Chapter 11: The Ridge Approach
The yard was a furnace of noise and light. Headlights cut through the midnight dark in sweeping arcs, engines snarled and coughed as riders swung onto their machines, and the air smelled of gasoline, dust, and the sharp electric tension of wolves about to run. Duncan stood at the edge of the gravel, the mate bite on his neck pulsing like a second heartbeat, and watched Jared straddle his bike.
Jared caught his gaze across the chaos. Something passed between them, wordless and heavy as stone. Then Jared pulled his bandana up over his mouth, gunned the engine once, and led the charge out through the gate in a blaze of red taillights. The rumble of a dozen bikes rolled away into the desert, fading too fast, leaving a hollow silence behind it.
Duncan exhaled.
"Move," Sofia said, already slipping toward the fence line. "They'll make noise for maybe twenty minutes before the Coyotl notice the headlights aren't coming any closer. That's our window."
Marcus fell in behind her, a mountain in the dark, his boots making barely a sound despite his size. Duncan followed, and after a moment, Danny came last, his posture stiff, arms crossed against the cold. He hadn't said a word since they'd left the clubhouse.
The fence was old chain-link, and behind it the desert opened up into broken ground and scrub. They ducked through a gap Marcus had cut earlier, then struck out east on foot, keeping to the wash where the rock was soft and the moonlight threw long shadows. Duncan's heart hammered. Every step felt too loud, every breath too sharp.
The ridge rose ahead of them, a dark spine against the stars. They climbed in silence, hand over hand up the loose scree, and Duncan's thighs burned by the time they reached the first ledge. He paused, pressing his back to the cold rock, and risked a look back the way they'd come. Nothing but black. Somewhere out there Jared was roaring down the main road with his pack at his back, the whole point of him a distraction, a target.
Duncan forced his gaze forward.
"Steady," Marcus murmured from ahead.
They moved again. The ridge flattened into a winding game trail that hugged the eastern face, and the wind shifted, carrying a thread of woodsmoke. Duncan's nose twitched. Pine, dust, and beneath it, the rank smell of too many wolves in a tight space, unwashed fur and old blood.
Sofia held up a fist. They dropped into a crouch.
The camp lay below them in a shallow bowl of rock, visible now through a gap in the ridgeline. A fire burned low in the center, its light painting a circle of rough figures, a half dozen Coyotl wolves lounging on bedrolls and crates. Their scent rose thick and oily in the cold air. One of them laughed, a low ugly sound.
And beside the fire, slumped against a stake driven into the ground, was Barrett.
His head hung forward, dark hair matmed with blood. His arms were bound behind him with what looked like wire, and strips of dirty cloth were tied around his wrists and ankles. His shirt was torn, stained dark across his chest. Even from this distance, Duncan could see the shallow rise and fall of his ribs, still breathing.
They were going to send him back in pieces.
Duncan's hands trembled, and he curled them into fists until the shaking stopped. Beside him, Danny made a choked sound, almost a growl, and started to rise. Sofia's hand snaked out and clamped on his arm, pulling him back down hard.
"Don't," she breathed.
"He's right there," Danny hissed, voice cracking. "He's right fucking there."
"And there are six of them between us and him," Sofia said, her grey eyes flat in the firelight. "You want to be a seventh body they send back? Sit down."
Danny's jaw worked. For a long moment he stared down at Barrett, and Duncan saw something crack behind his eyes, something raw and young. Then he sat, his whole body shaking.
Duncan looked at the camp again. He counted shapes, positions, weapons. Two by the fire, one standing guard on the far side, three sprawled near the mouth of a shallow cave. Barrett was fixed dead center, a baited hook in a trap that was already sprung halfway.
"It's quiet," Duncan said quietly. "Too quiet for a capture. They expect the charge to come here, not the road."
Sofia's sharp eyes followed his gaze. "They've got him staked in the open. Whoever comes for him gets shot trying to reach him."
"But they're not watching the ridge," Duncan said. "They're watching the approach." He turned, low and quick, and met each of them in turn. Marcus first, then Sofia, and finally Danny, who looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "We go down slow. Stick to the rock. Sofia and I cut him loose while Marcus draws their eyes. Danny, you come with me. You know Barrett, you'll get him moving faster than I could."
Danny stared at him. The hatred that had lived in his eyes for days was gone, burned away by fear. What was left was something younger, scared and desperate. "You're really doing this," he said, as if he'd only just understood. "You came. You're actually here."
"I'm here," Duncan said. "Now pull it together. We get him out, and then we run like hell."
Danny nodded slowly, the motion jerky, barely controlled. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and met Duncan's eyes. "Okay," he said. "Okay."
