The Crossroads Protocol: When Wolves Hunt the Wrong Marine

PART 1: The Line in the Sand

They say you can leave the war, but the war never really leaves you. It sits in the back of your mind, a quiet hum like a high-tension wire, waiting for the voltage to spike.

For me, Marcus Davidson, that hum usually stayed low. After twenty years in the Corps, most of it spent in the shadowy corners of Force Recon and counter-narcotics, I thought I’d finally found silence. My world had shrunk down to the eighteen wheels of my rig, the white lines of Interstate 40, and the Crossroads Truck Stop. It was a simple life. A good life.

I was sitting at my usual spot at the counter, the vinyl cracked under my weight, nursing my third cup of coffee. It was dusk. The evening sun was bleeding out over the asphalt, painting the parked semis in shades of burnt orange and bruising purple. I had my route maps spread out, but my eyes weren’t really on them. Habits die hard. My back was to the wall, and I had a clear line of sight to both entrances. It wasn’t paranoia; it was muscle memory.

“Need a warm-up, Marcus?”

I looked up to see Jenny Thompson. She was holding the pot, her smile the kind of genuine warmth that could make you forget, for a second, the things you’d seen in the jungle or the desert.

“Thanks, Jenny,” I said, my voice gravelly from days of silence on the road. “Always tastes better when you make it.”

“You say that every time,” she teased, pouring the dark liquid.

“Mean it every time.”

The diner was peaceful. The low murmur of conversation, the clatter of silverware, the hiss of the grill. A young family was eating in the booth near the window—father, mother, a little girl with pigtails. A couple of other truckers, guys I knew by handle only, were hunched over meatloaf specials.

Then the atmosphere shattered.

It started as a vibration in the floorboards, growing into a roar that rattled the windows in their frames. Motorcycles. Not just passing through, but slowing down. Revving. Aggressive. Straight pipes designed to announce a presence.

I didn’t look up from my map, but my focus shifted. I watched the reflection in the chrome of the napkin dispenser. Two bikes. Harley Dynas, customized. The riders dismounted with a swagger that screamed “look at me.”

The door chimed. The air in the diner changed instantly. It got colder, heavier.

Two men walked in. The lead guy was a mountain of bad choices—graying beard, cold eyes, leather vest straining over a gut that hadn’t seen a sit-up in a decade. The patch on his back read Road Wolves MC. His shadow was younger, wiry, with a snake tattoo winding up his neck and disappearing into his hairline.

Jenny’s hand trembled as she set the coffee pot down. “Oh no,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Beth warned us about them.”

I caught her eye. “It’s okay, Jenny. Just do your job. Business as usual.”

The big one, the patch said Hammer, scanned the room. He wasn’t looking for a table; he was looking for threats. His eyes slid over the family, the truckers, and finally landed on me. He dismissed me just as quickly—an old man with a map and a coffee.

Big mistake.

“Well, ain’t this cozy,” Hammer drawled. His voice was like tires on gravel. “Real nice setup.”

Beth Morrison, the owner, came out of the kitchen. She was a tough woman, built from the same steel as the rigs outside, but I saw the hesitation in her step. I saw her right hand drift below the counter. The baseball bat. Good girl.

“Welcome to Crossroads,” Beth said, her tone professional but guarded. “What can I get you gentlemen?”

The wiry one, Snake, smirked. He leaned over the counter, invading her space. “How about everything in the register for starters?”

The diner went dead silent. The father at the window booth shifted, putting his arm around his daughter.

Hammer chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. He clapped a hand on Snake’s shoulder. “Easy, brother. We’re just here to talk business.” He turned his dead eyes on Beth. “See, this stretch of highway? It’s under new management. The Road Wolves are expanding. We’re here to discuss your monthly… protection fees.”

I took a sip of coffee. It was hot, bitter. Perfect. My heart rate hadn’t climbed a single beat per minute. I was running the calculations. Two targets. No visible firearms, but likely carrying knives or concealed pistols. Distance: fifteen feet.

“This is a family establishment,” Beth said, her voice shaking but standing her ground. “We don’t need protection.”

“Everyone needs protection,” Hammer said, his voice dropping an octave. “Bad things happen. Equipment breaks. Supplies go missing. Customers have… accidents.”

Snake peeled away from the counter. He started wandering the room, picking things up, dropping them. He stopped at the family’s table. He leaned in close to the little girl. She whimpered and buried her face in her mother’s side. Snake laughed and bumped the back of her chair hard enough to make it rock.

