Page 5 of Diesel’s Desire

For about four seconds, everything goes exactly the way it’s supposed to. Ryder and Ace break from the treeline fast and quiet, masks down, weapons up but not aimed at anything specific yet—just the promise of them if anybody’s stupid. The driver’s door swings open on reflex, some poor bastard already halfway to offering help before his brain catches up to the men standing in his headlights wearing horns.

Then the passenger door opens too.

“Second man,” I say, already moving, reaching for the pistol at my back even as Havoc barks the same thing half a beat behind me. Nobody told us it’d be two riders. Nobody told Jinx two riders, or Jinx didn’t think it mattered, and either way it’s a problem now, a big one, because the second guy’s reaching for his gun before his boots hit gravel.

I close the distance before he clears the holster. Hit him low and hard, shoulder into his ribs, and we go down together in a tangle that knocks the wind out of both of us. He’s stronger than he looks, wiry, all elbows and knees, and for a few seconds it’s just grunting and grappling in the dark while somewhere behind me I hear Ace shouting at the first guard, herding him face-first against the side of the van.

My guy gets a fist into my ribs that’ll bruise something fierce come morning. I answer with an elbow to his jaw that dazes him long enough that I can flip him onto his stomach and get a zip tie cinched around his wrists before he remembers how his hands work.

“Stay down,” I tell him, voice pitched low and rough behind the mask. “Nobody’s dying tonight. Just be smart.”

He stays down. Good instincts, for a county employee getting paid nowhere near enough for this.

It’s only when I’m hauling myself back up, chest heaving, adrenaline running hot enough that I barely feel the gravel biting into my palms, that I register the cord at my throat’s gone loose. Snapped somewhere in the scuffle, slack against my collarbone where it used to sit tight.

My stomach drops before my hand even finishes the motion of reaching up to check.

Nothing. Just cord, frayed at the end where it tore, and no weight where there should be weight, no metal weight beneath my hoodie.

“Diesel.” Havoc’s voice, tight, close. “We’re clear. Move.”

I don’t have time to look, not when Ace and Ryder are already hauling the first crate out of the van’s back doors, and our panel van is idling at the ready, and every second we stand here is a second closer to some deputy noticing his radio’s gone quiet. I run my boot through the gravel where I fell, one pass, useless in the dark, then make myself stop before I get us caught.

It’s just a ring. Small stone, simple band, seventeen years of hiding in a pocket nobody else knew about. It doesn’t have my name on it. Doesn’t have anybody’s name on it—I never got that far, never got the chance—so even if some crime scene tech finds it rolling around in a ditch off County Road 9, it’s not going to mean a damn thing to anybody.

That’s what I tell myself while we load the last crate, while our panel van settles under the weight, while the two guards lie zip-tied and cursing in the grass and Bullet’s voice comes calm and quiet over the radio confirming no vehicles inbound. That’s what I keep telling myself on the ride back.

It’s just a ring.

But my hand keeps finding my chest anyway, fingers pressing against nothing, like touching the empty space enough times might conjure the weight back.

We got the guns. Nobody got hurt bad enough to matter—the second guard’s got a jaw that’ll ache for a week, and the first’s pride took more of a beating than his body did, but both of them are breathing, both of them are cursing, both should be found inside the hour.

Should feel like a win.

I keep rubbing the broken cord between my fingers all the way back.

4

PENNY

The call comes in at four-eleven in the morning, which is a special kind of hell reserved for people who haven’t slept well in seventeen years anyway.

Armed robbery reported. County evidence van, County Road 9, beyond the old feed mill.

I’m dressed and in the cruiser before the sky starts lightening. Even though I drive past the turnoff for my parents’ place, I don’t honk this time. No one’s awake to wave back.

Fog sits low over the ridge by the time I pull up, so thick that it dims the flashing lights on the other units. I passed the old feed mill on the way in. Up here, trees crowd the road on both sides.

Two county transport guards sit on the tailgate of an ambulance, blankets around their shoulders even though it’s not that cold. EMTs check their vitals while Johnson hovers nearby with his notepad, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. I catch his eye and he shakes his head—nobody’s hurt bad. Just rattled.

The van itself sits crooked on the gravel shoulder, back doors hanging open on their hinges, empty where crates should be. Whatever they were hauling, it’s gone now.

I crouch near the driver’s side door and study the ground. Boot prints, at least three sets, maybe four, pressed deep into the soft shoulder where the gravel gives way to mud. Tire tread crossing tread—overlapping tracks I can’t separate by eye. A cut zip tie lies in the dirt a few feet off, discarded once its job was done.

“Professional,” I say, mostly to myself.

“That’s the word I’d use.” Morris’s voice comes from behind me, gravel crunching under his boots as he ambles over with his hands in his coat pockets, looking like a man who’s had exactly as much sleep as I have. “Talked to both guards already. Say they were flagged down by a broken-down truck up the road, hazards flashing, hood up, the whole show. Two men came out of the tree line the second they stopped. Wearing masks.”