Chapter 15 Chapter fifteen
The mountaintop erupted into a symphony of mechanical violence. The Iron Wolves didn’t just arrive; they crashed into the clearing like a localized hurricane of leather and chrome. Dax led the charge, his Harley jumping the curb of the observation deck and skidding to a halt between me and the leveled rifles of Silas Thorne’s mercenaries. Behind him, Tank, Reaper, and twenty other brothers formed a semicircular wall of steel, their engines revving in a rhythmic, intimidating growl that challenged the thrum of the helicopter overhead.
"Get behind me, Mia!" Dax roared, his voice cutting through the wind. He didn't even look back to see if I complied; his focus was entirely on the men in tactical gear. He drew a heavy sidearm, his arm steady despite the blood soaking through the shoulder of his jacket.
Silas Thorne watched from the open door of the hovering helicopter, his face illuminated by the harsh spotlight. The "CEO" persona had completely vanished, replaced by the desperate, cornered look of a man who realized his empire had just been dismantled by a few megabytes of data. He grabbed a headset, shouting orders that were lost to the gale of the rotors, but his men on the ground didn't need a megaphone to understand. They were outnumbered, outgunned by the raw ferocity of the club, but they were trapped.
"Drop the weapons!" Dax commanded, his finger white against the trigger. "The feds have the data. The contract is dead, Thorne! There’s nothing left to kill for!"
One of the mercenaries, a younger man with a jagged scar across his nose, panicked. He shifted his aim toward Dax and fired.
The world slowed to a crawl. The muzzle flash was a bright orange spark in the darkness. I screamed Dax's name, but the sound was swallowed by the collective roar of the Iron Wolves as they returned fire. The clearing became a chaos of crossfire and shadows. I dove behind the Norton, the cold metal of the frame pressing against my cheek as bullets hissed through the air above me.
Dax didn't go down. He moved with a terrifying, focused aggression, closing the distance between himself and the lead SUV. He used the vehicle as cover, flanking the mercenaries with a tactical precision that made me realize he had been preparing for this kind of war his entire life. Beside him, Tank was a juggernaut, wading into the fray with a heavy chain in one hand and a snub-nosed revolver in the other, his roars of defiance echoing off the limestone cliffs.
Above us, the helicopter began to bank. Thorne wasn't going to stay and fight a losing battle; he was a shark who knew when the water had turned too bloody.
"He’s getting away!" I yelled, pointing toward the sky.
Dax looked up, his eyes narrowing. He saw the helicopter gaining altitude, heading toward the dark expanse of the valley. If Thorne disappeared now, he’d spend the rest of his life and his remaining millions hunting us from the shadows. The data was out, but the man was still a predator.
"Reaper! Cover the girl!" Dax shouted. He didn't wait for a reply. He sprinted back to his bike, his boots pounding the pavement.
"Dax, no! What are you doing?" I scrambled to my feet, ignoring Reaper’s hand reaching out to pull me back.
Dax kicked his Harley into gear, the rear tire screaming as he spun the bike around. He wasn't looking at the road; he was looking at the construction ramp on the edge of the summit—a steep, temporary wooden incline left behind by the crews working on the transmission tower. It pointed directly toward the low-flying path Thorne was taking to clear the ridge.
"He’s going to jump it," I whispered, the air leaving my lungs.
It was a suicide move. The gap was fifty feet of thin air over a thousand-foot drop. But Dax Steele wasn't thinking about the drop; he was thinking about the man who had ordered my death. He twisted the throttle, the engine of the Harley hitting a pitch I’d never heard before. He hit the ramp at eighty miles per hour.
The Harley soared into the night, a silhouette of chrome against the moon. For a heartbeat, the bike hung in the air, gravity seeming to lose its grip. Dax leaned forward, his hands steady on the bars, and as the helicopter passed beneath him, he didn't try to land on it. He reached into his vest and tossed a heavy, magnetic limpet mine—a piece of "found" ordnance from the foundry—directly into the open side door where Thorne stood.
Dax and the bike continued their arc, crashing onto the sloping grass of the far ridge in a violent tangle of metal and limbs.
A second later, the sky turned orange.
The explosion was a deafening roar that shook the very mountain. The helicopter transformed into a fireball, the rotors shearing off and spinning into the darkness like flaming boomerangs. Thorne’s legacy ended in a rain of burning debris that fell into the abyss below.
"Dax!" I screamed, running toward the edge of the cliff.
The mercenaries, seeing their boss incinerated in mid-air, finally dropped their guns. They were finished. The Iron Wolves surrounded them, but I didn't stay to watch the arrests. I scrambled down the steep, rocky slope of the far ridge, my hands bleeding as I tore through the brush.
I found him twenty yards down the incline. The Harley was a wreck of twisted steel, but Dax was sitting up, leaning against a pine tree. His face was a mask of blood and soot, and his left arm was hanging at an unnatural angle, but when he saw me, he let out a weak, raspy laugh.
"Tell me... I got him," he wheezed, his eyes struggling to stay open.
I fell to my knees beside him, my tears carving clean tracks through the grease on my face. I pulled him against me, my hands shaking as I checked for the pulse I couldn't live without. "You got him, you idiot. You almost killed yourself, but you got him."
Dax leaned his head back against my shoulder, his breathing shallow but steady. He looked up at the stars, then at the ring on my finger glinting in the firelight from the ridge. "Worth it," he whispered. "Every damn bit of it."
The sound of sirens approached—real ones this time, the federal task force arriving to secure the site. The war was over. where we didn't have to keep one eye on the rearview mirror.
"We’re going home, Dax," I said, kissing his forehead.
"Yeah," he murmured, his hand finding mine. "Home. I like the sound of that."