Chapter 4
Rebecca woke to Cargo's hand on her shoulder and the words she'd been dreading.
"We need to move."
She was upright before her eyes fully focused, adrenaline flooding her system like a switch had been flipped. "What happened?"
"Nothing yet." His voice was calm, but his body language said otherwise—coiled tight, eyes constantly scanning, hand resting near the weapon on his hip. "But Slade's people are checking your apartment. Your workplace. Everywhere you might run to ground."
"How do you know?"
"We have eyes on his operation now. Brothers watching his movements." He handed her a jacket—leather, worn soft, smelling like him. "Put this on. We're taking the bike."
She shrugged into the jacket without argument, the weight of it settling around her like armor. Too big, obviously borrowed, but warm and solid in a way that made her feel marginally less exposed.
"What about my things?" The question felt stupid even as she asked it. "My savings. My life."
"None of it matters if you're dead." Cargo's eyes met hers, flat and certain. "We get you somewhere safe first. Everything else comes later."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to demand he understand that "everything else" was four years of careful planning, tips saved and budgeted and hoarded toward nursing school, a future she'd built with her own hands because nobody else was going to build it for her.
But he was right. Dead women didn't go to nursing school.
"Okay," she said. "Let's go."
The compound was different in daylight—bigger than she'd realized, industrial buildings sprawling across Carolina pine, men moving with purpose between garage bays and what looked like a legitimate security business on the far end.
She caught glimpses of faces, nods of acknowledgment, the weight of attention that came from walking through territory that wasn't hers.
"They're staring," she murmured.
"You're new." Cargo guided her toward a massive black motorcycle that looked like it had been built for war. "They'll get used to you."
"Will they?"
Something flickered in his expression. "They'd better."
He swung onto the bike with the easy grace of a man who'd done it ten thousand times, then looked at her with an expression that was almost challenging.
"You ever ridden before?"
"Once. Spring break, bad decisions." She studied the machine with what she hoped was more confidence than she felt. "I remember holding on."
"That's the important part." He kicked the engine to life, the rumble vibrating through her bones. "Get on. Arms around my waist. Lean when I lean."
Rebecca climbed on behind him, settling against his back, her arms wrapping around the solid wall of his torso. He was warm despite the morning chill, his body a furnace that cut through the leather jacket she was wearing.
"Hold tight," he said, and then they were moving.
The compound gates opened ahead of them, and Cargo accelerated through without slowing. Within seconds, they were on a back road that wound through Carolina pines, the world blurring past in shades of green and gold.
Rebecca tightened her grip and pressed her face against his back.
She'd forgotten what this felt like. The speed, the vulnerability, the absolute trust required to put your life in someone else's hands. On the back of Warren's expensive sports car, she'd felt like an accessory. On the back of Cargo's bike, she felt like cargo.
Protected. Secured. His to transport safely.
The ride took them away from Fayetteville's familiar sprawl, deeper into the sandhills where tobacco barns rotted beside the road and houses appeared only in glimpses through the trees.
Cargo navigated without hesitation, taking turns Rebecca couldn't have anticipated, following routes that seemed designed to lose anyone trying to follow.
After an hour, he pulled off onto a dirt track that looked like it hadn't seen traffic in years. The bike bounced over ruts and roots, branches scraping at their arms, until they emerged into a clearing where a small cabin hunched beneath ancient oaks.
"This is it?" Rebecca asked as the engine died.
"This is it." Cargo dismounted, offering his hand to help her off. "Property belongs to a friend who doesn't ask questions. No connection to the club, no way for Slade to trace it."
She took his hand—rough, callused, impossibly warm—and let him steady her as her legs adjusted to solid ground again. Her thighs ached from gripping the bike, and her arms felt like they'd been locked in position for hours.
"You okay?" He was watching her face, cataloguing her response the same way he'd catalogued the documents last night.
"I'll live." She looked around the clearing, taking in the isolation. "No neighbors. No cell signal, probably. Middle of nowhere."
"That's the point."
"What if I need to contact someone? Let them know I'm not dead in a ditch somewhere?"
"Who would you contact?"
The question hit harder than it should have.
She opened her mouth to answer and realized she didn't have one.
No family worth calling—the foster system had made sure of that.
No real friends—bartenders worked nights and slept days, which didn't leave much time for connection.
No one who would notice she'd disappeared except maybe her landlord when rent came due.
"No one," she admitted. "I guess there's no one."
Something shifted in Cargo's expression. Not pity—he didn't seem capable of pity—but something adjacent. Recognition, maybe.
"That makes this easier." He turned toward the cabin, pulling keys from his pocket. "Come on. I need to check the perimeter."
The cabin was small but clean—someone had been here recently, airing the place out, stocking supplies. Rebecca noted canned food in the cupboards, bottled water in a row by the sink, first aid supplies in a box on the counter.
"You planned this," she said. "Before you even knew you'd need it."
"I plan everything." Cargo moved through the space with methodical precision, checking windows, testing locks, examining sight lines like he was preparing for a siege. "Safehouses get maintained whether they're in use or not. You never know when you'll need to disappear."
"That's paranoid."
