5. She Doesnt Scare Easy
five
She Doesn't Scare Easy
Jax
"Stay still, you hovering pain in the ass."
The voice comes from the corner of the workbench, and I give Rafe a terse look, but he's not looking in my direction.
Rafael Dalton, at thirty-seven, is a man built out of rebar and old concrete. He is six feet three of military lean muscle. He is built purely for function, with broad shoulders that taper down into narrow hips.
His dark brown hair is buzzed short out of deeply ingrained habit, the edges at his temples dusted with harsh gray. His hazel brown eyes are completely unreadable, trained on the scrolling lines of code and surveillance footage on his screen.
He runs Dalton Security out of a heavily fortified office in Moonrise, but before that, he belonged to special operations.
We bleed the same code. He is a friend turned brother, and he's one of the few men in this county who can walk into my workshop, hijack my workbench, and tell me to back the fuck off without getting his jaw wired shut.
Regardless of how hard I try, I can't stay still. I walk from the heavy iron anvil near the welding station to the open bay doors, my heavy boots grinding the iron dust and loose gravel into the cement.
I turn around and walk back, doing this four times in two minutes. My chest feels tight, a low and steady drumbeat hammering against my ribs that has absolutely nothing to do with the Texas heat.
"Are you done yet?" I ask roughly, crossing my arms over my chest so that my biceps pull tight against the sleeves of my faded black t-shirt.
"I will be done when I am done, shithead," Rafe mutters.
He types a rapid sequence on the keyboard. His hands are massive, scarred across the knuckles, built for violence, but moving over the small keys with terrifying speed.
The sleeves of his dark Henley are pushed up, revealing the faded ink of his military unit insignia and deployment dates covering both his forearms.
"Stop breathing down my goddamn neck. You are blocking my light, and you are acting like a goddamn bastard."
I clamp my jaw shut and turn away from him and look out across the salvage yard. Stacks of crushed steel and rusted truck axles sit baking in the afternoon sun. I look right through them as my mind flashes back to the fence line and inadvertently to Nora.
I can't get the look of raw panic that I'd seen on her face earlier out of my head. The first time I'd seen her, she struck me as a woman who faces situations squarely and is never shy from them. The second time, she came through my gate looking completely fearless and was unbothered by my size.
For a woman like her to freeze when the car pulls up in front of her property tells me something is deeply wrong.
I tell myself I do not care.
The problem is I have told myself that four times this morning.
It is not working.
I tell myself she is just a neighbor who walked into my yard demanding my mother's land. I tell myself that I dragged Rafe down here to run the plates because I only need to know what she is afraid of and if her trouble is going to spill over the fence line onto my property.
If she is involved with some wrong crowd, some shady developer, or some loan shark out of the city, that threat becomes my threat.
I convince myself that it is the only reason my blood is boiling. I am a man who protects his perimeter. So, I'm not doing this because I am worried about her and surely not because I still remember the exact taste of her skin in Galveston.
"Got it."
Rafe's voice breaks through the grinding gears of my head.
I drop my arms and immediately step closer, crowding his shoulder as I look down at the bright screen. The glare of the computer cuts through the shadows of the workshop.
"What are we looking at?" I ask.
Rafe taps the screen with a thick finger. The video feed is pulled from the high-definition security cameras I installed on the eastern light poles of the salvage yard. The camera has a clear, unobstructed view of the county road that runs past my front gate and dead ends near the Beckett driveway.
"The car," Rafe says, sparing me a brief glance. "The silver sedan is a rental car. Commercial fleet out of a corporate agency."
"Local?" I ask.
"No," Rafe says.
He hits a key, zooming in on the rear bumper of the vehicle. The image sharpens until the alphanumeric sequence on the plate is crystal clear. "It has Houston plates. So, it's not rented in Moonrise or anywhere near the coast."
My brow furrows deeply. I stare at the white and black plate on the screen.
Houston?
Why the hell would a rental car all the way from Houston make a woman like Nora look like she was about to face a firing squad?
"There is more," Rafe continues as he types another command, splitting the screen into two separate video feeds. He points to the left side. "This is the footage from today. This is the car idling near her driveway."
He points to the right side of the screen. The timestamp in the corner reads two days ago. "I ran the plates through your entire surveillance system archive. The exact same car was here forty-eight hours ago. Parked in the exact same spot on the shoulder of the county road."
