care about the kid anymore. He was just a symptom.
I cared about the disease. I cared about the adult who allowed it.
I walked right up to Henderson. He was tall, athletic build, probably played college ball somewhere ten years ago. But he was soft. His eyes were weak.
“Gang colors?” I asked, tapping the patch on my chest. “You’re worried about my vest?”
“I’m… I’m telling you to leave!” Henderson stammered, stepping back. He realized too late that his authority meant absolutely nothing to a man like me. “This is a zero-tolerance campus!”
“I saw you,” I said. It was a whisper, but it carried across the silent parking lot. The kids were dead quiet now. The iPhones were all trained on us. “I watched you look at my daughter screaming in the dirt. And I watched you check your Facebook.”
“I was… monitoring the situation,” he lied, his face flushing red. “I was about to intervene.”
“You were scrolling,” I corrected, stepping into his personal space. I was close enough to see the sweat bead on his forehead. Close enough to smell the fear radiating off him. “You watched a boy assault a girl and you did nothing. In my world, that makes you worse than the attacker.”
I leaned in.
“My name is Jack ‘Zero’ Thorne,” I growled. “Remember it. Because I’m going to make sure every person in this town knows exactly what kind of coward you are. And ‘monitoring the situation’? Buddy, the situation just changed.”
Henderson gulped. He reached for his pocket, probably to call the cops.
“Go ahead,” I said, smiling a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Call them. I’ve got a few things to say to the police about child negligence. And half these kids have it on video.”
I turned my back on him—the ultimate insult—and knelt down to Lily.
Chapter 2
I knelt down on the hot asphalt. The gravel bit into my jeans, but I didn’t feel it. I only felt the trembling of the small hand I was holding.
Lily looked different. Older. The baby fat was gone from her cheeks, replaced by the sharp angles of a teenager who had grown up too fast. Her eyes, usually a bright, mischievous hazel, were red-rimmed and swimming in a pool of tears.
“Are you real?” she whispered, her voice hitching. She reached out a shaking hand to touch my beard. “They said you were never getting out. Mom said…”
She trailed off, flinching as I gently brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead. There was a bruise forming there, a purple crescent blossoming on her pale skin.
“I’m real, baby girl,” I said, my voice thick. “I’m real, and I’m not going anywhere. Not ever again.”
I pulled a handkerchief from my back pocket—an old, grease-stained rag I used for the bike—and gently dabbed the scrape on her knee. She hissed in pain, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned into me, burying her face in the dusty leather of my vest. She smelled like strawberries and fear.
For a second, the rest of the world disappeared. The jeering kids, the cowardly teacher, the prison walls—it all faded into static. It was just a father and his daughter, trying to bridge a three-year gap in the middle of a war zone.
But peace is a luxury I don’t get to afford.
“Step away from the girl! Now!”
The command barked out from behind me, sharp and authoritative. I didn’t flinch. I knew that voice. It was the sound of the system coming to reclaim its property.
I slowly stood up, placing myself between Lily and the voice. I kept one hand on her shoulder, grounding her, while I turned to face the intruder.
Deputy Miller.
He was the School Resource Officer now? Three years ago, Miller was a rookie deputy who pulled me over for a busted taillight and was shaking so hard he dropped his flashlight. Now, he stood there with his feet spread wide, one hand resting on the grip of his service weapon, looking like he was ready to quell a riot.
“Thorne,” Miller spat, his eyes narrowing behind his aviator sunglasses. “I heard a rumor you were back in town. I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to show your face at a middle school on day one.”
“Deputy,” I nodded, keeping my hands visible but not raised. I wasn’t surrendering. I was negotiating. “Just picking up my daughter. Is there a law against that?”
“There is when you’re creating a disturbance,” Miller said, taking a step closer. The crowd of kids, sensing a new level of drama, pressed in tighter. The phones were still recording. “I got a call about a gang member threatening a teacher.”
I laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
“Threatening?” I pointed a calloused finger at Henderson, who was now standing behind the deputy, looking smug. “That man watched a boy drag my daughter by her hair and did nothing. I didn’t threaten him. I educated him on his job description.”
Miller glanced at Henderson, then back at me. He didn’t care about the truth. He cared about the patch on my back. To him, I was the problem. I was the nail that needed hammering.
“You’re trespassing, Thorne. And you’re violating the peace. I want you to get on your bike and ride out of here before I find a reason to violate your parole. You’ve been out for, what? Six hours? Do you want to go for a record?”
I felt Lily’s grip on my belt loop tighten. She was terrified. She thought I was going to be taken away again.
I looked at Miller. Then I looked at the sea of smartphones held by the students.
“You might want to check the footage, Deputy,” I said loudly, pitching my voice so the kids in the back could hear. “Half these kids just livestreamed the whole thing. They got the assault on my daughter. They got the teacher drinking his smoothie while she screamed. And now, they’ve got you threatening the father who stopped it.”
Miller froze. He looked around. He saw the red recording dots. He saw the potential PR nightmare. In the age of the internet, a cop harassing a dad who just saved a girl from a bully plays a lot differently than “Hero Officer Stops Biker Gang.”
He took his hand off his gun. He jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth would crack.
“Take your kid,” Miller hissed, leaning in so only I could hear. “But if I see that bike anywhere near this school again, I’ll tow it. And I’ll find something to stick on you. A busted light, a rolling stop, a misplaced sneeze. Watch your back, Zero.”
“I always do,” I replied calmly.
I turned back to Lily. “Let’s ride.”
She looked at the bike, then at me. “Mom’s going to be so mad.”
“Let me worry about Mom,” I said.
I grabbed my spare helmet from the saddlebag. It was a matte black half-shell I used to keep for Sarah. It was going to be big on Lily, but it would protect her. I strapped it under her chin, my fingers fumbling slightly with the buckle. My hands were shaking now. The adrenaline was dumping.
“Hold on tight,” I instructed as I straddled the beast. “Wrap your arms around my waist. Do not let go. Lean with me.”
She climbed on. She felt so light. Too light.
I turned the ignition. The engine roared to life, a thundering explosion of noise that made the principal, who had just come running out the front doors, stop dead in her tracks.
I didn’t look at Henderson. I didn’t look at Miller. I kicked it into gear and rolled the throttle.
We peeled out of the parking lot, leaving a cloud of exhaust and a stunned silence in our wake.
The ride was a blur of wind and noise.
I took the long way. I avoided Main Street, sticking to the back roads that winded through the old industrial park and out toward the edge of town. I needed the air. I needed to feel the road beneath me, to reassure myself that I wasn’t dreaming.
