Chapter 7: Shadows At The Salvage Yard
The gravel beneath my bicycle tires felt loud in the quiet of the county road, each crunch echoing off the corrugated metal fences of the salvage yard. Marge’s warning about the drainage culvert had kept me out of sight of the highway patrol, but it hadn’t prepared me for the heavy, suffocating silence hanging over the property. The sun had dipped entirely below the horizon, leaving the sky a bruised purple bruised with orange embers where the oil drums sat behind the main workshop. I ditched my bike behind a stack of rusted truck hoods, pulling my old jacket tight against the evening chill that rolled off the creek. My scuffed sneakers made no sound as I crept along the perimeter wire, ducking beneath a loose strand of chain-link where the sumac bushes grew thick and wild.
Inside the yard, the shadows stretched long across towers of flattened sedans and rusted engine blocks. A single yellow work light burned above the sliding door of the central office trailer, casting a harsh glare over three heavy-duty motorcycles parked haphazardly on the dirt. Even before I reached the shelter of a discarded tractor tire, I heard their voices—sharp, low, and laced with a cold anger that made my stomach tighten. I slipped closer, keeping low behind the fender of a flatbed truck, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"You're riding out tonight, Jax," a voice growled. It was Brick, the club president, his broad shoulders blocking the open doorway of the trailer. I couldn't see Jax yet, but I knew his silhouette—tall, rigid, his arms crossed over his leather vest. "The council didn't approve an extended leave. You’ve been ghosting club business for three weeks, sniffing around that diner like a stray hound. Word is you've got a distraction. A domestic distraction."
"My business is my own, Brick," Jax’s voice came back, steady and flat, carrying that controlled weight I was starting to recognize. "I’ve put in twenty years on these highways for the Skulls. I don't need a permission slip to take a month off the tools."
"Twenty years don't buy you out of the code," another voice chimed in—a younger man stepping into the halo of the work light, a silver skull ring glinting on his thumb. "Especially not when you’re hiding a kid out in the county. A kid with hazel eyes who looks at you like you hung the moon."
My breath caught in my throat. They knew. Somehow, Brick and his inner circle had pieced together what Marge and I thought we kept buried in the quiet corners of the diner.
Jax didn't flinch. I watched him shift his weight, his tall frame tensing as his hand drifted toward the edge of his vest. "Leave the boy out of it. He has nothing to do with the club."
"Everything that happens in this town touches the club, Jax," Brick stepped closer, crowding into Jax's personal space with deliberate intimidation. "And if you’ve got family crawling out of the woodwork, you’ve got liabilities. We don't carry liabilities. You either mount up and ride with us to the state line tonight, or you hand over your colors right here and walk away with nothing."
May you like
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bone. I wanted to stand up, to yell out that it wasn't Jax's fault, that I was the one who followed him, that he didn't ask for any of this. But my feet felt glued to the dirt, paralyzed by the sheer gravity of the choice unfolding under the yellow light. Jax looked down at the scuffed floorboards of the trailer, his jaw working as he clenched his teeth. The public glamour of the biker brotherhood—the roaring engines, the leather, the forged respect of the highway—was being stripped away to reveal the raw, unvarnished truth: he had to choose between the only family he had known for decades and the flesh-and-blood boy hiding fifty feet away in the dark.
Jax slowly raised his head, looking Brick dead in the eye. "Then keep the colors," Jax said quietly, his voice cutting through the night air like a knife. "I’m done riding."
