Chapter 8 Radio Silence
RADIO SILENCE
TYLER
He left me standing in the garage with the taste of him still on my lips.
I didn't move for a long time after the door closed behind him.
Just stood there, my back against the workbench where he'd pressed me, my hands gripping the edge hard enough to hurt.
The work light buzzed overhead, casting everything in that harsh yellow glow that made the shadows deeper, and somewhere outside I could hear the distant rumble of bikes returning—the rest of the club, coming home from wherever they'd scattered after the ambush.
My lips were swollen. I could feel it—the slight tenderness, the ghost of pressure where his mouth had been.
If I closed my eyes, I could still feel everything: his hand on the back of my neck, pulling me in.
The desperation in the way he'd kissed me, like he was drowning and I was air.
The sound he'd made, low in his throat, when I'd fisted my hands in his cut and pulled him closer.
And then the way he'd just... stopped.
Pulled back. Looked at me with something like panic in his eyes. And walked away without a word.
I'd been left before. Cross had made an art form of it—the push and pull, the moments of intensity followed by cold withdrawal, the constant reminder that I was only worth something when he decided I was.
I'd spent three years learning to read the signs, to brace myself for the inevitable retreat, to build walls high enough that the fall wouldn't break me.
I'd thought I was done with that.
I'd thought—stupidly, naively—that whatever was building between me and Tank was different. That the way he looked at me, the way he touched me, the way he'd literally thrown himself between me and an explosion meant something that couldn't be taken back.
But here I was. Alone in a garage that smelled like motor oil and blood, my heart pounding against my ribs, watching the door he'd disappeared through like he might come back.
He wasn't coming back.
I peeled my fingers off the workbench, one by one. Made myself stand upright. Made myself breathe.
Cross would have loved this. Would have loved knowing that even after everything, I was still the same pathetic mess who couldn't tell the difference between someone wanting him and someone just... wanting. Using me as a convenient outlet for confusion they didn't know how to process.
No.
That wasn't fair. Tank wasn't Cross. The kiss hadn't felt like manipulation—it had felt like something breaking open, something neither of us had planned or controlled. The panic in his eyes when he'd pulled back hadn't been cruelty. It had been fear.
But fear and cruelty could feel the same when you were the one being left behind.
I turned off the work light and walked back to my room in the dark.
Sleep didn't come.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the kiss until I'd worn grooves in my memory.
The exact moment his mouth had found mine.
The heartbeat of stillness before my body had responded, before the want I'd been suppressing for weeks had surged up and taken over.
The way he'd tasted—blood and smoke and something underneath that was just him, just Tank, the flavor I hadn't known I was craving until I had it.
And then the absence. The cold air where his body had been. The sound of the door closing.
Around three in the morning, I heard movement in the hallway. Footsteps that paused outside my door, lingered for a moment, then continued on. Heavy footsteps. Tank's.
I held my breath, waiting.
He didn't knock.
The footsteps faded, and I let the breath out slowly, something in my chest cracking along fault lines I'd thought were healed.
I'd been so careful. Since Cross, since the assignment, since the day I'd walked away from everything I'd built and started running—I'd been so goddamn careful not to want anything I couldn't afford to lose. The clubhouse had been shelter, not home. The club had been allies, not family. And Tank...
Tank had been a complication I'd told myself I could manage. A distraction I could appreciate from a safe distance. The morning lessons, the riding, the quiet hours in the garage—I'd let myself enjoy them without letting them mean anything. Without letting him mean anything.
That had been a lie.
I knew it now, lying in the dark with my lips still tingling and my chest hollow with wanting. Tank meant something. Meant enough that his walking away had cut deeper than anything Cross had done in months.
Which made me an idiot. But at least I was an idiot who could see clearly now.
Morning came gray and cold, fog pressing against the windows like something trying to get in.
I showered, dressed, went through the motions of being a functional human being. The face in the mirror looked like mine—same features, same tired eyes, same carefully blank expression I'd perfected during years of undercover work. No one looking at me would know that anything had changed.
