Page 46 of The Vagabond

SAXON

W e shove Zack back into the SUV—bloody, bruised, and zip-tied like a gift no one wants.

His head lolls for a second, chin slick with spittle and blood, before he catches himself, jaw locking with false bravado.

But his eyes—they give him away. They’re wide, wild, frantic behind his mask of defiance.

He knows exactly who he’s riding with. And he should be scared.

I slide into the back beside him, careful not to let our bodies touch. I lean into the door, repulsed by his nearness, like his filth might crawl across the seat and stain me. He turns to look at me, and I meet his gaze for just a second—long enough for him to see it.

The promise. He’s not walking away from this. Not even if we find her alive.

The engine growls to life like it’s hungry for blood. Lucky slams us into gear, and the SUV lurches forward into the night.

No one speaks. But the air is thick—swollen with tension, wrapping around our ribs and squeezing.

If there’s one thing we have in common, the Gatti outfit and I, it’s that when it comes to our women, we’ll raise hell to protect them.

Our women. My woman. The thought catches me by surprise.

, but that’s exactly what Maxine is. She’s my woman, and I won’t stop until I get her back.

We’re barely back on the road when the argument ignites — low, sharp, coiled with danger. There’s too much testosterone packed into this vehicle, too many sharp edges and tempers ready to blow.

I make a quiet note to myself: If I survive this, I’m never cramming into a car with these bastards again.

“Call in backup,” Lucky says, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, his voice a gravel rasp. “We’re flying blind.”

Mason doesn’t even look at him. “No.”

“That’s not a fucking answer.”

“It’s the only one,” Mason snaps. “Too many ears. Too many eyes. We make noise, and she disappears again.”

“She’s already gone,” Lucky reminds him.

Mason’s hand twitches near his gun. “Then we drag her back.”

Their voices drop lower, harder, every word between them a loaded gun.

But we don’t interrupt. This is how they bleed off the pressure.

Two kings circling the board. Still, we all know the truth: this is it.

No backup. No reinforcements. No safety net.

Just us. A fistful of devils armed with vengeance and firepower.

Mason, whose fury simmers just beneath the surface, quiet until it detonates.

Lucky, colder than ice, deadlier than a loaded confession.

Kanyan, brutal and calculated, with that stillness that means he’s already chosen violence.

Scar, the calm in the storm—right until he becomes the storm.

And me? I don’t know where I fit in this monster parade. But I know what I am tonight.

I’m one of them.

We ride in silence after that—a long, suffocating silence.

It drowns out our thoughts and replaces them with pulse.

I watch Zack from the corner of my eye. He shifts in his seat, testing his zip ties, breathing shallow through his nose like he’s trying not to choke on fear.

Smart. Because if this is a trap—and it might be—he's the first one who will die.

Maxine needs us. And there’s no cavalry.

No plan B. Just violence and a rapidly closing window.

The longer she’s gone, our chances of finding her become diminished.

She survived The Aviary once. I don't know if she can survive it again. And if she doesn’t—God help them.

Because when the sun rises over that shipping yard, it won’t be a new day.

It’ll be a crime scene. And the blood won’t be hers. It’ll be theirs.

The yard is dead when we arrive. Dead calm. Complete and utter silence that feels like it’s watching us. Waiting. As if the shadows themselves are holding their breath for what’s about to come.

The SUV crawls forward with its lights off. Tires crunch over gravel, brittle and loud in the stillness. Mason leans forward in the passenger seat, eyes scanning the rows of stacked containers, searching for any sign of movement.

Lucky kills the engine. The silence thickens.

The ocean breathes somewhere nearby, but even that sound feels distant. What I do hear is a low hum—a generator, maybe. A crane creaks overhead, metal groaning under its own weight. Otherwise, nothing. No voices. No footsteps.

“She has to be here,” Mason mutters, barely above a breath.

He doesn’t have to explain. We all want the same thing—and we’re all praying we’re not too late. Then comes the ritual. Lucky taps the butt of his gun—once, twice, three times. Go.

Doors open in sync. We spill out, shadows moving through the night, and the air shifts with us. The weight of what we’re about to do settles heavily on our backs, but we don’t slow down .

Lucky hauls Zack out of the car by the collar, the motion so violent Zack’s feet barely touch the ground. He stumbles, spits blood, but Lucky’s already got him slammed against the SUV with a crack that makes the whole frame rattle.

“Don’t want you babbling,” Lucky says flatly.

He tears off a strip of duct tape and seals Zack’s mouth shut—slow, deliberate, smoothing it down like he’s finishing a piece of art.

Then he drags him to the back of the SUV, pops the trunk, and shoves him in like refuse.

Zack lands with a grunt and a crunch that sounds…

final. Lucky leans in close. His stare doesn’t threaten, it promises.

Then the trunk slams shut, sealing him in his metal coffin.

We move as one after that—quiet, sharp, surgical.

The yard stretches in all directions. Containers like tombs. Some sealed tight. Others cracked open, yawning like the jaws of predators waiting to snap shut.

Scar crouches low beside a fresh set of shoeprints—big ones. And a smaller set that make my chest seize.

“Maxine,” I breathe.

Mason kneels beside them, tracing the marks in the dirt like they’re sacred.

Then—a sound.

Faint. Hollow. Like metal dragging? A breath?

No one speaks. But weapons rise in tandem. Muscles tense. Our focus sharpens.