I could feel Lily’s head resting against my back. Her arms were wrapped around me like a vice. I glanced in the mirror and saw the top of the black helmet.
She was safe. For now.
But my mind was racing. Who was the boy? Why did he feel so comfortable assaulting her in public? And why did Henderson look so… unbothered?
It wasn’t just laziness. I know lazy. Lazy is staying in your chair. Henderson had looked bored. He looked like this was a routine scheduled event.
We pulled up to a scenic overlook about five miles out of town. It was a gravel patch on a bluff overlooking the river. It used to be a make-out spot for teenagers, but in the daylight, it was empty.
I killed the engine and kicked the stand down. The silence of nature rushed back in, filling the void left by the V-Twin.
I helped Lily off the bike. She took off the helmet, her hair a messy bird’s nest of tangles. Her face was streaked with dirt and dried tears.
“You okay?” I asked, leaning against the bike.
She nodded, staring at her sneakers. “Yeah.”
“Who was he, Lil?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She picked at a loose thread on her jeans.
“His name is Tyler,” she whispered.
“Why was he hurting you?”
She looked up at me, and the pain in her eyes broke my heart all over again. “Because of you.”
I felt like I’d been punched. “Me?”
“He said… he said you were a murderer,” she said, her voice trembling. “He said the Iron Dogs are trash. He said…” She hesitated.
“What else?”
“He said his dad is going to run you out of town. He said the ‘Dogs’ don’t own this town anymore. The ‘Reapers’ do.”
My blood ran cold.
The Reapers?
Three years ago, the Grim Reapers MC was a small, chaotic club two counties over. We had a truce. They stayed in their lane; we stayed in ours. They were meth-heads and thieves, disorganized and sloppy. The Iron Dogs ran a tight ship. We were about brotherhood and bikes, not the heavy criminal stuff the Feds tried to pin on us.
“The Reapers are here?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.
“They’re everywhere, Dad,” Lily said, wiping her nose. “They wear their cuts at the mall. They hang out at the diner. Tyler’s dad… he’s the President of the local chapter. He drives a big black truck. He picks Tyler up from school sometimes.”
It started to make sense.
Henderson wasn’t just a coward. He was terrified. If the Reapers had moved in while I was away, they would have established dominance through fear. A gym teacher isn’t going to stop the son of a Reaper President.
I had been gone three years. In the world of outlaw motorcycle clubs, three years is an era. Empires rise and fall.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “We’ll deal with it. But first, we need to get you home. Does Mom know about this?”
Lily looked away. “Mom… Mom is different now, Dad.”
“Different how?”
“She’s just… tired. She works two jobs. She’s never home.”
Guilt washed over me. I did that. I left them vulnerable.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I need to talk to her.”
We got back on the bike. The ride to our house—or what I hoped was still our house—was shorter.
We lived in a small bungalow on the east side. It wasn’t much, but it was ours. I had built the deck myself. I had planted the oak tree in the front yard.
As I turned onto our street, I slowed down.
The neighborhood looked the same, but the vibe was off. A few lawns were overgrown. There was a rusted car on blocks two doors down.
I pulled into my driveway.
The house was still standing. The paint was peeling—I needed to scrape and repaint the siding, a mental note I made automatically—and the flower beds were full of weeds. My truck, a ’98 Chevy I had been restoring, was gone. Sold, probably. To pay the bills.
I turned off the bike.
“Lily!”
The front door flew open before we even dismounted.
Sarah stood in the doorway.
She looked beautiful. Tired, yes. There were lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and she was thinner than I remembered. She was wearing her waitress uniform from the diner, a stained apron still tied around her waist.
But it wasn’t joy on her face. It was pure, unadulterated panic.
“Jack?” she gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “What are you doing here? You can’t be here!”
I climbed off the bike and helped Lily down. “I’m out, Sarah. I’m home.”
“No,” she said, rushing down the steps. She didn’t hug me. She stopped three feet away, looking frantically up and down the street. “You don’t understand. You have to leave. Now.”
“Leave?” I frowned, hurt replacing the relief I had felt seeing her. “This is my house. You’re my wife.”
“Not anymore,” she whispered, tears welling up. “Jack, please. If he sees you…”
“If who sees me?”
I stepped toward her, reaching for her hand.
“Don’t touch her.”
The voice came from the porch. It was deep, gravelly, and amused.
I looked up.
Stepping out of the shadows of my own front door was a man. He was huge—bigger than me. He had a shaved head and a thick, braided beard.
He was wearing a leather vest.
But it didn’t say “Iron Dogs.”
The patch on the back, visible as he turned slightly to lean against the doorframe, depicted a skeleton holding a scythe.
Grim Reapers.
And on the front, right over his heart, was a patch that read “PRESIDENT.”
He was holding a beer. My beer. He was standing in my doorway.
“You must be Zero,” the man said, taking a slow sip. He smiled, revealing a gold tooth. “I’ve heard stories. Sarah talks about you in her sleep sometimes. It’s annoying.”
I felt the world contract. My vision tunneled.
“Who are you?” I growled, my hands balling into fists.
“Me?” The man laughed. He walked down the steps, moving with the arrogant swagger of a man who owns everything he sees. He draped a heavy arm around Sarah’s shoulders. She flinched, but she didn’t pull away. She looked at the ground, shame burning her face.
“I’m King,” he said. “I’m the one who pays the mortgage now. I’m the one who keeps the lights on. And I’m the one sleeping in your bed.”
He looked at Lily, who was hiding behind me.
“Hey there, kiddo,” King said with a smirk. “Did Tyler teach you that lesson today? I told him to go easy on you, but boys will be boys.”
Red.
Everything went red.
It wasn’t just a bully. It wasn’t just a bad teacher. It was a takeover.
My family. My house. My town.
I took a step forward, ready to kill him right there on the lawn. I didn’t care about parole. I didn’t care about the odds.
“Jack, don’t!” Sarah screamed, grabbing my arm. “He’ll kill you! He has guys everywhere!”
King just laughed. He reached into his vest pocket. I braced for a gun.
Instead, he pulled out a phone. He tapped the screen and turned it around so I could see.
It was a live video feed.
It showed the inside of the Iron Dogs clubhouse. My clubhouse.
But it was in ruins. The bar was smashed. The colors were ripped from the walls. And tied to chairs in the center of the room were three men.
My brothers. The few who were left. They were beaten, bloody, and unconscious.
“You see, Zero,” King said softly, his eyes dead and cold. “You don’t have a club anymore. You don’t have a family. You have nothing.”
He put the phone away and stepped up to me, chest to chest.
