Page 21 of Jagger’s Remorse (Iron Veins MC #1)

CHAPTER NINE

Jagger

The Sombra warehouse squats in Redding's industrial district like a cancer waiting to be cut out.

Three a.m., fog thick enough to choke on, and my woman's voice crackles through the earpiece.

"Two guards on the north entrance. Lazy fuckers, smoking instead of watching."

Scarlett's running tactical operations from the van, still too injured to fight but too stubborn to stay home.

Three days since she ‘executed’ Blade on camera, and she insisted on being here.

"Copy that," I murmur, adjusting my kevlar vest. "South side?"

"Clear. Mouse has eyes on the loading dock. Says it's quiet."

Too quiet, my instincts scream.

But we need this win. Need to show Eduardo and everyone else that the Iron Veins protects its interests.

"Positions?" I check with my team.

"North secured," Poncho confirms. "Ready to breach."

"South locked down," Hammer adds. "On your signal."

"Loading dock covered," Mouse reports. "No movement."

I study the warehouse through my scope.

Everything about this feels wrong.

The intel came too easy.

The guards look too relaxed.

Even the fog seems staged, like cover for an ambush.

"We go in two minutes," I tell the team. "Clean and quick. Get the product, get out."

"Roger that," comes the chorus of confirmations.

The plan is simple.

Hit them hard, fast, leave no one breathing.

Take back what's ours and send a message, but plans rarely go the way you want them to.

"Remember," I add, "if shit goes sideways, we extract. Product's not worth dying for."

"Since when do we run?" Hammer asks.

"Since I said so. We've lost enough brothers this month."

Silence on the comms. They know I'm right. Six injured at the party. Two dead before that. The club is bleeding.

"Sixty seconds," I announce.

I watch the guards through my scope.

One flicks his cigarette away, says something that makes the other laugh.

They have no idea death is coming.

"Scarlett, anything else we should know?"

"Thermal shows maybe ten bodies inside. Clustered near the office, southeast corner."

"Maybe?"

"Equipment's acting up. Could be interference from the machinery."

Another red flag. But we're committed now.

"Thirty seconds."

I chamber a round, feel the familiar calm settle over me.

This is what I know, what I'm good at.

Not the politics, not the emotional shit—just simple, clean violence.

"Breach, breach, breach!"

We flow through the warehouse like death itself, coordinated and lethal.

The door guards go down without a sound, Poncho's knife work beautiful.

Inside, it's wrong.

All wrong.

No resistance.

No shouting.

Just three guards who go down without barely a fight, like they were expecting us.

"This is too easy," Hammer mutters, checking corners with his shotgun raised.

He's right.

The product is there—all three hundred kilos plus some extra.

Stacked neat as you please, like they wanted us to find it.

Wrapped in plastic, marked with Sinaloa stamps, arranged like a fucking display.

"Boss," Mouse calls from across the warehouse. "You need to see this."

He's standing over a desk covered in papers.

Documents. Photos.

My stomach drops before I even reach him.

Surveillance shots of the club.

Guard schedules. Patrol routes. Detailed notes about how our security protocols are operated.

Everything they'd need to plan the attack on our party.

"Fuck," Poncho breathes, looking over my shoulder. "This is inside information."

"Someone's been feeding them intel," I confirm, rifling through more papers. "Recent stuff too. This schedule is from last week."

"A rat," Hammer spits. "We've got a fuckin’ rat."

I pick up a photo—Scarlett and me outside the compound. Date stamp from yesterday. Whoever took this was close.

One of us, close.

"There's more," Mouse says, voice strange. He hands me another folder.

Financial records. Shipping manifests. Details about our arrangement with Eduardo. Things only officers would know.

My phone buzzes. Scarlett.

"Multiple vehicles approaching. Two minutes out. Fuck, Jagger, it's a lot of them."

"It's a setup," I realize. "They wanted us here. Move! Everyone out!"

We grab what we can—the product, the documents—and bail.

Poncho and Hammer load the drugs while Mouse and I stuff papers into bags.

There’s no time to be selective.

"Forty-five seconds," Scarlett warns.

We burst through the loading dock as headlights pierce the fog. Three vehicles. No, five. More engines roaring in the distance.

"Go, go, go!"

Engines roar to life as we tear out of the warehouse, Sombra vehicles screaming into the lot behind us.

Muzzle flashes light up the fog and bullets spark off concrete.

Mouse shouts, returning fire from his bike. "Contact at the rear!"

I lean hard into a turn, feel a round whistle past my ear. Too fucking close.

"Split up!" I order. "Rally at checkpoint two!"