I lean my hands flat on the workbench. "What were they doing?"
"Nothing," Rafe says. He leans back in the metal folding chair, his left leg stretching out straight to relieve the ache I know he feels in his knee. It is an old injury he never talks about, but I know when the damp Gulf air makes it throb.
"They sat there for ten minutes. They did not get out. They did not approach the gate. If I had to guess, based on the sightlines and the angle of the windshield, they are running surveillance. They are watching."
"Watching what?" I ask.
"They are either watching your salvage yard," Rafe says, turning his head to look at me, his hazel eyes locking onto mine, "or they are watching the neighbor's property."
I know it is her property.
My gut twists. Not because somebody might be watching her. Because I know exactly what it feels like when trouble arrives before you're ready for it. One normal day. Then the rest of your life.
Rafe reaches out and shuts the laptop. The sharp click echoes in the quiet workshop. He folds his hands on top of the aluminum case. He tilts his head, studying my face closely.
"Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, Jax?" Rafe asks. "Or am I just pulling plates for my own health?"
I hesitate. I stand up straight, rolling my shoulders back to relieve the tension in my neck. I walk over to the tool chest, pick up a heavy crescent wrench, and wipe it down with a grease-stained rag without looking at him.
"There is a way I can get back all of my mother's land," I say.
Rafe goes completely still. Then, a slow, predatory grin spreads across his face, making the scar through his left eyebrow pull tight.
He stands up from the chair, clapping a massive hand onto my shoulder. The hit is heavy enough to stagger a normal man, but I barely shake.
"You lucky son of a bitch," Rafe laughs, his voice echoing in the rafters. "Are you serious? The eastern fifteen acres? You found a loophole?"
"Something like that," I mutter, tossing the rag onto the chest.
Rafe drops his hand, and his grin vanishes instantly. "What's wrong?"
"What do you mean?"
"You look like a piece of shit," Rafe says bluntly. "You just found out you can take back your mother's land. You should be celebrating at Priest's with whiskey. Why the hell do you look so down?"
I grip the crescent wrench in my right hand. "Because things are complicated, Rafe."
"How so?" Rafe crosses his arms, leaning back against the workbench.
"Arthur Beckett had a stroke," I say. "His daughter came down from Houston to pack up his house.
She found the deed on his desk and approached me at the fence line yesterday.
Now I finally know the kind of agreement my mother had with them before her death.
It was a fifty-year private lease. It expired twelve months ago. "
"Jesus," Rafe breathes. "They have been squatting on expired paper for a year?"
"Yeah," I say. "With everything out in the open, I can reclaim it. Legally, the land reverts fully to the estate. It is mine."
"So what is the goddamn problem then?" Rafe asks, his brow furrowing. "Take the land. Put up a fence."
"The daughter wants to buy me out," I say, my grip tightening on the wrench. "She offered above market value to clear the title and keep the dirt. She wants it badly."
"And?"
"I am not selling."
Rafe nods slowly, his hazel eyes tracking the movement of my hands. "That is reasonable. With the history concerning that land, only a blind, gutless coward would ask you to sell. That dirt is Margaret's legacy and your blood. Tell the girl no, and let the lawyers handle the eviction."
I nod, looking down at the concrete floor. Rafe is saying everything I already know. He is rationalizing the exact thoughts that have been running through my head for twenty-four hours. It is simple math. The land is mine. I will not sell. She has to leave.
Which is exactly why it makes absolutely zero sense that my chest feels like it is caught in a vice grip, and I feel bad.
I can't understand why I feel a sickening, heavy guilt that I cannot give Nora what she wants. I cannot stand the thought of taking something away from her, and it is tearing my goddamn head apart.
Rafe studies me. The silence stretches out, filled only by the hum of the oscillating fan in the corner.
"There is something else," Rafe says softly. It is not a question.
"You are holding out on me. I have known you for ten years, Jax. You are a hardass. You do not lose sleep over kicking someone off your property. What are you not saying?"
I look at him. I look at the scar on his face, the tattoos on his arms, the loyalty burned into his bones. He is a brother.
I decide to just say it.
"You are right," I say, my voice dropping so low it barely carries over the fan. "There is something else."
"Spit it out, shithead."
I look him dead in the eye. "I fucked her."