Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Locked In
Zane
Meeting canceled by cops. Fate had other plans.
I'm at Mel's at 11:45, watching the door, when the scanner on my phone lights up. Multiple units responding to the old medical warehouse on Jefferson—the one where we store overflow supplies, where deals sometimes happen, where my angel was apparently supposed to meet me in fifteen minutes.
Except now there's a raid.
Cops at Mel's. Abort.
Angel: Already here. Hiding.
Where?
Angel: Medical supply warehouse. Jefferson. You know it?
My blood freezes. That's our warehouse. Iron Talons territory. Currently being raided.
I'm coming.
Angel: NO. Cops everywhere.
Hide. Don't move. I know the building.
I'm on my bike before she can respond, taking back streets, avoiding the circus of red and blue lights. The warehouse has multiple entrances—perks of doing illegal shit, you always know the exits.
I slip in through the loading dock, moving by memory and instinct. The cops are loud, focused on the main floor where the deal went down earlier—not my deal, but someone was sloppy. Their voices echo off concrete, giving away their positions.
My phone vibrates.
Angel: Someone's coming.
Where are you?
Angel: Medical freezer. Sub basement.
The medical freezer. Of course she'd hide there—it's the last place cops check because it requires a key code and it's fucking freezing. Problem is, it's also a death trap if you can't get out.
I make it to the sub-basement, avoiding two uniforms who are more interested in their conversation about overtime than actually searching. The freezer door is cracked open—she's smart enough not to lock herself in completely.
"Angel?" I whisper.
"Diablo?"
I slip inside, and there she is—red dress like I asked, but paired with a jacket that's doing nothing against the sub-zero temperature. Her lips are already turning blue.
"Hi," she says, teeth chattering.
"Hi."
The freezer door clicks shut behind me. We both lunge for it, but it's too late. The emergency release was disabled months ago—safety violation we never fixed because who the fuck expects to be locked in here?
"Shit," she breathes, and her breath fogs in the frozen air.
"How long have you been in here?"
"Twenty minutes? Thirty? I can't feel my fingers."
I pull out my phone. No signal. We're in a concrete and steel box designed to keep things frozen. Things like us, apparently.
"How long before someone finds us?" she asks, already shivering violently.
"Could be hours. Cops'll clear out, then someone will come check." I do the math. "Three, maybe four hours."
"I'll be dead by then."
She's not wrong. She's smaller than me, less body mass, already hypothermic. That red dress might as well be tissue paper.
"Take off your clothes," I say.
"What?"
"Skin to skin contact. Share body heat. It's that or you die."
She stares at me. "This isn't how I imagined you getting me naked."
"Me either. But we need to do this now, before you can't."
Her hands are shaking too hard to work the zipper. "I c-can't—"
"Let me."
I step closer, and for the first time since that night at the diner, we're touching. My hands find her zipper, pull it down, and she's wearing nothing but black lace underneath because of course she is.
"This is so fucked," she whispers.
"Completely."
I strip down to my boxers, trying not to think about how this is the exact opposite of how I wanted this to go. Then I pull her against me, skin to skin, and Christ, she's ice cold.
"Is this okay?" I ask, wrapping us both in our discarded clothes as makeshift blankets.
"Just hold me," she whispers against my chest. "Talk to me. Keep me awake."
"What do you want to talk about?"
"Tell me your name."
"Zane," I say, because we're probably going to die in here anyway. "Zane Quinn."
"Lena Cruz."
Cruz. Miguel's last name. My suspicion confirmed while we're freezing to death.
"Your brother's going to kill me," I say.
"If we don't freeze first." Her whole body is shaking against mine. "God, you're warm."
"You're not. You're like holding an ice sculpture."
"Sweet talker."
I adjust our position, trying to cover more of her exposed skin. She makes a sound that might be pain or relief.
"Tell me something," she says. "Anything. Keep talking."
"I've been obsessed with you since that first text. That first voice note. I think about you constantly. Dream about you. Jerk off thinking about you every fucking night."
"Romantic," she mutters against my throat.
"You wanted honesty."
"Tell me more."
"I've never wanted anything the way I want you. It's pathological. You've rewired my entire fucking brain, and we've barely touched until now."
She presses closer, and I can feel her heartbeat against my chest—too slow, hypothermia setting in.
"My turn," she whispers. "I saved your friend today. At the warehouse. Ranger. Shoulder wound."
Ranger. He was at the warehouse massacre. She was there, saving everyone, including my brothers.
"You were there?"
"I'm always there when people bleed. Doesn't matter whose people."
"Your brother know?"
"He knows I was there. Doesn't know about you. About us."
"There's an us?"
She looks up at me, eyes unfocused from the cold. "If we survive this, there's an us."
"We're surviving."
"I'm so cold, Zane."
First time she's used my name. It hits different when she might be dying.
"Stay awake. Talk to me."
"Can't. Too tired."
"Lena. Angel. Stay awake."
But she's already going limp against me, her body shutting down to preserve core temperature. I hold her tighter, trying to push my warmth into her through sheer will.
Time becomes elastic in the freezer. Every minute stretches like an hour, marked by her shallow breathing and my racing thoughts.
I talk to her unconscious form—about Emma, about Dylan, about the first time I saw her Instagram photo and knew I was fucked.
About how her voice makes me want to be something other than what I am.
About how saving Ranger today makes her more of an angel than she knows.
My voice cracks sometime around hour two, when her lips are blue as surgical gloves and her heartbeat is so slow I have to press my ear to her chest to find it.
By hour two, I'm making promises to a God I don't believe in, offering trades—my life for hers, my soul for her survival, anything to keep her breathing.
Finally, finally, I hear voices. Banging on the door.
"In here!" I shout. "We're locked in!"
The door opens, and Tommy's face appears. "Z? What the fuck—"
"Get blankets. Now. She's hypothermic."
Tommy doesn't ask questions, just runs. I wrap Lena in my jacket, her body limp as a corpse but still breathing.
"I've got you, angel," I whisper. "I've got you."
The next hour is a blur. Getting her to my place, not the hospital because too many questions. Warming her slowly—too fast could kill her. Watching her eyes flutter open, confused.
"Zane?"
"Yeah, angel. I'm here."
"We didn't die."
"We didn't die."
She tries to sit up, fails. "How long?"
"You've been out for five hours. You're at my place."
"Miguel—"
"Thinks you're at Izzy's. She covered."
She stares at me. "You saved my life."
"You saved Ranger's. We're even."
"No," she says quietly. "We're not even close to even."
She's right. We're in so much deeper than even. We're in the kind of deep that drowns people.
"When you're better," I say, sitting on the edge of the bed where she's wrapped in every blanket I own, "I'm claiming that kiss you owe me."
"I don't owe you a kiss."
"You owe me several. But we'll start with one."
She smiles, small and tired. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"When I'm better. One kiss."
One kiss. Like that's not going to destroy both of us.
Like we're not already destroyed.
Like we didn't just literally almost die together, which seems about right for our relationship.
She falls asleep again, and I watch her breathe, alive and warm and in my bed.
Miguel's going to notice she's missing. The warehouse raid will be all over the MC network. Everything's about to explode in ways we can't control.
But right now, she's alive and breathing, and that's enough.
That has to be enough.