Chapter 2
Rebecca watched Cargo work through the documents with the same quiet intensity she'd observed across a hundred bar shifts.
He'd always sat alone at the roadhouse. Corner booth, back to the wall, eyes tracking every movement in the room without ever seeming to look directly at anyone. He ordered whiskey neat and nursed it for hours, tipped well, and never made conversation beyond what was required to place his order.
She'd noticed him because noticing was how she'd survived twenty-nine years. The quiet ones were either harmless or the most dangerous people in the room, and something about the way he carried himself had always screamed the latter.
Now, watching him spread stolen military documents across his workbench with hands that moved like they were handling explosives, she knew her instincts had been right.
"These serial numbers." He tapped a manifest without looking up. "They're sequential. Someone's pulling entire shipments, not individual pieces."
"I don't know what that means."
"It means this isn't opportunistic theft." His jaw tightened. "This is systematic. Organized. Someone with access to inventory systems is identifying equipment that won't be missed and diverting it before it's ever logged as received."
Rebecca hugged her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite the Carolina summer pressing against the shop's walls. "Warren mentioned he had contacts on base. People who owed him favors."
"Names?"
"He never said. Just—" She searched her memory, pulling up fragments of conversations she'd filed away without understanding their significance.
"He got calls sometimes. Late at night. He'd go into the other room to take them, speak quietly.
I heard him say 'the sergeant' once. And something about timing shipments with training rotations. "
Cargo's head came up, his eyes finding hers with an intensity that made her breath catch.
"Training rotations. You're sure?"
"I'm sure." She'd learned young to remember details. Foster homes taught you that the wrong word got you moved, so you paid attention to everything. "He was talking about when units would be deployed for exercises. Said it was the perfect window."
"Because equipment goes missing during training ops all the time. Damaged, lost, written off as combat attrition even in exercises." Cargo's voice had gone flat. Dangerous. "He's using legitimate military activity as cover."
"Is that bad?"
"It's smart. And it means he's got people inside who understand how the system works well enough to exploit it." He turned back to the documents, but she could see the tension coiled in his shoulders. "What else do you remember? Anything about where the equipment goes after he takes it?"
Rebecca closed her eyes, forcing herself to think past the fear and the throbbing pain in her face.
Warren's apartment. The drawer that was always locked.
The phone calls and the meetings and all the small things that hadn't added up but she'd ignored because she wanted to believe someone could actually want her.
"There was a warehouse," she said slowly. "He took me there once, said he needed to check on a shipment. Industrial area outside town. I waited in the car, but I saw men loading crates into a truck with foreign writing on the side."
"What kind of writing?"
"I don't know. Not English. Maybe Arabic? Something with different characters."
Cargo went very still. When he spoke again, his voice was carefully controlled in a way that told her he was suppressing something violent.
"You're telling me you saw stolen military equipment being loaded for international transport."
"I didn't know that's what it was. I thought—" She laughed bitterly. "I thought he was in import-export or something. He had so many explanations, and I was so stupid—"
"You weren't stupid." The words cut through her self-recrimination. "You were targeted. There's a difference."
She looked up and found him watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read. Not pity—she'd seen enough pity to recognize it. Something else. Something that looked almost like respect.
"He chose you because you're invisible," Cargo continued. "Because you work a job where people don't look twice, live a life that doesn't attract attention. You were perfect cover."
"Thanks. That makes me feel so much better."
"It should." He moved closer, and she became acutely aware of how much space he occupied.
Not just physically—though he was solid enough—but the way his presence seemed to fill the room.
"It means you survived by being exactly who you are.
Your instincts got you out of that apartment alive.
Your observation skills gave us more intel in ten minutes than most people could provide in ten hours. "
"My observation skills didn't stop me from dating a man who tried to kill me."
"Nobody's perfect."
She almost laughed. Would have, if her split lip didn't hurt so much.
"Tell me more about the warehouse," Cargo said, but his tone had shifted. Less interrogation, more conversation. "What else did you notice?"
"Security cameras. A lot of them, more than seemed normal.
Guards at the gate, two of them, wearing tactical gear.
" She frowned, pulling up details she hadn't consciously registered.
"Warren was different there. Colder. He talked to the guards like they were soldiers and he was their commanding officer. "
"Because that's probably exactly what they are. Former military, private security contractors." Cargo gathered the documents into a neat stack. "Men who've done this kind of work overseas and brought their skills home."
"This kind of work meaning...?"
"Moving equipment that doesn't officially exist to people who officially shouldn't have it.
" His eyes met hers. "Your boyfriend isn't just a thief, Rebecca.
He's running an arms trafficking operation.
Military-grade weapons flowing out of Fort Liberty to buyers who could be anyone—foreign governments, militias, terrorist organizations. "
The words hit her like physical blows. Arms trafficking. Terrorist organizations. She'd been sleeping with a man who sold weapons to people who killed innocents, and she'd had no idea.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Bathroom's through there." He pointed without judgment. "Take your time."
She made it to the small bathroom and leaned over the sink, fighting the nausea that rolled through her in waves. Her reflection stared back—split lip, bruised cheek, eyes that looked hollow with shock.
