Page 111 of Jax & Knox

I look at Jax one more time. His eyes are barely open, glazed with pain, but he manages to rasp, "Get them back."

I will.

I'm on my bike and hitting the club-wide channel before the thought fully forms. "All units. Justin has Ainsley and the boy. Last seen west on the old fire road in a dark four-door sedan. I want every available rider on the road now. Mason, Dagger, lock down every road out of the county. I don't care if you have to park your bikes across the goddamn highway. Steele, Riot, Rook, meet me at the secondary checkpoint. Switch, I need plates and traffic cams if any still work up here. Anything. Everything."

Acknowledgments come back in a rapid string of voices, overlapping, urgent. Mason's is the calmest and the most lethal.

"We're rolling. You stay on the line, Knox."

Steele, Riot, Rook, and Switch are already with me, their engines a chorus of fury as we tear down the mountain. We spread out in a net formation, covering every possible route west, every dirt road and forgotten trail that could lead out of these mountains.

It takes forty-three minutes. Forty-three minutes that feel like forty-three hours.

Switch is the one who finds the sedan, parked behind a falling-down house that doesn't appear on most maps, hidden in a stand of overgrown pines. He keeps eyes on it while the rest of us close in on foot through the trees, our boots silent on the carpet of dead needles.

I can see the glow of a single light through a dirty window, flickering like a candle. One vehicle. No sentries visible. Either they're cocky or they're stupid.

Mason's voice is quiet in my ear, barely more than a breath. "Your call, Knox."

"We go now," I answer, my voice hard. "Non-lethal if possible until the woman and child are clear. After that I don't care what happens to them."

We move.

Steele and Riot take the back entrance. Weston and Wyatt cover the sides, weapons drawn. Rook and Switch stay on the tree line with long guns, scopes trained on every window. Dagger and Mason hold the road in case anyone tries to run, their bikes positioned like roadblocks.

I kick the front door.

It explodes inward, the rotten wood splintering under my boot. Justin is in the middle of the room, Ainsley half-shielded behind him, Owen clutched against her chest. The boy's face is buried in her shoulder, his small body trembling. The second man is reaching for a weapon on the table, a shotgun, old but functional. He never makes it. Steele shoots him in the head and he goes down hard, screaming, the weapon clattering to the floor.

Justin spins, using Ainsley as a shield, the barrel of his gun pressed under her jaw. I can see the indent it makes in her skin, the way her pulse jumps beneath it.

"Back up," he snarls, his voice high and frantic. "Everyone back the fuck up or I paint the wall with her. I swear to God I'll do it."

I stop six feet away. My own weapon is trained on the small patch of his forehead I can see above her hair, right between his eyes.

"You're done," I tell him, my voice flat and cold. "You just don't know it yet."

Ainsley's eyes find mine. There's terror there, raw and animal, but also something else. Something broken and hollow.

She thinks Jax is dead.

I can see it in her face, in the way her expression has gone slack, like all the hope has drained out of her.

Before I can say anything, before I can tell her he's alive, the door behind me opens.

Ainsley's eyes go wide, impossibly wide.

I don't turn. I don't need to.

I know that uneven footstep, the drag of a boot that can't quite lift properly. I know that labored breathing, wet and painful.

Jax.

He's barely standing, one arm in a makeshift sling, his shirt soaked through with blood, fresh blood, still seeping through the bandages Tiny wrapped around him. Tiny is right behind him, looking furious, one hand hovering near Jax's back in case he falls.

"Couldn't keep him down," Tiny mutters, shaking his head. "Stubborn bastard."

Ainsley makes a sound, half sob, half gasp, like all the air has been punched out of her lungs. "Jax?"