That was the trigger.

I didn’t slam my hand on the table. I didn’t shout. I just spoke, projecting my voice with the ‘Command Voice’ I’d used to direct fireteams in Fallujah.

“The lady said she’s not interested.”

The silence that followed was absolute. Hammer turned slowly, his head cocking to the side like a confused dog.

“Well, well,” he sneered, walking toward me. “Looks like we got ourselves a hero.” He loomed over me, blocking the light. “This ain’t your business, old timer.”

I finally looked up. I didn’t glare. I didn’t grimace. I just looked at him. I let him see the twenty years of violence stored behind my eyes. I let him see the void.

“You’re making it my business,” I said softly.

Hammer leaned closer, his breath smelling of stale tobacco. “And who do you think you are?”

“Just a guy trying to enjoy his coffee,” I said. “But I have a pretty good idea who you are. Road Wolves MC. Moving up from Texas. You start with intimidation at truck stops, secure the logistics hubs, then you move the product. Protection rackets first, then the drugs.”

Hammer’s eyes narrowed. The swagger evaporated, replaced by the tension of a predator realizing the prey has teeth. “You know a lot for a trucker.”

“I know enough to tell you that you’re making a mistake.”

Snake moved up on my left flank, hand drifting to his belt. “Only mistake is you opening your mouth, old man.”

I didn’t move. I kept my hands on the counter, relaxed. “Two choices, gentlemen. One: walk out that door, get on your bikes, and find somewhere else to be stupid. Two: you try whatever it is you’re thinking about trying, and we see how that works out for you.”

Snake hesitated. He looked at Hammer. He was waiting for the signal.

But Hammer was smarter than he looked. He was staring at me, really staring. He noticed the way I sat. The lack of fear. The stillness. He realized this wasn’t bravado; it was certainty.

“You’re the one making a mistake,” Hammer said, though the conviction was gone. “This ain’t over.”

I nodded. “It is for tonight.”

Hammer stepped back. “Come on, Snake. We’ll finish this conversation another time.”

They retreated. It wasn’t a rout, but it was a retreat. As they mounted their bikes, Hammer pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at the diner. A promise.

When the roar of the engines faded, the air rushed back into the room. The father exhaled, shaking. Beth slumped against the counter.

“They’ll be back,” Beth said, wiping her forehead. “Won’t they?”

“Yes,” I said, pulling my phone out. “And they’ll bring friends.”

“What are we going to do?” Jenny asked, her eyes wide.

I looked at her, then out the window at the darkening highway. “We’re going to show them they picked the wrong truck stop. And definitely the wrong veteran.”

---

I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed at the counter, fueled by caffeine and tactical necessity. I made calls. Not to the police—not yet—but to the network. The Brotherhood of the Road. There are a lot of us out here. Former Army Rangers driving reefers, ex-Marines hauling flatbeds, Navy Corpsmen moving hazardous materials. We wave when we pass, but we share a frequency that civilians don’t hear.

By dawn, the lot was filling up. But not with randoms.

Big Steve Johnson, a former Ranger who was wide as a doorway, parked his rig next to mine. Mike “Doc” Wilson, a combat medic who could stitch a wound in a sandstorm, pulled in three spots down. They came in quietly, ordering coffee, taking seats.

When Sheriff Tom Cooper walked in, the diner was buzzing with a different kind of energy. Tom was a good man, overworked and underfunded. He sat next to me.

“Heard we had visitors,” Tom said quietly.

“Road Wolves,” I replied. “Scouts. Testing the perimeter.”

Tom sighed, rubbing his face. “I’ve got two deputies, Marcus. If they come in force…”

“They will,” I cut him off. “But they won’t expect what’s waiting.”

Right on cue, the rumble returned. But this time, it wasn’t two bikes. It was six.

The morning sun glinted off the chrome as they circled the lot like sharks. Hammer was back, and he’d brought muscle. A guy the size of a vending machine, bald head gleaming, marched in behind him.

The bell chimed. The Wolves swaggered in.

Hammer looked confident. He saw me, he saw the Sheriff. He figured he had the numbers. “Look who’s still here,” he sneered. “Brought some friends this time. Thought we should continue our talk.”

I swiveled on my stool. Slowly.

“Nothing’s changed since last night,” I said. “This isn’t your territory.”

