Claimed By The Inferno Riders

Chapter Sixteen

The tap on the sole of her boot didn't startle her. It just dragged her upward through a shallow, jagged layer of exhaustion.

Nadia opened her eyes. The garage was pitch black, the burn barrel reduced to a pile of gray ash with a single, faint orange heart.

Slate was crouching a foot away. He didn't say her name. He didn't tell her it was time. He simply held out the heavy, black Maglite Priest had been using earlier.

Nadia pushed the damp wool blanket off her chest and sat up. Her spine screamed in protest, the cold concrete having locked her joints into rigid, aching angles. She reached out and took the flashlight. The knurled aluminum casing was completely warm, heated by two solid hours of Slate gripping it in the dark.

She didn't turn it on. Turning on a beam of light in an unsecure perimeter was a good way to get shot.

Slate stood up, his knees popping in the quiet. He walked past her, dropping onto the exact patch of cold floor she had just vacated, and pulled his cut over his face.

Nadia stood, biting the inside of her cheek to distract from the sharp pins-and-needles flooding her deadened left leg. She walked toward the gaping mouth of the bay doors. The torrential downpour had finally exhausted itself, fading into a steady, miserable drizzle that coated the broken asphalt in a slick sheen.

She took her position against the jagged cinderblock frame.

She held the heavy flashlight in her right hand, resting the weight of it against her thigh. The silence out here wasn't empty; it was layered. The drip of water off the rusted corrugated roof. The settling of the mud. The distant, rhythmic ticking of Ghost’s watch from wherever he was stationed in the rafters above.

A sharp metallic snick broke the rhythm.

A brief, volatile flare of butane illuminated the opposite side of the bay door.

Kayne.

He cupped the flame, lighting a cigarette, the brief flash casting his heavy, scarred features into sharp relief before he snapped the lighter shut. The glowing cherry of the tobacco hovered in the dark, three yards away.

He hadn't been asleep. Nadia realized with a cold certainty that Kayne hadn't slept at all.

"You're holding the light wrong," Kayne said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that barely carried over the rain.

Nadia looked down at her hand. "I'm not turning it on."

"You're holding it by the base, like a wrench," Kayne said, the cherry flaring bright orange as he took a drag. "If someone comes through that tree line, you don't have time to swing it. You hold it near the lens. Overhand. So the base rests against your forearm. You blind them, and you drop the bezel straight down into the bridge of their nose."

Nadia slowly slid her grip up the textured aluminum barrel, flipping it overhand until the heavy D-cell battery compartment rested flush against her forearm. It felt unnatural. It felt violent.

"Better," Kayne noted, exhaling a thin stream of smoke that she couldn't see but could immediately smell.

Nadia kept her eyes on the dark tree line. "You think I'm going to have to hit someone with a flashlight."

"I think if the Bratva finds us, a flashlight isn't going to do a damn thing," Kayne replied smoothly. "But it buys you exactly one and a half seconds to run while River and I draw the fire."

He stepped out of the deep shadow, leaning his heavy shoulder against the cinderblock opposite her.

"You think I hate you," Kayne said. It wasn't a question.

Nadia didn't look at him. "I think you look at me and see a liability that's going to get your charter killed."

"You are a liability," Kayne agreed, entirely devoid of malice. "That's just math. We are five guns carrying a civilian who stops to check oil pans in the middle of an evasion route."

He took another drag.

"But I don't hate you, Nadia," he said quietly. "I hate your uncle."

Nadia’s grip on the Maglite tightened. "River said you all voted. You agreed to take the debt."

"We voted to back Slate, because Slate is blood," Kayne corrected. "But Marcus didn't come to us looking for a fair trade. He came to us because he knew exactly what kind of men we are. He knew we wouldn't let the Russian syndicate put a girl in a box. He weaponized our code against us."

Kayne flicked the cigarette out into the wet dark. It hissed briefly as it hit a puddle and died.

"Marcus Cole wasn't a victim," Kayne said, looking directly at her, his silhouette massive in the gloom. "He was a bastard who played a brilliant hand. He built a titanium cage, locked you inside it, and handed us the only key. And now we have to bleed to keep it shut."

Nadia felt the air thin out in her lungs. The sheer, unvarnished truth of it stripped away the last of her defenses. Kayne wasn't bullying her. He was terrified. He was a man who solved problems with extreme violence, trapped in a scenario where violence might not be enough to save the men he loved.

"I didn't ask for the cage," Nadia whispered, the words catching painfully in her throat.

"I know," Kayne said.

He pushed off the wall. He walked across the open threshold, stopping close enough that she could feel the damp cold radiating off his leather cut. He reached out and tapped the heavy bezel of the Maglite she was holding.

"Keep the grip high," Kayne instructed, his voice dropping back to its normal, abrasive baseline. "And if the shooting starts, you don't look for us. You get on the bike, and you drop the hammer."

He turned and walked back into the depths of the garage.

Nadia stood alone at the edge of the perimeter. She didn't adjust her grip. She held the heavy metal weapon exactly the way he had shown her, keeping her eyes locked on the treacherous, invisible road ahead, waiting for 0400 to arrive.