Chapter Fifteen
Dan
The night was warm, the kind of rare evening that made you forget winter existed.
Dan was buried deep inside Riley, her legs locked around his hips, both of them moving slowly and deliberately, chasing the last edge of pleasure before sleep.
Her nails dug into his shoulders; his mouth was on her throat, tasting salt and the faint trace of her shampoo.
His phone started vibrating on the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times.
Riley bit his shoulder and growled against his skin, “If that’s Denver again, tell him to fuck off until morning.”
Dan ignored it too, at least until the fourth buzz turned into a string of urgent chimes. He reached blindly, still moving inside her, and glanced at the screen.
Denver’s name.
Single text preview that turned his blood to antifreeze:
*INK & IRON IS ON FIRE. GET HERE NOW.*
He was off the bed and across the room before Riley could process the sudden absence. Jeans yanked on, belt forgotten, boots half-laced. “My shirt. Boots. Come on. We gotta roll.”
Riley sat up, sheet clutched to her chest, eyes wide. “Dan?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His pulse was already a war drum.
Thirty seconds later, they were on the bike, Riley’s arms locked around him like she knew what was coming. He twisted the throttle, and the bike screamed down the empty highway at a hundred and twenty, wind tearing at them like frozen claws.
They hit the edge of town, and the sky was wrong—glowing orange, the light pulsing like an open wound.
Dan’s heart stopped.
He knew that street. Knew the exact cinder-block building with the hand-painted iron roses curling around the windows.
They rounded the corner, and he saw the matte-black bike that was supposed to be safe in his garage was parked right next to the front of the building, flames licking up its tank like it was made of tissue paper.
Riley’s arms tightened around his waist so hard he felt ribs shift. “That’s my bike—”
He didn’t hear the rest. The throttle twisted to nothing as he slid the rear wheel sideways into the gravel lot across the street, and his boots hit asphalt running as soon as the kickstand was down.
Heat slapped at him like a physical fist. The entire front of Ink & Iron was an inferno with windows blown out in jagged black holes.
The roof had already started sagging, with bright licks of flame crawling up the mural Riley had finished last week.
She’d picked a phoenix rising from shattered glass and ink.
Seemed a cruel joke now. Smoke poured thick and black, carrying the smell of melting vinyl and burning paper and something sweeter, sickening, like turpentine, maybe, or paint thinner.
Fire.
This was his worst nightmare made flesh.
“RILEY!”
The roar that ripped out of him wasn’t human.
He ran straight at the front door. Hands grabbed him from behind.
Mad Dawg’s grip was on one arm, with Rocker on the other, two prospects piling on too.
He couldn’t understand why his brothers were trying to stop him.
Dan threw an elbow, connected with someone’s jaw evoking a grunt of pain, and kept going.
Flames kissed his forearms, singed his beard, and set the edge of his cut smoldering.
“Dan, she’s not in there!” Mad Dawg was shouting over the roar. “Brother, wait! She’s not inside!”
He didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The image in his head was too clear of Riley trapped behind the counter, red hair on fire, beautiful eyes wide as the ceiling came down.
Something detonated inside—paint cans, aerosol cans, the chemicals she used for shading, there was no telling the source, but the explosion was big. A wave of pressure punched him backward. He hit the gravel hard, air driven from his lungs, ears ringing.
That was when he saw her.
Riley, feet in her combat boots, clad in his oversized flannel, hair wild, sprinting across the street like a missile.
Ella’s tiny car screeched to a halt behind her, and the door flung open.
Riley launched herself at Dan, tackled him flat to the ground, knees on either side of his chest, hands framing his soot-streaked face.
“I’m here, I’m here, I’m right fucking here, Dan. Look at me.”
He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the loop in his head of her burning, her gone, the agony of her ashes sifting through his fingers.
She kissed him hard, her mouth tasting of salty tears and terror. “I rode here with you, remember? I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Sirens wailed closer. Firefighters shouted orders. The roof collapsed with a sound like the world cracking in half, sending a fresh bloom of sparks into the night sky.
Dan wrapped his arms around her and sobbed into her neck.
A lifetime of pain, those big, ugly, broken sounds, tore out of him in waves.
Riley held him tighter, rocking him on the gravel, whispering nonsense against his temple.
Brothers stood in a loose circle around them, giving him space while still protecting them.
To a man they stood there, eyes wet, jaws locked. No one spoke. No one needed to.
Denver’s voice cut through the chaos, phone pressed to his ear. “Got a live detonator signal. Cell tower ping just went active again—ten miles west, old grain silo off the interstate.”
Dan lifted his head. The tears on his face dried immediately in the heat.
He stared at Tinder.
Tinder looked back, stone-cold.
“Mount up,” Tinder said quietly.
Dan set Riley aside with a soft kiss, touching his forehead to hers. “Stay. I need to know you’re safe.”
She nodded, and he left her.
Every bike in the lot fired to life at once, a low, angry chorus of vengeance.
***
Riley
Riley stayed on her knees in the gravel long after the bikes roared away. Ella crouched beside her, arm around her shoulders, both of them watching the firefighters battle the blaze.
One of them—a tall woman with soot-streaked cheeks—walked over, helmet under her arm. “Ma’am, you the owner?”
Riley nodded, throat too tight to speak.
The firefighter crouched to her level. “We’ve got a preliminary read. Accelerant pattern is professional—multiple points of origin, timed spread. The perpetrator wanted it to look like a flash fire caught you inside. Like you died here.”
Riley’s stomach rolled. She pressed a hand to her mouth.
“They made it appear as if you were gone,” the firefighter said gently. “So no one would look for you after.” She tipped her chin to the two women and walked back to the line of firefighters still working to extinguish the flames.
Riley stared at the burning shell of her shop. Her bike. Her phoenix mural. Everything she’d built from nothing.
Then she looked west, towards the grain silo, where Dan and the club had just disappeared into the night.
She stood, legs shaking but steadying.
“They’re going to finish it,” she said.
Ella squeezed her hand. “And you’re going to let them.”
Riley nodded once.
Because this time, the fire wasn’t going to steal anything else from her.
Not her shop.
Not her life.
Not her man.
She turned towards Ella’s car. “Take me to the clubhouse. I need my stuff.”
The night was far from finished.
But neither was she.