Chapter 8 - The Ghost of Red Rock
The road to Red Rock had ceased to exist on state maps thirty years ago when the copper mines went dry. It was nothing more than cracked concrete and encroaching sagebrush winding through the jagged red stone canyons of the Nevada border.
The dawn was breaking, but it brought no warmth—only a bruised, sickly purple light that spilled across the abandoned clapboard storefronts of the ghost town. Rotting wood, broken glass, and rusted machinery lined the single dusty street like tombstones.
Jax pulled the shovelhead to a halt in front of a small, steepled structure at the town's highest point: Saint Jude’s Chapel. The stained-glass windows were long gone, leaving jagged black frames that looked like broken teeth against the gray sky.
He killed the engine. The bike gave a final, wheezing sigh and fell silent.
Jax slid off, his left side entirely numb now, the blood having dried into a stiff, black crust across his jeans and leather vest. Toby hopped down, looking around the empty town with wide, frightened eyes.
"Is this where she was?" the boy whispered.
"This is where everything ended," Jax said quietly, his voice cracked with exhaustion.
Fifteen years ago, the final shootout with Reyes’s faction had taken place in this very plaza. Jax had walked away believing Elena was dead, betrayed by the woman he loved. Now, holding the brass key in his pocket, the bitter truth felt like poison in his veins.
He pushed open the heavy oak doors of the chapel. The hinges shrieked, scaring a parliament of owls from the rafters above. Dust motes danced in the pale morning light slanting across the ruined wooden pews.
At the front of the altar stood a headless stone statue of an angel, its carved robes covered in decades of guano and faded graffiti. Beneath the angel’s feet, carved into the stone floor, was an iron ring embedded in a rectangular slab of slate.
Jax stepped toward the altar, Toby trailing closely at his heels. He hooked his boot under the iron ring and hauled upward. The stone slab gave way with a grinding groan, revealing a small, dry crypt beneath the floorboards.
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Inside rested a heavy, olive-drab military lockbox.
Before Jax could kneel to insert the brass key, the sound of multiple heavy engines idling rumbled outside the chapel doors.
