Page 67 of Tater
She smiled. “Yeah. Let’s make it fuckin’ worth it.”
At the base of the bridge, she yanked the emergency flare from her saddlebag, bit the cap off, and struck it against the guardrail. Red light roared to life. She tossed it backward into the oil slick still smoking on the road.
The night exploded.
Fire blossomed in the rearview, a wall of heat that lit the canyon red. The pickup vanished in it, tires screeching, a scream of metal swallowed by the blast.
The shockwave hit her hard enough to make the bike jump sideways. She fought the handlebars, teeth gritted, vision strobing between flame and dawn.
The dragon laughed wildly. “Now they see you.”
Ren roared back. “Good!”
She tore across the bridge, engine screaming, the world behind her burning.
By the time she cleared the next bend, the fire was a glow against the pale sky. Her breath came in ragged bursts. The dragon quieted, curling back inside her chest like a cat after the kill.
The comm crackled once—just once. Tater’s voice, distant, distorted:
She almost didn’t believe it.
“Copy,” she said. “I’m still here.”
“Can’t,” she said. “Bridge is gone.”
Static. Then his voice again, lower now.
The line went dead again, but she was smiling. The chain was warm in her pocket, the sun breaking over the horizon.
Ren throttled up, dust curling behind her. Ahead lay more road, more ghosts, and the kind of trouble only fire could clean.
She rode toward it, laughing under her breath.
The dragon purred. “Now it begins.”
CHAPTER 40
Ash and Iron
By the time the Bastards hit the ridge, the sun was nothing but a pale wound over the horizon, bleeding light into the smoke.
The air smelled like burnt oil and scorched rubber.
What was left of the bridge still glowed orange, twisted metal bowing toward the riverbed below.
Eagle was the first to kill his engine. The silence that followed was sharp enough to hurt.
Brick swung off his bike, boots crunching through char and glass. “Christ,” he muttered. “She did this?”
Tater didn’t answer. He just walked forward until the heat licked his boots, eyes scanning the wreckage. Pieces of a black pickup lay scattered across the median—door half-melted, grill crushed, a tire still smoldering where the flare had hit.
“Looks like she was chasing or being chased,” Eagle said, kneeling to pick up a shard of mirror. “Truck came in hot. Lost it right here.”
Tater crouched beside a streak on the asphalt—a curved line where rubber met oil, then vanished into flame. He knew that kind of move. A trap flipped into a weapon.
“She wasn’t running,” he said quietly. “She was teaching.”
Brick gave a low whistle. “Damn that lesson hit hard.”
