Chapter Four
The fuel line was shot.
Tess lay on her back in the engine compartment, diesel fumes burning her eyes, and stared at the clean slice through the rubber. Not worn. Not cracked. Cut. Serrano's people had been on her boat again, probably last night while she slept in the cabin twenty feet away.
She'd slept through someone cutting her fuel lines.
That thought scared her more than the damage.
She was elbow-deep in the engine, wrestling with a replacement line she'd bought with money she didn't have, when she heard boots on the dock. Heavy. Deliberate. The kind of footsteps that belonged to a man who didn't see any reason to hide his approach.
Tess grabbed the wrench beside her and climbed out of the compartment, ready to swing.
The man standing on her dock made her forget how to swing.
He was tall—six feet of weathered muscle that looked like the bay had carved him out of driftwood and salt. Scars on his hands, silver-white against tanned skin. A leather cut over a plain black t-shirt, patches she didn't bother reading because his eyes had already caught hers and held them.
Eyes that looked at her like he was reading the tide. Calm. Patient. Taking her measure the way a captain sized up weather before deciding whether to launch.
She knew him.
Not personally—she'd never spoken to him in her life.
But she'd seen him at fuel docks from Essex to Rock Hall, at bait shops and marine supply stores, always moving through the water world like he belonged to it.
A face she'd filed away without thinking, the way you remembered regulars at your favorite bar.
He was a regular on the bay. Same as her.
"Tess Rourke." His voice was low, unhurried. "You came to Mackey's last night asking about help with a problem."
She didn't lower the wrench. "I asked a bartender if he knew anyone who dealt with smugglers. He said he'd pass the word."
"He did." The man stepped onto her boat without asking permission, and something about the way he moved—easy, certain, like the deck was already his—made her pulse kick hard against her throat. "I'm Chesapeake. Charm City Killers."
The name landed like an anchor.
Everyone on the water knew the Killers. Not the way civilians knew them—scary bikers, avoid eye contact—but the way working boats knew them.
They controlled the harbor. They moved things that needed moving.
And they protected the people who fell through the cracks of a system that didn't give a damn about charter captains or crabbers or anyone else who made their living on the Chesapeake.
"You're the one who runs the bay routes," she said. Not a question.
Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe, that she knew. "I am."
"I've seen you at Henderson's fuel dock. And the bait shop in Rock Hall."
"I've seen you too." His gaze traveled over her—not leering, not dismissive, just... assessing. Taking inventory. "You've been running charters out of Essex for what, ten years?"
"Twelve." She finally lowered the wrench, but she didn't set it down. "You're here about Serrano."
"I'm here about you." The words hit her like a rogue wave, unexpected and impossible to brace against. "Serrano's been running product through the Chesapeake without club permission.
That's a problem we were going to handle anyway.
But he threatened you on our water. Put a hole in your boat. That makes it personal."
"Personal for who?"
"For the club." His eyes held hers, and she felt the weight of something unspoken in the space between them. "For me."
Tess's heart was doing something stupid in her chest—racing like she was sixteen again, not thirty-four and too old for this kind of nonsense. She crossed her arms over her grease-stained tank top and made herself hold his gaze.
"I didn't ask for protection."
"No. You asked for help." He took another step closer, and suddenly the deck felt very small. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Help means we work together. Protection means you stay out of the way while we handle things.
" His voice dropped, and she felt it vibrate somewhere low in her belly.
"I'm not here to tell you to stay out of the way.
I saw what you did to your hull patch. Clean work.
And pulling that package out of your prop and dropping it back in the bay?
" A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth. "That took guts."
"It took common sense. I don't want any part of whatever Serrano's moving."
"No. You just want him to leave you alone so you can keep running your boat on your water.
" He said it like he understood. Like he'd wanted the same thing once, before something changed.
"That's not going to happen. Serrano's down sixty grand because of you, and his buyers are the kind of people who don't accept 'some charter captain dropped my product in the bay' as an excuse.
He's going to keep coming until you break or disappear. "
"Then I'll—"
"You'll what?" He cut her off, and there was an edge in his voice now, something sharp beneath the patience.
"Fight him alone? You've got a pistol in your cabin—I can see the lockbox from here.
Maybe you know how to use it. But Serrano's got eighteen men, and he knows these waters almost as well as you do.
You're good, Tess. I can see that. But good doesn't beat numbers. "
The way he said her name made her skin prickle.
"I've been handling things alone since I was sixteen," she said, and her voice came out harder than she intended.
"My father was a drunk who couldn't captain his own boat, so I did it for him.
I fought off handsy clients and crooked inspectors and a bay that kills people without apology.
I don't need some biker riding in to save me. "
"Good." He didn't back down. Didn't bristle. Just stood there, solid as a piling, and looked at her like she was the most interesting thing he'd seen in years. "Because I'm not here to save you. I'm here to help you save yourself."
Before she could answer, the rumble of an engine cut through the marina quiet.
Tess looked past Chesapeake to the entrance of the lot. A black pickup truck had pulled in—tinted windows, mud on the wheel wells, the kind of vehicle that screamed muscle to anyone who knew what to look for.
Two men inside. She couldn't see their faces through the tint, but she didn't need to.
Serrano's people.
"Stay here," Chesapeake said.
"Like hell—"
But he was already moving, stepping off her boat and walking down the dock toward the truck with a stride that didn't hurry and didn't hesitate. Like he was taking a Sunday stroll. Like there weren't two men in that truck who'd probably come to finish what they'd started with her fuel lines.
Tess grabbed the wrench and followed.
She stopped at the end of the dock, close enough to see but far enough that she wasn't in the way. Chesapeake had reached the truck, and he stood in front of it with his hands loose at his sides, blocking the path to her slip.
The driver's window rolled down.
She couldn't hear what was said. Couldn't see the driver's face. But she saw Chesapeake lean in slightly, one hand resting on the truck's door frame, and she saw the casual way his other hand moved to rest near his hip.
The window stayed down for maybe thirty seconds.
Then it rolled back up, the truck reversed out of the lot, and Chesapeake turned and walked back toward her like nothing had happened.
"What did you say to them?" Tess demanded when he reached the dock.
"Told them who I was. Told them whose water this is." He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell salt and leather and something underneath that made her want to lean in. "Told them what would happen if they came back."
"And they just left?"
"The Killers have a reputation." His eyes found hers, and that patient heat was back, banked but burning. "Serrano's muscle knows what happens to people who ignore warnings from men like me."
Tess stared at him. At the scars on his hands and the calm in his eyes and the way he stood like the dock already belonged to him—like she already belonged to him, whether she'd agreed to it or not.
It should have made her angry.
It made her something else entirely.
"I'm not selling my boat," she said. "And I'm not hiding."
Chesapeake's mouth curved into that almost-smile again, and something in her chest caught fire.
"Nobody asked you to do either."