Chapter 23 #3
Dutton made six phone calls, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold the phone.
He begged money from his sister, from a former business partner, from someone who sounded like an ex-wife and clearly hated his guts.
Anchor stood in the corner and watched, patient as the tide, while his brothers kept their positions outside.
When the last of the cash was handed over—three thousand, two hundred, and forty-seven dollars in wrinkled bills and loose change—Anchor counted it twice, then tucked it into the inside pocket of his cut.
"The extra covers our travel expenses," he said. "The transmission gets loaded in the truck. You're going to deliver it to Channel personally, and you're going to apologize for making him wait."
Dutton's mouth opened like he wanted to argue. Then he looked at Anchor's face and thought better of it.
"Yes, sir."
"And Ray?" Anchor paused at the door, one hand on the frame. "You're done working in tidewater country. Word gets out you stiffed one of ours, nobody's going to hire you anyway. But just in case you're thinking about staying—don't. Next time we come, we won't be this friendly."
He walked out into the sunshine, where his brothers were waiting. Hurricane straightened up from where he'd been leaning against his bike, eyebrows raised.
"No blood?"
"Didn't need any." Anchor pulled the wad of cash from his pocket and tossed it to Riptide. "Get that to Channel. Tell him the debt's paid, plus interest."
"You're too soft." Hurricane said it with a grin that suggested he didn't mean it. "I was hoping to break something."
"Save it for someone who deserves it."
They mounted up and pulled out, leaving Ray Dutton standing in his gravel lot looking like a man who'd just seen his own grave and been told to step back from the edge.
The bikes roared back toward the highway, six engines thundering in formation as the morning sun burned off the last of the marsh fog.
Anchor let the ride clear his head, the way it always did.
The vibration of the engine beneath him, the wind cutting through his hair, the brothers at his back—this was what he'd built when everything else fell apart.
When the regulations strangled the fishing industry and the family boat had to be sold and four generations of Tate watermen came to an end with him.
He'd taken that money and built something new. Something that protected the people the system had abandoned. The fishermen, the dock workers, the small business owners scraping by while corporate operations swallowed the bay. Salt Blood MC wasn't just a club. It was a promise.
Nobody touches ours.
They stopped for gas at a marina station halfway back, the kind of place that sold live bait and stale coffee and had a Confederate flag faded to pink in the window. Hurricane pulled up beside Anchor at the pumps, his expression shifting to something more serious.
"Got some intel while you were playing debt collector."
Anchor squeezed the fuel nozzle, watching the numbers climb. "Talk."
"Compass has been hearing things. There's a loan shark operation pushing into our territory—been squeezing locals hard. Three businesses in Harborview alone, maybe more."
Harborview. The dying fishing village where Salt Blood had built their compound. Their home.
"Who's running it?"
"Don't have a name yet. Compass is digging." Hurricane's jaw tightened. "But from what he's hearing, these aren't your usual bottom-feeders. They're organized. Got muscle. Put a bar owner in the hospital last month when he couldn't make payments."
Anchor finished filling the tank and returned the nozzle to its cradle. His mind was already working, turning over the information like he used to turn over weather reports before a run—calculating risks, planning approaches.
"Church tomorrow morning," he said. "I want everything Compass has."
"Already told him." Hurricane swung back onto his bike. "This could get ugly, Prez. Loan sharks mean outside money. Outside money means someone thinks they can move in on what's ours."
"Then we'll remind them whose territory this is."
The words came out easy, automatic. The same promise he'd made a hundred times since founding this club. But something in his gut was already tightening—that old instinct that had kept him alive on rough water and rougher roads.
Trouble was coming. He could feel it the same way he used to feel a storm building on the horizon, that pressure drop in his bones that meant batten down and prepare.
He kicked the engine to life.
"Let's ride."
The bikes thundered back onto Highway 17, heading north toward Harborview, toward the compound, toward whatever was waiting for them there.
Anchor didn't know yet that the trouble was already closer than he thought.
Didn't know that tomorrow he'd walk into a waterfront restaurant he'd been visiting for years and find a woman with a broken arm and fear in her eyes—fear he'd burn the whole coast down to make disappear.
