Two chapters down. Four to go. The final act of Feeding Ground is coming together in all its gnashing, pulpy glory—and believe me, it’s meaner, leaner, and a hell of a lot hungrier than the last draft.
This weekend was a mess of coffee, scribbled notes, and long nights muttering things like “no, it needs more meat.” I’ve made some brutal changes to Act 3, and they’re exactly what the story needed—less mercy, more momentum. There’s no pulling punches now. We’re heading straight into the grinder.
I’ll be back with more progress soon, hopefully another chapter or two in the can. Until then: check out the first chapter of Roadkill Girls, coming out in just over a week, eBook and paperback!
Roadkill Girls Chapter 1: Born to Ride
The Harley’s engine screamed like a dying animal as Jinx downshifted around the semi-truck, her knee damn near kissing asphalt at sixty miles per hour. In the rearview mirror, the Desert Moon Truck Stop & Casino was already shrinking to a neon smudge against the black Arizona sky, but she could still smell the cordite and hear the screaming.
Three minutes. That’s how long it had taken for everything to go to hell.
Behind her, Viper’s Sportster howled in harmony with her own bike, the pyromaniac’s wild laughter cutting through the wind like broken glass. Spider and Roxy flanked them on either side, their matching Kawasaki Ninjas purring with mechanical precision. Four bikes. Four girls. And somewhere behind them, flashing red and blue lights were beginning to multiply like cancer cells.
“Jinx!” Spider’s voice crackled through the helmet comm, barely audible over the engine noise. “We got company! Three—no, four units coming up fast!”
Jinx spat into the wind and twisted the throttle harder. The speedometer needle swept past eighty, then ninety. At these speeds, the desert became a blur of Joshua trees and tumbleweeds, the broken white line of Highway 87 the only thing keeping them tethered to reality.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down.
The job had been simple—stupidly simple. The Desert Moon sat at the junction of three lonely highways, catering to long-haul truckers and the occasional gambling addict too broke for Vegas. The casino floor was the size of a gas station bathroom, maybe twenty slot machines and two blackjack tables staffed by dealers who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. The safe was supposed to be a joke, some ancient Mosler from the Carter administration that Spider could crack blindfolded.
But simple had a way of turning complicated when you rode with Viper.
Jinx’s jaw clenched as she remembered the guard—some pot-bellied rent-a-cop named Eddie who probably made eight bucks an hour to sit behind a particle board desk and watch truckers lose their grocery money. He’d been cooperative, hands up, keys handed over without a fuss. Spider had the safe open in under two minutes, revealing neat stacks of twenties and fifties that added up to maybe twelve grand. Enough for gas, food, and motel rooms for a month. Enough to disappear.
Then Viper had put three rounds in Eddie’s chest.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” Jinx had shouted, but Viper was already grinning that dead-eyed grin of hers, the one that made Jinx’s skin crawl.
“He was gonna remember us,” Viper had said, sliding the smoking .38 back into her jacket. “Now he won’t remember shit.”
That’s when the screaming started. Some trucker’s wife in the bathroom, heard the shots, came running out with blood-curdling shrieks that could wake the dead. Then the trucker himself, a mountain of flannel and righteous fury who tried to play hero until Spider put him down with a tire iron to the skull. Not dead—Spider didn’t kill unless she had to—but down long enough for them to grab the cash and run.
Three minutes from walking in to roaring out of the parking lot. Should have been clean. Should have been easy.
Should have been a lot of things.
“Jinx!” This time it was Roxy, her voice tight with fear. The kid was only nineteen, barely a month with the crew, and this was her first real job. “There’s more coming from the south! I count six—no, eight units!”
Jinx risked a glance over her shoulder. The lights were closer now, close enough that she could make out individual vehicles. County sheriffs, highway patrol, maybe even some federal boys who happened to be in the neighborhood. All of them converging on four leather-clad women on motorcycles like antibodies swarming an infection.
The radio chatter was probably already lighting up the airwaves: Armed robbery, shots fired, suspects fleeing northbound on 87. Four females on motorcycles, considered armed and extremely dangerous. The description would hit every cop shop from Phoenix to Flagstaff within the hour.
“Spider!” Jinx keyed her comm. “How’s our fuel situation?”
“Not good!” Spider’s voice was crisp and professional even at ninety-five miles per hour. “I’m showing half a tank, maybe less. Viper’s probably running on fumes—she never bothers to check.”
