Chapter 11: The Syndicate's Warning
The wind coming off the two-lane interstate highway cut through my thin jacket like a handful of small needles. I pressed my forehead against the wide, worn leather back of Jax’s vest, my small arms locked as tight as I could manage around his heavy waist. Every time the big chopper leaned hard into a curve, my sneakers slipped slightly against the metal footpegs, and my stomach dropped. Ahead of us, the gray asphalt stretched under a sky the color of wet cement, flanked by flat fields of dry cornstalks rattling in the late October wind.
We had been riding for nearly forty minutes when Jax pulled the bike off onto the gravel shoulder of a deserted county road, cutting the engine with a sharp twist of the wrist. The sudden silence of the highway was louder than the roar. He didn't turn around immediately, keeping his helmeted head forward, his thick gloved hands resting loosely on the rubber handlebars.
“You okay back there?” he asked, his voice muffled by the wind and the thick leather of his collar.
“My hands are cold,” I admitted, my teeth clicking slightly as I spoke.
Jax let out a short, rough breath through his nose. He took off his left glove, reached back without looking, and shoved a spare pair of heavy wool work gloves into my chest. They smelled faintly of motor oil and old gasoline, but they were thick and warm. “Put those on. And keep your eyes open. That red-bearded bastard, Vance, isn't the type to let us just ride out of town without a fight. He’s got friends in the county commissioner’s office who want that old property cleared out by the end of the week for some commercial warehouse deal. That’s why the foreclosure notices came early.”
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I pulled the oversized gloves over my fingers, listening as the distant drone of a heavy truck grew louder behind us. Two vehicles—a dark, dented pickup truck and a black sedan with tinted windows—pulled off the highway a hundred yards back, blocking our lane. Three men climbed out of the pickup. Even from a distance, I recognized the red-bearded face of Vance stepping down from the driver's side, holding a heavy tire iron loosely in his right hand.
“Stay on the bike,” Jax said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, dangerous tone that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He didn't sound panicked; he sounded like a man who had walked through this exact kind of trouble a hundred times before. He swung his heavy leg over the seat, planted his boots firmly in the loose gravel, and began walking slowly toward the middle of the empty road to meet them.