The bald biker, Brick, stepped forward. “You don’t get to make that call, old man.”

From the booth behind them, Big Steve stood up. He didn’t say a word. He just unfolded his six-foot-five frame and cracked his knuckles. It sounded like a gunshot.

From the corner, Doc Wilson stood up. He took off his glasses and set them on the table.

Two other drivers, men with the thousand-yard stare, pushed their coffees aside and stood.

Hammer paused. He looked around. He did the math. He saw the way these men stood—feet shoulder-width apart, hands loose but ready, eyes tracking targets. He realized these weren’t truck drivers. These were wolves of a different breed.

“You think bringing in a few other old-timers changes anything?” Hammer’s voice wavered.

I stood up. “Let me be clear. I know your operation. I spent twenty years tracking organizations like yours across three continents. You want to use this stop as a distribution hub. You want to run drugs through my community.”

“You don’t know—”

“I know,” I interrupted, my voice hard as iron. “And right here, right now, you have a choice. Leave. Or find out how many combat veterans are in this room.”

The silence stretched thin, vibrating with violence. Snake looked ready to jump, his hand twitching near a concealed blade.

“I wouldn’t,” Big Steve rumbled. “Not unless you want to eat through a straw.”

Hammer looked at his crew, then at us. The odds had shifted. He spat on the floor. “Let’s go. Plenty of other stops.”

As they backed out, the tension broke, but I didn’t relax. I watched them ride off, watched the dust settle.

“That was too easy,” Doc Wilson said, coming up beside me.

“Yeah,” I said, watching the horizon. “That was the probe. Next comes the assault.”

Tom Cooper looked worried. “Marcus, these guys… they’re connected. If they’re moving drugs, they have backing.”

“I know, Tom. I saw the tattoos. The symbols on their vests.” I turned to the map on the counter, tracing a line from the Mexican border up to Interstate 40. “This isn’t just a biker gang. This is a cartel operation. Diego Ramirez.”

Tom went pale. “Ramirez? The butcher?”

“The same.”

I looked at the group of men gathered around me—Steve, Doc, Beth, Jenny. They looked to me for orders. They trusted me. And that terrified me more than any cartel hitman ever could.

“They’re going to come back,” I told them. “And they’re going to escalate. They’ll try to burn us out, scare us off. They’ll target the supply lines. They’ll target your families.”

“So we leave?” Jenny asked, her voice small.

I looked at the American flag pinned to the wall behind the counter. I looked at the community that had become my family.

“No,” I said. “We dig in. We turn this truck stop into a fortress. If Ramirez wants a war, we give him one.”

The radio on Tom’s hip crackled. “Sheriff… we got a situation downtown. Someone threw a Molotov through the window of the hardware store. There’s graffiti.”

Tom grabbed the mic. “What does it say?”

“It says… War is Coming.”

I picked up my coffee cup. It was cold now.

“Part one is done,” I whispered to myself. “Now the real work begins.”

Part 2: The Siege

The fire downtown was just the opening salvo. A Molotov cocktail through a hardware store window doesn’t take down a criminal empire, but it sends a message: We can touch you anywhere.

But I knew better. This wasn’t chaos; it was choreography.

By the time I got back to Crossroads, the sun was high, baking the asphalt, but the air felt brittle, like it might snap if you moved too fast. We convened in the back office—me, Sheriff Cooper, Beth, Jenny, Big Steve, and Doc Wilson. And a new face: Carl Martinez. Carl was a local mechanic with grease permanently etched into his fingerprints and a background in the Army Corps of Engineers.

“They’re watching us,” Carl said, unfolding a schematic of the truck stop on Beth’s desk. “I spotted spotters on the ridge. High-end optics. They’re mapping our patterns.”

“Let them watch,” I said, leaning over the map. “What about the lights?”

Carl grinned, a sharp, dangerous expression. “Done. Installed halogens on the roofline, hidden behind the gutters. Wired to a single breaker in the kitchen. When you flip that switch, it’ll be brighter than a Baghdad noon out there.”

“Good. We control the environment, we control the fight.”

“Is that enough?” Beth asked. She was holding a ledger, her knuckles white. “Marcus, the bank just called. They’re calling in the loan. Full repayment. Immediately. They cited ‘instability in the area.'”

I looked at Cooper. The Sheriff shook his head, disgusted. “Ramirez’s reach. He’s squeezing the institutions. He wants to starve you out before he burns you out.”

