Page 20 of Monk

The door to church opened.

Then Pence walked in, grinning like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like he hadn’t just made bail on charges that would’ve gotten him cut to pieces in any prison yard in the country.Like he couldn’t see the fury in every brother’s face, or the way Montana’s hand had already drifted to the gun at his hip.

“Hey, boys,” Pence said, his voice light, almost cheerful. “Miss me?”

Everything happened at once.

Montana’s hand came up, the gun already drawn, already aimed.

Kansas turned, his mouth opening in a shout that never came, and I sat frozen, my mind screaming at me to move, to stop this, to dosomething.

The gunshot detonated in the enclosed room. Pence’s head snapped back, and a neat red hole opened in the center of his forehead. For a split second, he just stood there, frozen in that stupid, oblivious grin.

Then he crumpled. His body hit the floor with a wet, heavy thud that echoed in the sudden, terrible silence.

I stared at the corpse.

At the blood pooling beneath Pence’s head, spreading across the scarred wooden floor in a dark, slow tide. At the way his eyes stayed open, fixed on nothing.

Montana lowered the gun slowly, his expression carved from stone. “It’s done,” he said, his voice flat.

Kansas stood frozen, his face ashen, his eyes locked on Pence’s body.

No one moved.

No one spoke.

The weight of what had just happened pressed down on the room like a physical thing, crushing the air from my lungs.

I thought about the U.S. Marshals and the investigation that would come crawling after this. About the questions they’d ask, the records they’d pull, the scrutiny they’d bring down on every patched man in the club.

About Abigail, safe at home and clueless that her brother had just watched a man die. About the life I’d built out of lies, secrets, and the desperate hope that I could keep her untouched by any of it. And I realized, with a cold certainty that settled deep in my bones, that everything was about to come apart.

Justice had been served.

But I had a feeling the price was going to be higher than any of us could pay.

CHAPTER FIVE

Monk

I couldn’t breathe in that room anymore.

The walls felt like they were closing in, the air thick with gunpowder, blood, and the weight of what we’d just done. What Montana had done. What the rest of us had stood there and let happen. I shoved back my chair, the legs scraping hard against the floor, and walked out of church without a word.

No one stopped me. No one said a goddamn thing.

The clubhouse had dissolved into chaos—brothers shouting, glass breaking, rage bouncing off the walls. I didn’t look. Didn’t stop. I just crossed to the bar, snatched up my keys, and headed for the door like the Devil himself was on my heels.

My Harley waited in the lot, chrome flashing beneath the harsh Oklahoma sun. Heat shimmered off the asphalt in dirty waves, but I barely felt it. I ran my hand over the tank, feeling the warmth of the metal sink into my palm. That bike was more than steel and engine. It was the one thing in my life that never lied to me. Twist the throttle, and it answered. Lean into a turn, and it held. It was freedom, or the closest thing to it I’d ever found.

I swung a leg over the seat, settled into the worn leather molded to me by years of hard miles, and jammed in the key. The engine kicked over with that deep Harley growl that always hit me somewhere low in the chest. The vibration climbed through my bones, up my spine, and for one brief second, the rest of theworld dropped away. It was just me and the machine, same as it had always been.

And then I rode. I twisted the throttle and pulled out of that dusty lot, leaving everything behind me in a cloud of exhaust and possibility.

The highway unspooled in front of me like a black wound carved through dry grass and red dirt, vanishing into a horizon bruised purple with oncoming dusk. Wind tore at my face, my hair, my cut, slapping my vest against my chest with a violence that matched what was clawing around inside me. My knuckles ached white against the handlebars. The engine’s roar swallowed most of it—though the gunshot still ricocheted through my skull, along with Kansas’ broken voice, and the wet, ugly thud of Pence’s body hitting the floor like butchered meat. But no matter how hard I rode or how many miles I put behind me, I couldn’t outrun what I’d seen. What I’d allowed. The memory clung like oil—thick, black, impossible to wash off.

But it couldn’t drown out my thoughts.