Chapter Two
The stabling area smelled like hay and horse sweat and the faint chemical bite of something that shouldn't be there.
Teagan led Striker past the rows of temporary stalls, her boots crunching on the packed dirt, her mare following on a loose lead behind her.
The fairground was quieting down as evening crept in—competitors settling their horses, vendors closing up, the chaos of the day giving way to the uneasy calm before tomorrow's competition.
"Here." She stopped at a water trough near the end of the row. "Smell that?"
Striker leaned in, and she watched his nostrils flare. His expression didn't change, but something cold moved behind his eyes.
"Bleach."
"Dumped it in sometime between my morning ride and when I came back to check on Ginger.
" Teagan stroked her mare's neck, feeling the animal's steady warmth against her palm.
"If I hadn't caught it, she'd have been drinking that all day.
Could've burned her throat, her stomach.
Could've put her off competing for weeks. "
"But you caught it."
"I always check the water." Her jaw tightened. "My daddy taught me that before he taught me anything else. You can't trust what you didn't pour yourself."
Striker straightened, his gaze sweeping the stabling area with an intensity that made the hairs on her arms stand up. He wasn't just looking—he was reading. Cataloging. The way a man reads terrain before a fight.
"Show me the rest."
Teagan walked him back to her trailer, Ginger trailing behind like a patient shadow. The keyed panels caught the fading light—long gouges down the driver's side, deep enough to expose bare metal.
"This was two events ago, in Lubbock. First time Jessup approached me." She ran her finger along one of the scratches. "Told me it was a warning. Said next time, it wouldn't be the trailer."
"And you told him to go to hell."
"I told him if he touched my horse, I'd feed him his own teeth." She glanced at Striker, catching the edge of his grin. "He laughed. Thought it was cute."
"Bet he's not laughing now."
"Bet he's not."
She opened the trailer's tack compartment and pulled out her competition saddle. The note was still there, tucked under the cantle where Jessup had left it that morning.
$500/event or your horse runs her last race. —P
Striker took the note, read it, folded it carefully into his cut pocket. "He signed it with Pollard's initial. Confident bastard."
"He's been running this racket for two years, maybe longer.
Nobody's stopped him." Teagan lifted her saddle onto the rack and began checking the leather for damage.
"I've watched him work three events this season.
Vendors pay up or find their trucks vandalized.
Competitors pay up or find their animals hurt.
The livestock contractors are the worst off—Pollard's crew goes after their whole string if they don't comply. "
"And nobody reports it?"
Teagan laughed, the sound bitter in the evening air.
"To who? Small-town sheriffs who look the other way because Pollard's boys buy drinks at the local bar?
Circuit officials who don't want the bad press?
" She shook her head. "The rodeo world is small.
Word gets around. And the word on Pollard is that fighting back costs more than paying up. "
"The girl with the lame horse."
"Amy Reese. Barrel racer out of Oklahoma." Teagan's hands stilled on the saddle. "She refused to pay, same as me. Woke up the next morning to find her horse with wire cuts on both front legs. Deep ones. The kind that take months to heal, if they heal right at all."
"Did she report that?"
"She tried. Sheriff said it was probably an accident.
Horse got tangled in something." Teagan met his eyes.
"Amy knew better. So did everyone else. She sold her horse six weeks later.
Couldn't afford the vet bills, couldn't afford to wait out the recovery.
Last I heard, she was waitressing in Tulsa. "
The silence stretched between them. Teagan waited, watching Striker process what she'd told him.
He wasn't soft—she'd seen that in the parking lot, in the casual brutality of how he'd handled Jessup's crew.
But there was something working behind his eyes now.
Something that looked almost like anger.
Good. She could work with anger.
"You got a map of this place?" he asked.
"I've got a napkin and a pen."
That earned her another grin—quick, sharp, gone almost before she registered it. She dug the supplies out of her trailer's cab and handed them over.
Striker spread the napkin on her trailer's fender and started drawing. Quick strokes, efficient lines. The fairground took shape under his hands—the stabling area, the main arena, the parking lots, the vendor row.
"Choke point here." He marked an X near the stabling entrance. "Anyone coming for the horses has to pass through. Sight line from the grandstand covers most of the arena, but this corner's blind." Another X. "Exit routes—three for vehicles, two on foot if you know the fence line."
