Page 42 of Vengeance

"I know,” Vengeance said.

"He trusted exactly two people with it."

Vengeance looked confused. "Bowie—” Doc nodded. "And you,” Doc said.

His heart stopped. "What?"

"You were sixteen when he showed you how to clean it." A memory surfaced of Savage sitting on the porch outside Doc's clinic. The pistol was broken down into pieces across an old towel.

"Always respect your weapon," Savage had said. "Never worship it." Vengeance slowly accepted the Colt. It felt heavier than he remembered, not because of the steel, but because of what it meant—family, trust and even redemption.

He looked down at Savage’s initials engraved into the wooden grip, and his throat tightened. "I don't deserve this."

"No," Doc said calmly. "You earned it." Before Vengeance could answer, a knock echoed through the cabin, and everyone froze. Nobody had knocked on Doc’s door for ages. The old guy lived alone.

Vengeance immediately handed the Colt back to Doc and drew his own pistol. The pain in his side flared as he stood. Chloe instinctively moved behind him, and he noticed that she'd chosen to stand there not because she was afraid, but because she trusted him to protect her.

Doc quietly killed the lantern nearest the window, and the cabin fell into shadows. There was another knock, and then a familiar voice called through the front door. “It’s Bowie."

Chloe gasped. "Dad?"

Vengeance's heart lurched because Bowie wasn't supposed to know where they were. The voice came again. "Princess.” Only Bowie called Chloe that.

She took a step toward the door, and Vengeance caught her wrist. "Wait."

She looked at him in confusion. "That's my father."

"Maybe."

"What do you mean maybe?" Vengeance's instincts screamed at him. Everything about this felt wrong. Bowie would never walk up to an unsecured cabin and announce himself—never.

Vengeance slowly approached the window and shifted the curtain just enough to look outside, and his blood ran cold. A man stood on the porch wearing a leather kutte, but even in the darkness, Vengeance could see the mistake. The patch had been sewn on upside down.

He immediately stepped back from the window. "That's not Bowie." Before anyone could react, the front door exploded inward under the force of a shotgun blast.

The shotgun blast blew the front door off its hinges, and wood splintered across the cabin as the heavy oak door crashed into the living room floor. "Down!" Vengeance roared. He shoved Chloe toward the stone fireplace just as two more blasts ripped through the doorway. Buck shots peppered the log walls, and the windows exploded inward as glass rained over the room.

Doc didn't hesitate. The older man dropped behind an overturned kitchen table, his own pistol already in his hand. "Damn it!" he barked. "They found us too fast."

"No," Vengeance growled. "You were right—they followed us." His mind raced. Lucius hadn't been trying to capture them beneath the bridge. He'd been tracking them—waiting and watching to see where they'd run. And he'd led them straight to the only man besides Savage who had ever truly protected him. Damn it. He'd just painted a target on Doc's back.

A shadow crossed the shattered doorway, and Vengeance fired at it. The man disappeared with a curse. It wasn’t a kill, but it was enough to keep him from entering. "Back room!" Vengeance shouted.

Doc shook his head. "No."

"There are supplies—" Vengeance started to explain.

"I know what's back there." Doc crawled toward an old bookcase beside the fireplace, and Chloe looked at him in confusion.

"What are you doing?" she asked. Instead of answering, Doc grabbed one side of the bookcase and shoved hard at it. It moved, but not much. It was just enough to reveal a narrow opening behind it.

Vengeance stared at the exposed hole in the wall. "What the hell..."

Doc glanced over his shoulder. "You think I survived forty years patching up bikers without building an escape route?" A narrow stone staircase disappeared into darkness. "There isn't time to explain." Another burst of gunfire tore through the front windows. One round buried itself in the mantle inches above Chloe's head. She flinched but didn't scream.

"Move!" Vengeance ordered.

Chloe hesitated. "What about you?"