Chapter 6 - The Rusted Key
The headlights swept across the timber canopy above them, casting long, fractured shadows through the pines. Jax dragged himself into the hollow of the collapsed shed, Toby scrambling close behind, their backs pressed against the rotting cedar timbers.
Jax held a finger to his lips, wincing as he pulled a faded handkerchief from his hip pocket, biting down on it while he used his knife to cut away the blood-soaked denim sleeve around his shoulder. The bullet had torn through the meat of the deltoid, missing the bone, but the blood flowed thick and steady.
He took the brass key from Toby’s trembling palm. It was an antique tumbler key, the head stamped with an insignia that made Jax’s stomach drop: the crossed hammers of Saint Jude’s Chapel, a dilapidated parish twenty miles north in the ghost town of Red Rock.
"Elena had this?" Jax whispered, staring at the metal in the pale moonlight.
Toby nodded, rubbing his nose on his sleeve. "She kept it in her boot. When the men came to our trailer, she gave it to me and pushed me out the bathroom window. She told me not to look back."
A heavy silence settled between them. Elena had never been a thief, but she was the sister of Reyes—the president of the Dead Pines. Fifteen years ago, when Jax broke away from the club, Elena was supposed to ride out with him. But when the gunsmoke cleared at the border, she was gone, and Jax assumed she had chosen her brother’s blood over him.
He had spent a decade and a half hating her for running.
"She didn't run from you, did she?" Jax asked, the words hollow, directed more at the dark woods than the child.
Toby shook his head slowly. "She told me you were dead. Until last week, when she saw your name in the paper from the rally."
Jax closed his eyes, a searing regret burning hotter than the gunshot wound. Reyes had lied to both of them. He had kept Elena captive under the guise of family loyalty, letting her believe Jax was six feet under, all to protect whatever secret was locked behind that brass key.
Down on the logging road, an engine died. The soft click of a motorcycle kickstand echoed through the wet brush.
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"Stay flat," Jax breathed, reaching for the heavy combat knife sheathed at his hip. He didn't have a firearm, but in the blackness of the timber, steel was quieter.
A flashlight beam cut through the hemlock branches, twenty feet away, sweeping methodically toward the shed.
