2. MYLA
Chapter two
MYLA
By the time Gunner carried me out of the clubhouse, I had stopped telling him I could walk, mostly because every breath pulled against the fresh stitches in my side and I was too tired to keep arguing with a man who had clearly decided that getting me to the truck mattered more than whatever pride I had left.
The cold hit the second we stepped outside, sharp enough to cut through the ruined shirt beneath my jacket, and although I tried not to react, the shiver that ran through me was impossible to hide.
Gunner noticed because he seemed to notice everything, but he didn’t comment on it or make some stupid joke about me being cold.
He simply shifted me higher against his chest and kept moving through a compound that had transformed completely since I arrived.
Men were positioned along the fence line now, bikes had been rolled deeper into the garage, and somebody was already tearing into the stolen car I had driven through the gates.
There was a quiet efficiency to the Iron Flames that unsettled me more than shouting would have.
They didn’t need to make a show of being dangerous because everyone around them already knew.
“You do this often?” I asked, mostly because silence left too much room for me to think about the fact that I was being carried across a motorcycle club compound by a man I had known for less than an hour.
Gunner looked down at me. “Carry stubborn women around after they nearly bleed out on the floor?”
“Have strangers show up with evidence and accuse someone close to your club of feeding information to Rafe Maddox.”
His mouth shifted slightly as he kept walking. “More often than I’d fucking like.”
“That is not remotely reassuring.”
“Ain’t trying to reassure you, sweetheart.”
There it was again.
Sweetheart.
Coming from somebody else, the word would probably have annoyed me, but Gunner said it in that low, rough voice without making it sound sweet at all, and somehow that made it worse.
Or better.
I wasn’t deciding which.
He stopped beside an old black pickup parked away from the rows of motorcycles. The paint was faded around the wheel arches, one door carried a long dent, and there wasn’t a single Iron Flames marking anywhere on it.
I looked from the truck to him. “What happened to the bike?”
“You planning on hanging onto me for forty miles with fresh stitches?”
My brain supplied the image before I could stop it: my arms wrapped around his waist, chest pressed to his back and thighs tight against the bike while the road moved beneath us.
Apparently blood loss had completely destroyed my judgment.
“The truck is fine.”
Gunner’s mouth twitched.
I immediately hated him a little more.
He lowered me carefully, keeping one hand around my arm until he was sure my legs would support me, and when I told him I had it, he actually let go. There was no argument, no hovering and no insistence that he knew better simply because he had carried me out of the building.
That surprised me enough that I noticed.
Inside, the truck smelled like old leather, engine oil and coffee, while an empty shell casing sat in one cup holder beside a folded paper map.
There was another handgun tucked beneath the driver’s seat, and when Gunner climbed in and shrugged out of his cut, I caught sight of a knife clipped at the back of his jeans as well.
“How many weapons do you actually need?”
He started the engine. “Depends how bad the night gets.”
“You’ve already got a gun on your hip.”
“Got another in the truck.”
“I saw.”
“And the knife.”
I stared at him.
Gunner glanced over, completely serious. “What?”
“You do realize this isn’t normal.”
His gaze dropped briefly to the jacket where he knew my own gun was hidden. “Woman drives armed and bleeding into an MC compound with stolen information about a rival club, then starts judging normal. Bold choice, sweetheart.”
I hated that he had a point.
The gates opened just wide enough for us to leave, closing behind us the second the truck cleared them, and my stomach tightened as the steel disappeared in the mirror.
I hadn’t trusted anyone inside those walls, and I still didn’t, but there had been fences, weapons and enough Iron Flames around to make even Rafe’s men think twice before trying anything stupid. Now I was outside the compound and alone with one of them.
My fingers found the flash drive inside my jacket automatically.
Still there.
I had started checking it the way other people checked their keys or phone, touching the hard plastic edge whenever fear crept too close.
I had slept with it taped against my skin, hidden it beneath mattresses and once buried it behind a gas station because I became convinced the same car had followed me through three towns.
It was evidence.
Leverage.
Maybe the only reason I was still alive.
Gunner turned off the main road, and I started memorizing every turn without consciously deciding to do it. Ten minutes later, he doubled back, circled a closed gas station and left from another exit before heading in a different direction.
“You think somebody followed us?”
“Nah.”
