Chapter 57. Hunt the Traitor

Engines coughed to life and died again as riders argued over them, some shouting for action, others snapping to hold the line. The fire pit spat sparks into the pale dawn, and shadows stretched thin across bruised faces.

At first, the yard rang with the chaos of flared tempers and bad options. Boots crunched on glass and gravel; voices collided in the smoke. Most had slept in snatches, if at all. No one looked like themselves—eyes rimmed pink, cuts split open and leaking on cheeks, adrenaline already burning off and leaving only the hollow. Every few minutes, someone jerked a thumb at the gate or muttered about “the last stand,” as if this place ever belonged to anyone but ghosts.

“He’s gone,” one rider barked near the pit, hunched low over a battered dirt bike. “We lock the yard down, wait them out.” The others clustered in small, nervous knots, watching the chain-link quiver in the morning wind.

“And let him hand them the rest of Hale’s map?” another snapped, spi