The Deal

Anna started with two days before the fight.

“He came to me at the house,” she said, her voice barely rising above the hum of desert heat outside. “Sat right down at Dad’s kitchen table like he owned it. Told me what was going to happen to you at the bar, and he said if I called anyone, or warned you, or tried to stop it...” She pressed her lips together. “He said you’d die in a cell inside a year, that he had people everywhere and you’d never see daylight again.”

Jason did not move. His hands stayed flat on his denim knees, his gaze locked hard on her face.

“So you let it happen.”

“I thought I was keeping you alive!” Her voice cracked on the words. “What else was I supposed to do?”

He offered nothing back. She kept talking because his heavy silence felt worse than any shouting match.

“He took the letters, Jason,” she confessed, the shame catching in her throat. “Victor’s man intercepted them right out of my mailbox, brought me forgeries to sign, and delivered those fake pages to Ely. Every single envelope you sent from inside was opened, read, and replaced; every reply I sent back was just a script Victor approved. Three whole years of it.” She had written to a hollow ghost Victor manufactured, and Jason had spent those long years answering a sister made of paper and lies. “I knew they weren’t your words, but I kept writing back because I was terrified.”

Jason did not show surprise. He merely sat motionless, confirming the suspicion he had carried through solitary, assembling the hard facts one by one.

Then she got to their father.

She stopped talking for a moment while the desert outside sat white and blinding under the midday sun, the chain-link fence throwing thin lines of shadow across cracked asphalt.

“Three months after they took you,” she whispered, “Dad’s brakes failed on Route 318 out past the dry lake bed. The sheriff claimed the line just wore straight through.” Tears leaked down her cheeks, but she kept her tone completely flat, as if reciting a report she had rehearsed for years. “Victor sent flowers to the funeral. He stood right beside me at the grave.”

Jason counted four seconds of silence.

“Where is Victor now?”

It came out level, carrying zero warmth. Anna heard the lethal edge immediately.

“Jason, please...”

“Where?”

She wiped her wet cheek with the back of her hand. “Ghost Riders clubhouse, off Fremont on the east side of Vegas.” She lunged forward, grabbing his arm tight. “Please, Jason! He’ll kill you! Can’t you see he’s been waiting for you to get out just to have an excuse?”

Jason glanced down at her fingers gripping his forearm. “Drive home, lock the front door, and do not answer for anyone,” he said, his voice flat and measured. “I have forty-eight hours before Victor knows I’m not in Ely.” He reached past her, shoved the door handle open, and stepped out into the blinding heat. Two hours later, after driving south down Route 93 through the dead heat of the basin, Jason pulled in off the highway. The diner smelled of burnt coffee and old grease, the kind of forgotten stop Route 93 collected like roadkill. Jason had taken the back booth facing the entrance with his back firmly to the window, an old survival habit.

He was halfway through his cup when she sat down across from him like she belonged there.

“Agent Sarah Walker, FBI.” She laid her credentials flat on the scratched table. “Don’t reach for anything. I just want to talk.”

Jason studied the gold shield before looking at her face. Her posture was completely rehearsed, shoulders squared, hands loose and visible on the table. It was the specific composure that took years of training to build; he had clocked the slight bulge under her jacket before she opened her mouth.

“Talk,” he said.

“We have been building a case against Victor Reyes for eighteen months,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Ghost Riders, racketeering, and three murders we can almost prove. Almost.” She folded her fingers together. “We need someone on the inside.”

“And you decided to pick me up from a prison parking lot.”

“We picked you because you have the motive, the history, and the direct access. You walk right into that clubhouse and Victor does not flinch.” She leaned forward slightly. “You get us access to Victor’s distribution ledgers and off-the-books supply routes, the Bureau expunges your record completely clean, and we put full federal protection on your sister.”

Jason lifted his mug and took a slow, deliberate sip.