“I’m going to give you a choice,” King whispered. “You get on that bike, and you ride until you hit the ocean. You never come back. Or…”
He looked at Lily.
“Or I finish what my son started today. And I make you watch.”
Chapter 3
I have stared death in the face more times than I can count. I’ve looked down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun in a bar fight in Memphis. I’ve slid across the pavement at eighty miles an hour wearing nothing but denim and bad luck. But nothing—absolutely nothing—prepared me for the feeling of looking at my wife standing next to another man on my own front porch.
King.
The President of the Grim Reapers.
He stood there, one hand casually resting on the wooden railing I had sanded and stained myself three summers ago. The other hand held my beer. He took a sip, the condensation dripping onto his knuckles, and smiled. It was a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were dead things. Shark eyes.
“Tick tock, Zero,” King whispered, his voice like grinding gears. “The clock is running. Make your choice. The ocean, or the grave?”
I looked at Sarah.
She was trembling. Her face was pale, drained of blood, her eyes wide with a terror I had never seen before. She wasn’t just scared of the situation; she was scared for me. Her lips moved silently.
Go.
It wasn’t a rejection. It was a plea.
She knew what King was capable of. She knew that if I stepped onto that porch, if I threw a punch, two things would happen: I would die, and Lily would watch.
I looked down at Lily.
She was pressing herself against my leg, clutching the leather of my chaps so hard her knuckles were white. She was looking at King with the kind of fear a rabbit has for a wolf.
“Dad?” she whimpered.
That one word broke the red haze of rage that was blinding me.
I couldn’t fight. Not here. Not now. Not with Lily in the line of fire. A man who fights a war he can’t win isn’t a hero; he’s a corpse. And Lily didn’t need a martyr. She needed a father.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. It tasted like acid and shame.
“You win this round, King,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady, though my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
King laughed. It was a deep, booming sound that echoed off the siding of my stolen house. “Smart man. I knew prison would teach you some manners.”
I looked at Sarah one last time. I tried to pour everything I felt into that look—the confusion, the betrayal, the love, the promise that this wasn’t over. She gave a almost imperceptible nod, a single tear tracking through the makeup on her cheek.
“Let’s go, Lily,” I said, turning my back on the man who had stolen my life.
“Dad, no!” Lily cried, trying to pull toward the house. “Mom! We can’t leave Mom!”
“Get on the bike, Lily,” I ordered, sharper than I intended. I grabbed her arm, lifting her onto the pillion seat. “Now.”
She sobbed, but she obeyed. She wrapped her arms around my waist, burying her face in my back.
I swung my leg over the seat. I didn’t look back at the porch. I didn’t look at the weed-choked flower beds. I turned the key.
The engine roared to life. It was an angry, defiant sound.
“Hey, Zero!” King called out.
I paused, hand hovering over the clutch.
“Don’t let me see you in this county after sunset,” he shouted. “Or I’ll have my boys turn that pretty bike of yours into scrap metal. And you into dog food.”
I dropped the clutch and twisted the throttle. The rear tire spun on the asphalt, smoking, leaving a black streak of rubber on the driveway that I hoped would annoy him every time he walked out the door.
We shot down the street.
I didn’t slow down at the stop sign. I banked hard left, the footpegs scraping the pavement, sparks flying. I needed distance. I needed to think.
But as I straightened out onto the main avenue, I checked my mirrors.
Two black shapes were pulling out of the side street behind me. SUVs. Big ones. Tinted windows. Chrome grills that looked like teeth.
Reapers.
“Hold on!” I shouted over the wind.
Lily tightened her grip until it hurt.
They weren’t just escorting me out of town. They were hunting.
I weaved through the afternoon traffic. The SUVs were aggressive, honking, forcing sedans onto the shoulder. They didn’t care about witnesses. They owned this town now.
I saw the lead SUV surge forward in the left lane, trying to pull alongside me. I knew the move. They were going to try to clip my front wheel or box me in against a parked car.
“Not today,” I growled.
I saw a gap. A narrow alleyway between a bakery and a dry cleaner. It was tight—maybe four feet wide. Too narrow for an SUV. Just right for a Harley if you had the nerve.
I slammed on the brakes, the rear wheel locking up for a split second before I regained traction. I downshifted, the engine screaming in protest.
I wrenched the handlebars to the right.
We hit the alley entrance at thirty miles an hour.
The sudden darkness of the alley swallowed us. Trash cans clipped my saddlebags. I felt a cardboard box explode against my knee. Lily screamed, a short, sharp sound that was instantly lost in the echo of the exhaust bouncing off the brick walls.
I checked the mirror. The lead SUV had slammed on its brakes, skidding past the entrance. They couldn’t follow.
But they would circle the block.
I gunned it. We burst out the other side of the alley into a residential street. I took a hard left, then a quick right, zigzagging through the labyrinth of suburbia.
I knew these streets. I grew up riding bicycles here. I knew which cul-de-sacs had cut-throughs to the next street. I knew which fences were broken.
I drove up a curb, riding across a perfectly manicured lawn to cut through to the parallel street, dodging a plastic tricycle.
We rode for twenty minutes, twisting and turning until I was sure the black SUVs were ghosts in the distance.
Finally, I slowed down. The adrenaline was starting to fade, replaced by a cold, hard dread.
We were on the outskirts of town now, near the old railyard. It was a desolate place—rusted train cars, overgrown weeds, and the smell of diesel and decay.
I pulled the bike under the concrete arch of an old overpass. It was hidden from the road, shadowed and cool.
I killed the engine. The silence that followed was deafening.
I kicked the stand down and practically fell off the bike. My legs felt like jelly.
Lily slid off, her movements slow and stiff. She took off the oversized helmet. Her face was a mask of shock.
“Dad,” she whispered. “What is happening?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I walked to the edge of the concrete pillar and vomited into the weeds. The stress, the prison food, the rage—it all came up.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and turned to her.
“I don’t know, Lil,” I admitted. It was the hardest thing I’d ever said. Fathers are supposed to know. Fathers are supposed to fix it. “I don’t know.”
She walked over to me. She looked so small against the graffiti-covered wall.
“Mom…” she started, her voice cracking. “Is Mom okay?”
“She’s alive,” I said. “That’s what matters right now. King… he won’t hurt her. Not while she’s useful to him.”
“Why did she let him in?” Lily asked, tears spilling over again. “Why didn’t she wait?”
“Three years is a long time, baby,” I said, sitting down on a concrete block and pulling her into a hug. “People get lonely. People get scared. Bills pile up. The Reapers… they probably made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Protection. Money.”
