Chapter 26: Blood and Accusations
Chapter 26
Silence dropped over the depot yard like a physical weight, broken only by the distant hum of a truck engine idling and the ragged sound of Piper’s breathing.
"That’s a lie," Piper said, but her voice cracked on the second word, and Rowe watched something cold slide through her own chest at the sound of it.
"Is it?" Lila said, blood still trickling from her split lip, but her smile never wavered, savoring the chaos she’d just detonated. "Ask her about the burner phone in her jacket pocket. The one she’s been checking every few hours since you locked her up like a guest instead of a suspect."
Reaper’s hand moved before Rowe could react, reaching into the borrowed jacket still draped over Piper’s shoulders, patting down the pockets with quick, methodical efficiency until his fingers closed around a small, cheap prepaid phone.
Piper’s face had gone the color of old ash.
"Jax," she started, "I can explain—"
"Explain fast," Reaper said, his voice gone glacial, the phone held up between them like an accusation made physical.
"It’s not what she’s making it sound like." Piper’s hands trembled as she reached for it, though Reaper didn’t release his grip. "I’ve had that phone since before the fire. I use it to stay in contact with someone on the inside of the Disciples’ East Chapter. Someone who’s been feeding me information for years—information that’s the only reason I’ve survived being embedded this deep for this long."
"A source," Rowe said slowly. "You’re telling us you have a source inside the Disciples."
"I’m telling you I’ve had eyes inside their organization since before Cal died," Piper said, desperation cracking through her usual composure. "How do you think I knew about the ridge ambush before it happened? How do you think I knew Coyote had been turned, or that Lila had access to the compound’s east hallway? I’ve been playing both sides for fifteen years to stay alive long enough to bring you the truth."
"Convenient," Lila spat from where Viper held her pinned. "Playing both sides. That’s exactly what a spy says right before you realize she’s been playing you the entire time."
"Shut up," Ghost snapped, shoving her roughly toward the waiting truck. "Nobody asked for your opinion on loyalty."
But the damage was already done, the seed of doubt planted deep and ugly in the tense silence of the yard.
Rowe watched Reaper’s face, searching for some sign of what he believed, and found only conflict—old love warring with the fresh, raw wound of having trusted someone who might have been lying to him from the very first moment.
"Check the phone," Rowe said quietly. "If she’s telling the truth, there’ll be a record. Messages, call logs, something that proves an actual source inside the Disciples instead of just a convenient story."
Reaper powered the phone on, scrolling through with grim, methodical focus while Piper stood frozen, watching him read through what amounted to her entire defense laid bare on a cracked screen.
Minutes passed.
The sun crested fully over the horizon now, washing the depot in flat, unforgiving morning light.
"There’s a contact," Reaper said finally, his voice carefully neutral. "Saved under ’M.’ Messages going back eight months. Warnings about timing, about movements, about—"
He stopped, scrolling further, his jaw tightening.
"About Cade."
Piper’s breath caught.
"What about Cade?" Rowe demanded, stepping closer despite every instinct screaming to keep her distance from whatever ugly truth was about to surface.
"A message from three weeks before he died," Reaper read slowly, each word dragging out of him like it cost something physical.
"Your nephew’s getting too close. Someone inside is going to move on him soon. You need to pull him back before it’s too late."
He looked up, meeting Piper’s eyes.
"You knew. You knew Cade was in danger, and you didn’t warn him. Didn’t warn any of us."
"I tried," Piper said, tears finally breaking through the composure she’d held since the fire. "I sent a warning through a contact I trusted, someone who was supposed to get word to Cal indirectly, without exposing my own position. It didn’t reach him in time. Or it reached the wrong person first."
Her voice broke entirely.
"I have spent every day since blaming myself for not finding a faster way, a safer way, any way that didn’t end with that boy dead in a ditch made to look like something he’d never have done to himself."
The rawness of it, the genuine grief cracking through fifteen years of careful control, was either the most convincing performance Rowe had ever witnessed, or the truth of a woman who had spent a decade and a half sacrificing everything—her name, her safety, her own family—trying to fix a wound she hadn’t caused but couldn’t stop bleeding.
Rowe looked at Reaper, searching his face for a verdict she wasn’t sure either of them was ready to deliver.
"The source," Reaper said finally. "This ’M.’ Who is it?"
Piper wiped her face with the back of her bound wrists, some fragile composure reasserting itself through sheer force of will.
"Marcus. Devil’s Disciples’ East Chapter Treasurer. Disillusioned with the leadership out there for years, sick of the violence, looking for a way out that didn’t get him killed for desertion. I offered him one, eventually, in exchange for information."
"Convenient that he’s not here to confirm any of this," Lila called from the truck, Viper’s grip the only thing keeping her from adding more.
"He’s not here," Piper said, ignoring her, eyes fixed only on Reaper, "because two days ago he went dark. Stopped responding. Which either means he got caught feeding me intel and paid for it the way informants always pay, or—"
"Or he’s the one who told Lila and Coyote exactly where to find the depot and how to set this trap," Rowe finished grimly.
Piper’s face confirmed it before she spoke.
"It’s possible. I won’t pretend otherwise. If Marcus turned, if someone got to him first, everything I’ve built over fifteen years just became a weapon pointed directly back at all of us."
Reaper closed the phone slowly, tucking it into his own cut instead of returning it to Piper, a small but unmistakable gesture of the trust still hanging in fragile balance between them.
"We’re done trusting anything on faith," he said, voice hard. "Every claim, every source, every piece of this puzzle gets verified independently before we act on it again."
"That includes you, Piper."
"I want to believe you. God knows I want to believe my own blood isn’t the reason my father’s brother died for nothing. But wanting to believe something and knowing it’s true stopped being the same thing the moment Lila pulled a gun on me an hour ago."
"That’s fair," Piper said quietly. "More than fair, actually, considering everything."
Viper’s radio crackled, breaking the tension.
"Prez, we’ve got Coyote patched up and secured. He’s talking, but not making sense yet—keeps saying something about a second location, a real depot instead of a decoy meeting point. Says the real handoff was never supposed to happen here."
Every head in the yard turned sharply toward the wounded prospect slumped against the truck’s tailgate, blood-soaked pant leg testament to Rowe’s earlier shot, but his eyes were clear enough, lucid enough, to know exactly what he’d just revealed.
"What second location?" Reaper demanded, closing the distance in three furious strides.
Coyote’s laugh came out wet and pained, but genuine.
"You really think Lila’s the top of this ladder? She’s middle management, same as me. The real handoff, the real ledgers everyone’s been chasing—"
He coughed, blood flecking his lips.
"They’re already gone. Moved out three hours ago. While you were busy chasing decoys and cousins and old family secrets, the people actually running this whole operation walked away clean with everything that actually matters."
Rowe felt the floor of her stomach drop out entirely.
"Where?" Reaper snarled, hauling Coyote up by his collar despite the wound clearly screaming through his leg. "Where did they take it?"
Coyote’s smile turned genuinely delighted despite his obvious pain, savoring the last card he had left to play.
"Somewhere you’ll never think to look," he said, "because it’s been hiding in plain sight this entire time."
His eyes flicked, deliberate and pointed, past Reaper’s shoulder toward the compound’s distant silhouette on the horizon—
—and toward the one person standing closest to it who hadn’t been present for any part of the depot ambush at all.
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