Chapter 7
Rebecca had expected more running.
Instead, the truck rolled through the compound gates and Cargo killed the engine in front of the same converted tobacco warehouse she'd glimpsed two days ago, before the safehouse, before the shooting, before she'd learned what six bodies hitting the floor sounded like through a reinforced cellar door.
"We're staying here?" she asked.
"Safehouse is compromised." Cargo was already scanning the compound, his eyes tracking movement the way they always did—entry points, sight lines, brothers positioned at intervals she suspected weren't accidental. "Compound has better security. More bodies. Harder to hit."
"Comforting."
He looked at her then, really looked, and something in his expression shifted. Not softer—she didn't think Cargo did soft—but less clinical. Like he was seeing her instead of assessing her.
"You're safe here," he said. "That's what matters."
She climbed out of the truck on legs that still felt wrong. Not shaky, exactly. More like her body hadn't caught up with the reality that people had died less than two hours ago and she was walking around in borrowed clothes acting like that was normal.
Maybe it was normal. Maybe this was what normal looked like when your ex-boyfriend sold weapons to terrorists and a biker with Delta training killed six men before breakfast.
Cargo appeared at her side, his hand finding the small of her back with a proprietary certainty that should have annoyed her. It didn't. His touch was warm and steady and real, and right now real was the only thing keeping her upright.
"This way," he said. "I'll show you the quarters."
He led her through the compound with the focused efficiency of a man giving a briefing, not a tour.
Security cameras at every corner—he pointed them out.
Emergency exits, three of them, each leading to a different escape route through the pines.
The armory, locked with a code he'd change weekly.
The garage where brothers worked on bikes that gleamed like weapons.
"Chapel's off-limits during church," he said as they passed a heavy door reinforced with steel. "Otherwise, most of the compound is open. Bar's through there. Kitchen's stocked. Laundry's behind the garage."
"You're giving me the orientation speech."
"I'm giving you information you need to survive." He stopped in front of a door at the end of a long hallway, pulling keys from his pocket. "This is mine. It's yours now too."
The room was exactly what she expected. Sparse, organized, everything in its place with the kind of precision that came from a man who inventoried his life the way he inventoried weapons.
A bed, made with military corners. A desk with ammunition catalogs stacked at right angles.
A gun safe in the corner that probably cost more than her car.
"Bathroom's through there." He pointed. "Clean towels in the cabinet. I'll get you clothes that fit better than what the safehouse had."
"Cargo."
He stopped mid-inventory of his own room, turning to face her.
"I just watched you walk past six dead men without blinking," she said. "And now you're telling me where the clean towels are."
"You need clean towels."
"I need you to stop acting like this is normal."
Something flickered in his eyes. Not guilt—she didn't think he felt guilty about Houser and his men. Something closer to concern. For her.
"It is normal," he said quietly. "For us. For this life." He moved closer, and the room that had seemed adequate suddenly felt very small. "The question is whether you can live with that."
She thought about the cellar. The gunfire overhead, muffled but unmistakable. The silence after. The way Cargo had knocked their pattern on the door and she'd opened it to find him standing there with blood on his boots and relief in his eyes.
"I lived through foster care," she said. "I lived through Warren. I lived through a cellar while people died above me." She held his gaze. "I can live with this."
He studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and the tension in his shoulders eased by a fraction.
"Get cleaned up," he said. "I need to debrief with Legion. I'll come find you after."
He was halfway out the door when she called after him.
"Cargo. Where will you sleep?"
He paused without turning around. "Where do you want me to sleep?"
The question hung between them, loaded with implications neither of them was ready to unpack. Not yet. Not with Houser's blood still drying on his boots and adrenaline still humming through both of them.
"Here," she said. "I want you to sleep here."
His hand tightened on the doorframe. She watched the muscles in his back shift under his shirt, and then he was gone, moving down the hallway with that silent, purposeful stride.
Rebecca closed the door, leaned against it, and let out a breath she'd been holding since the safehouse.
She was alive. She was in a fortified compound surrounded by former special operations soldiers. And she'd just told a man she barely knew to share her bed.
Her bed. His bed. Their bed.
"Jesus Christ," she muttered, and went to find those clean towels.
The shower was hot enough to hurt, and she stood under it until the water ran clear and her skin was pink and the last traces of safehouse dust had washed down the drain.
When she emerged, wrapped in a towel that smelled like industrial detergent and gun oil, someone had left clothes folded outside the bathroom door.
Jeans that looked close to her size. A black t-shirt.
A flannel button-down. Underwear still in the package—the right size, which meant someone had assessed her measurements with professional accuracy.
She didn't want to think about which brother had been dispatched for that particular supply run.
Dressed, hair damp, bruises fading from purple to yellow-green on her cheek, Rebecca followed the sound of voices through the compound until she found the bar.
It was exactly what a bar built by special operations veterans would look like.
Reclaimed military pallets formed the counter.
Airborne and Special Forces memorabilia covered the walls—unit patches, jump wings, photographs of young men who didn't know yet what the world would do to them.
The lighting was low enough to be comfortable and bright enough to read faces.
She noticed the sight lines immediately. Every seat had a view of at least one exit. The mirror behind the bar showed the entire room. Whoever had designed this space had been thinking about security as much as socializing.
Three women sat at a corner table, and they looked up when Rebecca appeared in the doorway.
"There she is." The blonde one stood first, crossing the room with the easy confidence of someone who owned the space. "I'm Hannah. Legion's old lady. You need coffee, bourbon, or both?"