“She hates him,” Lily sobbed into my chest. “I hear them fighting. She locks herself in the bathroom and cries.”
The rage flared again, hot and white. Sarah wasn’t a traitor. She was a victim. King had preyed on a single mother with a husband in jail. He had moved in like a parasite.
“I’m going to fix this,” I swore, stroking her hair. “I promise you, Lily. I’m going to take it all back. The house. Mom. The club. Everything.”
“How?” she asked, looking up at me with red, swollen eyes. “It’s just us.”
She was right. It was just us. I had no phone. No money. No weapon. No crew.
I checked my pockets. I had forty dollars in cash—my gate money. A pack of cigarettes. A lighter. And a pocketknife I had swiped from the supply closet before I processed out.
Not exactly an arsenal.
“We need help,” I said. “We need to find someone who hasn’t turned.”
“Who?”
I thought about the roster of the Iron Dogs. Most were probably dead, in jail, or turned. But there was one man.
Old Man Silas.
He wasn’t a member. He was a legend. He ran a scrapyard about ten miles north. He had been a biker in the 70s, back when it was really wild. He was retired, neutral ground. He fixed bikes for everyone—Dogs, Reapers, cops. He didn’t take sides. He just took cash.
“I know a guy,” I said, standing up. “It’s a bit of a ride. You up for it?”
Lily wiped her face and put the helmet back on. She looked ridiculous with the giant black dome on her head, but her eyes were fierce. She was my daughter, alright.
“Let’s ride,” she said.
We got back on the bike. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows across the broken pavement.
As we merged onto the highway, heading north, I saw a billboard. It was for the local sheriff’s election.
“VOTE MILLER FOR SHERIFF – TOUGH ON CRIME.”
It was a picture of Deputy Miller—the same cop who had threatened me at the school. He was smiling, shaking hands with a man in a suit.
I squinted as we rode past at seventy miles an hour.
The man in the suit. The one shaking Miller’s hand.
It was King.
He was wearing a suit, his tattoos covered, his beard trimmed. But it was him.
The Reapers didn’t just take the streets. They took the law.
I gripped the handlebars until my knuckles cracked. This wasn’t a gang war. This was a coup.
And I was the only resistance left.
Chapter 4
Night fell hard and fast, like a heavy curtain dropping on a bad play. The air turned cold, the kind of damp chill that seeps into your bones and reminds you of every broken rib and healed fracture you’ve ever collected.
We rode in silence. The headlight of my bike cut a cone of yellow through the darkness, illuminating the cracked asphalt of County Road 9. This was the backwoods. No streetlights. Just trees, shadows, and the occasional pair of glowing eyes from a deer watching us pass.
Lily had fallen asleep against my back. I could feel her dead weight, her helmet bumping gently against my spine with every bump in the road. I reached back with one hand to check her grip. She was holding on by instinct.
I kept my eyes moving. Scanning the mirrors. Scanning the tree line. Every pair of headlights that appeared behind us made my heart rate spike until they passed.
We needed sanctuary.
Silas’s scrapyard was up ahead. I saw the sign, rusted and leaning at a forty-five-degree angle: “SILAS SALVAGE & REPAIR. WE BUY JUNK.”
I killed the headlight before I turned into the long gravel driveway. I didn’t want to announce my arrival. I rolled the bike down the path, the gravel crunching loudly under the tires.
The yard was a graveyard of machinery. Stacks of crushed cars loomed like metal monoliths against the moonlight. Twisted frames of motorcycles hung from chains in the open-air barn.
There was a light on in the main shed. A single, bare bulb swinging from a wire.
I stopped the bike about fifty yards out and cut the engine.
“Lily,” I whispered, shaking her shoulder gently. “Wake up, baby. We’re here.”
She groaned, lifting her head. “Where is here?”
“A friend’s place. Stay close to me.”
We walked the rest of the way. I kept Lily behind me, my hand on the small knife in my pocket. It wouldn’t do much against a gun, but it was better than a stern look.
I approached the shed door. It was open a crack. I could hear the hum of a radio—classic rock—and the metallic clink-clink of a wrench hitting steel.
“Silas?” I called out, staying in the shadows.
The clinking stopped.
“Who’s asking?” a voice rasped. It sounded like sandpaper on concrete.
“Zero.”
There was a long pause. A very long pause.
Then, a heavy sigh.
“Come into the light where I can see your hands.”
I stepped into the doorway, keeping my hands open and visible.
Silas was sitting on a stool, working on the transmission of a ’74 Shovelhead. He was ancient. His skin was like tanned leather, his beard white and down to his belt. He was wearing oil-stained overalls and a welding cap.
He held a large wrench in his hand like a club. He looked me up and down, his eyes narrowing behind thick glasses.
“I heard you were out,” Silas said. He didn’t smile.
“News travels fast,” I said.
“Bad news travels faster. And you, Jack Thorne, are bad news.”
He looked past me and saw Lily peering around my leather vest. His expression softened, just a fraction.
“Is that the kid?”
“Yeah. That’s Lily.”
Silas grunted. He put the wrench down on the workbench. “Well, don’t just stand there letting the mosquitoes eat you. Get inside. Close the door.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. We stepped inside. The shed smelled of grease, old metal, and coffee. It was the most comforting smell in the world.
“Thirsty?” Silas asked, gesturing to a mini-fridge in the corner. “There’s soda for the girl. Beer for the convict.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Lily grabbed a grape soda and sat on a stack of tires, watching us with wide eyes. I cracked a beer, the cold liquid soothing my parched throat.
“So,” Silas said, wiping his hands on a rag. “You pissed off King yet?”
“I think I pissed him off about three hours ago,” I admitted.
“Figured. I saw the smoke signals.” Silas chuckled darkly. “He’s been waiting for you, you know. He knew you’d come home.”
“He’s in my house, Silas. He’s with Sarah.”
Silas stopped wiping his hands. He looked at me with genuine pity.
“It’s worse than that, Jack. It ain’t just your house. It’s the whole charter. The Iron Dogs are gone.”
“I saw the video,” I said, leaning against the workbench. “He has some of the guys hostage. Do you know where?”
“Video?” Silas spat. “That ain’t hostages, son. That’s a trophy room. He keeps them there to break them. He’s trying to get them to patch over. Become Reapers.”
“Who’s left?” I asked. “Who hasn’t turned?”
Silas counted on his grease-stained fingers. “Preacher is dead. Took a bullet in a raid last year. Tiny is doing twenty years in state. Knuckles… Knuckles patched over.”
My stomach dropped. Knuckles was my VP. My best friend. The man I trusted to watch my family while I was inside.
“Knuckles turned?” I whispered.
