IVY
The man behind the desk had three weeks’ worth of excuses and exactly twelve minutes left to produce the money.
I gave him ten.
His name was Lenny Rusk, and he ran a collision shop off Route 14 where the cars came in dented and left with different VINs. The office smelled of stale coffee, hot metal, and the lemon air freshener hanging from a rusted filing cabinet. Underneath it all lingered the sharper scent of nervous sweat.
Lenny leaned back in his chair as if we were discussing a late utility bill. “Business has been slow.”
“Then you shouldn’t have taken the shipment.”
His smile tightened. He was thick through the chest, with grease embedded in the creases of his hands and a faded Saints of Ruin tattoo crawling up his neck. The outlaw club had held this patch of highway before the Iron Wraiths took it from them. Some men adjusted to losing territory. Others spent years pretending they hadn’t.
“I didn’t take anything,” he said.
“You accepted twelve crates from us and delivered nine.”
“Counting error.”
“Three crates of silver ammunition don’t get misplaced behind the canned peaches.”
His eyes shifted toward the garage.
There it was.
The office door stood open behind me, giving me a clean view of two mechanics working beneath a lifted pickup. One was wiping the same wrench for the third time. The other kept glancing toward the rolling door, waiting for someone who hadn’t arrived yet.
Neither man concerned me.
The heartbeat behind the parts shelves did.
Another came from inside the restroom, too slow and deliberate to belong to anyone using it. Beyond the cinder-block wall, boots scraped over gravel near the rear exit. Three men had been listed in our intel. I could smell six, possibly seven if the sour trace of cheap aftershave drifting down from the storage loft was fresh.
Someone had given the Wraiths bad numbers.
I set a folded invoice on Lenny’s desk. “Nine minutes.”
He stared at my gloved hand. “Vale sends a woman to collect now?”
“Vale sent Reaper.”
That wiped the smile from his face.
My road name had done half my work for years. Men heard Reaper and imagined someone taller, uglier, maybe male. By the time they understood their mistake, I usually had a blade beneath somebody’s jaw.
Lenny recovered enough to sneer. “New president ought to keep a tighter leash on his girls.”
I drew my pistol and shot the framed photograph beside his head.
Glass burst across the wall. In the garage, the wrench clattered to the concrete.
“Eight minutes,” I said.
The man near the truck moved first.
He lunged through the doorway, relying on size rather than sense. I stepped aside, caught his wrist, and used his momentum to drive his face into the metal filing cabinet. Before he hit the floor, the second mechanic reached beneath the workbench.
I threw the chair into his knees.
He crashed backward. The hidden man came around the shelving with a tire iron raised, but I ducked beneath the swing and buried my elbow in his ribs. Bone gave under the impact. He folded with a strangled curse, and I took the tire iron before it struck the floor.
Lenny dove for his desk drawer.
I brought the iron down across his knuckles.
He screamed.
“You should’ve used the nine minutes.”
The restroom door flew open. A gun appeared before the man holding it did, which made disarming him almost insulting. I trapped his wrist against the doorframe, twisted until his fingers opened, then drove the butt of his own weapon into his temple.
He dropped at my feet.
The rolling door rattled upward.
Late-afternoon light spilled across the garage, outlining three more men outside. One carried a shotgun. Another held a length of silver chain looped around his fist, its metallic scent strong enough to burn the back of my throat.
Seven men, then.
I had been right.
I kicked the restroom gun beneath a tool cabinet and backed into the main garage as the first shot tore through the office wall. Buckshot peppered the cinder blocks. The truck overhead gave a groan on its hydraulic lift, and the mechanic by the workbench began dragging himself toward the control panel.
I swung the tire iron into his wrist and hit the red release button.
The lift dropped eighteen inches with a violent hiss. Everybody looked up.
Everybody except me.
I drove my boot into the nearest man’s knee, turned as he fell, and used his body to block the silver chain. The links wrapped around his shoulder. He howled as they touched skin, confirming what his scent had already told me.
Wolf.
Not Saints of Ruin, then. Hired muscle.
The shotgun tracked toward me again.
An engine roared outside.
It came low and hard, the unmistakable thunder of a Wraith-built Harley being pushed well past what the narrow service lane allowed. The bike shot through the open door, black paint flashing beneath the fluorescent lights. Ronan leaned it nearly sideways, his boot skimming the concrete before he brought the rear wheel around.
The motorcycle slammed into the shotgunner and sent him crashing into a stack of tires.
Ronan killed the engine.
For half a second, the only sounds were the ticking pipes and Lenny whimpering in his office.
Ronan took in the lowered truck, the men on the floor, and the silver chain still smoking against a wolf’s jacket. His dark gaze settled on me.