2. Chapter 2
Shadow
The girl holds on like she hates needing to.
I feel it in the grip of her arms around my waist. Tight enough to bruise if I were softer. Loose enough every few seconds that I know she’s fighting herself, fighting the instinct to cling to a man she doesn’t know.
Smart woman.
Too damn smart to have been crawling around Salazar Huntington’s property alone.
But fear makes people reckless. Desperation makes them stupid. And love makes them walk into gunfire with nothing but shaking hands and bad luck.
The bike eats the mountain road beneath us, tires hugging the curves as the villa disappears behind the trees. I keep the headlight low and the speed mean, cutting through the dark with the kind of focus that kept me alive in worse places.
Behind us, the gunfire fades.
Doesn’t mean we’re clear.
Men like Salazar have reach. Money. Cameras. Dirty law in his pocket, probably. He owns half the nightlife in Blissmont County and enough scared people to make himself feel untouchable.
The Saints have been cutting into him for months.
Clubs shut down. Girls pulled out. Doors chained. Files handed to the right people when the right people can be trusted.
Then another club pops up.
Another name.
Another front.
Cockroaches survive almost anything.
Ghost’s call came forty minutes before I saw her. He’s the brother Havoc sends when a situation needs clean violence and colder judgment. If Ghost says a place is dirty, I don’t ask if he’s sure.
Big sale tonight. Huntington’s villa outside Black Pines. I’m too far out. You’re close.
That was all I needed.
I was twenty minutes away, coming back from checking a storage site Havoc wanted eyes on. I wasn’t supposed to hit the villa alone. Wasn’t supposed to do anything but confirm activity, send Ghost pictures, and wait for the club.
Then I saw her.
Little thing in the trees, crouched behind a pine like the whole damn forest wasn’t announcing her every step. Dark hair loose around her face. Curves wrapped in a jacket that didn’t hide a damn thing from me. Soft hips. Full thighs. A body made for a man’s hands.
She made it over the wall, and I knew before she fell into the bush that she was trouble.
Not Salazar’s kind.
Mine.
Talia.
The name sits in my head like a hot coal.
I feel her move behind me when I take a hard turn. Her fingers dig in tighter, pressing through my cut. Her cheek stays between my shoulder blades, helmet tucked against my back.
Good.
Let her hold on.
I want her hands on me.
Bad timing. Wrong place. Worse reason.
Doesn’t change the truth.
There was one second in that garden, one stupid second, when I turned her around and got a look at her face.
Baby blue eyes too big for the dark, angry and terrified at the same time.
Chocolate hair tangled with leaves. Freckles scattered over her nose like someone tried to make her sweeter and failed, because that mouth was pure sin and sass.
Then she bit me.
I flex my hand on the throttle.
The sting is still there.
Little hellcat.
She should piss me off. Reckless civilians usually do. They wander into things they don’t understand and expect luck to do the work of training.
But she isn’t looking for excitement.
She’s looking for her sister.
And she was ready to crawl into hell with no backup and a pair of boots that damn near got her killed.
That kind of loyalty is either beautiful or dangerous.
Most days, it’s both.
Ghost’s voice crackles low through my earpiece.
“Shadow. Status.”
I tap the mic once, keeping my eyes on the road. “Moving.”
“With the girl?”
He heard enough before I killed the channel. The shot. The scramble. My order for her to run.
“Yeah.”
A beat of silence.
“Pursuit?”
“Not close.”
“Need coordinates?”
“Not yet.”
Ghost doesn’t like that. I hear it in what he doesn’t say.
“Check in when stopped.”
I cut the mic before he can argue.
Talia’s arms tighten.
“Almost there,” I call over the engine.
She doesn’t answer.
I don’t expect her to.
The clubhouse is the safest place for her.
Getting there is the problem.
Lovestone Ridge sits forty miles east, and Salazar knows every main road between here and Saint territory. We’ve hit too many of his clubs, burned too many of his routes, taken too many girls out from under him. Men like that learn your habits.
No backup. No second bike. No cage running shield.
Just me, Talia, and a dark road full of places to die.
I’m not handing him a clean shot at us on a mountain road.
So I pick the motel.
I take the next turn off the main road and kill the headlight for thirty seconds, letting the bike glide through a narrow stretch between pines before bringing it back low. If anyone follows, they’ll miss the turn unless they know it’s there.
Five miles later, the neon sign of a roadside motel bleeds red into the dark.
VACANCY.
Half the letters flicker like they’re thinking about giving up.
Good enough.
The place is ugly. Anonymous. Good enough.