Teagan watched him work, something shifting in her chest. He wasn't just strong. He was smart. Tactical. The kind of man who walked into a situation and immediately started planning how to win it.
The kind of man who could actually help her.
"You do this a lot?" she asked. "Map out fairgrounds like battlefields?"
"Everything's a battlefield if you look at it right." He capped the pen and handed it back. "The question is whether you're the one choosing the ground or the one getting ambushed on it."
"And which one am I?"
Striker looked at her—really looked, his pale eyes taking in every inch of her face like he was memorizing it. "Right now? Neither. You're standing in the middle waiting to see which way the fight goes."
"I don't wait for fights. I start them."
"Yeah." His voice dropped, rougher than before. "I noticed."
The air between them thickened. Teagan felt it in her skin, in the sudden awareness of how close he was standing, in the way his gaze dropped to her mouth for just a second before snapping back to her eyes.
Dangerous, she thought. This one's dangerous in ways that have nothing to do with fists.
She stepped back, putting distance between them. "I need four more qualifiers to reach nationals. Four events, four chances to earn enough points. I'm not pulling out of a single one."
"Even knowing Pollard's crew will be there?"
"Especially knowing that." She lifted her chin.
"I've been chasing this my whole life. My daddy drank away his shot at the big time.
My mama worked herself half to death keeping a roof over my head.
This is my chance to prove that all of it—the sacrifices, the struggle, the years of living out of a trailer and borrowing barn space—meant something. "
"Pollard's not going to back off because you want it bad enough."
"I know." She crossed her arms. "That's why I'm talking to you."
Striker studied her for a long moment. Then he folded the napkin and tucked it into his cut alongside Jessup's note.
"Pollard's been running his operation on territory the Route 66 Outlaws protect.
The truck stops, the fairgrounds, the venues along our stretch—they're under our umbrella.
He's been stepping on our business, threatening our people.
" He took a step closer, and Teagan held her ground.
"The club's been looking for a reason to shut him down. You just gave us one."
"So this is what—mutual benefit?"
"This is the club doing what it does. Protecting what's ours." His eyes held hers, and something in his tone made her stomach flip. "You're on our territory now. That makes you ours to protect."
Ours. The word shouldn't have sent heat curling through her belly. She barely knew this man. He was a biker, an outlaw, the kind of trouble her mother had spent years warning her about.
But he was also the first person who'd shown up when she needed backup. The first one who'd looked at her situation and seen something worth fighting for.
"I don't need a babysitter," she said.
"Good. I don't do babysitting." He was close enough now that she could smell leather and motor oil and something underneath that was just him. "I do tactical operations. And right now, the tactical situation says you need the club's protection and we need your intel. Everybody wins."
"And if I say no?"
"Then you say no, and I ride back to the compound, and you handle Pollard's crew on your own." He shrugged, but his eyes never left hers. "Your call. I don't force help on people who don't want it."
Teagan thought about Amy Reese, waitressing in Tulsa because she couldn't afford to keep fighting alone. She thought about the bleach in the water trough, the note on her saddle, the keyed panels on her trailer that would cost money she didn't have to fix.
She thought about Striker throwing Jessup across a parking lot with a grin on his face.
"Fine," she said. "I'll take your protection. But I'm not hiding behind anyone. I compete, I work, I live my life. Your boys can watch my back, but they don't get in my way."
"Wouldn't dream of it." His grin was back, sharper this time. "We'll have a brother at every event you enter. Someone on your trailer at night. And when we're ready to move on Pollard, you'll be the first to know."
"And in exchange?"
"In exchange, you tell us everything. His crew, his patterns, his weaknesses. You've been watching him for three months. That makes you the best intelligence we've got."
Teagan extended her hand. "Deal."
Striker took it. His palm was rough, calloused, warm against her skin. He held on a beat longer than necessary, his thumb brushing across her knuckles before he let go.
"Welcome to the family," he said.
She didn't know if he meant it as a joke or a warning. She wasn't sure it mattered.
Either way, she'd just made a deal with the devil. And God help her, she couldn't bring herself to regret it.