Ten years is a long time to carry a secret that tastes like copper and cold rain.
I’m the Tail Gunner for the Iron Oaths. My job is to watch the rear, to make sure no one gets left behind.
But ten years ago, in a ditch outside of Hazard, I left my best friend behind in the darkest way possible.
Caleb didn’t die from a rival gang’s bullet. Not the one that mattered.
He was gut-shot, screaming, and the Reeds were closing in with literal butcher knives.
He looked at me—not with fear, but with a plea.
I did what a brother does. I gave him peace.
Now, I spend my days fixing his widow’s porch and watching his son grow into a man who has his father’s exact smile.
Beth thinks I’m a hero. She thinks I tried to save him.
The truth is, I’m the one who finished him, and every time she kisses me, I taste the gunpowder from a decade ago.
FULL STORY
Chapter 1
The humidity in the Appalachian foothills didn’t just hang in the air; it sat on you like a wet wool blanket. It made the grease on Reaper’s hands feel thicker, slicker, as he worked the wrench against a stubborn bolt on his 2012 Street Glide. The garage smelled of burnt oil, stale Marlboros, and the looming threat of a thunderstorm.
He was forty-two, but his knees felt sixty, and his back felt like it had been put through a woodchipper. Ten years of riding “Tail Gunner” for the Iron Oaths had done that. Being the last man in the formation meant eating everyone else’s dust and exhaust, and being the first one to pull a sidearm when things went south from behind.
“Jax?”
The voice was soft, but it cut through the low rumble of the radio playing some Nashville country station. Reaper didn’t look up immediately. He didn’t want Beth to see the way his jaw tightened every time she used his real name. To the club, he was Reaper. To the world, he was a ghost in leather. To Beth, he was the man who had brought her husband’s body home in a pine box.
“In the back, Beth,” he grunted, finally wiping his hands on a rag that was more black than white.
She walked in, navigating the graveyard of rusted parts and half-finished projects. She was wearing her nurse’s scrubs, the light blue fabric looking unnervingly clean against the grime of his world. Behind her, seven-year-old Leo trailed along, his eyes glued to the rows of chrome.
“I brought those Tupperware containers back,” Beth said, setting a stack of plastic bowls on a workbench. “The pot roast was good. Leo ate three helpings.”
“Kid’s growing,” Reaper said. He looked at Leo. The boy had Caleb’s jawline. The same slight cleft in the chin that had made Caleb a hit with the girls back in high school. Every time Leo smiled, it felt like a physical blow to Reaper’s ribs.
“He wants to know if the bike is fixed,” Beth said, her voice dropping a register. There was a warmth there that Reaper didn’t know what to do with. It felt unearned. It felt dangerous.
“Almost,” Reaper said. “Primary drive was slipping. Just needed a little grease and a lot of swearing.”
“You swear a lot, Jax?” Leo asked, stepping closer to the bike.
“Only when things don’t listen,” Reaper replied. He reached out and ruffled the kid’s hair, then pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned. He shouldn’t be touching the kid. He shouldn’t be in this garage. He should be miles away, buried in some dive bar in Ohio where no one knew his face.
“Gabe’s looking for you,” Beth said. Her tone shifted. The warmth vanished, replaced by the weary caution she always carried when talking about her brother. “He’s at the clubhouse. Said something about the anniversary coming up.”
Reaper felt the familiar itch at the base of his skull. The anniversary. Ten years since the shootout at the Reed farm. Ten years since the Iron Oaths had tried to expand their territory and ended up in a meat grinder.
“Gabe needs to find a hobby,” Reaper said, turning back to the bike. “Maybe something that doesn’t involve sticking his nose in club business.”
“He’s just protective, Jax. You know how he is. He never liked the Oaths. He certainly didn’t like Caleb being in it.”
“Caleb made his own choices, Beth.”
The words felt like ash in his mouth. It was the lie they all lived by. The idea that in a town where the mines were closed and the opioid clinics were the only thing growing, joining a motorcycle club was a “choice” and not a survival tactic.
“I know he did,” Beth whispered. She stepped closer, the scent of antiseptic and lavender following her. “I just… I’m glad you’re still here. Leo needs to see what a good man looks like.”
Reaper didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He picked up the wrench and started tightening a bolt that was already tight. He waited for the sound of her footsteps to retreat, for the screen door to creak and moan, and for the silence of the garage to return.
