“Evening, boss. You’re running late.” The parking lot light gleamed off a shaved scalp as Milo, one of his handyman hires, walked out of the shadows with another man. “Meeting someone?”

Hawk tipped his head toward the roadhouse. “I’m the driver.”

“From the sounds of it, they’ll need a ride,” Milo’s friend said. “Nice ride, man. I like the new F-150s.” He moved to Hawk’s left to look in the pickup’s side window.

“Hey, Hawk, did you see the crash just up there on Dall.” Milo pointed to the road to the right.

Even as Hawk turned to look, he caught a motion out of the corner of his eye and brought his arm up.

Too late.

The crowbar struck his head with a grisly thud. Even as pain exploded in his head, blackness sucked him down.

Audrey was the only one abstaining from alcohol at the table. Poor pitiful me, she thought.

Then again, Frankie’d been sipping one drink most of the evening. Kit stopped with two, saying she’d puke otherwise.

Lillian had nursed her drinks, saying that as the years crept on, the buzz wasn’t worth the ensuing hangover. And she didn’t appear to require alcohol for boisterous revelry.

“We should sing about babies.” Face flushed, EmmaJean gulped more of her drink. “Not a lullaby, but—”

The roadhouse door swung open so hard it banged against the wall.

Men flooded in. A handful headed straight toward the bar. The rest milled in the center of the room as if deciding where to sit.

“Boy, their evening is sure startin’ late,” Tina noted. “Oh shit.”

“What?” Audrey followed her gaze.

At the door stood a tall, rail-thin guy with a black beard.

Nabera.

Everything inside Audrey went cold. She turned to tell Kit to run.

Kit wasn’t there.

“Don’t move!” The captain pointed a pistol straight at Audrey’s table.

“You there. Put the gun down,” Raymond called from the bar. He was tapping on the cell in his hand.

The men who’d been seated at the bar jumped over it and attacked him.

Cursing, Raymond fought as they grabbed his phone, then clubbed him to the ground.

Audrey pushed her chair back, looking for somewhere to run.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lillian snapped, rising. “Are you stark raving mad, Nabera?”

“You wish, don’t you, Mayor Bitch? Lording it over the town.” The man’s gloating smile iced the blood in Audrey’s veins. “That stops today…and so do you.”

He motioned to a hatchet-faced man who shoved Lillian back down into her chair.

Audrey’s hands closed into fists. As several men surrounded the table, their firearms in their hands, she reached around to her phone in her back pocket.

A man kicked her chair. “Don’t move, bitch.”

Eff-it-all. Her hands curved over her lower abdomen protectively. Hang in there, baby.