Page 29 of Crash’s Secret

“I’m making you my Old Lady,” I whisper. “Figured I should keep you alive long enough to let you know.”

A sound comes out—half laugh, half sob.

Then the south gate explodes, right on schedule. The whole compound erupts—engines, gunfire, and men yelling names. The war we came to finish has officially started.

“Move,” Saber says from the door. “Celebrate the reunion later.”

We leave the trailer and run the fence line with her between us.

The Crimson Warriors are losing. That’s visible from here. Warriors are pinned between Duke’s team and Razor’s trucks. The main building’s floodlights are shot out. A bike lies on its side, burning.

A bullet flies past us and sparks off the chain-link fence. I put Cassidy against my left side, fence side, my body between her and the lot. Saber kills the shooter at forty feet without breaking stride.

We’re twenty yards from the gap in the east fence when the main building’s side door bangs open and a wiry figure comes out, silver goatee catching the firelight, a pistol in each hand.

Nitro. The Prez of the Crimson Warriors. Running for the trucks. Running from his own war.

Saber aims at him, but there are too many brothers in his line of fire. I won’t let go of Cassidy’s hand to draw my gun. Nitro is going to reach the trucks.

Then a single shot comes from the shadows by the trailers, and Nitro falls in the open lot. Dead before he hits the dirt.

Trapper steps out of the shadows, rifle still raised, checking left and right for more threats.

“TRAPPER,” Joker’s voice bellows from somewhere in the smoke, disbelieving, delighted, already telling the story. “PROSPECT JUST KILLED NITRO.”

Saber stops. Looks at the body in the lot. Then at the kid who has swept our floors for three years and just ended the war.

“That kid is getting patched,” Saber says, to nobody, to everybody.

The gunfire slows, then stops before we reach the bikes. Duke’s voice comes over the radio with the count. Every brother is alive. Two are wounded, but they’ll make it. Most of the Warriors are dead, including Nitro. The ones who aren’t dead surrendered, and they’re face down in the dirt with zip ties on their wrists.

At the ditch, I get on my bike.

Cassidy climbs on behind me without asking her brother’s permission, arms around my waist, palms flat against my stomach, chin hooked over my shoulder.

I turn my head and kiss her. In front of God, the burning compound, and her brother.

When I open my eyes, Saber is astride his bike ten feet away, watching us, and I brace for whatever shit he’s about to say.

He just looks tired. Tired and relieved down to the bone. He shakes his head at the pair of us, one slow time, like we’re a problem he’s decided he can live with.

“Let’s get home,” he says, and fires his engine.

Twenty-six bikes come up off the desert floor behind him, and the woman I love tightens her arms around me. We ride back toward Ash Valley with the fire shrinking in the mirrors until the dark takes it.

It’s over.

CHAPTER 11

CRASH

The sun comes up on twenty-six bikes rolling through the clubhouse gate, and not one brother left behind.

Cassidy’s arms stay around me until I’ve parked next to the clubhouse. Even then, she doesn’t let go right away.

So I sit there in the gravel lot and let her take her time.

“Doc first,” I say.