Chapter 13
The deafening roar of a heavy V-twin engine tore through the morning air like a sonic boom. Victor froze mid-draw, his hand halting inside his coat pocket as his head snapped toward the highway. Coming around the curve at a reckless, terrifying speed was a battered, oil-leaking cruiser motorcycle, its front wheel lifting ever so slightly as it fishtailed into the truck stop's gravel lot.
It was Jax.
His leather vest was torn at the shoulder, blood smeared across his cheek from a fresh laceration, and his long dark hair whipping wildly behind him like a battle flag. He hadn't been captured; he had broken free.
The motorcycle didn't slow down. Jax aimed the heavy cruiser directly at the side of Victor’s sleek black sedan, refusing to brake until the last possible microsecond. With a sickening crunch of fiberglass and shattered chrome, the motorcycle slammed squarely into the passenger-side door of the sedan, sending the vehicle rocking violently onto two wheels before crashing back down onto its axles with a cloud of white radiator smoke.
Victor stumbled backward, his pistol slipping from his grip and clattering harmlessly into the dusty gravel. “Shoot him! Stop him!” Victor shrieked, panic finally cracking the cool exterior of his polished persona.
The heavy-set enforcer lunged forward, drawing his own hidden weapon, but Big Mike was already in motion. The massive mechanic charged across the lot like a freight train, bringing the heavy three-foot breaker bar down in a brutal arc that caught the enforcer squarely across the chest, dropping the man to the asphalt in a heap of gasps and broken ribs.
Jax kicked his bike stand down, stepping off the heavy machine with deliberate, lethal grace. His big hazel eyes locked onto Victor, burning with the concentrated fury of a man who had nothing left to lose. He walked slowly toward the syndicate boss, his heavy boots crushing loose gravel beneath each step.
“You picked the wrong town, Victor,” Jax said, his voice a low, gravelly growl that echoed off the metal garage walls.
Victor backed up until his spine hit the hood of his wrecked sedan, his eyes darting frantically for an escape route, but Big Mike was already standing between him and the highway. Cornered, Victor forced a shaky, desperate laugh, raising his empty hands defensively. “You think killing me solves anything, Jax? The syndicate owns half the judges in this state. You’ll spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary, and the kid goes straight back to the state orphanage.”
Jax stopped two feet away from Victor, towering over the terrified man. He didn't throw a punch. Instead, he reached inside his vest and pulled out a small, encrypted digital flash drive—the very piece of evidence Victor had been hunting for across three state lines.
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“I'm not going to kill you, Victor,” Jax said coldly, holding the drive up to the sunlight. “I'm just going to email this copy to the federal prosecutor we spoke with this morning.”
Victor’s face went completely, bloodlessly white. Before he could lunge for the drive, the distant wail of multiple police sirens began to echo down Highway 12, growing louder by the second.