“Money talks,” Silas shrugged. “King brought in the cartel connections. Meth, fentanyl, guns. The Reapers are moving heavy weight now. Money started flowing, and loyalty started drying up. Knuckles drives a Corvette now.”
I crushed the beer can in my hand. The aluminum tore, slicing my palm, but I didn’t feel it.
“I need a weapon, Silas,” I said. “And I need a phone.”
Silas shook his head. “I can’t give you a gun, Jack. King has eyes everywhere. If he finds out I armed you, he burns this place to the ground with me in it.”
“I have a daughter,” I said, pointing to Lily. “He threatened her.”
Silas looked at Lily, who was sipping her soda, trying to make herself invisible. He looked back at me. He sighed again, a deep, rattling sound in his chest.
He walked over to a pile of junk in the corner. He moved a tarp, revealing an old floor safe. He spun the dial.
He pulled out a heavy cloth bundle and a burner flip phone.
He tossed them on the workbench.
“This never happened,” Silas said. “You never saw me.”
I unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a Colt 1911. .45 caliber. The finish was worn, but the action was smooth as glass. Two spare magazines.
“It’s clean,” Silas said. “Untraceable.”
I checked the chamber. Empty. I loaded a mag and racked the slide. The sound was a promise.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t thank me,” Silas grumbled. “Just don’t die on my property. It’s bad for business.”
I picked up the phone. I needed to make a call. But who?
Suddenly, the phone in my hand buzzed.
I froze. It was a brand new burner. Nobody had the number.
I looked at Silas. He looked just as confused.
“Did you give this number out?” I asked.
“I just took it out of the box,” he said.
I flipped it open.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Jack,” a voice purred. It wasn’t King. It was smoother. More cultured.
“Who is this?”
“A friend. Or at least, an enemy of your enemy.”
“I don’t have friends,” I said.
“You have one now,” the voice said. “Listen carefully. King knows where you are.”
My blood ran cold. I looked at the door.
“How?”
“There’s a GPS tracker on your bike, genius. He planted it while you were inside the school. He’s been toying with you. The chase? That was just for fun. He let you run to see where you’d hide.”
I looked at the bike. I looked at Lily.
“They are three minutes out,” the voice said. “Six bikes. Two trucks. If you stay there, you die. If you run out the front gate, you die.”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Check the saddlebag of your bike. The left one. Under the rain gear. There’s a package. Good luck, Zero.”
The line went dead.
“Silas!” I yelled. “We have to go. Now! They’re coming!”
“What?” Silas dropped his wrench. “Who?”
“Reapers! They tracked the bike!”
I ran to the bike. I ripped open the left saddlebag. I dug under the plastic rain suit.
My fingers brushed against something hard and cold.
It was a thick manila envelope. And taped to it was a key.
I ripped the envelope open. Inside was a stack of photos. Grainy, black and white surveillance photos.
I flipped through them rapidly in the dim light.
Photo one: King shaking hands with Miller. Photo two: Knuckles, my VP, taking a bag of cash from a man in a cartel suit. Photo three: Sarah.
My breath caught.
It was Sarah. She was in a car. She was crying. And she was holding a gun.
She wasn’t a hostage.
The photo was dated two days ago. She was sitting in the passenger seat of King’s truck, holding a pistol, looking at it with a mix of terror and… determination.
“Dad?” Lily was at my side. “I hear engines.”
I listened.
Far off, but getting louder. The rumble of V-Twins. A lot of them.
“Silas, is there a back way out?” I asked.
“There’s an old logging trail,” Silas said, grabbing a shotgun from under the workbench. “Cuts through the woods to the highway. But it’s steep. You’ll never make it on a cruiser.”
“Watch me,” I said.
“Jack,” Silas said, cocking the shotgun. “Go. I’ll buy you some time.”
“Silas, no. They’ll kill you.”
The old man smiled. It was a terrifying smile. “I’ve been dying of cancer for six months, son. I’ve been waiting for a reason to go out loud.”
He killed the light in the shed.
“Go!” he roared.
I grabbed Lily. “Get on. Now!”
We scrambled onto the bike. I didn’t turn on the headlight. I navigated by the moonlight.
As we tore across the salvage yard toward the tree line, I heard the front gate crash open. I heard tires screeching on gravel.
And then, I heard the boom of a shotgun.
BLAM!
“Come and get some, you scumbags!” Silas’s voice echoed in the night.
Then, a barrage of automatic gunfire ripped through the air.
I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.
I hit the dirt trail. The bike fishtailed wildly in the mud. I fought the handlebars, the heavy machine bucking like a wild horse. We bounced over roots and rocks, disappearing into the blackness of the forest.
Behind us, the night sky lit up with the orange glow of fire. They had torched the shed.
Silas was gone.
And we were alone in the woods, with a mystery caller, a gun, and a picture of my wife that changed everything.
Chapter 5
The woods were a nightmare.
A Harley-Davidson Road King is built for highways, for long stretches of asphalt and open sky. It is not built for a deer trail in the middle of a pitch-black forest.
The bike bucked and slid underneath me. Mud sprayed up in thick, heavy clods, coating my goggles and stinging my neck. Branches whipped at my face like angry ghosts.
“Keep your head down!” I screamed over the engine’s roar.
I could feel Lily shivering against my back. She wasn’t just cold; she was vibrating with terror. She had just heard a man die for us. She had seen the fire. She had heard the machine guns.
My heart was pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Silas. The old man had gone out like a Viking. He bought us a head start with his life. I couldn’t waste it.
The trail dipped sharply into a ravine. I feather-braked, the rear tire locking up and sliding sideways in the slick mud. The bike tipped.
“Jump!” I yelled.
I threw my weight to the left, laying the bike down as gently as I could in the mud. We tumbled off, rolling into a pile of wet leaves and pine needles.
The engine sputtered and died.
Suddenly, the woods were silent.
Dead silent.
No birds. No crickets. Just the heavy, wheezing sound of my own breath and the distant, fading crackle of the fire back at the scrapyard.
“Dad?” Lily’s voice was small, coming from the darkness.
“I’m here,” I whispered, crawling over to her. I checked her limbs. “You hurt?”
“I scraped my hand. I’m okay.” She paused, and then the sob broke through. “Is Silas…”
“He’s gone, Lil,” I said, pulling her into my arms. We sat in the mud, hidden by the ravine walls. “He saved us.”
“Why?” she wept. “Why are they doing this?”
“Because bad men don’t like it when you stand up to them,” I said, my voice hardening. “And we just stood up.”
I stood up and hauled the bike upright. It was heavy, dead weight in the mud. I hit the starter.