Tonight, temporary keeps her breathing.
I roll past the front office, circle around back, and park behind an old maintenance shed near the back row of rooms. The shadows sit thick here, and the security camera above the ice machine has been busted since the last time I came this way.
I kill the engine.
The sudden silence hits hard.
Talia stays pressed to my back for half a breath too long.
Then she jerks away like she’s been burned.
I climb off and hold steady while she swings one leg over, wobbling when her boots hit the gravel. She yanks the helmet off. Her hair tumbles around her face, wild and dark, and a leaf falls onto her shoulder.
She glares at me like I put it there.
“Absolutely not,” she says.
I take the helmet from her. “You don’t know what I’m asking.”
“You parked behind a motel after dragging me out of a gunfight. I can make an educated guess.”
The mouth on her.
God help me.
“Talia.”
“No. Don’t Talia me in that voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one that sounds like you expect walls to move if you grunt at them.”
I stare at her.
She crosses her arms, which does nothing good for my focus. Her chest rises and falls fast beneath her jacket. Fear still has her. Adrenaline too. But she stands there anyway, chin up, eyes bright, trying to stare down a man twice her size because it’s easier than falling apart.
She gets under my skin fast.
Too fast.
She’s younger than me. Bright where I’m worn down. Soft where I’ve gone sharp. I’m thirty-nine, with blood on my hands and ghosts under my skin, and I should have enough honor left to step back.
I don’t.
One look at her in that garden, all fury and fear and loyalty, and something in me locked.
Mine doesn’t feel like a choice.
It feels like a fact.
“You got somewhere safer?” I ask.
“My apartment.”
“Landon knows where you live?”
Her mouth opens.
Closes.
There it is.
“He knows where you work,” I say. “He knows your name. He probably knows your address, your car, your schedule, and every place you’d run if you panicked.”
The color slips from her face.
I hate that.
Doesn’t soften my voice though. Soft lies get people killed. Hard truth keeps them breathing.
“You go home tonight, he comes for you. Maybe alone. Maybe with men. Maybe he waits until you think you’re safe.”
She swallows.
“And here is safe?”
“No. Here is temporary.”
“That is also not comforting.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
Her eyes flash. “You’re very bad at this.”
“At what?”
“Reassuring people.”
I look around the back of the motel. Peeling paint. A rusted dumpster near the fence. Office light glowing around the corner. Two trucks parked closer to the front. One sedan with a cracked windshield near the stairs. Curtains closed in most rooms.
“I keep people alive. Different skill set.”
That shuts her up.
For about three seconds.
“Fine,” she says. “But if this turns into a murder motel situation, I’m haunting you first.”
“You planning to die loud too?”
“I plan to be inconvenient in every possible state of existence.”
I almost smile.
Almost.
I jerk my chin toward the front office. “Stay close.”
“I thought you said this place was temporary, not safe.”
“Close to me is safer than away from me.”
Her lips part.
For once, nothing comes out.
I like that too much.
We cross the lot to the office with my body angled slightly behind hers, blocking her from the road. She notices. I know because her shoulders tighten, but she doesn’t comment.
Inside, the clerk barely looks up from a little TV playing some late-night game show. Thin man. Gray hair. Cigarette tucked behind one ear despite the NO SMOKING sign taped to the counter.
“One room,” I say.
Talia makes a strangled sound beside me.
The clerk finally looks up.
I slide cash across the counter before she can start. “Back row. No ID.”
The clerk eyes the money.
Then me.
Then the cut.
His gaze moves away fast. “Room twelve.”
He hands over a key with a plastic tag.
Talia waits until we’re outside again before hissing, “No ID?”
“You want your name in a motel system tonight?”
“No.”
“Then no ID.”
“You do this a lot?”
I lead her back across the lot toward the room. “Enough.”
“That is vague and troubling.”
Room twelve sits in the back row, two doors down from the busted ice machine. From the window, I can see the maintenance shed and the shadows where I left the bike. I unlock the door and push it open, stepping in first.
“Wait,” she says. “Do not tell me you’re doing the scary-man-checks-the-room thing.”
I scan the room before answering.
One bed. Brown comforter. Nightstand with a cheap lamp. Small table. Two chairs. TV bolted to the wall. Bathroom to the left. Window facing the back fence. No connecting door. No closet. No one breathing where they shouldn’t be.
Not great.
Not the worst.
“Yes,” I say.
She blinks. “Oh.”
I let her in and shut the door behind us. Then I lock it, chain it, and drag one of the chairs under the handle.