Mustang (Wicked Mayhem MC #3)

CHAPTER ONE

Mustang

The truck smelled like cigarettes and gun oil.

I’d been sitting in it for three days straight, parked on the same stretch of curb across from Hannah Morgan’s house, and the smell had worked its way into my clothes so deep I could taste it when I swallowed.

I didn’t mind. Familiar smells kept me sharp, and I needed to be sharp for this.

The contract was simple, clean, familiar work I’d done enough times that my hands knew the steps before my brain did.

The envelope sat on the passenger seat, sealed. Next to it, a grainy photograph of a woman with long red hair walking down a street I’d never been to. The address was handwritten on the back of a napkin in the client’s blocky script. Below that, a number: fifty thousand dollars. Cash on delivery.

Fifty grand. Most men would sign without blinking.

The client wasn’t new. We’d done business before, back when he needed a problem solved quietly and the club needed the money more than we needed clean hands.

This time, the problem was Hannah Morgan.

She’d seen a crime she shouldn’t have. Identified the wrong people.

The client wanted her gone before she could testify, talk, or breathe another word to anyone who mattered.

I studied the house across the street. Modest two-story, white siding that needed pressure washing, cracked concrete walkway up to the front steps.

A window box of wilting flowers on the left side.

Through the front window, a bakery apron hung on a hook, pale blue with a blurred bakery emblem I couldn’t read from this distance.

I’d been watching for three days. Cataloging.

Day one: She left before sunrise. I heard the door at 4:17 AM, watched her walk to her car in the dark with her apron already on, a travel mug in one hand, keys in the other. The neighborhood was silent. Her headlights cut through the mist and she was gone.

She returned at 10:43 AM. I caught the smell before I saw her – yeast, sugar, warm baked dough carrying on the morning air. She parked, climbed out with tired shoulders, and went inside without looking around. Exhaustion from standing on her feet for hours, not fear.

Tuesday afternoon, she walked two blocks over to a children’s home. I watched through binoculars as she carried a cardboard box through the front door. Came out an hour later, empty-handed, smiling at a staff member’s comment.

Thursday, same routine. Box in, hour later, smile out.

Every morning, same thing. She came home from the bakery, changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and waved to the elderly woman next door. The neighbor waved back. Ritual. Comfort. Predictability that made my job easier and my stomach tighter with each passing hour.

I’d expected a liar. A liability. Someone tangled up in dirty work who’d brought this on herself.

A woman with angles, who knew the score and played it anyway.

I’d dealt with plenty of those. They were easier.

You could look at their face and see the calculation behind their eyes, the same math you were doing, just from the other side of the equation.

Hannah Morgan didn’t calculate.

On day two, I watched her hold a door open for a stranger at the corner store. The man didn’t thank her. She didn’t seem to care.

That same afternoon, she left a paper bag on her neighbor’s porch. Pastries, probably. The old woman found it an hour later, picked it up with wrinkled hands, and stood on her porch looking at Hannah’s house for a long time before going back inside.

Day three, I caught her through the open window of the community home.

She was kneeling in front of a little boy, murmuring words that made him laugh – a real laugh, full-bodied and bright.

She laughed too, her head tipping back, red hair falling over her shoulders, and for a second, I forgot why I was there.

Forgot the envelope, the photograph, the number written on the napkin.

Forgot the gun under my seat and the things I’d done with it.

The feeling lasted exactly two seconds. Then I was back in the truck, jaw clenched so tight I could feel the scar along it pulling.

My notes were sparse because there was nothing to write.

No pattern of suspicious visitors. No late-night calls.

No men coming and going. Just a woman who baked bread, visited children, and waved to her neighbor like clockwork.

I picked up the photograph again. Turned it over.

Her face was grainy, slightly blurred from movement, but the green of her eyes came through even in the cheap print.

I’d seen those eyes in person now, through the binoculars, bright and alert and completely unaware that someone, with a gun, a contract, and fifty thousand reasons to pull a trigger, was watching her.

I set the photograph facedown on the seat.

The house across the street was darkening as evening fell. The wilting flowers in the window box caught the last of the daylight, pale and struggling. The bakery apron hung motionless behind the glass.