Click.
Nothing.
I tried again. Click. Click.
Dead battery? No, the lights were working. I checked the kill switch. I checked the fuel.
Then I saw it. A stray branch had ripped the spark plug wire clean off the coil.
“Dammit,” I hissed.
I fished the pocketknife out of my jeans. “Shine the light, Lily. Use the phone.”
She fumbled with the burner phone Silas had given me, flipping it open to use the screen’s glow.
In the pale blue light, I stripped the wire and reconnected it, my hands shaking from adrenaline. It was a temporary fix, a band-aid on a bullet wound.
“Try it now,” I muttered.
I hit the starter. The engine coughed, sputtered, and then roared to life. It sounded rough, but it was running.
“Get on.”
We rode for another hour, navigating the logging roads until we hit tarmac. We were deep in the county now, miles from town.
I needed a place to think. A place to look at the package Silas gave me.
I pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned drive-in theater. The screen was a giant white skeleton against the starry sky. We hid the bike behind the crumbling projection booth.
I sat on the concrete, using the bike’s headlight to look at the photos again.
My hands were trembling as I shuffled through them.
King shaking hands with the corrupt Sheriff. Knuckles taking bribes.
And then, the photo of Sarah.
I stared at it until my eyes burned.
It was taken in the parking lot of the warehouse district. Sarah was sitting in the passenger seat of King’s truck. The window was down.
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t bound.
She was holding a revolver. A snub-nose .38. I recognized it. It was the “house gun” I kept in the nightstand safe.
But she wasn’t pointing it at King. She was checking the cylinder. She looked focused. Cold.
“That’s Mom,” Lily said, peering over my shoulder. “Is she… is she with them?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “No. She’s… she’s planning something.”
“She looks like you,” Lily whispered. “When you’re mad.”
She was right. Sarah didn’t look like a victim. She looked like an accomplice. Or an assassin.
The burner phone in my pocket buzzed again.
I flipped it open.
“You’re alive,” the voice said. “Good. Silas didn’t die for nothing.”
“Who are you?” I demanded. “And why do you have pictures of my wife?”
“I’m the guy who knows where the bodies are buried, Zero. Because I helped dig the graves.”
The voice was distorted, digital.
“Your wife isn’t safe,” the voice continued. “But she’s not innocent, either. She made a deal with the devil to keep your daughter off the radar. But devils don’t keep deals.”
“What deal?” I growled.
“King promised her that if she laundered money for the club through the diner, he’d leave you alone in prison and keep Lily safe. She’s been cooking the books for two years, Jack.”
My stomach turned over. Sarah? Laundering money? My Sarah, who wouldn’t even cheat on her taxes?
“She did it for you,” the voice said. “But tonight, the deal ends. King is cleaning house. He’s liquidating assets. That includes the bookkeeper.”
“Where is she?”
“The old textile mill on River Road. Midnight. He’s meeting the cartel buyers. He’s going to hand over the territory, the money… and the loose ends.”
I looked at my watch. 10:45 PM.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
“Because King killed my brother,” the voice said. The distortion slipped for a second, revealing a raw, painful edge. “And because I want to see you burn his kingdom to the ground.”
The line went dead.
I looked at Lily. She was watching me, her eyes wide and trusting.
“We have to go,” I said, standing up and checking the magazine in the .45. “We’re going to get Mom.”
Chapter 6
The textile mill was a fortress of red brick and broken glass, looming over the black water of the river like a tombstone. It had been closed for twenty years, a relic of a time when this town actually made things other than meth and misery.
I parked the bike a mile down the road, hiding it deep in a thicket of kudzu. The element of surprise was the only card I had left. If they heard the engine, Sarah was dead.
“Dad, I’m scared,” Lily whispered. The moonlight caught the tear tracks on her dirty face.
I knelt down, grabbing her shoulders. “I know, baby. I’m scared too.”
“You are?” She looked shocked.
“Yeah. Only crazy people aren’t scared. But bravery isn’t about not being scared. It’s about doing what you have to do, even when your knees are knocking together.”
I pulled the spare helmet off the bike. I handed her the burner phone.
“Listen to me closely, Lily. This is the most important thing I will ever ask you to do.”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“I’m going to put you in the old drain pipe near the river. It’s dry. It’s hidden. You stay there. You do not come out. Not if you hear shooting. Not if you hear me screaming. You wait.”
“But—”
“No buts. If I’m not back in one hour…” I swallowed hard. “If I’m not back, you call the number saved in this phone. You tell the voice where you are. And you wait for them.”
“Dad, please don’t go,” she begged, grabbing my vest.
“I have to get Mom,” I said, kissing her forehead. “I love you, Lil. You’re my heart.”
I walked her to the drain pipe. I watched her crawl into the darkness. I waited until she was settled.
“Be a shadow,” I whispered.
“I love you, Dad,” her voice echoed back.
I turned and faced the mill.
I moved through the shadows like a ghost. I stuck to the perimeter, using the overgrown brush for cover.
There were guards. Two prospects—young kids, barely eighteen—smoking cigarettes by the main gate. They were holding AR-15s like toys, laughing about something on their phones.
Amateurs.
I slipped through a hole in the chain-link fence on the south side. I crept through the abandoned loading dock, my boots making no sound on the oil-stained concrete.
I could hear voices echoing from the main warehouse floor.
I climbed a rusted ladder to the catwalks high above the floor. The metal grated under my weight, but the noise below covered me.
I looked down.
The scene was straight out of a nightmare.
Portable floodlights illuminated the center of the vast, empty space. In the middle, there was a long table stacked with bricks of cash and vacuum-sealed bags of white powder.
King stood at the head of the table. He was wearing his President’s cut, looking like a king on his throne.
Around him were a dozen Reapers. And facing them were three men in expensive suits. The Cartel.
But my eyes went to the chair next to the table.
Sarah.
She was tied to the chair. Her mouth was duct-taped. Her eyes were wide with panic. The snub-nose revolver lay on the table in front of King, a trophy.
And standing behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder, was Knuckles.
My best friend. My brother.
He was wearing a Reaper patch.
The betrayal hit me harder than a physical blow. I had to grip the railing to keep from falling. Knuckles. We had ridden thousands of miles together. I had saved his life in a bar fight in St. Louis. He was Lily’s godfather.
“Gentlemen,” King boomed, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “Business is concluded. The territory is yours. The distribution lines are open. And as a gesture of good faith…”
He picked up the revolver. He spun the cylinder.
“I’m cleaning up the loose ends.”
He walked over to Sarah. He placed the cold muzzle of the gun against her temple.