All he knew now was the road, the wind, and the brothers at his back.
For tonight, that was enough.
Chapter 2
The lunch rush hit like a wave, and Carly rode it the way she'd been riding waves her whole life—one order at a time, one smile at a time, one stab of pain shooting up her broken arm at a time.
"Two crab cake platters, extra slaw on both!
" She called the order back to Miguel in the kitchen, already turning to the next customer with her register smile firmly in place.
The Blue Claw was packed, every booth and table full of locals and tourists drawn in by the hand-painted signs promising the best seafood on the waterfront.
Her father had made that promise forty years ago, and Carly would be damned if she broke it now.
Even if every movement of her left arm made her want to scream.
The cast was heavy, awkward, wrapped in a plastic sleeve to keep it dry in the kitchen steam. She'd told the regulars she'd slipped on a wet floor—clumsy, embarrassing, nothing to worry about. Most of them believed her. The ones who didn't had the decency not to ask follow-up questions.
"Carly, hon, you sure you shouldn't be resting that arm?" Betty Marsh, who'd been eating lunch at The Blue Claw since before Carly was born, peered at her over a basket of hush puppies. "You look pale."
"I'm fine, Miss Betty. Just busy." Carly topped off her sweet tea without being asked. "You need anything else?"
"Just for you to take care of yourself. Your daddy would have a fit, seeing you work like this."
Carly's smile didn't waver. "Daddy worked with worse. I'll be fine."
She moved on before Betty could argue, because arguing took time she didn't have, and because thinking about her father right now would crack something she couldn't afford to let break.
The front door opened, letting in a blast of humid air and two men who didn't belong.
Carly knew it instantly—the same way she knew when a health inspector was about to walk in, when a customer was about to cause trouble, when the fryer oil needed changing.
Twenty years in this restaurant had given her instincts she trusted more than anything.
And right now, those instincts were screaming.
The men were big, both of them. The first one had a face like a clenched fist, small eyes scanning the room with the lazy assessment of someone who'd done violence before and would do it again.
The second was leaner, quieter, with a military haircut and the kind of stillness that made Carly's broken arm throb in remembered pain.
They took the booth by the front window. Best view of the register. Best view of her.
"Help you gentlemen?" Tina, her afternoon waitress, approached with a menu and her customer service voice.
"Just coffee." The big one didn't look at her. His eyes stayed on Carly. "We'll be here a while."
Carly turned back to the register, her heart pounding against her ribs. Seven days. That's what Wilcox had given her. Seven days to sign over the deed to The Blue Claw, or things would get worse.
Worse than a broken arm. Worse than the late-night phone calls. Worse than the two men who'd shown up at closing last week and explained, in patient detail, exactly what happened to people who didn't pay their debts.
She rang up a check for table six, made change, smiled at a compliment about the she-crab soup. Normal. Everything normal. Just another lunch rush at The Blue Claw.
The men in the booth didn't order food. Didn't look at menus. Just sat there with their coffee, watching her like she was already dead and they were waiting for her body to realize it.
The rush thinned out around two o'clock, the way it always did. Tourists wandered back to their rental cottages. Locals headed back to work. The dining room emptied until it was just the regulars lingering over pie and the two men who hadn't moved from their booth.
Tina sidled up to her at the register, voice low. "Those guys are creeping me out. They've been staring at you for two hours."
"I noticed."
"Should I call someone? The cops, maybe, or—"
"No." The word came out sharper than Carly intended. She softened it with a tired smile. "It's fine, Tina. They're just... it's a business thing. I'm handling it."
"You sure? Because that big one looks like he eats kittens for breakfast."
Despite everything, Carly almost laughed. "I'm sure. Why don't you head out early? I can handle closing."
Tina hesitated, clearly wanting to argue, but the prospect of an early Friday afternoon won out. She grabbed her purse from under the counter and headed for the back door, casting one last nervous glance at the booth by the window.
Carly wiped down the counter. Restocked the napkin dispensers. Ran the last few credit card receipts. Normal closing tasks, performed with hands that wanted to shake but didn't, because she wouldn't give these bastards the satisfaction.