8. MYLA
Chapter eight
MYLA
Watching Gunner ride out through the gates was harder than I expected.
I stood near the clubhouse window until the last of the bikes disappeared into the darkness, their engines fading gradually beyond the compound while every possible version of the night going wrong crowded into my head.
Rafe could realize the transfer was false.
Fallon could understand they had identified him before the Iron Flames got close enough to stop him.
Gunner had already been grazed by one bullet that day, and nothing about the way these men prepared for trouble suggested they expected tonight to end quietly.
Grant had kissed me before he left and told me he planned on coming back.
I wanted to believe him badly enough that it frightened me.
Elaina sat at one of the tables with coffee between her hands, watching me make another slow circuit between the window and the bar before finally taking pity on me.
“You’ll wear yourself out before anything even happens.”
“I’m not pacing.”
Her look made arguing pointless, so I dropped into the chair opposite her.
The clubhouse had gone unnaturally quiet without most of the men inside it. Grizz moved between the main room and garage while the brothers left behind watched the perimeter, but nobody spoke unless there was a reason.
“For eight months I got used to waiting for people to find me,” I said, looking toward the dark window again. “Apparently waiting for somebody to come back is worse.”
Elaina’s expression softened. “Usually is.”
Her eyes dropped to the pistol at my waist.
“Gunner teach you how to use that?”
“A little.”
“That means he likes you.”
I smiled despite myself. “Because he gave me a gun?”
“Because he took the time.”
That sounded ridiculous until I thought about the morning in the woods, Gunner standing behind me with his hands covering mine while he corrected my grip and pretended neither of us noticed the attraction burning between us.
“He gave me his real name too.”
Elaina lowered her mug.
“Grant?”
“You know it?”
“We all know it. We’re just smart enough not to use it.”
I was still smiling when the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the clubhouse completely, taking every exterior light and the hum of the refrigerators with it. Emergency strips flickered red near the floor a moment later, throwing enough light across the room to turn familiar furniture into shadows.
Elaina was already moving.
Outside, somebody shouted that the cameras had gone down.
“That shouldn’t happen,” she said, reaching beneath the bar for a shotgun. “Backup should’ve caught it.”
Cold slid through me.
Fallon had installed the security system.
He knew exactly how to blind it.
Grizz came through the front door with a pistol in his hand and told us the rear gate had opened when the system dropped. Nobody was touching the controls until Hawk returned, and he wanted Elaina and me in the back room until they knew what they were dealing with.
For once, I didn’t argue.
We were almost there when the main power returned.
The overhead lights flickered on, and I stopped so suddenly Elaina nearly walked into me.
If Fallon wanted the compound dark, bringing the power back made no sense unless the outage had only been there to get him inside.
A man’s voice carried from around the corner.
“Grizz called me. Said the camera controller took a dump.”
Every hair on my arms rose.
I had never seen Mike Fallon, but I knew that voice. Forty-three seconds of recording had burned the rough drag of it into my memory.
I caught Elaina’s arm.
“That’s him.”
We started backing away just as a man appeared at the far end of the hallway carrying a black equipment case, FALLON SECURITY stitched across his jacket.
For half a second he looked exactly like what he had pretended to be for years: an ordinary contractor who belonged inside the building because everyone was used to seeing him there.
Then he saw me.
His hand disappeared into his jacket.
Elaina shoved me aside as the first shot cracked through the hallway, splintering the doorframe where my head had been. I hit the floor hard enough to send pain across my healing side while Elaina fired back and forced Fallon behind the corner.
A young prospect came running from the other end of the hall before we could reach cover. Fallon fired again and caught him high in the thigh, dropping him almost immediately.
I crawled to him, dragged him behind the heavier wall beside the storage room and forced his hands against the wound.
“Hold pressure and don’t let go.”
He swore at me through clenched teeth, which was good enough for now.
Elaina crouched nearby with the shotgun trained toward the corner Fallon had disappeared behind.
“He’s moving toward the rear.”
I looked at the service door behind us.
Fallon knew every camera position and blind spot because he had built half the system himself. He also knew Elaina was watching the corridor, which meant he would never come back the obvious way.
“He’ll use that door.”
We turned together.
The handle moved.
I raised Gunner’s pistol and forced myself to remember the morning in the woods: higher into the grip, elbows loose, don’t fight the recoil before it happens.
Fallon came through fast with his weapon already rising.
I fired.
The first round struck the frame, but the second tore into his shoulder and spun him sideways. He fired wildly, the bullet burying itself somewhere above my head, and I squeezed again before he could recover.
His leg buckled.
Fallon hit the floor hard enough to lose his pistol.
For several seconds, I stayed exactly where I was with both hands locked around the gun while my ears rang and my arms shook violently enough to blur the sights.
Elaina moved first, kicking Fallon’s weapon beyond reach before planting the shotgun against his back.
Only then did I breathe.
A few days earlier, I had arrived at this compound bleeding because men like Fallon expected fear to make me easy to control.
Now one of them was bleeding on the floor in front of me.
Grizz arrived with two brothers and took in the injured prospect, the bullet damage and Fallon beneath Elaina’s shotgun before looking at me.
“You hit?”
“No.”
Elaina nodded toward Fallon. “She got him.”
Grizz’s expression turned glacial as he hauled Fallon partly upright by his jacket.
“You had access to my gates, cameras and businesses because we trusted you, and you sold every bit of it to Rafe.”
Fallon gave a weak laugh that ended in a grimace. “You really think this was about your cameras?”
Grizz tightened his grip.