It was then, in the dark glass reflection behind Walker, that he caught sight of them. Two men occupied the front window booth; one wore a coat far too heavy for the desert heat, while the other sat angled to watch the doorway. Victor had watchers everywhere, even two hours outside of Ely.

He lowered the mug to the saucer, slid his phone beneath the wood edge, and typed from memory into Cutter’s burner number: Two on the agent. Make them go away quietly.

He hit send and slipped the device away.

“What is the timeline?” he asked, keeping his focus on Walker.

“Weeks, not months. Victor is getting nervous, moving product faster, and consolidating everything.” She paused. “Which means he will make a mistake soon; we need someone inside when he does.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then you walk out that door, Victor puts a bullet in you within a month, and we waste another year building this case alone.” Her voice remained flat, offering only cold mathematics.

Then she inhaled a breath that seemed far too calculated.

“Four years ago, an agent named Tom Haskell was driving a Pahrump road on a surveillance run,” she said, her steady delivery faltering slightly. “Brake failure. They claimed the line wore through.” She fell quiet, swallowing hard against the memory. “Tom was my partner for six years.”

Jason recognized that look. He had carried that exact weight since Anna said the words Route 318 and told him what the sheriff claimed.

He offered no reply.

Behind Walker, the men in the window booth checked their screens at once. One answered a call, murmured two words, dropped cash on the table, and walked out without looking back.

Walker never noticed.

Jason watched her straighten her back, rebuilding the professional armor she had dropped for three seconds.

“Tell me more about the evidence you need,” he said.Walker slid the business card across the table with two fingers, holding her hand flat against the scratched laminate until she knew he was looking right at it.

“That’s my direct line,” she said. “You call me, day or night. Your sister gets full federal protection the moment you agree, and your record disappears like it never existed. That’s not a small offer, Jason. Are you really going to walk away from that?”

He looked at the white rectangle on the table, but he did not touch it yet.

She watched his face for any flicker of calculation, searching for some sign that the math was finally landing, but there was nothing. It was just that flat, unnerving calm she had seen in men who made peace with violence a long time ago.

Then he reached out, picked the card up, turned it once in his fingers, and slid it into his shirt pocket.

“No deal,” he said.

“Jason...”

“I heard everything you said, Agent Walker. Do I look like an informant to you?” His voice stayed completely level; he leaned forward against the edge of the booth. “I’m not your inside man.”

She pressed both palms down against the table. “Victor will kill you. That’s not a threat, it’s a timeline. You’ve got weeks, maybe less, before he decides you’re a loose end he can’t afford. Why throw your life away?”

“Probably.” He tilted his head slightly, studying her the way he had studied the two men sitting by the front window. “Four years ago. Your partner.”

Walker went completely still.

“Brake failure on a Pahrump road,” Jason said. “That’s what you told me, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Same story Anna got about my father. Route 318, down by the salt flats, line wore straight through.” He paused, letting the silence sit between them. “That’s not a coincidence, Walker. That’s a signature, isn’t it?”

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

“So what did he take from you?” Jason asked, his voice cutting straight through her professional armor. “Not from the Bureau. From you?”

The blunt strike hit her chest like a heavy weight, leaving an ache that knocked the breath out of her lungs. Tom’s loud laugh; the framed desk photo with the bad sunburn from that Laughlin weekend; the sheared line Morrison signed off on. Four long years of knowing the truth and being completely unable to prove a single damn thing.

She could not answer him.

The diner racket kept grinding along around them, rattling plates and the hum of the old coffee machine, yet the noise faded to a distant, muffled buzz. Jason looked at her for another second, then he stood up, pulled two folded bills from his leather jacket, and tossed them on the table beside his untouched coffee.

“You already know he’s not just a case,” he said quietly. “That’s your problem, isn’t it?”

He walked straight down the aisle toward the glass doors and pushed outside into the evening heat.

Walker sat alone in the booth with the cold coffee and everything she had failed to say.