Page 12 of Raiden

“You’ll be gone overnight. Inspecting a hundred acres? That’s going to take some time.”

Chapter 5

Raiden

The next morning, I ride out with Widow at my back. If she wants to put a knife into it, she’s more than welcome to try.

I’m taking the lead on this. It’s going to be me going through potential threats first. Keeping her behind me is actually a point of protection, even if from the daggers she stares at me when we stop to fuel up before we head up into the mountains, she doesn’t see it that way.

She doesn’t want to be on this trip with me at all. She asked me straight up if she could sub me out for Bullet, Gunner, Odin, Atlas, or literally any other one of my club brothers. She even went as far as to say that she’d rather take Lark herself and drive up in a cage.

I’m obviously way the hell down on her list of people she can stand.

When I said no—that the club needed to see us unified and not at each other’s throats, threatening an already tenuous agreement—she finally gave in.

I considered apologizing to her when I went to her room to talk, but there was so much hostility radiating from her, I changed my mind. The open road doesn’t seem like the right place either. I’ll have to wait until we get to the cabin.

The thought of doing it eats me all the way up those winding mountain roads, and eventually through the oldcorduroy log mud backroad. I get a vivid flashback of heading this way not so long ago, my club brothers in front of me, an army bent on saving their leader and inevitably on vengeance, me in my ancient pickup, grinding gears and double shifting my way through a road just barely wide enough for me to pass.

Gray said the property owner is old and wants to sell. I’m not sure who’s keeping the road open to even get to this place.

The woods are thick, many of the leaves already turning yellow. It hasn’t frosted in the city yet, but up here, I can’t be sure. The mountains always lend a new dynamic to the weather. The night is probably going to be a cold one. As much as I don’t want to go inside, I don’t want us outside the cabin either, exposed to the elements and at the mercy of anyone or any animal that might be out here.

We left early so we’d have plenty of daylight to get there, but also to get ourselves set up as much as possible in a cabin that, as far as I remember, has a dirt floor and no windows.

After riding down the track for a few miles the road just ends and the trees give way because someone’s cut them back, but barely. There’s a small clearing around the dilapidated log cabin. When we shut our engines off, the silence is ominous.

Living in the city, you forget howquietit is to be in the middle of nowhere.

I wrench my phone out of my jeans. No service. My stomach wrenches just looking at that cabin. Seeing Gray there, half dead, is going to be emblazoned in my brain for a long time. The thought that he’s considering building a home for his family here seems crazy, but maybe that’s how he deals with his demons? By facing them head on.

I finally turn around and face Widow. We’ve haven’t exchanged a single word this entire time. Standing there by her bike, wearing ripped up skinny jeans ending in shit kicker boots, her leather jacket snugged around her so that it accentuates her lush breasts and narrow waist, blonde hair whipped behind her by the wind, she looks anything but vulnerable. She’s a goddess of the road up here too, but her eyes lock with mine and I see the naked misery there. I sunk barbs into her and even though she wants everyone to believe she’s made of the hardest steel, they got through. If she’s tried to untangle herself, she’s only worked them deeper.

I failed to realize that though she might pretend to be impenetrable, she has a soft heart underneath and her sparring with me was really her offering up pieces of herself in the only way she knows how. We’re alike that way. Trained never to be vulnerable but needing it all the same.

So very human, though we don’t want anyone to ever know it.

I dig the toe of my boot into the soft dirt of the road. “Gray wants us to check out the land. There’s a hundred acres so we had better get started.”

She nods. She’s been briefed.

My saddle bags are bursting with supplies, and I’ve got my sleeping bag rolled and strapped on the back. I leave it all that way but get out one of those portable backpacks that scrunch down to nothing and throw in my compass, water bottle, and phone. It’s useful for the camera, if nothing else.

I feel Widow’s hot stare on me the entire time.

I start off without a word, because god fucking damn it, I can’t think of how to approach the conversation we need to have. She follows behind, her steps light while mine crash through the woods.

There’s a mix of trees out here, some towering giants, others skinny and new, most in between. It’s the deadfall that’s the problem. It makes walking nearly impossible. There are roots all over the place and branches that tear at our clothes and our faces.

Widow doesn’t complain. She trails directly in my path, a silent ghost dogging me. Since I’m breaking it, she probably doesn’t get smacked and scraped nearly so often.

The mosquitoes are thick, biting hungrily. The flies too, although this time of year they should be long gone. The forest is a different place. It has its own code.

I stop occasionally, glancing up at the blue sky above us, noting the way the sun changes position as the hours pass. My feet start to ache. Soon, I’m wishing I brought a set of hiking boots. I take photos occasionally, even though everything looks the same. Gray gave me a map provided by the property owner when he got permission for us to come out here and check it out. I remember when I reach for it, that I left it in the bottom of the bike’s saddlebag.

When my feet start to feel like there are shards of glass in my boots, my skin is scratched to shit from clearing paths, and every single fucking thing is starting to look the same, I get out the compass.

I realize immediately that I have no idea what direction we started, so knowing what direction north is doesn’t really help much. We could find the road, but that would probablytake hours and then we’d have to figure out where the hell we came out and how to get back to where we need to be, which is probably miles and miles away.

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