Five minutes later, Stone walked in.
Stone was the club’s Enforcer, a man who looked like he’d been carved out of a granite quarry and then dipped in cheap ink. He was ten years younger than Reaper and had half the conscience. He leaned against the doorframe, picking his teeth with a splinter of wood.
“Widow’s looking good,” Stone said. “You’re playing house pretty hard, Tail Gunner.”
“Shut your mouth, Stone,” Reaper said, not looking up.
“Just saying. The Prez thinks it’s sweet. Me? I think it’s messy. You spend too much time looking at the past, you’re gonna miss the truck coming at you from the front.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“Yeah. Gabe’s at the bar. He’s drunk, he’s loud, and he’s talking about ‘inconsistencies’ again. Pops wants you to go handle it. Quietly.”
Reaper dropped the wrench. It hit the concrete floor with a heavy, final thud. He looked at his hands. They were shaking, just a little.
“I’ll handle it,” Reaper said.
“See that you do. We don’t need a local deputy’s brother-in-law digging through old dirt. Especially not the dirt we buried Caleb in.”
Stone left, his heavy boots echoing on the pavement. Reaper stood in the middle of his garage, the air thick with the smell of rain. He remembered the smell of that field ten years ago. It hadn’t smelled like rain. It had smelled like iron, wild onions, and the frantic, wet breath of a dying man.
He reached into the pocket of his vest and felt the small, hard shape of a spent shell casing. He carried it everywhere. It was his penance. It was his anchor. And if Gabe didn’t stop digging, it was going to be his noose.
Chapter 2
The Lucky Horseshoe was the kind of place where the floorboards were permanently tacky with spilled beer and the lighting was designed to hide the age of the patrons. It was tucked into a bend in the road three miles outside of town, far enough away that the local cops usually looked the other way unless someone ended up through a windshield.
Reaper pulled his bike into the gravel lot, the engine’s dying rumble sounding like a growl in the humid evening. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be back in his garage, or better yet, asleep in his small, quiet house where the ghosts only came out after midnight.
He pushed through the heavy oak door. The AC was hummimg, struggling against the heat, and the jukebox was low. Gabe was at the far end of the bar, a half-empty pitcher of amber liquid in front of him. He looked like Beth, but the features were sharpened by bitterness.
Reaper took a stool two seats away. He didn’t order. The bartender, a guy named Mike who had lost a finger in the mines, just nodded and went back to cleaning a glass.
“Jax,” Gabe said, his voice thick. He didn’t look over. “The hero of the hour.”
“You’re making a scene, Gabe,” Reaper said quietly. “Beth’s worried about you.”
“Beth’s worried about everyone. That’s her problem. She thinks the world is a wounded bird she can nursback to health. She doesn’t realize some birds are just crows.” Gabe turned his head then, his eyes bloodshot and narrow. “I saw the autopsy report again today. The old one. From the archives.”
Reaper felt a cold drop of sweat slide down his spine. “Why would you be looking at that? It’s been a decade.”
“Because it never made sense. The police report said the Reeds opened fire from thirty yards. Scattern-gun stuff. Mostly birdshot and some .22 rounds. Caleb had three wounds in his chest. Messy, but survivable if you got him to the hospital fast enough.”
Gabe leaned in closer. The smell of cheap lager was overwhelming.
“But the fourth wound, Jax. The one in his temple. That wasn’t a .22. It was a .45. Point blank. Contact burn on the skin.”
Reaper stared at his own reflection in the back-bar mirror. He looked tired. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept since 2016.
“I told the cops back then,” Reaper said, his voice steady, a practiced lie he’d told a thousand times. “One of the Reeds got close. I didn’t see who. It was dark, Gabe. There was smoke everywhere. I was trying to lay down cover fire so the boys could get Caleb out.”
“You were his Tail Gunner,” Gabe spat. “You were supposed to be his shadow. How does a man get close enough to put a gun to my brother-in-law’s head while you’re standing right there?”
“I was pinned down. I’ve lived with that every day for ten years. You think you’re the only one who misses him?”
“I think you’re the only one who knows what really happened in that ditch,” Gabe said. He stood up, his stool screeching against the floor. “I’m going to find that gun, Jax. The cops never recovered the weapons from the Reeds. They said the family tossed ’em in the river. But I’m thinking maybe that .45 is still around. Maybe it’s in a safe. Or maybe it’s buried in someone’s backyard.”
