Page 8 of Peak’s Code

Every brother in the room leaned forward. "It sure as hell is." The bike belonged to a Grave Prowler. Peak zoomed in farther. There wasn’t enough resolution. The rider's face was hidden beneath a helmet and had no identifying marks. There was no plate visible.

"When was this taken?" Captain asked.

Peak checked the metadata. "Three nights ago."

"The night before she got picked up,” Peak said.

Warden's jaw flexed. "So she's right."

"Looks that way,” Peak said.

Captain folded his arms over his chest. "Can you identify the rider?"

Peak hated disappointing people, but there was nothing more he could do. "Not from this."

"You sure?" his Prez asked.

"I'm sure." He stared at the image. Unless. "Hold on." He reopened another program—one almost nobody knew existed. The software reconstructed missing pixels using dozens of neighboring frames from archived security footage. Slowly, the image sharpened, and the motorcycle became clearer. The image of the rider was still useless, but something else appeared. A pickup truck parked beside the container.

Peak froze. "No way."

"What?" Captain barked.

Peak zoomed in again. There, on the driver's side door, was a faded logo. It was one he'd seen before, but not recently. It was years ago, back when the government had tried recruiting him. He leaned back in the chair. "This just got worse."

Captain's expression darkened. "What is it?"

Peak looked around the room before answering. "That company—” He pointed at the truck. "Has been under federal investigation before. It’s owned by the Iron Serpents."

“For what?" Captain asked.

Peak swallowed. "Human trafficking." The words hit the room like a shotgun blast, and nobody moved.

Captain slowly looked toward the hallway where Maeve was being held, and then back to Peak. "Looks like our guest just became the most important woman in Maryland."

Peak closed the laptop. "No." Every eye landed on him. "She just became the most hunted." And if the Iron Serpents had already learned she'd walked into a Grave Prowlers clubhouse, they weren't going to wait long before coming to get her.

Maeve

The silence after Peak walked out of the room was almost worse than the interrogation. Maeve listened to his boots fade down the hallway until she couldn't hear them anymore, and then there was nothing. Just the steady buzz of the fluorescent light overhead, the old refrigerator humming somewhere beyond the wall, and the muffled rumble of motorcycles outside.

She let out a slow breath she'd been holding since Peak had stepped through the door. Please believe me. It wasn't a prayer. Maeve Carter had stopped praying almost two years ago. God hadn't answered when they took Wren, and she doubted He'd start now.

The steel door opened again, and she looked up. It wasn’t Peak. It was Warden. The giant Enforcer ducked through the doorway carrying two paper cups and a brown paper sack. He set one cup on the table in front of her.

"Coffee,” he grumbled.

Maeve looked at it suspiciously. "You poison all your prisoners?"

"No." He uncuffed one wrist before attaching the chain to a steel ring bolted into the floor. "Only the annoying ones."

She rubbed circulation back into her fingers. "I've been upgraded from sweetheart to annoying."

"Congratulations,” he breathed as he pushed the paper bag toward her. “It’s a burger." Her stomach growled loud enough that Warden smirked. "I'll take that as a thank you."

She hadn't eaten since yesterday morning, and the smell alone made her dizzy. "You expect me to choke on it?"

"If I wanted you dead, we'd be having a different conversation,” he said. That was a fair point. Maeve unwrapped the burger. The first bite nearly made her eyes water. It had been days since she had real, hot food. She hadn't realized how hungry she'd been. Warden pretended not to notice. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, watching her.