“It gets worse,” Jenny added, her voice trembling as she held up her phone. “The food delivery truck turned around five miles out. Driver said he was pulled over by State Troopers and held for three hours for a ‘safety inspection.’ He’s too scared to come back.”

I nodded. This was the playbook. Isolation. Strangulation. Make us feel like the world had turned against us.

“We have MREs in the rigs,” Big Steve rumbled. “We won’t starve.”

“It’s psychological, Steve,” I said softly. “He wants us to panic. He wants us to make a mistake.”

The afternoon wore on in a suffocating slow motion. The “soft war” continued. A county health inspector—a man I’d never seen before—showed up and slapped a ‘Condemned’ sticker on the door for violations that didn’t exist. We ignored him. A brick flew through the front window around 3:00 PM. We boarded it up.

Then came the silence. The heavy, oppressive silence of a predator crouching before the pounce.

At 5:00 PM, the black SUVs arrived.

They didn’t roar in like the bikers. They glided. Four black Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows and government plates—or plates that looked government. They parked in a phalanx formation, blocking the main entrance.

“Here we go,” I said, standing up from my stool. “Showtime.”

The doors opened. Men in suits stepped out. They weren’t feds. You can tell a fed by the way he holds himself—bureaucratic weight mixed with authority. These men moved like jaguars. Fluid. Lethal. Cartel security.

Then, from the center vehicle, he emerged.

Diego Ramirez.

He looked nothing like the monster from the intelligence reports. He was shorter than me, wearing a suit that cost more than my truck, with manicured hands and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He looked like a CEO, not a butcher. But I saw the way his men looked at him—with absolute terror.

I walked out to meet him on the pavement. I stopped ten feet away. The heat radiating off the asphalt was suffocating.

“Mr. Davidson,” Ramirez said. His English was perfect, unaccented. “I’ve read your file. Force Recon. Distinguished Service Cross. Impressive.”

“You’re trespassing,” I said flatly.

Ramirez chuckled softly. He looked around at the boarded-up window, the empty fuel pumps. “Am I? It looks like this establishment is… distressed. I’m an investor. I fix distressed assets.”

“We’re not selling.”

“Everyone sells, Marcus. It’s just a question of currency.” He took a step closer. “I’m offering you two million dollars. Cash. Today. For the property. You walk away. You retire somewhere warm where your joints don’t ache.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then the currency changes.”

He snapped his fingers. One of his guards stepped forward and handed him a tablet. Ramirez tapped the screen and turned it toward me.

My blood ran cold, but I kept my face like stone.

It was a live feed. A suburban house. A woman gardening in the front yard. Jenny’s mother. The camera zoomed in.

He swiped. Another feed. A college campus. A young girl walking with books. Beth’s daughter.

“Accidents happen, Marcus,” Ramirez said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Gas leaks. Hit and runs. Tragic. And completely avoidable.”

I looked at him, really looked at him. I saw the arrogance. The certainty that money and violence could solve any equation.

“Threatening families,” I said, my voice low. “That’s a line.”

“I don’t see lines,” Ramirez replied. “I see obstacles. You have 24 hours. Tomorrow night, midnight. I want the deed signed, or I burn this place to the ground with everyone inside. And those accidents? They happen simultaneously.”

He turned and walked back to his SUV. The convoy pulled away, leaving a cloud of dust and the smell of expensive cologne hanging in the diesel fumes.

I walked back inside. The diner was silent. Jenny was crying softly in the corner. Beth looked like she was going to be sick. Even Big Steve looked shaken.

“He has my mom,” Jenny sobbed. “Marcus, we have to stop. We can’t…”

“We aren’t stopping,” I said.

“Did you see those feeds?” Cooper hissed. “He’s got eyes everywhere.”

“Yes,” I said. “He does.” I walked to the counter and poured a cup of coffee. My hand was steady. “Which means he feels safe. He feels in control.”

I looked at the group. I needed them to trust me one last time. I needed them to walk through the fire with me.

“Listen to me,” I said, my voice commanding the room. “Ramirez thinks he’s playing chess. He thinks he’s taken our pieces. But he’s making the classic mistake of the arrogant.”

“What mistake?” Doc Wilson asked.

“He thinks we’re alone.” I pulled out my burner phone—the one I hadn’t used yet. “He gave us 24 hours. That’s not a deadline. That’s a window.”

