Chapter 14 Fourteen

Two weeks out, I broke one second fifty off Venom's best time.

Dax was at the fence when I came around. She had the stopwatch in her hand and she looked at the number for a long moment before she looked at me. She didn't say anything immediately. She wrote it in the notebook, closed it, and walked to her bike.

"Again," she said.

I went again.

The second pass I matched it exactly. Same line through the crest, same late apex at mile four, same exit speed out of the technical section. The course had built itself into my hands the way she said it would, less like something I was navigating and more like something I knew.

I came back to the fence and she was already on her phone. She finished the call before I got my helmet off.

"Federal contact," she said quietly. "I moved the meeting up. Tonight."

I looked at her. "How far up?"

"Originally it was after the championship. Now it's in four hours." She put the phone in her pocket. "Kane moved on one of my source's contacts in Pittsburgh yesterday. Roughed him up badly enough to put him in hospital. He's accelerating and I can't wait for race day to brief the agent."

"Does briefing the agent change the race plan?"

"No. The agent needs the championship to happen. Kane has to be physically present with his operation running for the arrest to hold. We still race. We still win." She looked at me steadily. "But now there are federal eyes on everything from tonight forward. Which means no mistakes. Nothing that gives Kane a reason to pull out before race day."

"Where's the meeting?"

"Off compound. Neutral location." She glanced toward the south exit. "I go alone."

"Dax."

"I go alone, Zed." Her voice had the final quality it got when a decision was already made and the conversation was just formality. "Tank knows where I'll be. If I'm not back in three hours, he has instructions."

I didn't argue. I'd learned which battles with Dax were worth having and which ones she'd already closed before you opened your mouth.

"One and a half seconds," I said instead.

She looked at me.

"That's where I am. One and a half seconds off his best." I held her gaze. "I'll close it."

She held mine for a moment. "I know you will." She pulled on her helmet. "Be here when I get back."

She rode out the south exit and the gate closed behind her and I stood on the empty course with Tank and the sound of the engine fading and two weeks sitting in front of me like a road I had to ride blind.

Tank didn't talk much while she was gone. He sat on his Harley near the south gate with his phone in his hand, checking it every few minutes, and I went back on the course and rode it alone because sitting still wasn't something I knew how to do when my mind was running fast.

Four passes. Each one the same. The course felt locked in now, the kind of locked in where your body makes the decisions and your mind is free to run somewhere else.

It ran to Dax.

To the line at mile four she'd given me without explaining where it came from. To the way she looked at the stopwatch when I broke the time. To what Tank had said in the garage two nights ago, that she used to race this course, that she was fast, that Dutch had made her stop.

I thought about a woman who was that good at something being told to stop. What that does to a person over six years. Where it goes.

I thought it probably went exactly where everything else with Dax went. Inward. Controlled. Used as fuel for something colder and more purposeful than what it started as.

I came off the course after the fourth pass and Tank was standing up.

"She's back," he said.

Dax came through the south gate eight minutes later. She pulled up and cut the engine and sat on the bike for a second before she dismounted. A second was a long time for Dax to sit still.

I walked over. "How did it go?"

She pulled off her helmet. "The agent has the preliminary files. The recordings, the paper trail, the financial evidence." She looked at me. "He confirmed what I've suspected for six months. There are two people inside the Iron Wolves who have been on Kane's payroll. Not just Reaper."

Tank made a sound. "Who?"

"One of them we already dealt with. Lenny." She paused. "The other one has been in this club for eight years. The agent showed me the payment records." She looked at Tank. "It's Priest."

Tank went very still.

I looked between them. Priest had been in the meeting the morning after we found the listening device. He'd sat at that table and listened to everything Dax had laid out. The new protocols. The restricted access. The federal timeline.

"He was in the compound meeting," I said.

"Yes." Dax's voice was flat. "He knows the south exit is our primary route. He knows Tank rides with Zed. He knows the protocols changed." She looked at the gate. "And he's been on compound all day."

Tank was already on his phone.

"Don't move on him yet," Dax said quickly. "Same reason as Reaper. If he runs, Kane knows and pulls out." She looked at Tank until he lowered the phone. "We manage him. We control what he hears and what he passes back. We feed him information that keeps Kane confident and present until race day."

"You want to use him," Tank said.

"I want to use him exactly the way Kane used Reaper. Carefully and for exactly as long as we need to." Her jaw was set. "After race day, he answers for it."

Tank put his phone away. The look on his face was the same one he'd had when Dax told him to bring Reaper to the office, the look of a man paying a debt that had been accruing interest for longer than he'd admitted to himself.

"What do we feed him?" Tank asked.

"I'll work that out tonight." She picked up her helmet. "Get back to the compound. Normal patterns, normal routines. Nothing changes on the surface." She looked at me last. "Tomorrow morning, five AM. I want the full course, all eight miles, full speed."

"I'll be ready," I said.

She nodded and walked to her Harley.

I fell into step beside her without thinking about it. She didn't slow down or speed up. We walked to the bikes side by side in the early dark, the industrial edge of Coldwater quiet around us, and for a moment it was just two people walking and not everything else that came with it.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

She looked at me sideways. Not the assessing look. Something more direct. "I've been working toward this for two years," she said. "Finding out there were two people feeding Kane information from inside my club, that's not a surprise. It's a confirmation." She paused. "Confirmations are easier than surprises."

"That's not what I asked."

She was quiet for a few steps. "No," she said. "It's not."

She put her helmet on and swung her leg over the Harley. I stood beside my Ducati and watched her start the engine. She looked at me once before she pulled away, a look that lasted less than two seconds, but it was the most unguarded two seconds I'd seen from her since the night she told me Marcus was the second person Kane had taken from her.

Then she was riding and I was watching her go and Tank was beside me on his bike waiting for me to move.

"She doesn't let people ask her that," Tank said.

"I know," I said.

"She answered you."

I didn't say anything to that. I put my helmet on and followed them back through the south gate and into the compound and said nothing else about it for the rest of the night.

But I thought about it.

One and a half seconds and two weeks and a woman who had given me a line she'd kept for six years without saying why.