8. The Predator
eight
The Predator
Nora
Meeting with him is definitely a bad idea, but I would walk through flames to make sure he doesn't lay a hand on what belongs to me.
I sit rigidly in the cracked, yellow vinyl booth of the Moonrise Café.
The smell of stale fryer grease and cheap bleach clings to the air.
The kind of building where the bones are good but nobody's maintained them in thirty years.
Salt from the Gulf has been eating at the window frames for decades.
The waitresses know everyone by their first name.
But the man sitting across from me does not belong here. He knows that as much as I do.
Stanley Whitfield Hargrove III looks exactly the same as he did seven years ago.
Time and consequence have never touched him.
His dark hair is swept back perfectly. He wears a crisp, white button-down shirt, cuffs rolled to the elbows, a gold Patek Philippe watch resting against his wrist like a quiet declaration of war.
His hands are flat on the scuffed Formica table. Soft. Pale. Perfectly manicured.
Those hands have never built a single thing in their life. They only know how to take things apart.
His face is immaculate. No stress fractures. No hairline cracks. Fa?ades that are perfect always hide the worst structural damage.
My heart is beating a frantic, sickening rhythm against my ribs, but I force my spine perfectly straight. I keep my hands locked together in my lap, beneath the table, so he cannot see how violently my fingers are shaking.
"You look incredible, Nora," Stanley says.
"Cut the bullshit, Stanley," I say, my voice tight, keeping my tone low so the waitress wiping the counter across the room cannot hear. "Why are you in Moonrise?"
"You've changed, Nora." He murmurs, his voice a smooth, practiced baritone that never rises or strains. As if he hasn't heard anything I said. "You never used to speak like this."
"Answer the question, Stanley."
Stanley's lips curve into that familiar, soft smile. It photographs beautifully and means absolutely nothing.
"I told you in the text. I am here to talk about your property."
"My property is not for sale."
"Every property is for sale, Nora," he replies easily, taking a slow sip from the thick ceramic mug in front of him. "It is just a matter of finding the right number. And my family is very good at finding numbers."
"I don't care about your family's money," I snap. "I am not selling."
"You should care," Stanley murmurs, setting the mug down.
He doesn't raise his voice. He never raises his voice. That is the most terrifying thing about him. His eyes hold mine across the table — dark, flat, and completely still. Not angry. Not cruel. Just empty. Like whatever should live behind a human face never moved in.
"I heard your father is not doing well. A stroke, I believe? That is a terrible shame." He lets that sit for a moment. "Property changes hands every day, Nora. The legal system is a very expensive maze. Are you sure you have the capital to navigate it against my father's firm?"
He smiles.
Nothing moves except his mouth.
"You're wasting your time," I say. "I am not selling."
"I am just expressing concern," he says, tilting his head slightly. "Robert is getting older. The house is falling apart. I drove past it yesterday."
I lift my chin, unwilling to give him a response.
"Why cling to a dying land when you could take a generous buyout and put him in a proper care facility in Houston?"
"Because it is my home," I say, my voice trembling with suppressed rage. "And you are not taking it."
"It is a business acquisition, Nora," Stanley says. "Whitfield Development is building a flagship resort on the river corridor. We need the acreage. I saw your name on the acquisition file for the eastern plot, and I volunteered to handle it personally. Consider it a professional courtesy."
"Courtesy?" I scoff, a bitter, breathless sound. "You stalked me. You showed up at a mixer in Houston, you blew up my phone for weeks, you sent a rental car to sit in my driveway, and now you ambush me in my hometown."
"I am persistent," he corrects smoothly. "And I like to tie up loose ends."
"I am not a loose end. I am telling you to leave."
"You left a lot on the table in Houston seven years ago," Stanley says. The temperature in the booth drops to absolute zero.
He frames the darkest, most agonizing trauma of my life as a failed business negotiation. Like it was a contract that fell through. Like Clara was a line item.
"I offered you compensation then. You walked away. I am offering you compensation now. Do not make the same mistake twice."
My chest heaves. The urge to vomit is rising in the back of my throat. "I didn't want your filthy money then, and I don't want it now."
"It is a lot of money, Nora."
"I don't give a damn."
"You get so emotionally attached to broken things," Stanley says. The words are almost gentle. Almost. "It is why you rebuild old houses, isn't it? You think you can fix them. But some things are just meant to be torn down."
