Page 30 of Charging Dodge

Dodge

The sky's just starting to lighten at the edges, gray easing into black, and we're seven bikes deep on the interstate, riding tight. Seven men who've bled for this patch and would do it again without blinking. The engine noise fills my head, drowns out everything I don't want to think about right now. Everything except her. I push the thought down, same as I have for two years now. There's no room for Adalynn on this stretch of road. Not yet. Glacier pulls up beside me. I catch the set of his jaw in the headlight glow. He jerks his chin forward. I nod once. We ride. We stop thirty miles back at a decommissioned pump station off the highway, a stretch of nothing that nobody drives unless they're lost or hiding. I spread the folded topo map across the flat concrete pump island and mark it with a red Sharpie. The Winlaw compound sits on twelve acres outside of Henryetta. Chain-link perimeter with razor wire. Two guard posts on the north and south access roads. A main structure that doubles as Gallows' operations center and a row of outbuildings along the eastern fence line where his soldiers bunk and his money moves.

“How many we looking at?” Rebel leans over the map, tracing the perimeter with one scarred finger.

“Enough to matter,” I tell Rebel. “Not enough to stop us.”

Nobody argues.

Cobra points to the south access road. “Speed and Creeper take the south post quiet. Blades only until we need noise.”

“I can work with that.” Speed nods, already checking the knife at his hip.

Pyre steps forward. “What about communications?”

“You cut the relay on the east fence,” I tell him. “Before we move on the main building.”

“Done,” he confirms.

Rebel studies the layout, jaw tight. “So we push through the front with you?”

“You and me both,” I confirm. “Cobra holds the exterior perimeter. Phoenix stays two miles out with a laptop and a very specific task that can unravel Gallows from the inside out.”

Creeper whistles low. “That's a lot of faith in a computer.”

“It's not faith,” I tell him. “It's strategy.”

Cobra rolls up the map, satisfied. “Good plan. Clean. Brutal in the right places.”

I nod and turn for my bike, but Glacier catches my arm before I get there, and I already know what's coming. We saddle up anyway, the whole line of us rolling back onto the highway, and a mile up the road Glacier signals again, pulling off onto a shallow turnout that's nothing but gravel and scrub grass. The rest of the formation idles down fifty yards ahead, giving us room. Glacier cuts his engine, pulls his helmet free, and runs a hand through his cropped hair. I kill my own engine and wait.

“Talk,” I order.

“You're running hot.” His voice is low, measured. The voice he uses when he's already made up his mind and is choosing his words carefully anyway. “I need to know you've got your head in the job and not in that house we left behind.”

I hold his gaze. “My head is where it needs to be,” I assure him.

“That's not what I asked,” Glacier challenges. The rest of the men hang back fifty yards up the road, keeping their distance without being told to. Glacier steps closer, dropping his voice another notch. “Dodge. I've ridden with you through some ugly nights. The Tulsa thing. The cartel job down in McAlester. You're always cold when it counts. Surgical.” He pauses. “Tonight you're not cold. You're lit up. I can see it on you.” I don't deny it. There's no point. He's known me since I was twenty-three years old, running errands for the previous president, and he doesn't miss much.

“She and those kids are in my mother's house,” I tell him. “A man named Gallows put a price on their heads because a ten-year-old girl used his criminal ledger as a coloring book. Tell me I'm not supposed to be lit up.”

“I'm not saying it's wrong.” He crosses his arms. “I'm saying make sure the fire's controlled. You go in there wanting to burn everything down for her, you get sloppy. You get sloppy, you don't come back. And if you don't come back—” He stops there, lets it sit.

If I don't come back, there's nobody standing between Adalynn and whatever's left of Gallows' organization. He's right. He usually is, which is why he's my VP and not some enforcer I send out to collect debts.

“I hear you,” I tell him.

“Do you?” Glacier asks.

“I said I hear you, Glacier,” I mutter.

He studies me a second longer, then nods and reaches into his cut. He pulls out his phone and holds it out. “Phoenix called while you were checking the map. Wants to talk.”

I take the phone and dial. Phoenix picks up on the first ring, sounding like he always does, a man who hasn't slept in three days and doesn't much care. “Tell me you're not already inside,” he warns.

“Thirty minutes out. What do you have?” I ask.

“Everything.” He doesn't hesitate over the word. “Spent the last four hours imaging that ledger Hulk photographed. Every page. Forty-six entries of wire transfers, bribe logs, names of three law-enforcement officials in Latimer County, two in Pittsburg, one sitting federal magistrate. There's also documentation of six contract killings, including—” He stops. “Including the two in Colorado.”