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t struggle. She just cried silently.
“This woman,” King announced, “has been very helpful. But she knows too much. And her husband… well, her husband is a pest.”
“Do it,” one of the cartel men said, bored. “We have a schedule.”
I didn’t think. I didn’t plan.
I raised the .45.
It was a hell of a shot. Fifty yards. Low light. Moving target.
I took a breath. I let it out halfway.
Squeeze.
The gun bucked in my hand. The boom was deafening in the enclosed space.
Down below, the revolver in King’s hand exploded.
Sparks flew. King screamed, dropping the gun and clutching his hand. Blood sprayed onto Sarah’s white waitress uniform.
“Sniper!” someone yelled.
Chaos erupted.
The cartel men dove for cover behind their SUVs. The Reapers started spraying bullets blindly into the rafters.
I didn’t stop. I fired again. And again.
I hit a Reaper in the leg. I hit another in the shoulder.
“Run, Sarah!” I screamed, my voice tearing through the gunfire.
Knuckles looked up. He saw the muzzle flash. He saw me.
For a second, our eyes locked across the distance.
He had a clear shot at me. He raised his rifle.
I braced for the impact.
But he didn’t fire at me.
He swung the rifle around and shot the Reaper standing next to him.
Bang.
The Reaper went down.
Knuckles grabbed his knife and slashed the ropes binding Sarah. He ripped the tape off her mouth.
“Go!” Knuckles roared, shoving her toward the shadows. “Run!”
King, bleeding from his hand, scrambled for his own weapon. “Kill them! Kill them all!”
I was pinned down. Bullets were chewing up the catwalk around me. Rust and metal shards were flying into my face.
I had to get down there.
I saw a heavy chain hanging from a pulley system above the center of the room.
I holstered the empty gun. I took a running leap.
I grabbed the chain. My shoulders screamed as my weight snapped the line taut.
I swung down, descending into the middle of the firefight like a wrecking ball.
I let go ten feet from the ground, rolling as I hit the concrete. I came up drawing the .45, slapping a fresh magazine in.
I was in the open. Exposed.
But I wasn’t alone.
Knuckles was back-to-back with me.
“took you long enough, brother,” Knuckles grunted, firing a burst at the cartel SUV.
“I thought you turned,” I shouted, firing two rounds at a Reaper charging us.
“I’m undercover, you idiot!” Knuckles yelled. “I’ve been working with the Feds for six months trying to nail King!”
“You could have told me!”
“You were in jail!”
We were surrounded. Ten Reapers. Three cartel hitmen.
“We need an exit!” I yelled.
“The back door!” Knuckles pointed. “But we have to get through King.”
King was standing by the back exit, holding a sawed-off shotgun with his good hand. He was smiling.
“Family reunion,” King laughed. “How sweet. Now you can die together.”
He raised the shotgun.
Suddenly, a deafening roar filled the warehouse.
The main bay doors exploded inward.
A massive black truck smashed through the metal, debris flying everywhere. It plowed into the cartel SUV, flipping it over.
The truck skidded to a halt. The driver’s door flew open.
It wasn’t the police. It wasn’t the Feds.
It was Mr. Henderson. The gym teacher.
He was wearing a tactical vest. He was holding an assault rifle.
And he looked absolutely terrified.
“Get in!” Henderson screamed, his voice cracking. “Get in the truck!”
Chapter 7
“Get in!” Henderson screamed again, revving the engine of the battered Ford F-150. “I don’t have all day!”
I didn’t ask questions. In a firefight, a ride is a ride, even if the driver is the guy who teaches your daughter dodgeball.
I grabbed Sarah’s hand. “Go!”
We sprinted across the concrete floor, bullets sparking around our feet like angry hornets. Knuckles provided covering fire, his assault rifle barking in short, controlled bursts.
I threw Sarah into the back seat. Knuckles dove into the bed of the truck. I vaulted into the passenger seat.
“Drive!” I roared, slamming the door just as a shotgun slug shattered the side mirror.
Henderson floored it. The truck lurched forward, tires smoking on the smooth concrete. We smashed through a stack of wooden pallets, sending splinters flying everywhere.
King was standing in the open, screaming orders, his face twisted in a mask of pure hate. He raised his shotgun.
Henderson didn’t swerve away. He swerved toward him.
King dove out of the way at the last second, rolling into a pile of trash.
We hit the exit ramp at forty miles an hour. The truck went airborne for a terrifying second before slamming down onto the gravel road outside.
“hold on!” Henderson yelled. He spun the wheel, drifting the heavy truck around a corner like a rally driver.
I stared at him. The man was sweating, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, but his eyes… his eyes were focused. Sharp.
“You,” I breathed, checking the clip in my .45. “You’re the voice on the phone.”
“Took you long enough,” Henderson grunted, checking the rearview mirror. “And for the record, I wasn’t scrolling Facebook at the school. I was calibrating the drone feed.”
“Drone?”
“How do you think I got the photos, Jack? I’ve been watching King for six months. Ever since he killed my little brother in a botched robbery.”
He took a hard left, the tires squealing.
“I’m a tech teacher, Jack. Not just gym. I know computers. I hacked their phones. I hacked their cameras. I was waiting for the Feds to move, but they were too slow. So when I saw you at the school…”
“You used me,” I said, realizing the game.
“I needed a battering ram,” Henderson admitted. “And you, my friend, are a sledgehammer.”
“We need to get Lily,” I interrupted. “She’s at the drain pipe by the river.”
“I know,” Henderson said. “I’m tracking her phone. She’s moving.”
My heart stopped. “Moving? I told her to stay put!”
“She’s not moving on foot, Jack,” Henderson said, his voice dropping. “She’s doing forty miles an hour. Someone picked her up.”
“No,” I whispered. The blood drained from my face.
“It’s Miller,” Henderson said, tapping the GPS screen on his dashboard. “The Sheriff. He must have been patrolling the perimeter. He’s taking her to the bridge.”
The bridge. The only way out of town. It was a choke point.
“Catch him,” I growled. The monster inside me woke up. It wasn’t the cold “Zero” anymore. It was a father’s rage, hot and nuclear. “Catch him, or I will kill you myself.”
“I’m trying!” Henderson yelled, pushing the truck to its limit.
In the back seat, Sarah leaned forward. She put a hand on my shoulder. She was shaking, but her voice was steel.
“We get her back, Jack,” she said. “Whatever it takes. We get our baby back.”
I looked at her. The waitress uniform was ruined. Her hair was a mess. But she was the toughest woman I had ever known.
“Knuckles!” I yelled out the window to the truck bed. “You good back there?”
