Chapter 1 #2
“I should have done something,” she said again, like it was a fact, not an argument.
Cap’s voice crackled in my ear. “Status.”
“I’ve got her,” I said. “She’s done. We are pulling her out.”
Amanda’s head snapped toward me again. “No,” she said. “No, I can still work. I can get back on my station. I can access the internal server, you still need me in there, you know I am the only one who—”
“You are done,” I cut in. “Op is burned.”
“It isn’t. He doesn’t know who I am. I can still move. I froze like an idiot, but I can still fix it, I can still—”
She tried to stand and her legs buckled. I caught her before she hit the ground.
“Let me go,” she said. “I can walk. I am not a liability. I know my shit, Wrecker, I am not some girl you have to haul out of the fire.”
Her voice was shaking, but the words had an edge to them. That was the thing about her. Even with fear chewing through her, she still tried to fight me on the way out.
“Tell her she’s pulled,” Cap said in my ear. “Non-negotiable. We are not losing her over this.”
“You heard the man,” I told her.
Her eyes flashed. She hated that. Hated being told she was done. Hated that her body had locked up on her more than anything the Watcher had done.
I picked her up anyway. She swore at me the whole way to the exit in between sharp, broken breaths.
Four days later, she was in my bed at the compound, looking like she hadn’t slept in years.
Her cup rattled as she set it back on the nightstand. “You’re staring,” she said.
“You look like shit,” I answered.
“Flattering.”
“Have you eaten today?” I asked.
“Bossy.”
“That a yes?”
She rolled her eyes, which was a good sign. “If Doc brings me more toast and bananas, I’m going to hack his medical records and list him as clinically annoying.”
“There she is,” I murmured.
“Who?”
“The pain in my ass I recognize.”
That got me the ghost of a smile. It was gone almost as fast as it came.
Her gaze dropped to the doorway. The hall beyond it was quiet, but I saw the way her shoulders tensed when someone walked by. Just footsteps. Normal morning traffic.
She stiffened like she was back in that corridor. The comforter shifted where her fingers curled into it.
I moved closer to the bed and set my hand on the frame, steady and solid where she could see it. “You’re here,” I said. “This is club land. No elevators. No suits. No Watcher. Just idiots with bad coffee and loud bikes.”
She drew in a breath. Held it. Let it out slow.
“I know,” she said.
“Your body doesn’t.”
“Yeah, well. She can get on board any time now.”
She looked at my boots, then up to the chair shoved back from the bed. “You slept there all night?” she asked.
“Wasn’t tired.”
“Sure.”
“I wasn’t.”
She hummed. “Neck says otherwise.”
“My neck is fine.”
“You’re an awful liar.”
She pushed herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet searched for the slippers, found them, slid in. She moved like everything ached, but there was stubborn in every line of her spine.
“I should be in the ops room,” she said. “You should be sleeping. Or on a bike. Or out there doing something that isn’t watching me breathe.”
“You are my something,” I said.
That came out rougher than I meant it to. Her eyes flicked up, sharp.
“Yeah?” she asked quietly.
I cleared my throat. “Doc wants you off screens for a bit. Your brain needs rest. We got Ghost on the feeds and Ariel running backup. You are allowed to take a day and not carry the whole damn op on your shoulders.”
“I am not taking a day,” she said. “You saw that video. They’re still moving girls. That elevator is still running. Scout is still missing. I am not sitting on my ass while everyone else works.”
“Finally,” I muttered. “Was wondering when you’d start yelling at me.”
“I’m not yelling.”
“You’re close.”
“If I was yelling, you’d know.” She pushed herself to her feet, swayed, then corrected like she was insulted at her own balance. “I need a shower. Then coffee. Then a laptop.”
“The shower, sure. Coffee, maybe. Laptop, no.”
“Wrecker.”
“Doc’s orders.”
“You outrank Doc in club business.”
“This isn’t club business. This is you still seeing that elevator every time you close your eyes.”
Her jaw locked. She looked away, toward the small window where light was starting to creep in. The line of her throat jumped.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well. I earned that.”
“You didn’t.”
“I froze.”
“You were undercover in a building full of traffickers and cartel linked assholes,” I said. “You did not sign up for that kind of contact. No one moves the first time they see it up close. They freeze, or they throw up, or they pass out. You stayed upright.”
“I didn’t move,” she repeated, like she hadn’t heard anything else.
“If you had moved, we would be pulling you out of a body bag,” I said. “I am very clear on which outcome I prefer.”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “You don’t get to make that call for me.”
“I already did.”
