He uses his legitimate trucking routes.
Cole owned a massive shipping and salvage yard on the industrial edge of the county, right by the rail lines. It was a fortress, heavily guarded, disguised as a scrap metal recycling facility. That’s where he would take Lily. That’s where he felt safe.
I needed transportation, and I needed an army. I didn't have time to wait for the FBI to navigate bureaucracy. Cole would realize I didn't have a phone down in that cellar to call him. He would panic, and he would move Lily.
I began to walk. Two miles down the logging road, I reached the main highway. I flagged down a passing farmer in a pickup truck. He took one look at my bloodied face and hesitated, but I threw a hundred-dollar bill from my emergency stash onto the dash and told him to drive me to the nearest town.
An hour later, I was standing at the payphone outside a dilapidated gas station. I dialed a number I hadn't called in ten years.
"Yeah?" a gravelly voice answered.
"Preacher. It's Jax."
Silence on the line. Preacher was the president of the local motorcycle club I used to ride with before Emily was born. We had history. We had blood between us.
"Jax. I thought you died a decade ago," Preacher said slowly.
"I did," I replied, my voice hard. "But I need a favor. Now. The man who killed my daughter is sitting in the industrial salvage yard off Route 9. He has my granddaughter. He’s got twelve men with tactical gear."
Preacher didn't ask questions. Biker brotherhood doesn't require paperwork. It only requires a debt, and he owed me his life from a bad situation back in the nineties.
"We're on our way. Give us thirty minutes."
The salvage yard was a sprawling, chaotic nightmare of stacked shipping containers, crushed cars, and heavy machinery, enclosed by a twenty-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
I didn't wait at the front gate. I approached from the muddy rail line at the back of the yard, scaling a blind spot in the fence while the roar of fifteen heavy Harley motorcycles suddenly exploded at the front entrance.
Preacher and his boys didn't engage with guns. They didn't have to. They simply brought chaos. They drove their massive bikes straight through the aluminum front gate, revving their engines, swinging chains, and drawing the immediate, panicked attention of Cole's security team. Men started running toward the front office, shouting orders.
I dropped silently into the yard from the rear fence.
I navigated the labyrinth of towering rusted cars. I didn't need a map; I knew how men like Cole operated. He would keep his prize close. He would be in the heavy control room overlooking the yard.
I slipped through the shadows, avoiding the rushing guards, and reached the base of the metal stairs leading to the suspended control room office.
Silas was guarding the bottom of the stairs, an assault rifle slung across his chest. He was looking toward the front gate, distracted by the roaring chaos of the bikers.
I grabbed a heavy steel lug wrench from a discarded tire pile. I stepped up behind Silas, swung the wrench with brutal precision, and struck the back of his knee. His leg buckled instantly with a wet crunch. As he fell, I drove the heavy steel wrench into his ribs. He collapsed into the mud, completely incapacitated without a single drop of blood being spilled.
I kicked his rifle away and charged up the metal stairs.
I kicked the office door open.
Cole was standing inside, watching the chaos at the front gate through the glass window, holding a phone to his ear in absolute panic.
Tied to an office chair in the corner of the room was Lily, her eyes wide with terror, the pink raincoat dirty and torn.
Cole spun around, dropping the phone. He reached for the heavy pistol on his desk.
"Don't do it!" I roared, stepping into the room and pulling the silver flash drive from my pocket. "I have it. You pull that trigger, I crush this drive under my boot, and the cartel guts you alive for losing their data!"
Cole’s hand froze inches from the gun. His eyes locked onto the small silver drive in my hand. His breathing was rapid, shallow. The arrogant king of the salvage yard was gone. He was terrified.
"Hand it over, Arthur," Cole demanded, his voice shaking with desperate rage. "The deal was a trade. The drive for the girl."
"There is no trade," I said, my voice eerily calm despite the adrenaline surging through me. "You killed my daughter. You put hands on my granddaughter. You don't walk away from this."
Cole lunged.
He tackled me with the weight of a desperate man. We crashed backward through the glass window of the office, plummeting eight feet down onto the hood of a crushed sedan below.