“Rafe’s already gone,” Fallon added. “Miller yard was bullshit. He knew before your boys got there.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then why come here?”
Fallon looked directly at me.
“Because you were still here. I was supposed to clean up the one problem he couldn’t leave behind before I disappeared.”
The engines outside arrived before Grizz could force anything else out of him.
I recognized one immediately.
Gunner came through the clubhouse door with Hawk and the others behind him, and the moment he saw the pistol in my hand and blood streaked across my shirt from helping the injured prospect, every part of his face changed.
He crossed the room in seconds, hands checking my arms and face before he reached my waist.
“Grant, it isn’t mine.”
His eyes lifted to mine, and some of the violence left them.
“Fallon came here when the power dropped,” I explained. “He shot at me.”
That brought the violence straight back.
I caught the front of his cut before he could move toward Fallon.
“He missed.”
Gunner looked at the weapon still in my hand.
“You shot him?”
“You taught me.”
For a second, he only stared.
Then his hands slid into my hair and his mouth came down on mine.
There was nothing careful about the kiss. Relief and fear tangled together in it, and the shaking I had ignored since the first shot finally caught up with me as I held onto him.
Gunner felt it immediately and wrapped both arms around me, one hand settling at the back of my head.
“I was terrified,” I admitted against his neck.
His hand moved slowly through my hair.
“Being scared don’t mean you weren’t brave, sweetheart.”
That nearly undid me more effectively than the gunfire.
I stayed against him until my breathing settled, and when I finally stepped back, Fallon was watching us with open disgust.
“Touching,” he muttered.
Gunner’s expression hardened.
“We need him alive,” I said quietly.
“He shot at you.”
“I know.”
“That ain’t helping his case.”
Hawk moved in before Gunner could decide otherwise.
If Fallon had known the yard was false, they needed to understand what Rafe was doing instead.
Fallon resisted at first, but surrounded by men who had just discovered how thoroughly he had betrayed them, his confidence faded quickly.
“Rafe’s done playing with stolen loads and route changes,” he finally said. “He’s pulling his people back because he’s got something bigger coming.”
“What?” Grizz demanded.
“I don’t know the whole plan. He stopped telling me anything I didn’t need weeks ago. All I know is he had me watching one of your men closer than the rest.”
Fallon’s gaze crossed the room and settled on Axel.
Something changed in Axel’s face.
Tiny.
But enough.
Fallon noticed too.
“Rafe had me tracking his runs, where he stopped, who he met, anywhere he went outside club business. Then he gave me one name to flag if it ever showed up anywhere near Iron Flames territory.”
Hawk asked the question nobody else needed to.
“What name?”
“Tabitha Small.”
The keys in Axel’s hand slipped to the floor.
Whatever that name meant, it meant enough to drain every trace of humor from him.
Grizz looked at Axel. “Who is she?”
“Someone from a long time ago.”
Fallon smiled through the pain. “Someone Rafe’s been waiting to come back. That’s why he wanted Axel watched. If Tabitha showed up, he wanted to know before you did.”
Understanding settled through the room.
Fallon hadn’t only been stealing information about the Iron Flames. Rafe had also been using him to watch Axel for a woman from his past, which meant Tabitha knew something important enough that Rafe had prepared for her return months in advance.
Hawk looked toward Axel.
“If Rafe’s underground and still worried about her, she knows something.”
Axel’s jaw tightened. “She ain’t coming back.”
Nobody pushed him.
Not yet.
Grizz ordered Fallon taken downstairs alive, and two brothers dragged him away while Hawk followed to start pulling everything else he knew out of him.
Axel walked outside without looking at anyone.
The club had its traitor.
Rafe had escaped.
And whatever came next clearly belonged to something older than the fight that had brought me here.
Gunner touched my side carefully.
“You hurting?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to surprise him.
I smiled tiredly. “Thought I’d save us the argument.”
“Appreciate it.”
He bent and lifted me before I could object anyway.
I wrapped my arms around his neck as he carried me toward the room where Elaina had already started setting out medical supplies.
Around us, the clubhouse was moving again. The wounded prospect was being treated, Grizz was already working through whatever Fallon might have left behind, and Diesel stood near the door staring after Axel.
It should have felt chaotic.
Dangerous.
Like somewhere I needed to escape before the next problem arrived.
Instead, for the first time, I realized I wasn’t looking for an exit.
“Grant.”
He glanced down.
“I want to stay.”
His steps slowed.
“With the club?”
“With you.”
Something softened in his face, although he watched me carefully enough to make sure I understood what I was saying.
“I’ve spent eight months believing safety meant nobody knowing where I was,” I told him. “New rooms, new names, leaving before anyone could find me. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Gunner lowered me carefully until my feet touched the floor, keeping his hands around my waist.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
I rested my palms against his chest.
“Somewhere between the terrible chili, you teaching me to shoot and you trusting me with Grant, I stopped thinking about how fast I could get away from you.”
His thumb brushed across my cheek.
“I ain’t good at speeches, sweetheart.”
“I know.”
“But I want you here.”
That was enough.
I kissed him slowly while the clubhouse carried on around us, and for once the noise didn’t sound like danger closing in.
It sounded like people.
Family, maybe, although I wasn’t ready to examine that too closely yet.
Rafe Maddox was still somewhere beyond the gates, and the look on Axel’s face when Fallon said Tabitha Small made it clear the Iron Flames war wasn’t finished.
My part in running was.
For eight months, safety had meant an empty room with more than one way out.
Now it felt like Grant’s hands around my waist and knowing that when morning came, I intended to still be there.