Page 6 of Reaper

Chapter 3

REAPER

Her chest rose. Fell. Rose again.

I watched her breathe, and I made the call.

“You’re coming with me.”

Not a question. A fact. The kind you deliver when the alternative is leaving her standing in a gravel lot with a dead phone and a glitter skeleton hoodie while whoever sent that man circles back to check why his asset went dark.

She didn’t argue. Didn’t ask where. Her eyes held mine for three seconds—the same controlled stillness I’d clocked at the fence—and then she nodded. Once. Sharp. The nod of someone who understands that when a stranger tells you to move after putting another man on the ground, you move.

I turned toward the access drive.

She followed.

The festival thump faded behind us as we crossed the gravel. Her boots scraped on the uneven surface, that heel catching every third step. She compensated. Adjusted. Kept pace without being told. The floodlight threw our shadows long across the packed dirt, hers stretching thin beside mine, the glitter on her hoodie catching the harsh white light in brief, sharp flares.

My bike sat where I’d left it, parked between two work trucks at the far edge of the lot. Black. No chrome. The kind of machine built for getting places fast without announcing itself. I unlocked the handlebars, swung my leg over, and kicked the engine to life. The vibration hit low in my chest, familiar as my own heartbeat.

She stood beside the rear wheel, hands at her sides, watching me. No hesitation in her posture. No fear, either—or if there was fear, she’d buried it somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Get on.”

She did. One foot on the peg, one swing of her leg, and she was behind me. Her hands found my waist. Not gripping. Resting. Light enough that I could barely feel the pressure through my jacket. She knew how to ride. Or she knew how to pretend she did.

I pulled onto the access drive, gravel spinning under the rear tire, and hit the county road at a pace that wasn’t running but wasn’t taking our time, either. The cold air cut through my jacket at the collar, sharp enough to sting. Her body heat pressed against my back, a warm counterpoint to the wind. I could feel her breathing. Steady. Controlled. The same rhythm I’d watched in the gravel lot.

The road unspooled ahead of us, blacktop glinting under the sparse glow of distant security lights. We passed the festival entrance—still lit, still loud, the orange bonfire glow visible above the tree line—and kept going. North, then west, into the kind of territory that doesn’t show up on tourist maps. The houses thinned. The streetlights died. The road surface roughened from asphalt to patched concrete to something that might have been gravel once and was now just packed dirt with ambitions.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t tighten her grip when the bike hit a pothole. Didn’t lean the wrong way on the curves. Just held on and kept her breath even and trusted me to take her somewhere she’d never been.

The clubhouse came into view around a bend lined with pine scrub. Low-slung building, concrete block and corrugated steel, the roof sagging in the middle where the support beams had settled over thirty years of Nevada weather. Chain link around the perimeter, topped with razor wire that caught what little light reached this far from town. Security cameras at each corner, their red indicator lights blinking steadily in the dark. The parking area was half-empty: three bikes, a club truck, a prospect’s beater sedan with primer spots showing through the paint.

I cut the engine at the edge of the lot and kicked the stand down.

She dismounted the same way she’d mounted: one foot, one swing, solid landing. Her boots hit the dirt, and she was standing, hands back at her sides, waiting for whatever came next. The skeleton hoodie had ridden up her arms during the trip. I could see the pale skin of her wrists where the cuffs ended, cold air turning the blood vessels blue.

“Through the back,” I said.

She followed me around the building’s eastern wall, past the dumpster and the stack of empty kegs, to the steel door that opened onto the clubhouse’s rear corridor. The door was unlocked. It usually was. The kind of place where the lock matters less than who’s willing to walk through it.

I pushed it open and stepped inside.

The smell hit first. Motor oil. Leather. Sweat dried into fabric. Spilled beer gone sour in the grooves of the concrete floor. Underneath it all, the faint chemical tang of gun cleaner and the mustiness of a building that hasn’t seen enough fresh air in a decade.

The corridor was narrow, lit by a single bulb in a wire cage. Concrete walls, stained in patterns that told stories I didn’t need to hear. A water heater hissed somewhere to our left, pipes knocking as the temperature adjusted. I led her past it, boots on concrete, the sound echoing off the close walls.

The main room opened at the end of the corridor.

Stained concrete floor, swept recently but never quite clean. Steel lockers along the far wall, doors hanging open, contents visible: spare cuts, tool rolls, a stack of club T-shirts still in plastic. Above them, a gun rack bolted to the cinder block, holding six long guns arranged by caliber. A workbench dominated the room’s center, cluttered with engine parts, takeout containers, and a spread of tools that had been left mid-job. A single bulb hung above it on a frayed cord, swinging gently in the draft from the corridor, throwing uneven light across every surface.

Six men occupied the room.

Dox sat at the head of the workbench, forearms resting on the scarred wood, a bottle of Jim Beam at his elbow, half-empty. Forty-five, maybe fifty. Gray threading through his beard, eyes that had seen enough to stop being surprised by anything. The club’s sergeant-at-arms. The man who decided whether problems lived or died.

To his right, a prospect—young, twenty-two at most—was wiping down a carburetor with a shop rag, fingers black with grease. He looked up when we entered, rag freezing mid-wipe, eyes going wide.