Lucky signals left. He and Kanyan peel off into the shadows. Mason nods to me and Scar—we flank right. Every step is silent, calculated. My throat’s dry. My gun’s warm in my hand.

I can almost feel her. And I swear to God, if I find her broken… I will not stop until this yard is soaked in my retribution.

We round the final corner and find two guards standing beside a rusted container with a red stripe. They’re smoking, relaxed, unaware that all hell is about to break loose.

I don’t hesitate. One shot. Straight through the first man’s throat. He drops before his cigarette hits the ground.

Mason lunges for the second, blade flashing, slicing deep before the guard can even reach for his radio. He gurgles once, then slumps to the ground. Blood pools. The night watches.

We reach the door, secured with rusty chains and a padlock. We hear muffling. Closer. A scrape. A whimper.

Maxine.

Mason steps forward, raising his gun with that steady hand I know can end lives without so much as a twitch. The bullet tears through the deadlock and the chains come away, falling to the ground. And when the door flies open—when the first shot cracks the night in half—the quiet dies screaming.

The door rips open with a metal scream, and we’re greeted with only darkness and silence. For a breath, for two—we hear nothing. And then— a cough. A sob. A choked scream that dies too fast. My stomach drops.

We move in, guns raised, vision clouded by the dark. But the shapes start to form—and take life-when I take my phone out and turn my flashlight on. There are figures hunched in corners, slumped in piles like discarded meat. Women. So many of them. Dozens. All in various stages of hell.

Some are stripped down to rags. Others are naked, curled into themselves like they’re trying to disappear. Eyes swollen shut. Mouths gagged. One girl stares right through me, vacant and trembling, blood drying on her thighs.

I can’t breathe. Not because I’m not used to this. I am. But that’s the worst part. I’ve seen this before. And it never gets easier. I’m reminded that we came in search of one woman, and instead found dozens more.

Scar’s behind me, and when his eyes adjust enough for him to take in the full horror, he lets out a sound I’ve never heard from him before. Not rage or grief. It’s something broken, something feral.

“Fuck,” he growls, his voice ragged. “Fuck.”

He runs a hand down his face, pacing the edge of the container like the walls are too tight for his fury.

Kanyan steps in behind him, face carved from stone. He doesn’t speak, just scans the container with that deadly stillness of his—cataloguing what’s here. What’s been done. The lack of humanity.

One of the girls tries to crawl toward us, her arms shaking so hard she collapses mid-way. Kanyan’s there in two strides, kneeling beside her, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around her shoulders with a gentleness that looks foreign on a man like him.

Scar turns to us, jaw tight. “Call Tayana. Now.”

Lucky raises a brow. “You sure?”

Scar’s already pulling out his phone. “She’s handled worse than this.” He glances at the women. “And they’ll trust her faster than they’ll trust us.”

He’s right. They don’t look at us with relief. They look at us like we might be the next monsters. And maybe we are. We’re just different breeds.

Lucky gets through to Tayana, his brother Rafi’s wife.

For years, she’s been carving light out of the shadows—rescuing victims, coordinating safe house transfers, navigating the ugly bureaucracy that comes with pulling people out of the trafficking trade and actually helping them stay out.

She’s not just trained. She’s relentless.

She knows how to speak to women who’ve forgotten the sound of their own voices.

She knows how to lead with mercy, how to act with precision.

And she understands. There’s no one better for this.

I move deeper into the container, stepping around limp bodies, some conscious, some not.

My boots stick to the floor—something thick, unidentifiable.

Blood. Vomit. Urine. My fingers twitch at my sides, desperate to do something.

But there’s no sign of Maxine. And that makes me afraid of where she is.

Kanyan stands back up, turning to Mason. “This isn’t just about Maxine anymore.”

“No,” Mason says, low and hollow. “This is The Aviary. We’ve found their fucking pipeline.”

Scar looks like he’s going to tear the whole yard down with his bare hands. “This isn’t one shipment. This is a system . They’re staging here. Holding them until transport. Just like the others we found.”There’s a pause. Then Mason says the one thing none of us want to admit.

“We need Brando.”

Scar curses under his breath. “He’s going to fucking lose it.”

“Exactly,” Mason snaps. “And he should. Because that beast is exactly what we need right now.”

Scar looks torn for half a second, then nods. Kanyan steps back outside, already pulling out his phone to coordinate.

Mason turns to us. “You good to keep going?”

I nod. “She’s still out there.”

“Going rogue could cost you your badge,” he reminds me.

“There’s nothing I’m not willing to lose to find her.”

His gaze lingers—long enough to feel like a question, or maybe a quiet acknowledgment—and for the briefest second, I think I see it. A flicker of respect, buried beneath all that cold detachment. But then it’s gone, snuffed out like it was never there at all.

Lucky loads another mag into his Glock. “Let’s go.”

Scar and Kanyan stay behind, tending to the women. Scar pulls his hoodie off and hands it to a girl no older than fifteen. Kanyan moves to a girl chained to a pipe and starts cutting her free. Their silence is louder than anything, because this just became a war.

Mason, Lucky, and I move deeper into the yard. Past another row. Then another. My blood is ice, my vision tunneling. The thought of Maxine in a place like that?—

No. No. I won’t let it end that way. I press forward, gun drawn, senses flaring. Maxine, I’m coming. And God help anyone who stands in my way.