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I didn’t back down. I knew it was a shitty tactic, but I was fucking desperate. It felt like my heart was being clawed open. “I’m just trying to make you see I care about her just as much as you love Sam and your future spawn.”
He snorted, slamming on the gas as soon as the light turned green and he could swerve into the fast lane. “Yeah, please, Knox, talk out your feelings. I’m retiring as the president and picking up psychiatry.”
“You’d get one patient, and they’d be running out in two minutes flat.”
We were joking, but it was far from funny. It wasn’t easy for guys, much less MC bastards, to talk about their feelings. We, as proven multiple times on my face, preferred talking with our fists. One hell of a productive way to build up inner trauma.
Two minutes of excruciating silence passed, and then Jackson spoke. “We’re almost there. I hope you know you’re the root of this.”
“I know. That’s why I’ll understand if you kick me out.”
“Fuck that. You’re staying.”
“Thanks, Jack?—”
“If Bates dies by the end of the day.”
Well, damn.
I tried to make the mood light for both our sakes. “Wow. I’ve never been given an ultimatum before.”
“And it’s the last one you’ll get, Royal Flush.”
Jackson was gruff about it, and the threat was definitely real, but he had the best intentions. He was a loyal leader and didn’t want to lose his brothers. We had all been through hell time and time again. We lost Will and Gabriel. The Devil’s Luck couldn’t bear to lose anyone else.
I turned solemn. “Thank you, Black Jack. I’ll prove my worth with every battered bone in my body.”
“Good. Because we’re back to the hellhole.”
He veered the truck onto a gravel shoulder of the road to and from the warehouse. Jackson and I hopped out and started wrestling with the strips of road spikes. We hauled them across the width of the road.
“You’re well-connected, man,” I told Jackson, who adjusted the last one. “These are tire shredders.”
They looked fucking wicked. Dark metal zigzagging across itself, its spikes ready to puncture tires and bring some Wolverines down.
Jackson brushed his palms on his pants. “It’s fuck-up-proof,” he said as we climbed into the truck. “Blends in with the road. As soon as those bastards cross, they’ll pop tires, and they’ll wipe out. Cause more injuries than ambushing them with guns.”
I nodded. “I would love to see those nice bikes fishtail and wreck into one big pile of metal and broken bones.”
Jackson sped off the shoulder and onto the road, off-roading us a quarter mile in to lay the rest down. “As long as we can even the playing field, that’s all that matters. If they don’t hit that first batch, they’ll hit these.”
We quickly repeated the process, then hurried back to the truck, gravel crunching under our boots like a goddamn countdown, to finally get to the next phase of the mission: storming the warehouse.
I’m coming, Caroline. Hold on.
My adrenaline hit me like a jolt to the spine. The classic fight or flight mode—but there was no flight in me tonight. I wanted to fight until I couldn’t fight anymore—and then fight more. I wanted blood. I wanted bodies scattered across the ground and Bates’s crew forever destroyed.
All of my limbs tensed up, and I felt wired, going jittery like some cracked-out junkie chasing a fix he’d been denied for too long. Except mine wasn’t a drug messing with my head.
It was her.
Saving the people I cared about—that was what had me practically vibrating out of my skin. If Vane laid so much as a finger on her, I was going to put my boot through his skull.
“Get a grip, Knox,” Jackson warned, wrenching the wheel to whip us to the service path Caroline told us about. “If you have a shaky trigger finger…”
I gritted my teeth and caught sight of the two pickups. I locked in like a switch flipped, disturbingly calm and steady. “I’m solid. Believe me, I fucking won’t miss.”
Jackson slammed the brakes to a stop. I was out before he even put the truck in park. We loaded ourselves up with weapons we’d stashed in the bed, mentally preparing to run headfirst into danger.