Chapter 5
STRYKER
By the time the second patrol unit carried the three men toward county lockup, the last of the sunlight had stretched the barn’s shadow halfway across the yard.
Trent Kessler sat hunched in the rear seat, staring at me through the glass with the hatred of a man who had learned too late that a warning from the Black Crowns wasn’t issued for dramatic effect.
I watched the cruiser disappear beyond the rise, then turned toward Jacqueline, who stood beside the barn rubbing one thumb over the crescent marks the shotgun had pressed into her palm.
Otis’s flannel hung around her hips, drawing my eyes to a sliver of soft skin just above her jeans.
My cock thickened behind my zipper with the same brutal insistence it had shown from the moment I first saw her.
I wanted to lift that shirt and kiss my way down until her legs opened around my shoulders and the only trembling left in her body came from my tongue. It was inconvenient as fuck that the first woman I’d ever looked at and instantly claimed had also decided to make concentration a full-time job.
“I want the barn, both access roads, and the surrounding acreage checked before we lose the light,” Sheriff Raines ordered, pulling nitrile gloves from his pocket. “Photograph anything that looks out of place before somebody puts a boot through it.”
“You planning to search several hundred acres with one deputy?” Hawkeye asked as he tugged on a pair of black riding gloves and glanced toward the ridge behind the barn.
“I was counting on heavily armed—all properly licensed, I’m sure—men in leather developing civic pride,” Raines returned.
“Cuts,” Hawkeye corrected. “Leather’s the material.”
Raines stared at him for a beat. “I’m aware of the distinction.”
The tension in the sheriff’s shoulders had eased when Ghost, Judge, four more brothers, and two prospects arrived, though he would’ve swallowed his badge before admitting it.
He and I had worked the same territory long enough to understand the arrangement without discussing it.
When evidence existed, we gave him what he could use.
But when the system failed, he knew better than to become curious every time a predator abruptly left Southern California or lost the ability to hurt anyone else.
Raines’s gaze shifted toward Jacqueline before returning to me. “So? You helping me search, or are your men here to improve the scenery?”
“We’ll clear the property.” I placed my hand at the base of Jacqueline’s spine and turned her toward the farmhouse.
Her chin jutted out. “I know what belongs in the barns and which buildings my grandpa had used.”
“You can tell us from the porch.” I guided her across the yard with my palm steady against the curve above her ass. “We confirm nobody else is hiding on your land first.”
Jacqueline released a breath carrying more acceptance than annoyance before asking me to recover Otis’s missing post-hole digger if we found it. “He accused three people of stealing the thing before admitting he might’ve forgotten where he put it.”
“He hid it from himself twice,” I told her, and a small smile softened the fear lingering around her mouth.
“That sounds more accurate.” Then she looked at me curiously as she reached the bottom of the porch steps. “How did you—”
Her words were cut off when I wrapped an arm around her waist, slid the other beneath her thighs, and picked her up before she could strain anything that would hurt worse by morning.
Her breath caught and both arms circled my shoulders on instinct, color blooming across her cheeks as she informed me, “I have legs.”
“I noticed.” I climbed up the steps while her body settled against mine. “Believe me.”
“Then why are you carrying me?”
“Because I can.”
Her eyes widened at the blunt answer, but the sweet curve of her body softened against me instead of stiffening. My cock surged hard enough to make me lock my jaw as every filthy thought I’d been controlling roared back to life.
She weighed almost nothing in my arms, but there was strength beneath her softness. Several filthy possibilities were suddenly crowding my mind. When I lowered her onto the swing, my brain supplied several uses for it that had nothing to do with sitting.
Fucking hell.
Apparently, my head had taken up permanent residence between her thighs. But I wasn’t particularly motivated to evict it.
I kept one hand around her waist until the seat stopped moving beneath her. Her arms lingered around my shoulders for a moment before her fingertips slid down the front of my cut, and the soft drag of them left heat in places no touch should’ve reached through leather.
“You could’ve asked me to sit,” she murmured, though amusement warmed the words.
“I did.”
“You ordered me.”
I shrugged. “Same result.”
Her lips pressed together, but I caught the twitch at one corner. I took the bottle of water Judge had retrieved from the house, twisted off the cap, and put it in her hand. “Drink. Give the deputy your statement and stay here until I come back.”
Jacqueline lifted the bottle toward her mouth, blue eyes peeking at me over the rim with a little spark that told me she knew exactly what she was doing. “What happens if I don’t?”
I dragged my thumb along her jaw, watching humor give way to heat as her lips parted beneath the touch. “I bring you back.”
The color in her cheeks deepened, and her thighs shifted beneath the faded denim, but she only whispered, “Okay.”
Raines cleared his throat from the yard with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast. “You two finished?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Jacqueline answered at the same time, her tone sweetly sassy as she hid another smile behind the water bottle.
I shook my head, but one side of my mouth tugged up.
Fuck, she was cute. I almost laughed at the thought. Cute wasn’t a word I’d ever have expected to describe my old lady.