Gabe stumbled toward the door. Reaper didn’t follow him. He sat there, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He remembered the ditch. He remembered the way the mud had felt—slick and cold, smelling of ancient rot. Caleb had been on his back, his hands clutching his stomach, his blood looking black in the moonlight. The Reeds were shouting, their voices high and jagged with meth-fueled rage. They were coming with knives and tire irons. They didn’t want to kill the bikers; they wanted to take them. They wanted to show the Oaths what happened to trespassers.
Caleb had grabbed Reaper’s vest. His eyes were wide, darting. He’d seen what the Reeds did to captives. He’d seen the “trophies” they kept.
“Don’t let ’em take me, Jax,” Caleb had wheezed. His lungs were filling with blood. He was drowning on dry land. “Please. Don’t let ’em…”
Reaper had heard the brush breaking twenty feet away. The Reeds were laughing.
He’d pulled his Colt .45. He’d looked into his best friend’s eyes. And he’d done the only thing a brother could do.
“You okay, Reaper?” Mike the bartender asked, pausing in front of him.
“Fine,” Reaper said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty, slapping it on the bar. “Keep the change.”
He walked out into the night. The rain had finally started—a slow, miserable drizzle that blurred the world. He climbed onto his bike and kicked it over. The engine roared, a violent, mechanical scream that drowned out the memory of Caleb’s last breath.
He didn’t go home. He rode. He rode past Beth’s house, seeing the single light on in the kitchen. He imagined her sitting there, waiting for Gabe, or maybe waiting for him. He imagined the life they could have—the quiet, the safety, the softness.
But as long as that .45 was hidden in the floorboards of his garage, and as long as the shell casing was in his pocket, that life was a hallucination. He was a murderer posing as a savior, and the debt was coming due.
Chapter 3
The porch light at Beth’s house was a pale yellow beacon in the misty Appalachian night. Reaper stood at the bottom of the wooden steps, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He had no business being here at 9:00 PM on a Tuesday, but the conversation with Gabe had left him feeling untethered, drifting toward the only thing that felt real.
He knocked. A moment later, the door opened. Beth stood there in an oversized gray sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a messy knot. She looked tired, the kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.
“Jax? Is everything okay? Is it Gabe?”
“Gabe’s fine,” Reaper said, his voice sounding gravelly even to his own ears. “He’s at the Horseshoe. Just… I wanted to check on you.”
Beth’s expression softened, a look of genuine relief washing over her face that made Reaper’s stomach turn. “Come in. It’s freezing out there.”
The house was small and smelled of cinnamon and floor wax. It was the polar opposite of the clubhouse. There were no piles of dirty magazines or the scent of stale beer here. Instead, there were school drawings on the fridge and a basket of clean laundry on the sofa.
“Leo’s asleep,” she said, nodding toward the hallway. “I was just about to have some tea. Do you want… well, I have coffee, but it’s decaf.”
“Tea’s fine,” Reaper said. He sat at the small kitchen table, feeling far too large for the room. His leather vest looked aggressive against the floral wallpaper.
They sat in silence for a few minutes while the kettle whistled and the steam rose. Beth set a mug in front of him. Her hand brushed his, and for a second, he wanted to grab it and never let go. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to scream the truth until the walls shook.
“Gabe is getting worse, isn’t he?” she asked softly, sitting across from him.
“He’s just stuck, Beth. Some people get stuck in the day things went wrong and they can’t find the exit.”
“And you?” she asked, her eyes searching his. “Are you stuck, Jax?”
Reaper looked down at his tea. “I’m the Tail Gunner. I stay in the back. I see the whole road. It’s hard to move forward when you’re always looking at what’s behind you.”
“Caleb loved you like a brother,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. “He always said if anything happened, you’d be the one to make it right. And you have. You’ve been here for us more than my own family. More than the club.”
“I haven’t made anything right, Beth,” Reaper said, his voice cracking. “I just… I’m just trying to keep the roof from caving in.”
“You did your best that night. Nobody blames you for not being able to save him from all of them.”
The “all of them” stung. The lie was so layered now. The Reeds, the shootout, the chaos—it was all a convenient screen for the three seconds that actually mattered.
“I look at Leo,” Reaper said, changing the subject because he couldn’t breathe under the weight of her gratitude. “He’s got Caleb’s hands. The way he holds a wrench.”