Her stare snapped back to me, hot and sharp now, not wild. That was better. Anger I could work with.
“I was doing my job,” she said. “I knew the risks. You and Cap laid them out in graphic detail. I went in anyway. I am not some innocent you have to protect from big bad reality.”
“I know exactly what you are,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Too damn valuable to lose.”
Her breath stuttered. She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head like she was clearing a glitch.
From down the hall, someone yelled something about coffee filters. Smoke barked, high and excited. A door slammed. The normal chaos of the clubhouse pushed in against the quiet in the room.
She flinched at the slam. Just a little. Her shoulders rose.
I reached out without thinking and laid my hand on her shoulder. “Red.”
She went still under my palm, then eased, like she was matching her breath to mine.
“Cap’s not going to keep you on the bench forever,” I said. “You know too much. You see patterns none of us do. You’re already back in it whether he likes it or not.”
“Then why am I in here and not there?” she asked.
“Because your brain and your body are not on the same page yet,” I said. “We fix that first.”
She frowned. “What, with more toast and electrolytes?”
“With training. With time. With nightmares where you wake up and I tell you you’re still here, and one day your body believes me.”
She looked down at my hand on her shoulder. “You plan on being here for all of that?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a lot of nights, Wrecker.”
“I’ve had worse duty assignments.”
She huffed. “You’re annoying.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her lips twitched again. That was twice in one morning. I was calling that a win.
Someone knocked on the doorframe, light and polite. Doc stuck his head in. His hair was a mess and his T shirt looked like he had slept in it, but his eyes were clinical and sharp.
“You alive?” he asked Amanda.
“Unfortunately,” she muttered.
“Good. Go eat.”
“That’s a command, not a question.”
“Sharp as ever,” Doc said. “That’s promising. I want you in the kitchen in fifteen. Hydration, protein, simple carbs. No hacking my records.”
She blinked. “Wrecker tattled.”
Doc’s mouth quirked. “I’ve heard you saw it multiple times while drinking the electrolytes. You threaten to break into my files again and I am giving you a tetanus booster just for fun.”
She sighed, nodded once. “Fine. Fifteen.”
Doc looked at me over her head. “You on her or is Ariel taking that shift?” he asked.
“I’ve got her,” I said.
Doc nodded like that was the answer he had expected. “Watch her in the hall,” he said. “No surprises from behind. She is flinching at footsteps.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“Good. Maybe you won’t stomp like a rhino then.”
He left. Amanda stared at the doorway for a second.
“Do I get a say in this schedule?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She snorted. “Honest. I appreciate that.”
She shuffled to the bathroom, grabbed a hair tie off the dresser on the way. It was one of Ariel’s. Bright purple. She tossed it once, caught it, then twisted her hair up into a quick knot.
Her hands shook once while she did it. She swallowed it down and finished anyway.
“Wrecker,” she said, still facing the door.
“Yeah.”
“I am not going to be this person forever,” she said. “The one who jumps at shadows and drops coffee cups because someone walked up too fast behind her.”
“I know.”
“I hate her.”
“I don’t.”
She glanced over her shoulder, like she was checking to see if I meant it.
“You’re not weak, Amanda,” I said. “You saw something that would wreck most people. You survived it. You are still here and you still want to go after them. That is not weakness.”
Her fingers tightened on the hair tie. “I don’t want to freeze again,” she said quietly.
“Then we teach you how to fight,” I said. “And I stay with you while you learn.”
She looked at me for a long moment. There were a lot of things in that look. Fear. Anger. Guilt. A hard, hot thread of stubborn that had been there since the first time I saw her walk into our clubhouse like she belonged there.
“Okay,” she said.
Just that.
She turned into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the water start up a minute later.
I let myself sit on the edge of the bed while she was out of sight, rolled my shoulders, stared at the far wall.
The Watcher had looked right at her. Right through the camera. Right through me.
I had seen a lot of men like him overseas. Men who thought people were statistics. Collateral. Acceptable losses.
Those men tended to die ugly when I got to them.
I knew she’d be unfinished business to them.
The Watcher had seen her. Really seen her.
He’d dragged a girl into that elevator while Amanda stood there, frozen, watching. And when he realized she was gone, pulled out, erased from the board, he wouldn’t wonder if something was wrong.
He’d know.
He would want her scared. Want her running. Want her to break.
That would not happen.
“We are coming for you fucker,” I said under my breath, to the empty room, to the ghosts in my head, to the man in the suit who would never hear it.
Iron Battalion protected its own.
He wanted a war.
He was about to get one.