"Coffee," Rebecca said. "Please."
"Smart girl. Bourbon comes later." Hannah guided her toward the table with a hand on her arm that felt less like hospitality and more like tactical extraction from the doorway. "This is Natalie. Ghost's. And Jessica, Trooper's. Caroline's at the clinic—she'll catch up later."
Natalie was dark-haired and quiet, watching Rebecca with eyes that missed nothing. Jessica was taller, sharper, with the kind of smile that suggested she'd survived her own version of hell and come out swinging.
"Sit," Jessica said. "You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"Three days," Rebecca corrected, sliding into the booth. "Give or take."
"Three days." Natalie pushed a coffee mug across the table—already poured, already waiting. "That tracks. Cargo doesn't sleep when he's working a problem, and the people around him tend to catch the insomnia."
"Is that what I am? A problem he's working?"
The three women exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation Rebecca couldn't decode.
"Honey," Hannah said, sitting down across from her. "You're a lot of things to that man, but a problem isn't one of them."
Rebecca wrapped her hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into fingers that still felt cold despite the Carolina heat outside. "You've all been through this. The—" She gestured vaguely. "The threat. The compound. The man who decides you're his to protect."
"Different threats," Jessica said. "Same energy."
"Does it get easier?"
"The threat ends," Natalie said carefully. "That part gets easier. The man who decided you're his—that part gets more intense." She sipped her own coffee. "But I'm guessing you've already figured that out."
Rebecca thought about Cargo standing over her in the cellar doorway, blood on his boots, relief cracking through his armored expression. The way he'd squeezed her shoulder like confirming she was real.
"He killed six men this morning," she said. "And then he showed me where the clean towels are."
"That sounds about right," Hannah said. "Legion reorganized the entire weapons locker after our situation. Said it calmed him down."
"Ghost cooked dinner," Natalie added. "Four courses. At two in the morning."
"Trooper mapped seventeen different escape routes from our bedroom." Jessica shrugged. "They process through doing. It's a special operations thing."
Rebecca looked at these women—calm, competent, settled into a life that involved fortified compounds and armed men and threats that required military-grade responses.
They weren't broken by it. They weren't diminished.
If anything, they seemed stronger for having survived whatever had brought them here.
"How did you know?" she asked. "That it was worth staying?"
Hannah leaned forward, her expression shifting from welcoming to serious. "When the threat was over and I could leave, and I realized leaving would hurt worse than anything the bad guys had done." She held Rebecca's eyes. "That's when I knew."
"You're not there yet," Natalie said gently. "And that's okay. Right now you just need to be safe and let Cargo do what he does."
"What he does being..."
"Protect things that matter to him," Jessica finished. "With the kind of obsessive attention that makes normal people uncomfortable and keeps the rest of us alive."
Rebecca drank her coffee and listened to these women talk about compound life—the routines, the rhythms, the strange normalcy of living among men who'd killed for their country and now killed for each other.
They didn't ask about Warren. Didn't press for details about the safehouse or the shooting or the bruises still fading on her face.
They talked about the bar schedule, the kitchen rotation, which brothers snored loud enough to hear through walls.
They talked about their work—Hannah's PT clinic, Natalie's coffee shop, Jessica's storage business, Caroline's vet practice.
Lives built around and alongside the club, not consumed by it.
Normal lives. Extraordinary circumstances. The combination shouldn't have worked, but somehow it did.
Rebecca found herself relaxing by degrees, the tension in her shoulders loosening as conversation flowed and coffee refilled and these women made space for her without demanding she fill it.
She was on her third cup when she felt him.
Not heard. Not saw. Felt—a shift in the room's energy, a presence that registered in her body before her eyes confirmed it.
Cargo stood in the doorway, watching her. Not approaching. Just watching, the way he'd watched from across the roadhouse bar for months. Cataloguing. Assessing. Making sure she was where she was supposed to be.
Their eyes met across the room, and something passed between them that Rebecca couldn't name. Not quite comfort. Not quite desire. Something between inventory and intimacy—the look of a man confirming that his most valuable asset was secure.
Hannah followed her gaze and smiled. "Go," she said. "We'll be here."
Rebecca stood, carrying her coffee, and crossed the bar to where Cargo waited.
"Debrief done?" she asked.
"For now." His eyes tracked the bruise on her cheek, the damp hair, the clothes that weren't hers. "You met the women."
"They're terrifying."
Something that might have been amusement flickered across his face. "They survived things that would break most people. It changes a person."
"I noticed." She leaned against the doorframe beside him, close enough that their arms almost touched. "They told me you'd show me where everything is. Security systems. Supply locations."
"I will."
"They also told me that's your version of a love language."
His jaw tightened. "They talk too much."
"They talk exactly enough." She looked up at him, this man who'd killed for her and showed her where the towels were and stood in doorways watching her drink coffee like she might disappear if he looked away.
"Show me. All of it. Every camera, every exit, every weapons cache you're willing to share. "
"Why?"
"Because you need me to know." She held his gaze. "And I need to understand the place I'm living in."
He was quiet for a moment, processing. Then he nodded, and she caught something in his expression that looked almost vulnerable.
"Come on," he said. "We'll start with the perimeter."
He led her into the Carolina heat, and Rebecca followed, learning the geography of a life she hadn't chosen but was beginning to understand.
Behind her, through the bar's open door, she heard Hannah laugh and say something to the other women that she couldn't quite catch.
She didn't need to catch it.
She already knew what it was about.