The funeral was stone-cold silent, except for one sound: the frantic scratching of my brother’s dog on his casket. Everyone stared, thinking it was just grief. I knew it was a warning.
My brother, Finn, lived and died for his motorcycle club. These men standing behind me, all leather and scowls, were supposed to be his family. But as they stood there watching his dog, Scrappy, desperately claw at the polished wood, I saw something flicker in their eyes.
It wasn’t sympathy. It was fear. Finn’s death was ruled an “accident” on a quiet road, but he’d called me just two nights before, his voice low and urgent.
He said he’d found something, something that implicated Leo, the club’s president. “They think I don’t know,” he’d whispered, “but Scrappy knows. He always knows.”
Now, Scrappy wasn’t whining.
He was working. The funeral director tried to pull him away, but he let out a sharp bark and kept scratching at one specific spot near the edge of the lid. Leo stepped forward and hissed, “Get that mutt out of here, now.” But it was too late.
With one final, determined scratch, Scrappy’s claw caught on something. A tiny, hidden latch popped open. What was inside changed everything.
Tucked into a small, felt-lined hollow was a single, black USB drive. My breath hitched. My mind raced back to Finn’s cryptic words.
This was it. This had to be it. My hand shot out, my fingers closing around the cool plastic drive just as Leo lunged for it.
He was faster than he looked, his big hand clamping down on my wrist. His grip was like iron. “Give it to me,” he growled, his voice a low threat that cut through the somber air.
But Scrappy was faster. With a protective snarl, he launched himself not at Leo, but at the leg of another biker standing nearby, creating a sudden, chaotic diversion. The man yelped and stumbled backward, crashing into two others.
In that split second of confusion, I yanked my wrist free, shoved the USB drive deep into my pocket, and ran. I didn’t look back. I just ran, Scrappy a blur of brown fur at my heels, his barks echoing through the cemetery.
I could hear shouts behind me, the heavy thud of boots on grass, but fear was a fire in my veins. We burst through the cemetery gates and I fumbled for my car keys, my hands shaking so violently I could barely fit the key in the lock. The engine roared to life just as Leo and two of his men appeared at the gate.
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