Raines pointed his deputy toward the porch before looking at Jacqueline with the affection of a man who had known her since childhood. I disliked that he had years of memories involving her when I had less than an hour, but that imbalance was already on borrowed time. “Ten minutes, kid.”
Jacqueline settled back against the swing, and I left her answering the deputy’s questions.
Hawkeye waited near the barn’s rear doors with a flashlight in one hand, his gaze sliding once toward the porch before returning to me with enough amusement to be irritating.
“Not a fucking word,” I told him before he could decide where to start.
He lifted one shoulder. “About carrying her? Or the way you almost smiled at a woman threatening to disobey you?”
“Pick carefully.”
“I’m VP, not suicidal,” he snarked, then tipped his chin toward the barn as the humor fell back under the work. “Ghost has the western fence. Judge and Cipher are already building the timeline. Although, Cipher’s bitching because Deputy Collins called him a hacker.”
Cipher was another Black Crowns enforcer and brilliant hacker—but he detested being called that, preferring the term “white hat.”
“He’ll survive,” I muttered.
“Not if Judge keeps saying whiz kid.”
“Seems more likely it’ll be Judge eating a bullet.”
Hawkeye’s mouth twitched, and I turned toward the others, my voice carrying through the yard. “Nobody crosses tracks or moves evidence until Raines’s deputy photographs it.”
The sheriff came alongside us, pulling on gloves. “I appreciate you remembering who submits evidence.”
“I remember who has to explain chain of custody in court.”
His mustache twitched as he turned toward the loader.
Portable lights exposed overlapping tread marks, hydraulic fluid beneath the machine, and silver filings around the workbench, while a feed sack concealed stripped decals and bent identification plates.
Packages from replacement GPS units, clipped wiring harnesses, and an old factory tracker hidden inside a dented coffee can confirmed the crew had processed more than one piece of equipment there.
Receipts, cigarette butts, food wrappers, and disposable cups shoved behind the hay bales narrowed the timeline to the weeks after Otis left for San Jose.
“They waited until the place was empty.” Anger roughened the sheriff’s voice as he studied the collection.
Wade Kessler’s people had turned the barn where Otis taught me to saddle a horse into a stripping site within days of his absence.
Respecting Otis’s privacy hadn’t been a mistake—he’d been a friend, not a target.
The club had no business watching his land while he lived there.
That boundary had changed the second Jacqueline came home and found three criminals waiting for her.
Ghost’s voice crackled through my radio. “Property’s clear. Tracks continue west through the rear gate. Road runs to the county fire route, and there’s no sign they crossed our boundary.”
I looked at Hawkeye. “Let’s see it.”
We left Raines, Judge, and his deputy, who’d just joined them, cataloging evidence and followed the tracks behind the barn. Ghost waited beside the rear gate, one gloved hand on the top rail while his flashlight illuminated a new chain looped through the latch.
He pointed toward the brush where the old chain lay with both links sheared cleanly. “Original was cut. They replaced it with cheap shit so the gate looked untouched from a distance.”
“They made their own entrance,” Hawkeye observed, studying the road beyond it. “So they never needed ours.”
The route became obvious as we climbed. Whoever selected the site knew the terrain well enough to find the only seam between Otis’s privacy and the club’s surveillance.
My gaze dropped toward the farmhouse. Jacqueline remained on the porch swing with the water bottle between both hands, her face turned toward the ridge as though she had tracked my position the whole time. Even from that distance, the pull of her hit hard enough to tighten my body.
The breeze blew loose strands across her cheek, and she tucked them behind her ear with a tired movement that pulled my focus back where it belonged.
Wanting her naked didn’t outrank securing the land around her, though the two needs were now welded together tight enough that separating them would be a waste of time.
I keyed my radio and ordered cellular cameras, thermal coverage, motion sensors, and a plate reader be brought over.
Hawkeye put two-man rotations on the western and southern approaches, Ghost began marking surveillance positions, and Judge had Cipher start digging into Kessler Hauling before the first equipment vehicle reached the property.
Nobody asked whether protecting land we didn’t own justified pulling men from the compound or borrowing equipment designed for national-level security work. They had seen my hand on Jacqueline, heard me kill the purchase offer, and understood the decision for what it was.
Their president had drawn a line around her. The club was already moving to defend it.
Raines climbed the ridge several minutes later and stopped beside me, tracing the concealed route with narrowed eyes before looking toward the brothers marking camera positions and patrol sectors. “Keep your lenses off the public road.”
“We know the law.”
He snorted. “You know several versions of it.”
“Only one helps you in court,” I drawled. “You’ll get anything you can use.”
The boundary in the answer remained clear, and Raines held my gaze long enough to acknowledge it without wasting either of our time.
He’d spent years trying to prove Wade Kessler was tied to a regional theft ring, and now a stripped loader, cut tracking devices, altered plates, and Wade’s son had landed in a barn beside the Black Crowns.
He might not approve of every method we used once we found the men above Trent, but relief was beneath his hard expression because the search no longer depended solely on resources his county couldn’t afford.