Page 127 of Priest

The men dispersed without hesitation, boots heavy against hardwood, voices low and focused. The clubhouse shifted again, not into panic but preparation. Weapons were checked. Vests tightened. Radios clipped into place.

As I turned from the table, Archangel stopped me with a quiet word.

“Priest.”

I looked back.

“Once we hit that building, this stops being only about your club.”

“I know.”

He studied me for one last second. “Then let’s make sure the dead are the only ones left behind.”

Outside, engines began to turn over one by one. The low rumble built through the compound, rolling under the walls and out toward the road beyond the gates. It wasn’t chaos. It was coordination.

Joker had wanted me reckless.

Instead, he’d given me a target.

At least, I wasn’t walking into the dark blind.

41

Blue

Consciousness returned in pieces.

Pain found me before memory did. The back of my head throbbed with a dull, sickening pulse, and my wrists burned where they were stretched behind me. Every small shift dragged something rough across my skin. My mouth was so dry it hurt. The gag pressed against my tongue, rough with cloth and stale breath, but beneath it lingered something cloying and artificial, a chemical sweetness that burned the back of my throat every time I tried to swallow.

I opened my eyes.

The room tilted hard enough that I squeezed them shut again.

When I forced myself to look a second time, the blur slowly settled into shape. Dusty light filtered through a narrow window high on one wall. A desk sat crooked near the far corner, and rusted filing cabinets lined the space beside it. I was in a chair with my ankles bound and my wrists cinched tight behind my back. A strip of fabric cut across my mouth, knotted cruelly enough to make my jaw ache.

Memory rushed in too fast.

The hospital parking lot. A hand clamping over my face before I could get enough air to scream. The dark van.

I jerked against the ropes, panic slamming through me so sharply the edges of my vision blurred again. The baby rolled hard beneath my ribs, a frightened shift that snapped me back into myself.

Breathe.

I pulled air through my nose, slow enough to keep from choking on it, and made myself listen.

From somewhere below the floor came a sound that didn’t belong to an empty building.

Crying.

More than one voice. Women, thin and terrified. Somewhere beneath them, a child sobbed, the sound exhausted in a way that hollowed out my chest.

This wasn’t only about me.

The door creaked open before I could make that thought fit inside my head.

Boots crossed the room with slow, deliberate weight. I lifted my eyes.

He stood near the desk like he owned the air in the room.