Page 35 of Dreadful

“How helpful,” Cruz drawls.

“I’ll need to get some things from my place,” Gage says, already pushing his chair back from the table.

Coco doesn’t look at him. She swirls the dregs of her mimosa.

Bishop stands, his movement cutting through the tension like a blade. “One hour,” he says, voice low and final. “Grab what you can’t live without. Be smart, and keep your eyes open.”

THIRTEEN

BISHOP

The weight of the morning sits behind my eyes like something I can’t blink out.

“Bell hasn’t texted me back yet.” Gage’s knee is going in the passenger seat, a metronome set to anxious. His phone clicks against his thigh on every other beat.

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

He shakes his head without looking up. “You don’t know that. What if Devil’s Hand got her?”

“She’s with Rafe.”

The knee stops. He holds his phone up between us like evidence. “Exactly my fucking point. He was with her last night too, and she still got shot. I should’ve gone with her instead.”

I fight not to roll my eyes. After the brunch from hell, we split up to get what we needed and get back to Coco’s within the hour. I’d wanted Rafe with me on the storage untie run. He’d already had one foot out the door behind Bellamy before I’d finished the sentence.

Fucking up the no one goes alone rule.

“Take that shit up with him.”

“Wow.” He stretches the word out, dropping his head back against the seat. “Such compassion from you, brother.”

I let his judgment slide off me. “If you’re gonna worry about someone, worry about Cruz. He’s the one out there alone.”

Gage snorts and cracks the window an inch, letting in a thin blade of salt air. “He’s going to the grocery store. Half a mile away. He’ll be fine.”

“Devil’s Hand gotta eat too, don’t they?” My knuckles tighten slightly on the wheel.

He tips his head back. “They’re not gonna take him out in the frozen foods aisle, man.”

Silence stretches between us, thick and useless. I can feel Gage’s judgment like a physical weight, but it’s nothing compared to the fucking chaos in my own head. Extraction routes, ammo counts, gaps in our security, cash flow. It’s all there, clicking through my mind on a merciless loop.

And underneath it, a darker current: the way Bellamy smiled at my brother when he made her a fucking burrito. The sound of fucking moaning drifting out of Cruz’s room this morning. The way Rafe refused to leave her side this morning.

Useless, distracting shit that has no place in a threat assessment. My hands tighten on the wheel.

Fuck. Get your shit together.

“I’m surprised Ma hasn’t texted anything.” Gage looks over at me. “Do you really think she’ll leave?”

“If she takes the threat seriously.”

Coco has been running Hollow Beach for so long, she hasn’t had to handle any threats of this size in… too long. There’s a part of me that worries she’s forgotten how. Hollow Beach takes care of its own—that’s something she pushed for years and years now. Fuck, my whole goddamn life she preached about family above all. Locals in Hollow Beach are the outermost ring of family.

And now the weight of two clubs coils around my shoulders, pinching tighter with every minute.

Devil’s Hand is back. They came at Hollow Beach once before, under their old president, and we buried that play so deep it should’ve stayed dead. But here they are again, and this time they’ve got the Widowmakers riding with them. Someone made promises, offered something worth the risk.

I need to know what that something is before it shows up at our door. There’s gotta be something from last night. Something said, something seen. A detail that tells me what they’re actually building toward.