“I’m out of ammo!” Knuckles shouted back, the wind whipping his words away. “And we’ve got company!”
I looked in the side mirror.
Three black SUVs were tearing down the road behind us. The Reapers. And leading them was King’s custom truck.
He wasn’t letting us go. This wasn’t about business anymore. It was personal.
“Henderson,” I said calm as the grave. “Get us to the bridge. Don’t stop for anything.”
“What are you going to do?” Henderson asked, eyeing the speedometer.
I climbed out the window, pulling myself into the truck bed with Knuckles.
“I’m going to finish it.”
Chapter 8
The wind roared in my ears as I stood in the bed of the speeding truck. The night air was cold, but my skin was burning.
We were hitting eighty on the straightaway leading to the bridge. The lights of the SUVs were blinding in the mirrors, getting closer.
“Here!” Knuckles yelled, tossing me a tire iron he found in the junk pile in the truck bed. “It’s not much!”
“It’s enough,” I said, gripping the cold steel.
Up ahead, I saw the flashing lights of a police cruiser parked sideways across the entrance to the bridge.
Miller.
He was standing behind the cruiser door, his service weapon drawn. And next to him, handcuffed to the push bar, was Lily.
She looked tiny. Terrified. Screaming silently into the night.
“Henderson! Ram it!” I shouted, pounding on the roof of the cab.
Henderson didn’t hesitate. He held the line.
Miller saw the truck coming. He saw we weren’t stopping. He panicked. He fired two shots that pinged harmlessly off our windshield, then he dove into the ditch.
Henderson slammed on the brakes at the last second. The truck screeched, fishtailing, and smashed into the back of the cruiser. Metal screamed. Glass shattered. The cruiser spun out of the way, clearing the path.
The truck stalled.
“Get Lily!” I screamed to Sarah as I jumped out.
Sarah scrambled out of the cab, running toward the cruiser where Lily was struggling against the cuffs.
I turned around to face the road.
The three SUVs skidded to a halt ten yards away, blocking our escape. Doors flew open.
King stepped out.
He was bleeding from his hand, his suit torn, his face a mask of dried blood and fury. He was holding a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.
Six Reapers fanned out behind him, holding chains, knives, and pipes. They were out of bullets, just like us.
This was going to be old school.
“You think you can take my town?” King roared, pointing the bat at me. “You think you can take my family?”
“I’m taking back what’s mine,” I said, stepping forward. I swung the tire iron, testing the weight.
Knuckles stepped up beside me. He pulled a combat knife from his boot.
“FBI,” Knuckles grinned, flashing his teeth. “You’re under arrest, King. You have the right to remain silent. Or you can scream. I prefer the screaming.”
King laughed. “FBI? In this county? I own the law.”
He charged.
The clash was brutal.
I ducked under King’s first swing. The barbed wire whistled past my ear. I slammed the tire iron into his ribs. He grunted, but he didn’t go down. He was a tank.
He backhanded me, the heavy wooden bat catching me in the shoulder. My arm went numb. I stumbled back.
“Dad!” Lily screamed from behind me.
That sound. It was the fuel.
I didn’t feel the pain. I felt the three years of missing birthdays. I felt the cold concrete of the cell floor. I felt the humiliation of the teacher watching her get hurt.
I roared.
I tackled King. We hit the asphalt hard. I dropped the tire iron and used my fists. Left. Right. Left. I was hitting him with every ounce of frustration I had stored up for a thousand days.
King managed to get a thumb in my eye, gouging. I yelled, rolling off him.
He scrambled up, breathless, spitting blood. He reached into his boot and pulled out a hideout gun. A small .22.
“Goodbye, Zero,” he wheezed, aiming at my chest.
CRACK.
The shot rang out.
I flinched, waiting for the bullet.
But it wasn’t King’s gun.
King looked confused. He looked down at his chest. A red flower was blooming on his white shirt.
He dropped to his knees. Then he fell face forward onto the bridge.
I spun around.
Sarah was standing by the police cruiser. She was holding Miller’s service weapon. Her hands were shaking, but her aim was true.
Miller was cowering in the ditch, his hands up.
Silence fell over the bridge.
The remaining Reapers looked at their fallen King. They looked at Knuckles, who was holding his badge high in one hand and a knife in the other. They looked at Henderson, who was aiming a very large hunting rifle from the truck window.
They dropped their weapons.
“It’s over!” Knuckles shouted. “Get on the ground! Now!”
Sirens.
Real sirens this time. Not local cops. State Troopers. Dozens of them. Blue lights flooded the horizon, coming from the highway side of the bridge.
“The cavalry,” Knuckles panted, wiping blood from his lip. “Right on time. Sort of.”
I didn’t care about the cops. I didn’t care about the Reapers.
I ran to Sarah.
She dropped the gun and collapsed into my arms. I held her up, burying my face in her neck.
“You saved me,” I whispered.
“We saved each other,” she sobbed.
Then I felt small arms wrap around my waist.
Lily.
I fell to my knees, pulling them both into a huddle on the cold asphalt. We were bruised, bloody, and broken.
But we were together.
Epilogue: Two Months Later
The suburbs still hate the sound of my bike.
I was tuning the carburetor on the driveway. The chrome was polished to a mirror shine. The “Iron Dogs” patch on my vest was gone. I traded it for a plain leather jacket.
Knuckles—or Special Agent Hernandez, as I knew him now—stopped by yesterday. The RICO case against the Reapers was a slam dunk. King survived the shot, which is good. It means he gets to spend the rest of his life in a 6×8 cell. He can rot there.
Miller is in the cell next to him.
Henderson got a commendation. He still teaches gym, but the kids don’t make fun of him anymore. He comes over for steaks on Sundays. He’s trying to teach me how to use a computer. It’s not going well.
I wiped the grease from my hands and looked up.
The front door opened.
Lily walked out. She was wearing a purple backpack. She looked like a normal kid again. The fear was gone from her eyes.
“Ready for school?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, hopping on the back of the bike. “Can we stop for donuts?”
“Donuts are strictly against Mom’s rules,” I said, handing her the helmet.
“So?” she grinned.
“So, get on. We’ll eat them before we get home.”
Sarah walked out onto the porch. She looked happy. Truly happy. She leaned against the railing—the one King had defiled—and blew me a kiss.
I kicked the engine to life. That deep, rumbling roar filled the neighborhood.
A neighbor across the street—a lady in a white SUV—scowled at the noise.
I just smiled and waved.
Let them stare. Let them judge.
I’m Jack Thorne. I’m a father. I’m a husband.
And I’m home.
END