"Paranoid keeps people alive." He paused at the back window, scanning the tree line. "I lost brothers because I wasn't paranoid enough once. I don't make that mistake twice."
She wanted to ask. Wanted to understand what had happened to make him this way—this closed-off, this careful, this obsessed with control and contingency.
But the set of his shoulders said he wasn't ready to share, and she was too raw to push.
"What happens now?" she asked instead.
"Now we wait." He finished his circuit and returned to the main room, finally letting some of the tension drain from his posture. "The brothers are digging into Slade's operation. Finding his weak points. Once we have targets, we move."
"And I just... sit here?"
"You stay safe." His eyes found hers. "That's your job right now. Staying alive until this is over."
"I'm not good at waiting."
"Learn."
The word was clipped, commanding. It should have made her angry. Instead, it made something warm curl in her stomach.
"You're very bossy," she observed.
"I'm very good at keeping things secure." He moved past her toward the kitchen area. "Coffee?"
"God, yes."
She watched him work—filling a kettle from the water bottles, setting it on a camp stove, measuring grounds with the same precision he'd used to check the windows.
Everything about him was deliberate. Controlled.
Like he was constantly running calculations about threat levels and response protocols.
"Cargo." She said his road name carefully. "Why do they call you that?"
"Because I handle transport." He didn't look up from the coffee. "Getting supplies where they need to go. Making sure nothing gets lost in transit."
"That's it? Just logistics?"
"What were you expecting?"
"I don't know. Something more dramatic." She leaned against the counter, watching his profile. "You don't seem like a logistics guy."
"No?" Now he did look at her, one eyebrow raised. "What do I seem like?"
"Someone who's lost things he couldn't afford to lose." The words came out before she could stop them. "Someone who's decided the only way to keep that from happening again is to control everything around him."
His hands stilled on the coffee pot. The silence stretched.
"That's perceptive," he said finally.
"I told you. I notice things."
"You notice too much." But there was something in his voice that wasn't quite criticism. "Most people would look at me and see a biker with weapons. You look at me and see..."
"Someone who's carrying the same weight I am." She held his gaze. "We recognize each other, people like us. The ones who learned early that the world doesn't give you safety. You have to build it yourself."
The kettle began to whistle. Cargo turned away to pour the water, but not before she caught something in his expression that looked almost vulnerable.
"I had a cache," he said quietly. "Afghanistan. Weapons and equipment for operators doing things that officially never happened. Somewhere in the system, there was a leak. Signals intelligence that went to the wrong people."
She waited, barely breathing.
"The enemy knew what we had. Where we had it. When our people came to resupply..." He poured coffee into two mismatched mugs. "Three operators dead. Because the supply chain was compromised."
"That wasn't your fault."
"Wasn't it?" He handed her a mug, his fingers brushing hers. "I trusted a system. Believed that if I did everything right, the equipment would be secure. But systems leak. People fail. And operators die."
"So now you don't trust anything."
"Now I don't trust anything I can't personally verify." His eyes held hers. "Except apparently I trust you. And I don't know what to do with that."
The confession hung between them, raw and unexpected. Rebecca wrapped her hands around the warm mug, processing.
"I walked into your shop covered in blood," she said slowly. "Why would you trust me?"
"Because you came to me instead of running.
" He leaned against the counter opposite her, close enough that she could feel his warmth.
"Because you didn't fall apart when I told you what you'd stumbled into.
Because you picked up a gun like you knew how to use it and didn't flinch when I said you might have to. "
"That's not trust. That's assessment."
"It's both." He took a sip of his coffee, watching her over the rim. "I've been assessing you since you walked through my door. And everything I've seen tells me you're someone worth protecting."
"Worth protecting," she repeated. "That's a strange way to put it."
"How would you put it?"
She considered. "You're treating me like I'm valuable inventory. Something that needs to be secured and monitored and kept safe at all costs."
"Is that a complaint?"
"I don't know." She met his eyes. "I've never been valuable to anyone before. It's... disorienting."
Something shifted in his expression. Heated.
"Get used to it," he said roughly. "Because as long as this threat exists, you're the most important thing in my inventory. And I don't lose things that matter."
She should have bristled at being called a thing. Should have reminded him that she was a person, not property, not cargo to be transported.
Instead, she found herself leaning into the intensity of his focus. The absolute certainty in his voice. The way he looked at her like she was something precious that he'd kill to protect.
"Okay," she heard herself say. "Then don't lose me."
"I don't intend to."
He pushed off from the counter and moved toward the window again, checking the perimeter like he hadn't done it five minutes ago. But Rebecca saw his hands weren't quite steady, and his jaw was set harder than before.
She'd gotten to him. Somehow, in the middle of running for her life, she'd cracked through whatever walls he maintained and found the human underneath.
And as she watched him inventory the safehouse with paranoid precision—checking every corner, every potential entry point, every weapon stashed in hidden locations—she realized something that should have terrified her.
She'd become something he was protecting with the same intensity he gave to military-grade equipment. The same paranoid attention. The same absolute refusal to let anything compromise his supply chain.
She was cargo now. His cargo.
And some treacherous part of her was glad.