I looked at Beth. “Beth, I need you to cry. I need you to call your supplier and beg. Loudly. Make sure anyone listening knows we’re breaking.”

I looked at Cooper. “Sheriff, pull your deputies back. Make a public show of it. Say it’s out of your jurisdiction. Let Ramirez think the law has abandoned us.”

“You want us to play dead?” Steve asked, his brow furrowing.

“No,” I said, checking the magazine of my .45 under the counter. “I want us to play victim. We need to draw him in. Not just his soldiers. Him. He needs to be here when the hammer falls. He needs to believe he’s coming to a coronation, not a funeral.”

The night settled in like a shroud. The waiting was the hardest part. The “Road Wolves” circled the perimeter on their bikes, hooting and hollering, throwing bottles, keeping us awake. We let them. We turned off the lights inside. We sat in the dark, watching the red glow of their taillights.

Around 3:00 AM, my phone buzzed. A text from a number that didn’t exist.

Asset in place. Green light for 2400 hours.

I showed it to Cooper. He exhaled a breath he seemed to have been holding for a week. “You sure about this, Marcus? Once we trigger this, there’s no going back.”

“There never was,” I said. “Get some sleep, Tom. Tomorrow night, we end this.”

The next day was a blur of staged desperation. We packed boxes. We let the Road Wolves see us loading cars. We acted defeated.

By 11:00 PM, the truck stop was dark. The parking lot was empty of civilian cars. Only my rig and a few others remained, looking abandoned.

Inside, the mood was electric. We were positioned in the shadows. Big Steve and Doc were by the kitchen doors. Cooper was in the office with the radio. I sat at my stool, a single candle burning on the counter, waiting.

At 11:55 PM, the roar began.

It wasn’t just the SUVs this time. It was everything. Dozens of motorcycles. The SUVs. A moving army of chrome and steel.

They poured into the lot, surrounding the building. They wanted a show of force. They wanted to crush us under the weight of their inevitability.

The front door kicked open.

Hammer walked in first, holding a heavy chain. Snake was behind him with a bat. And behind them, flanked by four armed guards, was Diego Ramirez.

He looked around the dim diner, spotting me at the counter.

“Punctual,” Ramirez said, stepping into the candlelight. “I like that.”

I didn’t stand up. “You brought a lot of people for a real estate transaction.”

“I like to celebrate my acquisitions,” Ramirez smiled. “Do you have the papers?”

“I do.” I slid a manila envelope across the counter.

Ramirez reached for it. His fingers touched the paper.

“You know,” I said softly, my hand hovering near the coffee pot. “In the Corps, they taught us about the fatal funnel. The point of entry where you’re most vulnerable.”

Ramirez paused. His smile twitched. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. They also taught us that the best way to trap a wolf is to let him think he’s caught a sheep.”

Ramirez’s eyes narrowed. He sensed it then. The shift in the air. The smell of ozone.

“What is this?” he hissed.

I looked him dead in the eye.

“This is the Crossroads Protocol.”

I flipped the switch under the counter.

Part 3: The Reckoning
CLICK.

The world turned white.

Carl’s halogens on the roof didn’t just turn on; they exploded with the intensity of a stadium array. Outside, screams of confusion erupted as the bikers were blinded, their night vision obliterated in a millisecond.

Inside, the darkness vanished.

“Now!” I roared.

Big Steve kicked the kitchen doors open. He wasn’t holding a spatula; he was holding a riot shield we’d salvaged from Cooper’s armory. He slammed into Hammer like a freight train, sending the biker flying over a table.

Doc Wilson moved with surgical precision. He stepped out from the shadows, side-stepping Snake’s wild swing with the bat, and delivered a single, calculated strike to the solar plexus. Snake folded like cheap laundry.

Ramirez stumbled back, shielding his eyes. “Kill them! Kill them all!” he screamed, his veneer of corporate civility shattering instantly.

His four bodyguards reached into their jackets.

“Federal Agents! Drop it!”

The voice boomed from everywhere. The ceiling tiles popped open. Two DEA agents in full tactical gear dropped onto the counter, weapons trained on Ramirez’s guards.

Simultaneously, the sound of breaking glass shattered the chaos. The back windows imploded as an FBI SWAT team poured in.

Ramirez’s guards froze. They were killers, yes, but they were professionals. They knew the difference between a fight and an execution. They saw the red laser dots dancing on their chests. They raised their hands slowly.

