Page 25 of Mustang

Wet work.The term sat in the air between us, clinical and terrible, and I felt Mustang’s hand shift against my back — his thumb moving once across the canvas of his jacket where it covered my spine, a gesture so small I almost missed it.

Socket pulled another photograph from the stack.Closer, clearer, the same thin man, Priest, caught from a different angle as he entered the parking garage.The timestamp was eleven minutes before the first photo.“Facial recognition got a hit.Priest is ex-military, dishonorable discharge, three confirmed kills as a contractor in the Middle East.He’s the triggerman.The one who pulled the trigger in that garage.”

Mustang had been standing with his arms crossed, jaw set, absorbing it all with the stillness of a man who processed information by letting it settle into place before he moved.Now he uncrossed his arms and planted both fists on the scarred wood of the table, his knuckles white where they pressed against the grain.

“She saw a hit on a federal informant,” he said.His voice was flat, final, the kind of certainty that didn’t leave room for discussion.“That’s why they want her buried.Not because she saw something.Because she saw the wrong thing at the wrong time, and the wrong people noticed.”

The room held his words.Ace leaned back in his chair, his steel-blue eyes moving from Mustang to the corkboard and back, and something in his expression shifted — not concern, exactly.The look of a man recalculating odds he’d already run twice.

“These aren’t street guys, Mustang,” Ace said.“They’ve got reach.Reeves has connections in the DA’s office, in the police department.If they’re willing to send a contractor after a baker who saw something she shouldn’t have, they’re willing to go through us to get to her.”

Mustang didn’t flinch.Didn’t shift his weight.Just held Ace’s gaze across the table with an intensity that made the air between them feel charged, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter but no less certain.

“Then we move faster than they do.”

Socket’s laptop chimed.A soft, insistent ping that cut through the silence, and his hands moved across the keyboard with a speed that belied their size.The screen filled with a map: satellite view, streets rendered in pale gray, a pulsing red dot near the center.

“One of their phones just went active,” Socket said.His voice had dropped to something dangerous.“Two miles from the shop on Caldwell.”

The shop.The motorcycle repair and customization business Mustang had mentioned once, in passing, at the cabin.The legitimate front.The place where the club’s income came from when the gun running was on hold.

The three men at the table went still at the same moment.Not the freeze of fear — the absolute cessation of movement that happened when trained bodies recognized a threat and calculated response time in fractions of a second.Ace’s hand was already on his phone.Socket’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, waiting for the next command.Mustang’s jaw tightened until the scar along it pulled white against his stubble.

I stood in the doorway with Mustang’s hand on my back and the dried herbs pressed against my ribs and the understanding that whatever came next had been set in motion the moment I’d cut through that parking garage three weeks ago, and the men in this room were about to move because of it.

The overhead bulb hummed.Outside, beyond the concrete walls, the compound held its breath.

Mustang’s phone buzzed against the scarred wood of the war room table.He picked it up, looked at the screen, and whatever he saw there turned his face to something I hadn’t seen before — not anger, not fear, something colder and more focused, the look of a man whose body had already started moving before his brain finished processing the information.

He was across the room before the phone reached his ear.Four strides, door open, into the hallway with Ace and Socket on his heels and me following because his hand had found my wrist on his way past and the grip said move now, questions later.The common area erupted around us — Loch came out of the bunkroom pulling on his cut with one arm already through the sleeve, his ice-blue eyes doing that fast sweep of the room that every man in this building seemed to have mastered.Ace was shouting something down the corridor that I couldn’t make out over the sudden percussion of boots on concrete and doors slamming.J.D.sprinted past with a shotgun broken over his forearm, the barrel pointing at the floor, his prospect cut flapping against his back as he disappeared toward the compound’s rear gate.

I had a mug in my hand.Coffee, half-full, still warm from Screwball’s refill five minutes ago.Mustang took it from me without breaking stride, set it on the nearest counter with a click that sounded too deliberate to be casual, and turned to face me with both hands on my shoulders.

“Stay behind me,” he said.His voice was flat, final, each word carrying the full weight of its intention.“Don’t stop moving unless I tell you to stop.You understand?”

I nodded.My throat had closed around whatever response I might have offered, and nodding was all I had.

He kept one hand on my upper arm as he moved us through the clubhouse.Not dragging, not pulling — guiding, his body between mine and every doorway, every corridor junction, his eyes doing that constant sweep I’d come to recognize as the way he navigated the world.The clubhouse had transformed in the space of thirty seconds.Men I hadn’t met yet were moving with purpose through rooms I hadn’t seen, weapons appearing from places I wouldn’t have thought to look, and the air itself felt charged, thick with the electricity of trained bodies responding to a threat they’d drilled for.

He kept one hand on my upper arm as he moved us through the clubhouse.Not dragging, not pulling, guiding, his body between mine and every doorway, every corridor junction, his eyes doing that constant sweep I’d come to recognize as the way he navigated the world.The clubhouse had transformed in the space of thirty seconds.Men I hadn’t met yet were moving with purpose through rooms I hadn’t seen, weapons appearing from places I wouldn’t have thought to look, and the air itself felt charged, thick with the sharp electricity of trained bodies responding to a threat they’d drilled for.

“J.D.,” Mustang said, and the prospect was there before the name had finished leaving Mustang’s mouth, shotgun cradled against his chest, his expression set in a way that made him look ten years older than he was.“Nobody opens this door but me.You read me?”

“Yes, sir.”J.D.’s voice didn’t shake.Something in it had hardened, the eagerness burned away by whatever was happening outside, and what remained was steady.

Mustang looked at me.One last time, his steel-gray eyes holding mine across the concrete room, and then he was gone, the door closing behind him with that same vault sound, and I was alone with the hum of a single fluorescent tube and the distant crack of gunfire that I realized, with a clarity that turned my stomach, was coming from the direction of the motorcycle shop.

I pressed my ear to the door.Not smart, probably, but my body did it before my brain could intervene, and the steel was cold against my cheek and carried sound the way metal does — muffled but present, voices overlapping on what had to be a radio channel.

“,east side, behind the concrete,”

“,prospect down, shoulder hit, I need a,”

“,SUV backing into Caldwell, Loch you got eyes,”

Ace’s voice, calmer than the others, cutting through the chaos with the measured precision of someone who’d done this before and would do it again: “Mustang’s two minutes out.Hold your positions.Nobody pursues past the intersection.”

The gunfire came in bursts.Not constant — rhythmic, controlled, the disciplined pattern of men who were conserving ammunition and choosing their shots.Each burst was followed by a silence that felt heavier than the noise, and in those silences I could hear engines, tires on gravel, the rising whine of a motorcycle accelerating hard enough to make the frame scream.