Chapter 2
DANIEL
The heater in the truck rattles against the Pine Valley blizzard outside, but the heat coming off the woman in the passenger seat is enough to fog the windows. Kaila Reyes.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel until the leather groans.
If I look at her, I'll drive us into a ditch.
I keep my eyes on the whiteout conditions of the mountain road, navigating by memory and instinct.
The road to the Broken Halos clubhouse proves treacherous even in July.
In a storm like this, the gravel track becomes a death trap for anyone unfamiliar with the hidden cliff edges and deep potholes.
"You missed the turn," she rasps. Her throat has taken a beating from screaming at me back in the cabin before I tossed her over my shoulder.
"No, I haven't."
"The GPS says—"
"GPS doesn't work out here. Satellites can't see through the iron deposits in the ridge." I shift gears, the engine growls as we climb steeper. "Trusting a screen over the ground under your tires gets you killed."
She huffs, folding her arms over her chest. The motion draws my gaze. She wears layers of tactical gear that swallows her small frame, but underneath the bulk hides soft skin and a pulse thrumming too fast.
She doesn't tremble. Her gaze remains steady, calculating. That messes with my head.
Most people cry and beg when Daniel Gunnar kicks down their door to drag them into a storm. Kaila just calculates. I can practically hear the processors whirring in her brain, assessing threat levels and analyzing escape routes.
"Where are you taking me? The slaughterhouse?"
"Clubhouse," I correct. "You’re an asset."
"An asset." She tastes the word, practically spitting the syllables. "Is that what you call people you kidnap?"
"I extracted you."
"Tomay-to, tomah-to, mountain man."
My jaw locks. She delivers the title like an insult, treating me like some primitive brute dragging a club. Maybe she has a point. The second my hands touched her back in that cabin, civilization checked out. Logic short-circuited. The roaring static of Mine consumed everything else.
"You were sitting in a glass house throwing rocks at the Costas," I grumble, the sound vibrating against the steering wheel. "Your encryption is sloppy. They've run a trace on your localized IP for three days. If I hadn't shown up, you'd be bleeding out in a trunk right now."
Silence stretches from the passenger seat. A small, begrudging shifting of fabric follows.
"Two days," she mutters.
I glance over. "What?"
"They tracked me for two days. I routed through a bouncing signal in Kiev, but the latency tipped them off." She stares at the wall of white snow outside her window. "I needed six more hours. I almost had their ledger."
"You almost caught a bullet."
I downshift. The massive iron gates of the compound looms out of the snow like the jaws of a beast. I hit the remote clipped to my visor. Hydraulics whine as the heavy metal swings inward.
The Broken Halos MC operates as a fortress. The sprawling main lodge consists of timber and stone, fortified with steel shutters and reinforced doors. Outbuildings dot the perimeter, housing the armory and the bunkhouse for Prospects.
"Welcome to hell," she whispers.
"Home," I correct.
I pull the truck around the back, parking next to the heavy steel door leading directly to my private quarters. The rest of the club uses the main entrance, living in the communal noise of the brotherhood.
I avoid the chaos.
As the Tracker, I live in the silence between the keystrokes.
"Out." I kill the engine.
She stays put, staring at the thick metal. "What if I refuse?"
"Then I carry you. I promise to skip being gentle about it."
Dark eyes flash at me, sparking a defiance that makes my blood run hot. Shoving the door open, she jumps down into the knee-deep snow. A curse slips from her lips as she stumbles, but I catch her before gravity wins.
Gripping her arm, I haul her upright. The contact sends a jolt straight up my limb, bypassing my brain and hitting me right in the groin. Under the layers of winter gear, her frame feels bird-boned and breakable.
Yet this woman has held off a cartel cyber-attack for eight months with nothing but a laptop and caffeine.
"Move," I growl, guiding her toward the entrance.
Inside, the air hangs stale and cold until we hit the second landing. My loft occupies the entire top floor of the north wing. Soundproofing and climate control shields the space to keep the servers running at optimal efficiency.
I key the biometric lock, the heavy door hisses open.
Kaila steps inside and stops dead.
The room functions as a command center, bathed in the soft, blue hum of server racks. Monitors line the far wall, curved and glowing over cables that snake across the floor in organized bundles.
"Whoa," she murmurs. Her tough exterior slips, revealing the raw tech-nerd underneath. "Is that a liquid-cooled mainframe? Are you mining crypto or running a small country?"