As if summoned by her name, Viper’s voice cut through the channel, wild and manic: “Fuck the gas! Let’s turn around and give these pigs a real fight! I got two mags left and a heart full of hate!”
“Negative!” Jinx’s voice carried the kind of authority that came from five years in Tucson State Prison, five years of establishing pecking orders and maintaining them through violence when necessary. “We run until we can’t run anymore. Then we find cover and figure out our next move.”
But even as she said it, Jinx knew their options were shrinking fast. Highway 87 was a straight shot through nothing—mile after mile of scrub brush and alkali flats with nowhere to hide and nowhere to go. To the east, the Mazatzal Mountains rose like broken teeth against the stars, too far away to matter. To the west, more desert stretched to the California border, empty and hostile and offering no sanctuary.
The speedometer hit one hundred, then one-ten. At these speeds, hitting a pothole or a piece of road debris would turn them into red smears on the asphalt, but the alternative was a cage, and Jinx had sworn on her mother’s grave that she’d die before she went back inside.
She’d done five years in Tucson for armed robbery—a liquor store job that went sideways when her partner got greedy and pistol-whipped the clerk. Five years of gray walls and gray food and gray uniforms, five years of watching her back and sleeping with one eye open and learning that the only thing that mattered in this world was power and the will to use it.
When she got out, she’d sworn things would be different. She’d be the one in charge. She’d be the one calling the shots. No more partners who couldn’t follow orders, no more jobs that went to shit because somebody couldn’t keep their head on straight.
But here she was, running from the law because Viper couldn’t resist putting bullets in people who didn’t need killing.
“Contact ahead!” Spider’s voice cut through her brooding. “Roadblock, half a mile and closing!”
Jinx squinted through the wind-tears and saw them—a line of patrol cars stretched across both lanes of the highway, their light bars painting the desert in strobing reds and blues. Behind the cars, she could make out the silhouettes of cops crouched behind open doors, rifles probably already trained on the approaching bikes.
“What’s the play, boss?” This from Roxy, trying to sound tough but unable to keep the tremor out of her voice.
Jinx’s mind raced through the options. They could try to ram through the roadblock, but that was suicide—four bikes against God knew how many cops with high-powered rifles. They could surrender, but that meant life sentences for all of them, after Viper’s little execution back at the casino. They could try to turn around, but the pursuit units were less than a mile behind and closing fast.
Or they could go off-road.
“Follow me!” Jinx yanked her handlebars to the right, sending the Harley into a controlled skid as she left the asphalt and plunged into the desert proper. Behind her, she heard the whine of three more bikes following suit, their tires fighting for purchase on the loose sand and gravel.
The terrain was rougher than it looked from the highway—a maze of arroyos and boulder fields that threatened to swallow them whole. Jinx’s teeth rattled in her skull as she fought to keep the bike upright, the headlight beam dancing crazily across rocks and thornbushes and the occasional bleached skeleton of some long-dead animal.
“Jesus Christ, Jinx!” Viper’s voice was breathless with exhilaration. “This is fucking insane!”
Maybe it was. But insane was better than dead, and dead was better than caged.
Behind them, the roadblock’s lights were fading into the distance, but Jinx knew the respite was temporary. They’d have helicopters up within the hour, probably with thermal imaging. And somewhere ahead in the darkness, more roadblocks were already being set up, more traps being laid by men with badges and guns who saw four women on motorcycles as nothing more than prey to be run down.
“Fuel’s getting critical,” Spider reported, her voice steady despite the battering her bike was taking. “We need to find cover soon, or we’re gonna be walking.”
Jinx was about to respond when she saw it—a flicker of neon light in the distance, pink and blue against the star-drunk sky. Some kind of building, maybe a gas station or a diner, sitting alone in the middle of nowhere like a mirage made real.
It probably meant trouble. Places like that always did, especially for women like them. But trouble was better than capture, and capture was better than death.
At least, that’s what Jinx told herself as she aimed her bike toward the distant lights, hoping that she wasn’t leading her girls straight into something that would make their current problems seem like a pleasant Sunday ride.
The neon sign came into focus as they drew closer: “Last Chance Diner – Open 24 Hours – All Welcome.”
Jinx almost laughed at the irony. Last chance, indeed.
She just hoped it wouldn’t be their last anything.