“He asks about him more lately. He asked if his dad was brave.” Beth reached across the table and took Reaper’s hand. This time, he didn’t pull away. Her skin was warm, slightly damp from the tea mug. “I told him his dad was the bravest man I knew, and that he died protecting his brothers. Was I lying to him, Jax?”
Reaper felt the shell casing in his pocket pressing against his thigh. He looked Beth in the eye, and he felt the soul-crushing weight of his own damnation.
“No,” Reaper said, his voice a dead thing. “You weren’t lying. He was brave.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
She leaned forward and kissed him. It wasn’t a tentative kiss; it was a desperate one, born of years of shared grief and silent proximity. It tasted like tea and longing. Reaper kissed her back, his hands tangling in her hair, and for a fleeting, beautiful moment, he forgot about the ditch. He forgot about the blood. He forgot about the .45.
But then he pulled away. The reality of who he was hit him like a cold bucket of water. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t build a life on top of a grave he’d dug himself.
“I have to go,” he said, standing up so abruptly he nearly tipped the table.
“Jax, wait—”
“I can’t, Beth. I just… I can’t.”
He bolted out the door, ignoring her call. He scrambled onto his bike and tore out of the driveway, the tires throwing gravel against the side of the house. He rode until the wind froze the sweat on his face.
He ended up at the old quarry, a jagged hole in the earth filled with black water. He stood at the edge, the bike idling behind him, its headlight cutting a path into the darkness.
He pulled the shell casing out of his pocket. He held it over the edge. Just drop it, he thought. Drop it and the gun, and never look back.
But he couldn’t. The casing was the only thing left of the truth. If he dropped it, the lie would be the only thing left. And as much as he hated the truth, he feared the lie becoming his entire reality even more.
He put the casing back in his pocket and rode back toward the clubhouse, where the neon sign of the Iron Oaths flickered like a warning light.
Chapter 4
The atmosphere inside the Iron Oaths clubhouse was thick with tobacco smoke and the sharp, metallic tang of gun oil. It was “Maintenance Night,” a tradition where the brothers gathered to clean their sidearms and talk shop. Normally, Reaper found a strange peace in the ritual, the repetitive motions of stripping and oiling a weapon acting as a form of meditation. Tonight, it felt like sitting in a room full of ticking bombs.
Pops, the club’s President and its oldest member, sat at the head of the scarred oak table. He was a man who seemed to be made of leather and white beard hair, his eyes two sharp blue sparks behind thick glasses.
“Tail Gunner,” Pops said, nodding as Reaper took his seat. “You look like you’ve been dragging a plow.”
“Just the rain, Pops. Gets in the joints,” Reaper replied. He pulled his Colt .45 from its holster and laid it on a clean cloth. The weight of it felt different tonight. Heavier.
Next to him, Stone was already halfway through cleaning his Glock. Stone didn’t use a cloth; he used a greasy rag and a sense of bored efficiency.
“Heard you had a run-in with the deputy’s brother again,” Stone said, not looking up. “The Horseshoe was buzzing.”
The table went quiet. Twelve pairs of eyes turned toward Reaper. In the club, there was no such thing as a private conversation.
“Gabe’s drunk and grieving,” Reaper said, his voice level. “It’s the season for it.”
“He’s talking about ballistics, Jax,” Stone said, finally looking up. His eyes were cold, devoid of the camaraderie that was supposed to bind them. “He’s talking about contact burns and .45 rounds. That ain’t just grieving. That’s investigating.”
Pops leaned forward, the light reflecting off his silver rings. “We took care of Caleb’s family, Jax. We paid the funeral, we’ve kept the roof over Beth’s head. We did right by a fallen brother. But the club can’t have people digging in old holes. It brings up smells nobody wants to deal with.”
“I’ll handle Gabe,” Reaper said.
“How?” Stone asked. “By kissing his sister? We know where you’ve been spending your nights. You’re getting soft, Reaper. You’re letting the widow’s bed blur your vision.”
Reaper stood up so fast his chair skidded back and hit the wall. The sound was like a gunshot. “You watch your mouth when you talk about her, Stone. She’s a club widow. She deserves respect.”
Stone stood too, a slow, predatory movement. “She deserves the truth, don’t she? Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she just needs a man who isn’t haunted by the fact that he was too slow to save his best friend.”
