Page 69 of Jasper
Onyx and Slate are waiting for me in the back lot, so I rush back to meet them. Onyx’s stripped down to the waist, his skin streaked with grease and sweat. He’s washing off under a shower head attached to the back of the clubhouse. He doesn’t bother looking up when I roll in, so I shout, “You look like you got into a wrangle with your oil pan and lost, brother.”
He growls, “Fuck all the way off with that shit, Jasper.”
Slate’s propped against his bike, polishing his handlebars with slow, methodical strokes. It’s the kind of attention to detail that defines everything he does. It’s why he’s our Sergeant-at-Arms. He glances up when I approach.
“Goddamn, it’s ‘bout time you showed up, Jasper. Was startin’ to think that pretty woman of yours bewitched you.”
I spit on the ground between our bikes and tell him in no uncertain terms, “Ain’t no woman who can hold me in her thrall, but this one comes damn close.”
Slate chuckles under his breath, barely lifting his gaze. “Hell, Jasper, I never thought you’d be the fucking first of us to fall. You never seemed like the settling down type.”
I swing a leg over my bike, ignoring the jab. “Shows you don’t know me very fuckin’ well.”
Onyx walks up, pulling a clean shirt over his head. “We ready to ride?”
“Yeah, we’re doing a perimeter check, just like we planned. We need to keep our eyes sharp because I have a bad gut feeling about this situation.”
Just then our phones jingle and we all pull them out. I read the message from our old man. The scouts in town report the Hyenas all upped stakes and pulled out. They’re riding west in one big convoy, taking their heavy equipment with them. Rather than being elated, I’m more concerned than ever.
Onyx mutters, “Well those fucking assholes didn’t last long.”
Slate is more suspicious, “Why would they leave? We didn’t even give them a good beat down yet.”
“Well, I’d like to think they took one look at our setup on that fancy drone they sent yesterday and decided we were too powerful to mess with, but nothing in our lives is ever quite that easy.”
Slate sighs, turns off his phone and puts it away. “Our brothers have had a few run-ins with them over the last month, and they came out on the losing side every single time. Maybe they’re moving on to greener pastures.”
Both of my brothers look at me with hopeful expressions, but I shake my head. “Hell no, this is setting off warning bells in my head. What if the ignorant fucks have decided they can take us in a fair fight?” Glancing off into the distance, I say, “They could be coming here.”
Slate’s temper flares. “I can’t believe they’d be that ignorant—to think they can swarm and take our clubhouse by force.”
I type out a message on my phone as I talk, “I’m texting our old man to put the clubhouse on lockdown for now and double the guards at the gate and put brothers on perimeter watch for the next few hours in case they come here.”
Putting my phone away, I tell them grimly, “We need to go ahead and scout the area around the clubhouse to make sure they haven’t prepositioned weapons and shit.”
“Let’s get the hell moving,” Onyx says, starting his bike.
We head out at a steady pace, because we might miss something important if we speed around. The secondary road loops around the outer ridge of the property. It’s paved but rough. The farther we go, the quieter it gets. We don’t even see birds flying about. It’s totally unnerving.
Not catching sight of anything alarming like a staging area for them to attack, we ride until the road tapers off into a mountain trail that skirts the edge of the bluff.
This part of the land has been left wild on purpose. The thickets and brush serve as natural barriers, a built-in warning system that keeps most people away.
Onyx takes the lead as the trail narrows and turns into a gravel road. He slows, lifts a fist, and then rolls to a stop near a thicket of blackberry bramble. We kill our engines and follow him on foot. He points upward, towards the canopy.
About twenty feet up, there is a clearing in the thick pine. I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing. There is some kind of drone docking station attached to the tree. It’s cleverly done, matte black with a low-profile antenna and a camouflage nettingthat blends perfectly with the branches. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it.
Onyx pulls out his binoculars and gazes at it.
I ask, “Am I seeing what I think I am?”
“Yeah, it’s a drone nest of some kind,” he says, his voice low.
I pull out my phone and take a few photos from different angles, then scale the tree carefully and retrieve the unit. It’s light, lighter than the last one, and the casing’s cool to the touch. Still fresh.
I make a note of the GPS coordinates in my phone and we move out again, cutting across a dry ravine and following a deer trail that runs parallel to the fence line. A mile out, Slate spots something tucked into a pile of rocks. From a distance, it looks natural, just another crumbled outcrop. But up close, you can see that someone stacked the stone deliberately.
Onyx kneels beside it and pulls free a flat slab of shale. Beneath it, a hidden panel flicks open, revealing a small docking station with an embedded power cell. The tech is clean, the panel smooth and dust-free.