Eight weeks. She'd dated Warren Slade for eight weeks, let him into her bed, let him use her as cover while he funneled stolen weapons to God knew where.
And she'd had no idea. No clue. Just a vague sense that something was off, easily dismissed because he was charming and attentive and she was so tired of being alone.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
She splashed water on her face, careful to avoid the cut on her lip, and forced herself to breathe. Falling apart wasn't going to help. She'd learned that lesson in her third foster home, when crying just made everything worse.
Survive first. Fall apart later.
When she emerged, Cargo was on his phone, speaking in low tones that stopped the moment he saw her.
"Better?" he asked.
"No. But functional." She leaned against the doorframe. "Who were you calling?"
"My president. He needs to know what's happening." Cargo pocketed the phone. "We're meeting at the compound in a few hours. Church—that's what we call our meetings. The brotherhood needs to decide how to handle this."
"Handle it how?"
"That depends on what we find when we start digging." His expression gave nothing away. "But men like Warren Slade don't get to operate in our territory without consequences. And they definitely don't get to put hands on women and walk away."
Something warm flickered in her chest, cutting through the cold dread. He wasn't just talking about justice in the abstract. He was talking about Warren specifically. About what Warren had done to her.
"You don't even know me," she said quietly. "Why do you care?"
Cargo was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than before.
"You came to me." Simple words, but weighted with something she didn't fully understand. "You were hurt and scared and running for your life, and you came to me. Not the police. Not a hospital. Me."
"I told you why—"
"I know what you told me." He moved closer, and she found herself holding her breath. "But you trusted me with your life when you didn't have to. That means something."
"What does it mean?"
"It means you're mine to protect now." The words came out fierce, almost angry. "Whatever Warren Slade throws at us, whatever his operation tries to do—you're under my protection. The club's protection. And we don't let our people get hurt."
Our people. Like she belonged already. Like one terrified decision to run to a stranger's shop had made her part of something bigger than herself.
"I'm not one of your people," she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
"You are now." Cargo's eyes held hers, and she saw something in them that made her pulse quicken. Not just protectiveness. Something darker. Hungrier. "You became mine the moment you walked through that door."
She should argue. Should remind him that she was a grown woman who didn't need to be claimed like property, who'd spent her whole life learning to take care of herself.
But the words wouldn't come. Because some treacherous part of her liked the way he said mine. Liked the certainty in his voice, the fierce possessiveness that felt less like ownership and more like shelter.
"Okay," she heard herself say. "Okay."
Something shifted in his expression. Satisfaction, maybe. Or relief.
"Get some rest," he said, stepping back. "We've got a few hours before we need to move. The cot in the back room isn't comfortable, but it's safe."
"What about you?"
"I don't sleep much." He moved toward the window, positioning himself where he could watch the approach road. "Not when there's a threat to assess."
Rebecca studied his profile—the hard line of his jaw, the scars she could see peeking above his collar, the way he held himself like a weapon waiting to be deployed.
"Cargo." She said his name the way he'd said hers, testing the weight of it. "That's not your real name."
"No."
"Will you tell me your real name?"
He glanced at her, and something almost warm flickered in his eyes. "When this is over. When you're safe."
"That's a strange thing to make conditional."
"Names are weapons." He turned back to the window. "They give people power over you. I don't hand out power to people I don't trust."
"But you trust me enough to protect me?"
"Trust is earned. Protection is given." His voice softened, just slightly. "You'll earn the trust. I can already tell."
She wanted to ask how he could tell. Wanted to understand this man who treated her like precious cargo—was that why they called him that?—while barely knowing her name.
But exhaustion was crashing over her, the adrenaline finally fading, and her body was demanding rest whether her mind agreed or not.
"A few hours," she said, moving toward the back room. "Then we go to your compound and figure out how to stop a man who's apparently been selling weapons to terrorists."
"That's the plan."
"Great." She paused at the door. "Just so you know, this is officially the worst date I've ever had."
The sound Cargo made might have been a laugh. "Warren?"
"You." She gestured vaguely at the shop, the documents, the whole impossible situation. "This. All of it."
"This isn't a date."
"No?" She raised an eyebrow despite everything. "Strange man, late night, life-or-death stakes? In my experience, that's basically every date I've ever been on."
This time she was sure he laughed. A short sound, surprised out of him, quickly suppressed.
"Get some sleep, Rebecca."
She went. But as she lay down on the narrow cot, staring at the ceiling of a stranger's shop while her whole life burned down around her, one thought kept circling through her exhausted mind.
Warren Slade had seemed charming, attentive, safe. He'd turned out to be a monster who sold weapons to killers and tried to murder her when she learned the truth.
Cargo seemed dangerous, intense, barely human in his focus. And yet she felt safer with him than she'd felt with anyone in years.
Maybe her instincts weren't as broken as she'd thought.
Or maybe she was just trading one disaster for another.
Either way, she was too tired to care. Tomorrow she'd figure out how to survive a military theft operation worth millions and a man who'd decided she needed to die.
Tonight, she'd sleep under the protection of a stranger who called her his like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And somehow, against all logic, that felt exactly right.