Page 69 of Tater
Ahead, the road opened wide, sunlight bouncing off the cracked pavement. Every mile felt heavier than the last.
Brick pulled alongside him, voice raised over the wind. “What’s the play if we find her?”
Tater’s eyes stayed on the horizon. “We don’t find her. We join her.”
Eagle chuckled darkly over comms. “That’s either loyalty or suicide.”
“Same thing,” Tater said.
They hit open country, engines thundering like war drums. The air smelled of sage and smoke. To the east, the fire on the bridge was finally dying, but the heat still shimmered in the distance.
Tater reached down, tapped the flare cap in his vest pocket. It was warm, as if holding a heartbeat that wasn’t his.
He didn’t pray—hadn’t in years—but the thought rose anyway.
Keep her burning, not gone.
The Bastards rode on.
CHAPTER 41
The Quiet Between Flames
By the time Ren reached the edge of the next town, the adrenaline was wearing thin.
Her hands still shook on the grips, the wind biting through her jacket like it wanted her bones. The sun sat high now, pale, and cold. Smoke from the bridge still stained the horizon behind her—a black thread unraveling against the sky.
She slowed on the outskirts of town, coasting past faded billboards and rusted silos. A line of empty freight cars sat on the tracks, graffiti curling across their sides like bruises. The place was too quiet. No dogs. No trucks. Not even a breeze.
The dragon inside her was silent again but not gone. Just listening.
“You are being hunted,” it murmured.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “That’s the point.”
She pulled into an abandoned service station a half mile off the main road. The sign above the pump was sun-bleached to nothing, just ghost letters. Perfect.
Ren cut the engine. The sudden quiet made her ears ring. She sat for a long time, just breathing, watching the shimmer of the heat on the asphalt.
Her ribs hurt—she’d hit harder than she’d realized when the bike went airborne on that ridge. When she peeled her jacket off, the shirt beneath was stiff with blood on the shoulder. It didn’t matter. Nothing she hadn’t ridden through before.
She dug a bottle of water from her saddlebag, poured some over her hands, and splashed the rest on her face. The cool shock helped her focus.
Her phone was still dark—no service. The jammer radius stretched farther than she’d thought.
Tater would be moving by now.
He’d seen the fire. He’d know.
She smiled faintly, despite the ache in her jaw. “You’ll find me,” she whispered.
The chain lay heavy in her pocket. She pulled it out, turning it in her hand. The sunlight made the small dent glint gold instead of silver.
That dent—the mark from Tater’s thumb years ago—felt like a heartbeat under her fingers.
“You’d hate this,” she said to the empty air. “Me bleeding, the road watching, the whole damn world on fire again.”
The dragon stirred. “He would follow anyway.”
