Page 31 of Charging Dodge

Adalynn's parents. My jaw tightens.

“What's the plan?” I ask.

“I've got a contact at the U.S. Marshals field office in Oklahoma City. Off the books. Once Gallows is out of the picture, the ledger is what takes down everything he built. Accounts frozen, the corrupt names exposed, the rest of Winlaw scrambling with no leader and no cover left. I send this package the second you confirm and it doesn't matter what happens to the warehouse after tonight. The evidence survives either way.” He pauses. "So whatever you do in there, that book doesn't need to make it out. I've already got what I need."

“Good, because Gallows isn't walking out,” I say. “Not tonight. Not ever.”

“Dodge—”

“He doesn't see a cell, Phoenix. He doesn't see a courtroom. He put a bullet in two people for opening a ledger, then spent months hunting three kids for owning it. That ends with him in the ground.”

Phoenix is quiet for a second. “Copy that. I'll transmit the second you confirm you're breaching. If things go sideways⁠—”

“They won't,” I insist.

“Dodge,” he warns.

“I said they won't.” I hand the phone back to Glacier. “Tell him to transmit in twenty-two minutes whether he hears from us or not.” Glacier nods and relays the order. I pull my helmet back on, and for just a second, I let myself think about Adalynn. Not last night, in my bedroom, I can't afford that on a road like this. I think instead about her at Mom's kitchen table two mornings ago, hands wrapped around a coffee mug, eyes carrying every mile she'd driven and every nightmare she hadn't slept through. She sat up straight anyway. Kept her voice even with the kids. Still asked me how I was doing. Ashley walked out because she decided I was too much to carry. Adalynn looked at all of it, the cut, the club, the ugly parts I don't bother dressing up, and stayed anyway.

I kick the engine over and ride.

The Winlaw compound comes up out of the dark, the chain-link fence right where the satellite image said it would be. The guard post on the north road glows orange with the ember of a cigarette, one man, tired, not expecting company. Creeper takes him down in under twelve seconds. I keep my eyes forward. Speed signals from the south. Clean. Pyre moves along the eastern fence line, quiet and quick. The communications relay goes dark forty seconds later. No alarms. No lights beyond the compound's usual flood lamps casting yellow circles on the packed dirt. Rebel falls in on my left shoulder as we clear the perimeter breach. Cobra holds the exterior with two men, a kill zone nothing exits from. The main building sits forty yards across open ground, a squat, reinforced structure, more warehouse than headquarters. Steel door. One camera above the entrance, already blind courtesy of a directional jammer Phoenix couriered to us last week.

We cover the ground fast and low.

Rebel hits the door with a ram on my signal and it gives with a sound like a gunshot. We pour through. The entry hall is narrow, fluorescent-lit, stinking of motor oil and cigarettes and the kind of stale desperation that soaks into places where men make choices they can't walk back. Two Winlaw soldiers are in the hall. They reach. They don't get far. We move deeper. The hallway branches left toward what looks like a storeroom and right toward a set of heavy interior doors with light showing beneath them. I go right. Rebel stays on my shoulder. We hit the doors and push through, and the room beyond is bigger than I expected, a war room of sorts, maps tacked to corkboard, a long table scattered with phones and laptops and paperwork that moves money without looking like it. Three men spin toward us from the table. A fourth stands at the far end of the room with his back to us, studying something on the wall.

He doesn't spin around. Doesn't reach for a weapon. Just stands there. The room goes quiet except for the sound of Rebel handling the three at the table. Takes maybe eight seconds, and then it's just heavy breathing and the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The man at the far end still hasn't moved. He's broad across the shoulders, gray at the temples, wearing a charcoal suit that looks like it cost more than my bike. The fabric's pristine, not a wrinkle anywhere, which is wrong in a way I can't quite name—not here, not in this place. He reaches up with one unhurried hand, pulls a photograph off the wall, studies it for a moment, sets it face-down on a nearby shelf.

When he finally turns around, he doesn't look surprised. He looks satisfied. “Dodge.” Gallows drawls. “I was wondering how long it would take you to find your way to my door.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Adalynn

The mattress dips under my weight, and Carter's already sitting up before I've even settled, back against the headboard, knees drawn up. He hasn't slept. I can tell by the way his eyes catch the little bit of light from the hallway, too sharp, too awake.

“Where's Dodge?” Carter asks, no preamble.

“Handling something,” I tell him.

“That's not an answer, Adalynn,” Carter presses.

I narrow my eyes. “It's the one I've got right now.”

Carter shifts, careful not to jostle Amelia, who's curled against the wall with one arm slung over her stuffed rabbit, breathing slow and even. Noah's somewhere between asleep and not, his small body warm against my side. “You said Dodge would tell me stuff,” Carter says. “You said I wouldn't get kept in the dark anymore.”

“I'm not keeping you in the dark. I'm telling you what I know,” I remark.

“Then tell me,” Carter demands.

I look at him a second, at the tight set of his jaw, and decide there's no version of tonight where I get to keep him soft. “There's a book. The one Amelia was coloring in a couple weeks back, remember? Black cover, no pictures, just numbers and writing.”

“The ugly one?” Carter asks.

“That one. It belongs to a man who's been hunting us. It's got things in it he doesn't want anybody to see. Dodge and the others went to deal with him tonight,” I explain.

“Deal with him how, Adalynn?” Carter presses.