Stone didn’t know. No one at this table knew, except maybe Pops, who had a way of seeing through walls. They all thought Reaper had failed to protect Caleb. They thought his guilt was the guilt of a coward, not the guilt of a man who had done the unthinkable.
“Enough,” Pops barked. He slammed his palm on the table. “Sit down, both of you.”
They sat, but the tension remained, a jagged thing in the air.
“Reaper,” Pops said, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “We have a run tomorrow. Down to the border of Mingo County. Just a delivery. No drama. I want you on the tail. Keep your head on a swivel. And when we get back… you make sure Gabe finds something else to talk about. Am I clear?”
“Clear, Pops.”
The rest of the night was a blur of mechanical clicks and the smell of Hoppe’s No. 9. Reaper cleaned his gun with a ferocity that bordered on mania. He scrubbed the barrel until it shone like a mirror, but he couldn’t scrub away the memory of the flash in the dark.
The next morning, the Oaths rode out. The Appalachian mountains were beautiful in the early light, the mist clinging to the hollows like ghosts. But as Reaper watched the line of bikes ahead of him, all he could see was the vulnerability of it. The way a single well-placed shot could shatter the whole formation.
The “delivery” was a exchange of heavy duffel bags with a crew from across the state line. It was quick, dirty, and tense. As they were packing up, a local kid—no older than eighteen—tried to get cute, reaching for a pocketknife when he thought Stone was shorting them on the count.
Stone didn’t hesitate. He didn’t warn. He just drew his weapon and pistol-whipped the boy across the face, the crack of bone audible over the idling engines. The boy slumped into the dirt, blood blooming across his cheek.
“He’s just a kid, Stone!” Reaper yelled, stepping forward.
Stone looked at Reaper, his face a mask of indifference. “He’s a threat. You should learn the difference, Tail Gunner. Or maybe you forgot what happens when you hesitate.”
Reaper looked at the boy in the dirt. He saw Caleb. He saw every person the club had stepped on to keep their “brotherhood” alive. The seduction of belonging, the myth of the outlaw hero—it was all just a thin veneer over a pile of broken bodies.
On the ride back, the rain returned, harder this time. Reaper hung back, letting the gap between him and the pack grow. He felt the weight of the club, the weight of Beth, the weight of the gun.
When he finally pulled into his driveway, he saw a truck parked there. It wasn’t Beth’s. It was Gabe’s.
Gabe was sitting on the porch steps, a folder in his lap. He wasn’t drunk this time. He looked sober, sharp, and dangerous.
“Found something, Jax,” Gabe said, his voice flat. “Something the coroner missed, but the lab tech didn’t.”
Reaper stayed on his bike, the engine cooling with a series of metallic pings. “Go home, Gabe.”
“I can’t. Not until you tell me why the bullet they pulled from Caleb’s head had the same unique rifling marks as the one they pulled from a deer you shot three months before he died.”
The world stopped. The rain seemed to freeze in mid-air.
“You and Caleb used to hunt together, didn’t you?” Gabe continued, standing up. “You used the same gun. Your lucky .45. The one you told the cops the Reeds stole.”
Reaper didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was a statue of leather and regret.
“He was my brother, Jax,” Gabe whispered, his voice breaking. “And you killed him. You didn’t just fail him. You executed him.”
Chapter 5
The silence that followed Gabe’s accusation was louder than any engine Reaper had ever heard. It was a vacuum, sucking the air out of his lungs. He looked at Gabe, really looked at him, and saw the jagged ruin of a man who just wanted an answer that wouldn’t hurt. But there were no such answers left.
“Gabe,” Reaper began, his voice a dry rasp. “You don’t understand what it was like out there.”
“I understand ballistics, Jax! I understand that you lied for ten years! My sister has been sleeping with the man who put her husband in the ground!” Gabe was screaming now, his face turning a frantic shade of purple. He threw the folder at Reaper’s feet. Papers scattered in the mud—black and white photos of a crime scene that had never really closed.
The front door of the house next door opened. An old woman peered out, her face tight with worry. This was a small town; voices carried, and secrets had a way of bleeding into the soil.
“Come inside,” Reaper said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “Now.”
Gabe laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. “Why? So you can finish me too? So you can keep the secret safe?”
“I said inside!” Reaper stepped forward, the authority of the Tail Gunner momentarily overriding his guilt. He grabbed Gabe by the shoulder and shoved him toward the garage.