Sofia was already moving, a shadow sliding along the ridgeline toward a crack in the rock where the descent was less brutal. Marcus went the other way, angling wide to come at the camp from the north, his bulk silent as stone. Duncan pressed his palms flat against the cold rock, breathed once, and then followed.
The climb down was worse than the climb up. Loose shale skittered under his boots, and every scrape sounded like a gunshot in the thin air. He moved sideways, keeping his belly close to the rock, and behind him Danny did the same, his breathing harsh and quick. Duncan didn't look back.
Halfway down, the firelight sharpened. Duncan could see the Coyotl more clearly now, the patched leather of their cuts, the hard angles of their faces. The guard on the far side was leaning against a boulder, rifle cradled across his chest, jaw half hidden in a dusty beard. He wasn't looking up. None of them were looking up.
Duncan's boots hit the bottom of the wash with a soft scrape. He froze. No one stirred.
He crept toward Barrett, keeping low, using the shallow bowl of the camp's edge for cover. Sofia was a breath behind him, her hand on the knife at her belt. Twenty feet. Ten. The smell of Barrett's blood hit him like a wall, copper and fear, and beneath it the dark wet scent of pain.
Barrett heard them. His head lifted an inch, and his eyes, cracked and bloodshot, found Duncan through the flickering dark. Something passed through them, disbelief, then a wild flicker of hope that hurt to look at.
Duncan pressed a finger to his lips. Barrett's head sagged again, but his shoulders loosened a fraction.
The wire around his wrists was barbed, sunk deep enough that the blood had dried black around it. Duncan worked at it with his knife, careful, patient, while Sofia watched the camp and Danny crept in on the other side, low and quiet. The wire bit into Duncan's fingers but he didn't feel it. He just kept cutting.
A laugh rang out from the fire. Duncan's heart slammed.
"Did you hear that?" one of the Coyotl said, tipping his bottle toward the dark. "Engines. Another hour and we'll have that alpha on his knees."
"Keep dreaming," another said. "He'll come in shooting."
"Let him. We've got the bait."
Duncan's blade sawed through the last strand of wire. Barrett's arms came free, and he sagged forward, catching himself on his hands with a choked grunt. Duncan caught his shoulder before he could fall, and Barrett looked up at him, lost and barely present.
"Come on," Duncan breathed. "Stay with me."
Barrett's mouth moved. No sound came out.
On the far side of the camp, a rock shifted. A Coyotl by the cave mouth stirred, muttered something, and looked up toward the ridge.
The guard on the boulder straightened, peering into the dark. "Check the wire," he said, jerking his chin toward Barrett.
Everything in Duncan went still.
"Now," Sofia said, her voice low and sharp as a blade.
Marcus moved. He emerged from the dark north of the camp like a landslide, and the sound he made was not human, a rolling growl that bounced off the rock walls and came back doubled. The Coyotl spun. The guard raised his rifle, and Marcus hit him like a truck, sending him flying into the fire ring, scattering coals and sparks into the night.
Chaos.
Duncan grabbed Barrett's arm and hauled. "Move, move, move!" He got Barrett to his feet, the man stumbling, nearly dead weight, and Danny was there on the other side, shoulder under Barrett's arm, and they were running before the first shot cracked.
A bullet smacked into the rock beside Duncan's head, spraying grit. He ducked, dragged Barrett into the wash, and the darkness swallowed them as more shots rang out behind them, wild and blind.
Sofia was at their back, her knife red, her eyes bright. "Up the trail, go, go!"
They hit the slope at a sprint that was more fall than run, boots skidding on loose stone, Barrett half dragged between them. Below them the camp erupted, shouts and howls, and then the roar of an engine, then two. Duncan didn't look back. He just climbed, hands raw, lungs burning, every step a wrench toward the ridgeline.
Behind them, Marcus's deep bellow rose once more, and then the heavy final sound of something hitting the ground.
Then they were up. Over the lip. Into the cold waiting dark of the game trail, the Coyotl's camp falling away behind them, their shouts growing faint in the wind.
Duncan didn't stop. He kept moving until the sound of engines faded into the desert and the night was just the creak of leather and the ragged breathing of wolves who had made it out.
They collapsed in a shallow hollow below the ridge, hidden among the scrub. Barrett lay on his back, eyes closed, chest heaving. Danny knelt beside him, hands shaking, pressing a folded cloth to the worst of the cuts on his wrists.
Duncan looked down at his own hands. They were torn and bloody, the mate bite burning hot against his neck, and the road back to the clubhouse stretched out dark under the stars.
Somewhere out there, Jared's roar was still thundering toward a trap that no longer held a prize.
"We have to move," Duncan said. "They'll follow."