We scatter into the industrial maze, using the fog and our knowledge of the area.

The Sombra fuckers might have numbers, but this is our territory.

Ten minutes of heart-pounding chase before we lose them.

Close. Too fucking close.

Back at the compound, adrenaline still pumping, I spread the documents across the table in church.

The other officers gather round, faces grim as they process what we're looking at.

We don't let anyone in who isn’t an officer, Scarlett, or Raven.

As mine and Squirrel’s ol’ ladies’ they have a fucking right to be here.

"Someone's been talking," I tell Squirrel. "Feeding information to both Sombra and Three Devils."

His voice is deadly quiet, the kind that precedes violence. "Who?"

"Working on it. But whoever it is, they knew about the party. Knew exactly when we'd be vulnerable."

"The prospects," Scarlett says from where she's examining photos. She shouldn't be standing, but try telling her that. "Rocket and Quill. They had to have help from inside."

"What makes you say that?" Squirrel asks.

She spreads out several surveillance photos, pointing to specific details.

"Look at these angles. This one's taken from inside the compound, near the kitchen.

This one's from the supply room. And this.

.." She taps a photo of me and her. "This was taken from inside the women's bathroom window. See the reflection in the mirror?"

"Fuck," I breathe. "No prospect has access to the women's bathroom."

"Exactly. And look at the timestamps." She arranges them chronologically. "These were taken during church. When all the prospects would have been on gate duty or running errands. Someone else took these."

"An old lady?" Hammer sounds incredulous. "No way."

Scarlett's jaw tightens. "Look at this one closer." She holds up a photo of the garage. "See the edge of the frame? That's nail polish. Metallic blue."

I think about who wears that color. My stomach drops. "Tina."

"She's been asking a lot of questions lately," Raven says slowly, like she doesn't want to believe it. "About routes, schedules. Said she was trying to be more involved."

"And she was the one who pushed hardest for those three prospects to patch in," Poncho adds. "Said they came highly recommended from Denver."

"Where her sister lives," Scarlett finishes. "Where she visits every few months. Perfect cover for meeting handlers."

"This is bullshit," Digger snarls. "Tina's been around for years. She's solid."

"She's also been struggling since her old man died last year," Squirrel says quietly. "Lost his life insurance when the company found out he died on a run. She's been working two jobs just to keep her place."

"Perfect target for recruitment," I mutter. "Desperate, access to intel, already vetted by the club."

Scarlett nods. "Rocket and Quill couldn't have disabled our security alone. They needed someone who knew the codes, the blind spots. Someone who could move freely without suspicion."

"An old lady," Raven says, voice flat. "One of mine."

"Find her," Squirrel orders. "Quietly. If she runs?—"

"She won't run," Scarlett interrupts. "She'll act normal, keep feeding information. She doesn't know we know."

"Then we use that," I decide. "Feed her false intel, see where it goes."

"Find them," Squirrel orders. "I want answers."

"Then we use that," I decide. "Feed her false intel, see where it goes."

"Raven, can you handle this?" Squirrel asks. "She's one of yours."

Raven's face is stone. "I'll deal with it. Quietly. She won't suspect anything."

"Good. And we need to find Rocket and Quill," Squirrel adds. "I want answers from them too."

Church ends and the rest of the night passes by in a blur.

Before I know it, dawn is breaking, gray and miserable, matching my mood after a sleepless night poring over intel.

I'm on my third cup of coffee when Poncho bursts in. "VP, we got a delivery."

The bodies are dumped at our gates like trash.

Rocket and Quill, tortured beyond recognition.

Tongues cut out. Fingers missing.

A message carved into Rocket's chest: Snitches get stitches.

"Jesus Christ," someone mutters.

"Someone didn't want them talking," I observe, crouching beside the corpses.

"Someone who knew we were looking for them," Scarlett adds.

She's pale but standing, refusing to show weakness despite the way she's favoring her injured side. "How many people knew about the hunt for the prospects?"

I think back. "Everyone in church. So... all the officers. Plus Raven and?—"

"Tina," Raven finishes, her voice cold. "I mentioned it to her last night. Said we were looking for them. It wasn’t a slip up on my part. I did it on purpose, to get more evidence against her traitorous ass."

"Fuck." Squirrel runs a hand through his hair. "She warned someone. Probably got them killed to cover her tracks."

Doc appears, examines the bodies clinically. "Been dead maybe six hours. Torture went on for a while before that."

"They break?" Squirrel asks.

"Everyone breaks eventually," Doc says. "Question is what they knew to tell."

That night, I can't sleep.

I keep thinking about those documents.