"I run the mountains," I state, locking the door behind us. The heavy thud of the bolt sliding home makes her shoulders jerk.
She spins around, eyes narrowing. "You locked it."
"Standard protocol."
"Am I a prisoner?"
"You're a guest who isn't allowed to leave."
"That defines a prisoner, Einstein." She marches over to the wall of monitors, her fingers twitching toward the keyboard. "So, the Tracker hides here. I expected more skulls and less fiber optics."
"The skulls belong downstairs."
Striding past her, I dump her bag of hard drives onto the metal workbench. The clatter echoes off the soundproofed walls.
"Hey!" She lunges for the bag. "Careful with those! That's my life in there."
I catch her wrist before she can touch the drives. My grip holds loose but inescapable. Pulling her in just an inch brings the scent of ozone and cold winter air clinging to her dark hair straight into my lungs.
"This," I say, pointing to the canvas bag, "is contraband. Until I vet every byte of data on these drives, you don't touch them."
"You can't do that." Her chest heaves, brushing against my heavy jacket. "My brother's intel and the Costa patrol routes sit on those drives. If I stop tracking their financial leverage, Kevin dies."
"If you plug a corrupted drive into my network, we all die."
Releasing her wrist, I step back to regain some distance. Her proximity scrambles my ability to think in binary. Instinct roars to claim and protect, while logic demands I verify and sanitize the threat.
Take off the hoodie," I order.
She blinks. "Excuse me?"
"The hoodie. You're overheating."
"I'm fine."
"Sweat is gathering at your temples. Take it off, Kaila. I need to see that you're not wired."
Her teeth sink into her lower lip. A nervous habit. I file that away. Bites lip when cornered.
The heavy cotton of the oversized hoodie rustles as she pulls it over her head. Shrugging the thick material off, she lets it drop to the floor. Underneath, a thin tank top clings to her curves like a second skin.
Fuck.
Dryness coats my tongue. Every line of her tiny, fierce body radiates tension.
"Happy?" she snaps, holding her arms out. "Searching for a wire, or are you just perving?"
"If I wanted to perv, I wouldn't need an excuse." Turning away, I move to the main console. I need to sit down. Looking at code proves safer than staring at those curves. "Sit."
I point to the only chair in the room—mine.
A deep frown creases her brow. "Where are you going to sit?"
"I'm standing." Tapping a sequence into the keyboard wakes the main array. The screens flare to life, cascading waterfalls of code scrolling too fast for a normal human to read.
Kaila defies normal.
A sharp gasp escapes her throat as she drifts toward the screens like a moth to a flame. "You're running a polymorphic encryption on a rolling key. That's military grade."
"Better. It's mine."
"Look at line forty-two." She points at the screen, leaning over the desk. "A logic loop. If the Costas use a brute-force packet injection, they stall your firewall for three seconds. That gives them enough time to plant a listener."
Every muscle in my body locks.
Scanning the green text, I confirm it. I wrote that architecture myself, staring at it for three years.
She has it exactly right.
A microscopic flaw exists right in the center. A vulnerability so small only another apex predator would spot the gap.
"Fix it," I command.
She tilts her head, eyebrows raised. "You just explicitly forbade me from touching the tech."
"Your tech remains off-limits. You can use mine."
Reaching for the keyboard proves useless against the high desk, designed for my massive frame to stand or sit in the raised chair. Her height leaves her stretching uncomfortably.
She drags the heavy stool over. The biometric sensor on the seat flashes red instantly.
"Access denied," the computer chirps.
"The system only unlocks for my weight distribution and heat signature," I explain.
A loud groan echoes over the server hum. "Seriously? You have a butt-scanner?"
"Security remains absolute."
"How am I supposed to fix your sloppy code standing on my tiptoes?"
The vulnerability glares back at me from the screen, mocking my oversight. If the Costas hit the compound tonight...
I stop thinking and just move.
Dropping into the leather seat triggers the sensors to turn green. The system unlocks.
"Come here."
She stares at the space between us. "What?"
"You can't reach, and the chair rejects your biometrics. Sit." I pat my thigh.
Her dark eyes expand. The oxygen in the room vanishes, sucked out by a sudden, violent tension. "You want me on your lap?"
"It's practical."
"It's insane."
"Do you want to fix the code or let the cartel burn this mountain down?"
Her gaze bounces between the screen and my face. The hacker in her eventually wins the war against the cautious captive. Huffing in annoyance, she closes the distance.
Turning around, she lowers her weight onto my thighs.