Claimed By The Inferno Riders

Chapter Twenty-Two

The headlights didn’t illuminate the quarry; they violated it.

Three sweeping beams of high-intensity halogen cut through the black, washing over the jagged granite walls and illuminating the stagnant pools of water on the quarry floor. The low, guttural growl of heavy displacement engines echoed off the stone, a predatory rumble that swallowed the sound of the wind.

Nadia kept her face pressed hard into the rubber eyecups of the Steiner binoculars. Her thumb instinctively found the focal wheel, sharpening the image as the vehicles crawled down the switchbacked access road and hit the uneven gravel of the basin.

Three black, late-model Cadillac Escalades.

They moved with a sluggish, unnatural weight, their suspensions compressed. They weren't standard luxury models. They were up-armored. She could see the thick, opaque distortion of ballistic glass in the windshields and the heavy, reinforced steel plates welded behind the stock front bumpers.

"Three units," Nadia whispered, her voice tight, forcing the air out exactly the way Ghost had taught her. "Escalades. Armored."

"Distance?" Ghost asked. His voice was a flat, digital readout.

"Three hundred yards. Closing at idle."

The lead vehicle reached the center of the kill zone, directly beneath their overhanging ridge. The second and third vehicles fanned out slightly, maintaining a tactical spacing that proved these weren't street-level thugs. They were professionals.

They were looking for the trail River had intentionally left. They were looking for the bikes.

"Identify the lead block," Ghost ordered.

Nadia stared through the magnified glass. She stripped away the black paint, the chrome, and the threat, forcing her brain to see only the mechanical schematic.

"It's a 6.2-liter naturally aspirated V8," Nadia said, her mind dropping into the familiar, comforting architecture of an engine bay. "The armor plate covers the lower radiator, but the upper grill is stock plastic to allow for airflow. The intake manifold sits high and dead center, directly beneath the hood latch."

"Give me the coordinate," Ghost said.

Nadia opened her mouth to speak, but the lead Escalade suddenly stopped.

The brake lights flared red, casting a bloody halo over the wet gravel. The driver’s side window didn't roll down—ballistic glass rarely did—but the ambient light from the dashboard illuminated the interior just enough.

Nadia saw the silhouette of the driver. She saw the sudden, jerky movement of his hand pointing toward the deep shadows where Slate had hidden the bikes.

It wasn't a machine anymore. It was a man. A man who was about to be permanently, violently unmade.

Her lungs locked. The air in her chest turned to concrete. The four-second breathing count Ghost had walked her through completely evaporated, replaced by a suffocating, paralyzing wave of human panic. If she spoke the coordinate, she became the trigger.

"Nadia."

Ghost’s voice didn't rise in volume, but the density of it shifted. It bypassed her panic and hooked directly into her consciousness.

"You're looking at the cabin," Ghost said. He didn't take his eye off the scope. He knew exactly what she was doing without having to look at her. "You are looking at the meat. Look at the metal."

"He sees the bikes," she choked out, her hands gripping the binoculars so hard her knuckles ground against the aluminum chassis.

"If he calls it in, the funnel breaks. If the funnel breaks, Slate dies," Ghost stated, his tone mercilessly stripped of any comforting lies. "I cannot shoot through the engine block if I don't know where the armor stops. I need your eyes. Separate the math from the consequence. Give me the coordinate."

He wasn't carrying her. He was demanding that she carry her own weight.

Nadia forced her eyes away from the silhouette in the driver’s seat. She dragged the reticle of the binoculars down, locking the crosshairs dead onto the center of the massive chrome grill.

She took a jagged breath, pulling it deep into her stomach.

"Top center of the grill," Nadia said, her voice dropping into a hollow, mechanical cadence. "Two inches below the hood line. Dead center on the Cadillac crest. If you punch through that badge, you crack the intake and shatter the fuel rail."

"Wind?"

"Still quarter-value, left to right. It's dropped. Maybe five miles an hour."

"Holding half a mil left," Ghost murmured. "Brace."

Nadia didn't close her eyes. She refused to look away from the reality of her own choice.

The rifle didn't fire; it detonated.

The concussive shockwave physically punched the air out of her lungs. The muzzle flash was a blinding, instantaneous spear of white-hot light that seared itself into her retinas.

Down in the quarry, the Cadillac crest on the lead Escalade violently ceased to exist.

A massive, jagged hole punched through the plastic grill. A split second later, the heavy hood buckled violently upward as the high-velocity round obliterated the pressurized fuel rail and cracked the aluminum engine block in half.

A deafening, metallic shriek echoed across the basin, followed instantly by a massive eruption of white steam and black smoke as the engine consumed itself. The heavy vehicle shuddered, bleeding vital fluids onto the wet gravel, and completely died.

The driver slammed the heavy SUV into reverse, but the transmission had nothing to connect to. The three-ton armored box was now just a roadblock.

Before the echo of the sniper rifle had even faded from the rock walls, the quarry floor erupted.

Muzzle flashes flared from the deep shadows of the rusted loading gantry. The heavy, rhythmic, hammering sound of River’s and Kayne’s assault rifles tore through the night, cross-firing directly into the stalled convoy. The rounds sparked furiously against the ballistic glass of the Escalades, spider-webbing the windows and deafening the men trapped inside.

Nadia dropped the binoculars.

Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn't control them. The sheer, overwhelming scale of the violence below was staggering. The air immediately filled with the acrid, chemical smell of sulfur, burning oil, and vaporized coolant.

Ghost didn't look down at the c*****e. He fluidly racked the bolt of his rifle, the heavy brass casing ejecting and clinking sharply against the granite, and immediately settled his cheek back onto the stock.

"Find the second block, Nadia," Ghost ordered, his voice an anchor in the center of a hurricane.

She stared at him. He was terrifying. He was a monster built for exactly this environment. And right now, he was the only thing standing between her and the dark.

Nadia picked up the binoculars, pressed the rubber against her eyes, and looked back into the fire.