Except everything had changed.
The common room was busy when I came down—members eating breakfast, comparing notes from last night, the low buzz of conversation that followed any successful operation.
Ghost was absent, still at the hospital getting his leg properly treated.
Irish had his arm in a sling, a graze from a stray bullet that he was already turning into a story involving significantly more heroics than I remembered.
Tank was at the far end of the room.
He looked up when I entered, and our eyes met for exactly one second before he looked away.
His jaw was tight, his shoulders rigid, every line of his body screaming discomfort.
He was sitting with Hawk and Axel, papers spread across the table—the pharmaceutical documentation we'd recovered from the van, probably.
Important work. Work that required his full attention.
Work that conveniently meant he didn't have to acknowledge me.
Fine.
I got coffee, found a seat near Kai, and pretended I didn't feel Tank's presence like a brand on my skin.
"You look like shit." Kai's voice was low, private.
"Thanks. You really know how to make a guy feel special."
"Seriously." He leaned closer, violet hair falling across his forehead. "What happened? You were fine when we left for the ambush, and now you look like someone ran over your dog."
"Didn't sleep well."
"Tyler."
"Leave it, Kai."
He studied me for a long moment, his eyes too knowing. We'd grown up together, he and I—foster siblings who'd chosen each other when the system had given us nothing else. He knew me better than anyone alive, which meant he could see through my bullshit with uncomfortable accuracy.
"Okay." His voice softened. "But when you're ready to talk, I'm here."
"I know."
Across the room, Tank stood and walked out without looking in my direction. The papers stayed on the table; Hawk gathered them with a frown, exchanging a glance with Axel that I couldn't interpret.
Something was wrong. Something beyond whatever was happening between Tank and me.
I finished my coffee and went to find out what.
The pharmaceutical analysis took most of the morning.
I sat with Hawk and Axel in the chapel, going through the documentation we'd recovered, explaining what the batch numbers meant and how the supply chain worked.
The photographs were spread across the table like pieces of a puzzle—bottle labels, shipping manifests, inventory codes that told a story if you knew how to read them.
It was familiar territory; I'd spent four years working cases like this with Cross, tracing drugs from seizure to destruction, identifying the gaps where product could disappear.
"Walk me through it." Hawk leaned back, arms crossed. "Assume I don't know anything about how this works."
I picked up one of the photographs—a close-up of a label, the batch number circled in red marker.
"When the DEA seizes controlled substances, everything gets logged into a federal database.
Batch number, quantity, seizure date, location.
The drugs are supposed to be stored in secure facilities until they can be transported to an approved destruction site—usually an incinerator with federal oversight. "
"Supposed to be." Axel's voice was dry.
"Right. The system has checkpoints. Every transfer requires signatures, witnesses, documentation.
On paper, it's airtight." I tapped the photograph.
"But this batch number? I ran it through what I remember of the federal coding system.
It was logged as destroyed six months ago.
Incinerated, witnessed, signed off. Except here it is, in the back of a Wolves cargo van, very much not destroyed. "
Hawk leaned forward. "So someone's falsifying the destruction records."
"Someone with access. You'd need to be in the system—DEA, or someone with credentials to access their databases.
And you'd need cooperation at the destruction facility, someone willing to sign off on incineration that never happened.
" I spread my hands. "It's not one person.
It's a network. Multiple points of corruption, all working together. "
"How much are we talking about?"
"Based on what we captured last night? If they're running shipments this size every week, we're looking at fifty, sixty million a year.
Street value." I pulled another photograph closer—a manifest listing quantities and destinations.
"But it's not just about the money. These drugs are going back into circulation without any quality control.
They're being cut with whatever the dealers want—fentanyl, tranq, whatever's cheap—and sold to addicts who have no idea what they're really putting in their bodies.
People are dying from this. Overdoses that look like user error but are really poisoned supply. "
Axel's jaw tightened. "And the Wolves are the distribution network."