Nobody steals colors. Not if they value breathing. The back patch isn’t leather and thread.

It’s blood.

It’s loyalty.

It’s every mile earned beside brothers willing to die for each other. Storm comes through the clubhouse doors hard enough to make them slam against the wall.

He’s breathing too fast. Face pale beneath the dust.

“…Someone cut a patch.”

The room changes. Instantly.

Sidewinder is already standing before the sentence finishes. Dust closes his notebook without another word. Cobre’s chair scrapes backward across the concrete. Grave calmly reaches for the pistol resting on the table beside him.

No panic.

Just purpose. The clubhouse suddenly feels colder.

Storm lays the damaged leather cut across the table.

The back is cleanly sliced. The rattlesnake is gone. Only the outline remains.

A challenge. An insult. A declaration.

Sidewinder looks at me. No discussion necessary.

I nod once. Within seconds… Engines thunder to life outside.

Coyote spreads maps across a workbench, already identifying every abandoned property within fifty miles. Dust starts making calls. Grave loads magazines with slow, practiced movements.

Nobody raises their voice.

The quieter we become… The more dangerous we are.

Hours later, after following broken tire tracks across forgotten ranch roads and dry creek beds, I find myself standing before an abandoned tobacco barn slowly collapsing beneath decades of desert wind. The smell of old wood and dust hangs heavy in the air. The front door swings gently.

Open.

I step inside.

Sunlight spills through gaps in the roof, illuminating drifting particles of dust. The stolen Black Vipers patch hangs from a rusted nail driven into one of the support beams. But it isn’t the first thing I see.

You.

Standing farther inside the barn. Alone.

My jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.

“…You picked a dangerous place to wait.”