“Why?” Whitford asked finally, voice raw.
Jax didn’t dodge the question. He looked down at the corpse, then up, his face a map of grief and resolve. “Because he knows too much and he likes watching people suffer. Because we need fuel.” His voice was quiet and dangerous. “Because I can get more from dead mouths than live ones sometimes.”
The chief’s anger and the law’s throttle wound together; there were words about charges and procedure. But Whitford, his wife gone and the grief still raw in his voice, heard something else in Jax’s tone — the kind of hunger that could be turned into action.
“We move, now,” Jax said. “Use Devereaux. Use what he carried on him. Let me be the one who speaks with the men he trusted.” Whitford hesitated, then turned to the map of contacts on the table. The d