They burst into the workspace, the smell of grease and cold metal enveloping them. Reaper slammed the door shut and turned the lock.
“Tell me,” Gabe demanded, backing into the workbench. “Tell me you didn’t do it.”
Reaper looked at the floor. He saw the spot where he’d dropped the wrench the day Beth had visited. He saw the life he’d tried to build, and he saw it burning.
“I did it,” Reaper said.
Gabe’s breath hitched. He looked like he’d been punched in the gut. All the anger seemed to drain out of him, replaced by a hollow, sickening horror. “Why? Why, Jax? He was your best friend. He would have died for you.”
“He was dying, Gabe! He was gut-shot. He was screaming. Do you know what a gut-shot feels like? It’s not like the movies. It’s hours of agony while your own insides poison you. And the Reeds… they were twenty feet away. They were coming with saws, Gabe. They didn’t want him dead. They wanted him alive so they could take their time. They’d done it before to a kid from the Vipers. We found him three days later. They’d cut his tongue out and left him to bleed in a dog crate.”
Reaper’s heart was pounding so hard he thought it might crack a rib. The memories were flooding back now, no longer a trickle but a dam-break.
“Caleb looked at me,” Reaper continued, his voice shaking. “He knew. He’d seen the pictures. He grabbed my vest and he begged me. He didn’t beg me to save him. He begged me to end it. He didn’t want to go into that basement. He didn’t want Beth to see what was left of him after they were done.”
Gabe was shaking his head, tears finally spilling over. “That wasn’t your choice to make. You should have fought. You should have carried him.”
“There were twelve of them! I was out of ammo for the long gun. I had three rounds in the Colt. One for him, and two for me if I couldn’t get to the bike. I chose to give him the only mercy he had left.”
“Mercy?” Gabe spat the word like it was poison. “You call that mercy? You spent ten years watching my sister cry. You spent ten years playing father to his son while you were the one who made him an orphan!”
“I know!” Reaper roared. He grabbed a heavy metal canister from the bench and hurled it across the room. It shattered a window, glass spraying into the rain outside. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t see his face every time I close my eyes? You think I don’t feel the gunpowder every time I touch her?”
The silence returned, heavier than before.
“You have to tell her,” Gabe said quietly.
“It will kill her, Gabe. She finally has some peace. She finally thinks the world isn’t just a series of tragedies.”
“It’s a lie, Jax. And you’re a murderer as long as you keep it. If you don’t tell her, I will. And then I’m going to the Sheriff.”
“The club won’t let you,” Reaper said, and he hated himself for the threat. “Stone and the others… if they find out you’re digging, they won’t care about the ‘mercy’ part. They’ll just see a snitch.”
“Let them come,” Gabe said, his voice remarkably steady. “I’d rather be dead than live in a world where you’re the hero.”
Gabe turned and walked toward the door. Reaper didn’t stop him. He watched Gabe walk out into the rain, his shoulders hunched, the folder of evidence left behind in the dirt.
Reaper sank onto his stool. He looked at his hands. They were the hands of a mechanic. The hands of a brother. The hands of an executioner.
He knew what he had to do. He couldn’t let Gabe go to Beth. Not like that. If the truth was going to come out, it had to come from the source of the rot.
He picked up the phone. His fingers hovered over Beth’s name. Then he put it down.
He didn’t call. He walked to the corner of the garage and pulled up a loose floorboard. Beneath it sat a small, oiled wooden box. Inside was the Colt .45.
He loaded a single round.
He wasn’t going to kill Gabe. He wasn’t going to kill himself. He was going to take the gun to Beth’s house, and he was going to lay it on her kitchen table.
The debt was ten years overdue. It was time to pay.
Chapter 6
The walk to Beth’s house felt like a trek through a graveyard. Every house Reaper passed, every flickering streetlamp, felt like a witness to his shame. The rain had slowed to a miserable mist that clung to his leather and turned the world into a gray smear.
He reached her porch. The light was on. She was always awake this late, a habit born from years of waiting for a husband who never came home, and now, waiting for a peace that was about to be shattered.
He didn’t knock. He just opened the door.
Beth was in the living room, folding Leo’s clothes. She looked up, a smile starting to form on her face, but it died the moment she saw his expression.
“Jax? What happened? Your face…”
He walked into the kitchen and sat at the table where they had shared tea just twenty-four hours ago. He reached into his waistband and pulled out the .45. He laid it on the wood. The metal looked cold and indifferent under the yellow light of the overhead fixture.