I checked the mirrors. Empty street. No cars I hadn’t already accounted for. No movement in any of the neighboring windows. The elderly woman’s porch light had come on, casting a yellow glow over her stoop where the paper bag had been.

I made the decision the way I made all decisions. No debate. No second-guessing. Just a shift in my body, a restless pressure finally settling, and the knowledge that I was going to move.

The envelope stayed on the seat. The photograph stayed facedown. I reached under the driver’s seat, felt the cold weight of the Glock, and didn’t pull it out yet.

Not here. Not yet.

I started the engine. Let it idle. Watched the street one more time through the windshield, then the rearview, then the side mirrors. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change unless I changed it.

The weight of what came next settled across my shoulders like a burden I’d carried before and would carry again. Heavy. Familiar. A weight that didn’t get lighter no matter how many times you picked it up.

I put the truck in drive and pulled away from the curb, headlights cutting through the gathering dark. Hannah Morgan’s house receded in the mirror, small and quiet and completely unaware of what was coming for it.

I had three hours until midnight. Enough time to get ready. Enough time to make sure that when I walked through her back door, the job would go exactly the way I planned.

Enough time to pretend I hadn’t already decided, somewhere between day one and day three, that I wasn’t going to kill her.

The backyard gate whined when I pushed it open.

Not loud – just enough to make me pause, listen, count to five.

Nothing moved. The neighbor’s dog didn’t bark.

The street stayed quiet. I stepped through and closed it behind me, the latch catching with a soft click that sounded twice as loud as it was.

Rusted patio chair to my left. Small herb garden along the fence line – rosemary, thyme, maybe sage.

The smell hit me as I passed it, green and sharp, cutting through the night air.

The back door was locked, but only in the way that mattered to honest people.

I had it open in under thirty seconds, my fingertips finding the right pressure points on the frame, the lock giving way with a whisper.

The kitchen smelled like bread and coffee.

Warm. The range hood light was on, casting everything in a yellow glow that made the room feel smaller than it was.

Flour dusted the counter in a fine white layer.

A half-finished loaf sat wrapped in a dish towel, the crust still soft.

The coffee maker gurgled on its timer, the pot half-full and steaming.

I cleared the room in seconds. Glock drawn, low and ready, sweeping the corners, checking the doorway to the hall, the space under the table. Empty. The house was quiet except for the coffee maker and the low hum of the refrigerator.

Then she walked in.

From the hallway, barefoot, in a sleep shirt that hung past her knees. Red hair loose around her shoulders, the way I’d seen it through the binoculars but closer now, real, catching the yellow light. Green eyes. Wide. Frozen.

I raised the gun. Center mass. Two-handed grip, the way I’d done it a hundred times.

She didn’t scream. Didn’t run. Didn’t even breathe for a second that stretched longer than it should have, filling the kitchen, pressing against the walls, and making the coffee maker’s gurgle sound like it was happening in another room.

Then Hannah glanced at the coffee maker. Her eyes came back to me. She raised her hands to shoulder height, palms out, and her voice came out steady in a way that made my finger tighten on the trigger.

“It just finished brewing,” she said. “Do you want a cup?”

I stared at her. The gun didn’t move. Her hands were trembling – I could see it from six feet away, a fine shake running through her fingers – but her voice stayed steady. No tears. No begging. Just a question, offered like she was talking to someone who’d knocked on her door at a reasonable hour.

She was watching me the way someone watches a stray dog. Careful. Assessing. Not cruel. Not panicked. Just... careful. The same way I’d watched her for three days, except she was doing it from six feet away with a gun pointed at her chest and nothing between us but air and the smell of coffee.

My finger stayed on the trigger. The safety was off. I could feel the metal against my skin, the slight resistance before the break, the way the gun would jump when it fired. I knew exactly what would happen if I pulled. I’d seen it before. I’d done it before.

I studied her face.

No calculation. No angle. No hidden agenda playing behind those green eyes. Just a young woman trying to survive the next thirty seconds by offering a stranger coffee in her kitchen at midnight.