I pushed the Electra Glide harder. The needle on the speedometer hovered near ninety, the frame of the bike beginning to shimmy. This old girl wasn’t built for a racing line on a rain-slicked mountain pass, but she was all we had. We were deep in the Wayne National Forest now, a place where the trees grow tall and the shadows grow long. The road, Route 7, twisted like a dying snake along the edge of the Ohio River. To my left was a wall of wet limestone; to my right, a sheer drop into the black, churning gut of the river.
The lead vehicle, a silver Audi SUV, lunged forward. It didn’t try to pass. It clipped my rear fender.
The bike fishtailed violently. I felt the back tire lose grip, the sickening sensation of the machine sliding out from under me. I stomped my left boot down, the heavy sole screaming against the pavement as I used my own leg as a temporary outrigger to snap the bike back into line. My hip popped with a dull, sickening thud, but the bike straightened.
“You son of a bitch,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
They weren’t trying to stop me anymore. They were trying to kill us both. To them, Maya was a “liability” now, and I was just an obstacle to be cleared.
I saw a break in the trees ahead—an old logging trail, half-overgrown and choked with mud. It was a suicide move on a bike this heavy, but it was better than being rammed off a cliff. I gripped the front brake, the ABS pulsing under my fingers, and slammed the bike down two gears. I leaned so hard the floorboards scraped the ground, throwing a spray of orange sparks into the rain.
We hit the mud at forty miles per hour.
The bike bucked like a wild horse. Maya let out a muffled scream as we bounced over a protruding root. I fought the handlebars, my forearms burning, my shoulders screaming in protest. The mud was deep and thick, grabbing at the tires, trying to pull us down into the earth. I kept the throttle pinned, the V-twin engine churning out a rhythmic, muddy growl.
Behind us, the Audi attempted to follow. I heard the crunch of fiberglass and the roar of a high-end engine struggling with a terrain it wasn’t designed for. The SUV’s low profile was its undoing. I heard the sickening sound of an oil pan shattering against a rock. A plume of white smoke erupted in the darkness, and the headlights of the first vehicle came to a dead stop.
One down.
But the second vehicle, a blacked-out Jeep Wrangler, didn’t hesitate. It climbed over the brush, its huge knobby tires finding purchase where the Audi couldn’t. It was closer now. I could hear the driver revving the engine, the sound of a predator closing in for the kill.
I looked ahead. The trail narrowed until it was barely wide enough for the bike. Branches whipped against my chest and helmet, stinging like lashes. I saw a clearing—an old, abandoned fire lookout tower. It was a skeletal structure of rusted steel rising a hundred feet into the air, surrounded by a small patch of gravel and an old ranger’s shack.
I slid the bike into the clearing, the gravel spraying everywhere. I didn’t wait for the kickstand. I laid the bike down on its side and hauled Maya off.
“Run!” I yelled, pointing toward the shack.
We scrambled across the open space. The Jeep burst into the clearing a second later, its roof-mounted light bar turning the night into high-definition day. I didn’t look back. I threw Maya through the door of the shack—a small, one-room box of rotting cedar—and slammed the bolt home.
“Get under the desk,” I whispered, my breath coming in ragged heaves. “Do not move. Do not make a sound until I come for you.”
Maya’s face was a pale oval in the darkness. She didn’t cry. She just nodded, her eyes wide with a terrifying maturity. She crawled under a heavy oak desk that looked like it had been there since the Great Depression.
I turned back to the window. The Jeep had stopped twenty yards away. The engine was still running. Two men stepped out.
They weren’t wearing wool coats. These were the “cleaners.” They wore tactical vests, dark cargo pants, and suppressed submachine guns hanging from single-point slings. These were professionals, likely ex-military, the kind of men who get paid six figures to make people disappear.
“Jax!” one of them called out. His voice was calm, almost bored. “We know you’re in there. We know the girl is in there. This doesn’t have to be a mess. Just give us the girl, and you can walk back to your bike. We’ll even give you a head start.”
I didn’t answer. I reached into the small of my back and pulled out the Smith & Wesson .45. I checked the chamber by feel. One in the pipe. Seven in the mag. Two spare mags on my belt. Twenty-four rounds against two guys with automatic weapons and body armor.
The odds sucked. I loved it.
I moved away from the window, hugging the wall. I could hear their boots on the gravel. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. They were splitting up. One to the front door, one to the side.
I felt a strange sense of calm wash over me. This was the world I knew. Not the world of paperwork or social rules, but the world of lead and bone. I thought about my own life—the years wasted in bars, the brothers I’d buried, the women I’d let walk away because I couldn’t be what they needed. I realized that everything I had ever done, every scar on my body, had led me to this one room, protecting this one girl.
If I died tonight, at least I’d die doing something that mattered.
The front door exploded.
They didn’t kick it; they used a breaching charge. The shockwave knocked me back, dust and splinters filling the air. I didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. I fired three shots into the doorway, the heavy .45 rounds booming in the small space.
I heard a grunt of pain and a heavy thud.
“Man down! Man down!” a voice screamed from the side.
A spray of 9mm rounds chewed through the cedar walls of the shack, the wood splintering like matchsticks. I dived for the floor, crawling toward the desk where Maya was hiding. I put my body between her and the source of the fire.
The second man was dumping a full magazine into the shack, trying to suppress me so he could move in. I waited for the click.
There it was. The silence of an empty chamber.
I rose up like a ghost from the floorboards. I didn’t fire. I didn’t have a clear line through the wall. Instead, I charged. I hit the side door with my shoulder, the rotten wood giving way instantly.
The shooter was standing there, frantically trying to slap a fresh mag into his MP5. He looked up, his eyes widening as he saw two hundred and sixty pounds of bearded fury flying at him.
I didn’t use the gun. I hit him with a right hook that carried thirty years of resentment. I felt his jaw shatter under my knuckles. He went down hard, his head hitting a rock with a sound like a dropped melon.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, the rain washing the blood off my hand. I looked at the Jeep. The engine was still humming.
I walked back into the shack. Maya was still under the desk, her hands over her ears. I knelt down and reached out for her.
“It’s okay,” I said, my voice shaking with adrenaline. “It’s over for now. Come on.”
She crawled out, her small hand finding mine. She looked at the man on the ground, then back at me. She didn’t look disgusted. She looked relieved.
“We have to go,” I said. “They’ll have more coming. A lot more.”
I went to the man I had punched and stripped him of his comms unit. I put the earpiece in.
“…Status? Team Two, report. We have the perimeter established at the base of the hill. No one gets out. Do you have the package?”
I keyed the mic. “The package is with me,” I said, my voice a low, terrifying growl. “And if you want her, you’d better send more men. Because Team Two is currently taking a permanent vacation.”
I smashed the radio under my boot.