“Jax, what are you doing with that?” she asked, her voice trembling. She stayed in the doorway, her hands clutching a pair of small denim jeans.
“Gabe found the report, Beth,” Reaper said. He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. “He found the ballistics.”
The silence in the room became absolute. Even the hum of the refrigerator seemed to die away.
“What ballistics?” she whispered.
“The bullet that killed Caleb didn’t come from a Reed gun. It came from this one.” He tapped the barrel of the Colt. “My gun.”
Beth didn’t scream. She didn’t faint. She just stood there, and the light seemed to leave her eyes, replaced by a dull, flickering shock. “No. No, you said… you said you tried to save him. You said they got close.”
“They were getting close,” Reaper said, and then he told her. He told her about the ditch. He told her about the smell of the mud and the sound of the Reeds laughing. He told her about the look in Caleb’s eyes—the pleading, the terror of the basement, the request for a brother’s grace.
“He asked me, Beth. He begged me. He didn’t want to be a trophy. He didn’t want to be a piece of meat.”
Reaper finally looked up. Beth was leaning against the doorframe, her face as white as a sheet. She looked like she was seeing him for the first time, and the person she was seeing was a monster.
“You shot him,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You put a gun to his head and you pulled the trigger.”
“I gave him peace.”
“Peace?” She finally broke. She lunged forward, not to hit him, but to grab the gun. He moved it out of her reach, and she collapsed onto the chair opposite him, sobbing with a violence that shook her entire body. “You took him from me! You took Leo’s father! You decided he didn’t have a chance! You decided he was already dead!”
“He was already dead, Beth! The gut shots… he wouldn’t have made it to the road.”
“You don’t know that! People survive! Miracles happen! But you… you wanted to be the judge. You wanted to be the one who decided when it was over!”
She looked at him with a hatred so pure it felt like a physical heat.
“Every time you touched me,” she whispered, her voice thick with bile. “Every time you looked at my son. You were thinking about the way his father’s brains looked on the grass. You were thinking about the way you snuffed him out.”
“I was thinking about how much I loved him,” Reaper said, his own tears finally falling. “I was thinking about how I’d give anything to be in that ditch instead of him.”
“Then go,” she said.
“Beth—”
“Go! Get out of my house! Get out of this town! If I ever see your face again, I’ll call the police myself. I don’t care about the Oaths. I don’t care about anything. You’re a murderer, Jax. You’re not a brother. You’re just a man who was too scared to let his friend suffer, so you made sure I’d suffer for the rest of my life instead.”
Reaper stood up. He left the gun on the table. He didn’t need it anymore. The weapon had done its job; it had finished the work it started ten years ago.
He walked out the door. He didn’t look back at the house. He didn’t look at the garage. He walked toward the clubhouse, but he didn’t go inside. He went to the parking lot where his bike sat, the chrome dulled by the rain.
Stone was standing by the gate, smoking a cigarette. He looked at Reaper, then at the empty holster on his hip.
“You handled it?” Stone asked.
“Yeah,” Reaper said. “It’s handled.”
“Pops wants to see you. We’ve got a meeting about the Mingo run.”
“Tell Pops I’m retired,” Reaper said.
Stone laughed. “You don’t retire from the Oaths, Tail Gunner. You know the rules.”
“Then tell him to come find me,” Reaper said. He climbed onto his bike. He didn’t put on his helmet. He didn’t put on his gloves.
He kicked the engine over. It roared to life, a hollow, mechanical sound that echoed through the quiet valley. He pulled out of the lot and headed toward the highway.
He didn’t know where he was going. Maybe north, where the mountains turned into flat land. Maybe south, where the heat would burn the memory of the rain out of his skin.
As he hit the open road, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the spent shell casing. He held it in the wind for a moment, feeling the vibration of the bike through his palm.
Then, he opened his hand.
The brass flickered in the taillight’s glow for a split second before it vanished into the dark, lost somewhere on a stretch of asphalt that led to nowhere.
Reaper twisted the throttle. He didn’t feel like a hero. He didn’t even feel like a man. He just felt like a ghost, finally catching up to the rest of his life.
The rain continued to fall, washing the salt from his face, but the copper taste of the truth remained, stubborn and cold, long after the town was nothing but a pinprick of light in the rearview mirror.