“Then why are we driving in circles?”
“Because thinking nobody followed you is how you end up getting followed.”
I looked at his profile, taking in the scar through one eyebrow and the hard line of his mouth.
“Military?”
“Eight years.”
“What did you do?”
“Shot people.”
I waited for the rest.
It didn’t come.
“That is all I get?”
“What were you expecting, sweetheart, a presentation?”
A laugh escaped before I could stop it, and pain immediately tore across my ribs hard enough to make me suck in a breath.
The humor vanished from his face.
Gunner reached behind his seat, pulled a bottle of water and two painkillers from a canvas bag and placed them between us without saying a word. He didn’t tell me to take them or warn me about being stupid if I didn’t. He simply returned his hand to the wheel.
For some reason, that made me take them.
I was beginning to understand how he operated.
He didn’t push unless he had to.
He made the sensible option obvious and waited to see whether I would choose it.
The roads narrowed as we left town behind, houses thinning until there was nothing outside but trees, empty fields and the weak sweep of the headlights. Gunner didn’t turn on music, and he still hadn’t asked for the flash drive or demanded to know everything I knew.
The silence should have been uncomfortable.
Instead, it felt strangely easy.
Rafe’s men had hated silence because silence left room for other people to think, so they filled it constantly with questions, threats and stories about themselves.
Gunner seemed perfectly comfortable letting it sit between us.
Eventually, curiosity got the better of me.
“Why Gunner?”
“Army.”
“That tells me almost nothing.”
He sighed, although there was a hint of amusement in it. “I was good with a rifle. Couple guys thought I was too damn good. Name stuck.”
“How good?”
“Good enough.”
I studied him in the dashboard light, noticing the pale scars that cut through the tattoos on his forearm and the way his attention moved constantly between the road and mirrors without ever seeming distracted.
“You always answer questions with the minimum number of words possible?”
“Most people talk too much.”
“You definitely don’t.”
That earned a low laugh from him, and the sound surprised me because it softened something in his face that I hadn’t realized was usually tense.
“You don’t want to know anything about me?” I asked.
“I wanna know what I need to keep you alive.”
“That’s romantic.”
His eyes flicked toward me for a second. “Who said anything about romance?”
The look lasted barely a heartbeat, but it was enough to bring back the awareness I had felt when his fingers brushed the back of my neck inside the clubhouse.
I looked toward the window before he saw too much.
“You’re not my type.”
“Good. One less problem.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“Usually.”
“That must be exhausting for everyone around you.”
“Diesel complains.”
I smiled despite myself.
For somebody who barely spoke, Gunner was unexpectedly easy to sit beside, and that probably should have worried me more than it did.
The painkillers began to work not long after, dulling the pull of the stitches and making the exhaustion harder to fight.
“You can sleep,” Gunner said.
“I don’t sleep in cars with strangers.”
“Then keep pretending you’re awake, sweetheart.”
I intended to.
The next thing I knew, the truck had stopped and my hand was already inside my jacket.
I had the gun halfway free before Gunner caught my wrist.
“Easy.”
His grip loosened the second my eyes focused.
Trees crowded around us, and a weathered house sat ahead beneath the moon, its porch sagging slightly at one end and the windows dark.
My heart took several seconds to slow.
“You nearly got shot.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“That should worry you more.”
“Would’ve worried me more if you hit the truck.”
I stared at him until I realized he was joking.
Apparently Gunner did have a sense of humor.
It was simply buried under several layers of weapons, scars and permanent irritation.
He got out first and checked the property before letting me join him, clearing the outside with his pistol drawn and moving around the house with the kind of practiced caution that reminded me exactly what he had said about those eight years in the military.
Up close, the place looked even more forgotten.
“You sure this isn’t where you murder me?”
Gunner glanced back. “If I was gonna murder you, sweetheart, I wouldn’t have let Elaina waste good stitches.”
“You are terrible at comforting people.”
“Ain’t my skill set.”
Inside smelled like dust, old wood and cold fireplace ash. A battered couch faced a stone hearth, shelves were crowded with paperbacks and framed photographs covered one wall.
Nothing about the place looked connected to the Iron Flames.
My eyes stopped on one picture in particular.
A much younger Gunner stood beside an older man on the bank of a river, both holding fishing rods.