Ramirez stood alone in the center of the diner, blinking, his face a mask of disbelief.

“You…” he stammered, pointing a shaking finger at me. “You set me up.”

I walked around the counter. I didn’t rush. I walked with the weight of every threat he’d made.

“I didn’t just set you up, Diego,” I said. “I served you up.”

Outside, the thwup-thwup-thwup of a helicopter rotor beat the air into submission. Blue and red strobes washed over the parking lot, drowning out the yellow halogens. Cooper had led the local charge, pinning the Road Wolves in the lot while the State Police and Feds closed the perimeter.

I picked up the manila envelope Ramirez had touched. I opened it. It wasn’t a deed. It was a single sheet of paper with a transcript of our conversation from yesterday—the threats against Jenny’s mom, against Beth’s daughter.

“We recorded everything,” I said, tossing the paper at his feet. “Every threat. Every bribe. And just now? You touched the envelope. Your prints are on the transfer of ‘ownership’ for a criminal enterprise. That’s RICO, Diego. That’s life without parole.”

Ramirez looked at the paper, then at the agents surrounding him. He looked at me, his eyes filled with a pure, toxic hate.

“You’re a dead man, Davidson,” he whispered. “My organization… we are legion. You think this stops us?”

I stepped into his personal space, nose to nose. “I think you’re confusing fear with respect. You ruled because people were afraid to stand alone. But look around.”

I gestured to the room. To Beth, holding her bat but standing tall. To Jenny, recording on her phone, fear gone from her eyes. To the truckers—Steve, Doc, and the others—who had formed a wall of humanity.

“We aren’t alone,” I said. “And neither are the communities you terrorize. Not anymore.”

An FBI agent stepped forward, spinning Ramirez around and slamming him against a table. The click of handcuffs was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

“Diego Ramirez,” the agent recited, “you are under arrest for conspiracy, racketeering, attempted murder, and drug trafficking…”

I watched them drag him out. He tried to maintain his dignity, tried to walk tall, but as he passed the window, he saw his empire crumbling. Hundreds of Road Wolves were zip-tied on the asphalt. The black SUVs were being torn apart by search teams.

The war was over.

The sun came up three hours later. It rose over a scene of controlled devastation.

The diner was a mess—broken tables, shattered glass, scuff marks on the linoleum. But it was our mess.

I sat on the bumper of an ambulance, a paramedic checking a cut on my forehead I didn’t remember getting. Cooper walked over, two cups of coffee in his hands. He looked ten years younger.

“They found the distribution hub,” Cooper said, handing me a cup. “Based on the GPS in Ramirez’s SUV. It’s a warehouse in Oklahoma. They’re rolling it up right now.”

“And the families?” I asked, taking a sip.

“Secure. The Feds picked up the tail teams an hour ago. Jenny’s mom is fine. Beth’s daughter is confused but safe.”

I nodded, watching the tow trucks haul away the last of the motorcycles. “It’s done.”

“You know,” Cooper said, looking at the diner. “You took a hell of a risk, Marcus. If that timing was off by ten seconds…”

“It wasn’t.”

“Still. You crazy Marine son of a bitch.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

Beth came out of the diner. She was sweeping glass, but she stopped when she saw us. She walked over, wiping her hands on her apron. She didn’t say anything. She just hugged me. A bone-crushing, desperate hug.

“I thought we were going to lose it all,” she whispered.

“We almost did,” I admitted, patting her back. “But almost doesn’t count.”

Later that morning, as the last of the police tape was being spooled up, I went back to my spot at the counter. The vinyl was torn where Hammer had gone flying, but the seat still held me.

Jenny poured a fresh cup. Her hand wasn’t shaking anymore.

“So,” she said, looking out at the highway where traffic was starting to flow again. “What happens now?”

I looked at my map, still spread out on the counter. The edges were coffee-stained and crinkled.

“Now?” I said. “Now we fix the window. We brew more coffee. And we keep the lights on.”

I looked at the reflection in the chrome napkin holder. The old marine was still there, a little more tired, a few more gray hairs. But the hum in the back of my mind—that constant, high-tension static of impending danger—was gone.

The Road Wolves had come looking for prey. They found a pack.

And as I watched a young trucker pull his rig into the lot, looking for a safe place to rest, I knew one thing for sure.

This was our crossroads. And we held the line.