Clara's headstone is pale gray. It has a small carved lamb at the top because I chose it in a fog of grief and the lamb looked gentle. It is the size of a shoebox.
Most people see a headstone. I see proof she was here.
Stanley Hargrove is never going to touch it.
I lift my chin.
"Stay off my land, Stanley."
"It is just dirt."
"It is mine."
"For now," he says, shifting slightly in the booth.
He doesn't need to say anything else. The smile says the rest.
"I am not playing games with you," I say, forcing every ounce of professional composure I possess into my voice. "I have lawyers too. You will not bully me out of Moonrise."
Stanley looks at me for a long, quiet moment. The smile fades by a fraction of an inch, revealing the cold machinery operating beneath his polished face. He leans forward across the table. I shrink back against the vinyl, but there is nowhere to go.
"You think you are strong now," he whispers, his voice dropping into a register that only I can hear. "You think because you wear tailored slacks and draw blueprints that you are out of my reach. But you know exactly what I am capable of, Nora. You know that I always win."
"Leave Moonrise," I say, my voice shaking so badly the words barely form. "Leave Moonrise and never come back."
Stanley doesn't blink. He slowly lifts his right hand from the table.
I freeze. My entire body locks, my mind screaming at me to move, to slap his hand away, to stand up and run. But the trauma response is a heavy, leaden anchor. My limbs refuse to obey.
His soft, white fingers reach across the distance between us. He gently catches a stray strand of my red hair that has fallen across my cheek. He tucks it slowly, deliberately behind my ear. His knuckles brush against my skin.
The touch is revolting. It feels like a spider crawling across my jaw.
It is the exact opposite of the heavy, electric heat of Jax's calloused hands. Stanley's touch is a claim of ownership. A violation disguised as intimacy.
I should have slapped his hand away.
The fact that I didn't makes me feel sick.
He slides out of the booth, smoothing the front of his suit jacket. He drops a crisp fifty-dollar bill onto the table next to his coffee mug, gives me one last perfectly practiced smile, and walks toward the exit.
I sit in the booth, entirely unable to move. I stare at the fifty-dollar bill until the lines on the paper blur.
Seven years.
Seven years of building a life that had nothing to do with Stanley Hargrove.
One conversation and I feel twenty-two again.
I thought I had buried that version of myself.
Apparently she never left.
I wait until I hear the hum of his silver rental car pulling out of the gravel lot. Only then do my muscles unlock. I grab my purse, slide out of the booth, and stumble toward the front door, desperate for fresh air.
I push through the glass doors, the heavy, humid coastal heat hitting my face like a wet towel. I suck in a ragged breath, wrapping my arms around my stomach.
I walk toward my car, my boots crunching in the loose gravel, when a low, vibrating rumble pulls my attention to the far edge of the lot.
Six motorcycles.
Parked in a loose line beneath the dense shade of a massive live oak, engines idling in that low, synchronized rumble I have heard a hundred times growing up in Moonrise. Six men sitting astride them, still and unhurried. Dark denim. Leather. Boots.
I slow my steps.
The man second from the left — broad-shouldered, ink creeping up the side of his neck — I have seen him behind the bar at Calder's.
Priest.
Beside him, wrapped hands resting easy on his thighs.
Knox Wilder.
And in the center, Reed Jensen, sitting with the quiet confidence of a man everyone else unconsciously follows.
I know Reed. Every person in Moonrise knows Reed Jensen.
None of them are looking at me.
They are all looking at the diner entrance.
At the door Stanley walked out three minutes ago.
The realization moves through me slowly. Then all at once.
They were here the entire time.
This was not six men parked under a tree.
This was a perimeter.
Something in my chest — something tight that has been wound around my sternum since the moment Stanley's text arrived last night — loosens.
Not safe.
Seen.
Like somebody looked at Stanley Hargrove and believed me without asking for evidence.
Stanley spent seven years making me doubt that.
Six motorcycles just answered him.
Reed Jensen's head turns. Our eyes meet across thirty yards of dust and heat.
He gives me one slow nod.
Nobody had ever done that for me before.
I nod back. I get in my car.
I drive home at a normal pace, both hands loose on the wheel.
Jax Rowe has a salvage yard and a dangerous reputation and eyes like winter water.
He also sent six men to stand watch without being asked.
I don't know what to do with that yet. But I know what it means.
The drive back to the Beckett cottage is a blur of green pines and gray asphalt.