Chapter 7
CIPHER
Leaving Bex in the clubhouse kitchen required more discipline than it should have, even with Jacqueline beside her, Mara and Dot determined to feed her into a coma, and several of my brothers and prospects lounging in the common room where they could see both the kitchen and front entrances.
She was inside the most heavily protected property in Sable Canyon, surrounded by men who already understood that anything threatening her would face the full weight of the Black Crowns, but every instinct I possessed still objected when the swinging door closed between us.
I forced myself to walk away. My office sat behind a biometric lock and steel-lined walls on the quieter side of the clubhouse.
There was also a central operations room that held encrypted radios, surveillance controls, hardened servers, and the equipment we used when club business needed to disappear from networks nobody trusted.
Two smaller offices offered enough privacy for work that didn’t belong on the main screens.
I retrieved a sealed handset, an authentication token, and a compact emergency beacon from the equipment vault, then locked myself in my office before opening the evidence pouch containing Bex’s old phone. If someone took this small window to trace her location, they’d be real fucking disappointed.
I had already created a read-only image of the device before sealing it, allowing me to rebuild the personal parts of her life without dragging any hidden access into the replacement.
The shit she needed moved through separate scans before reaching the clean phone, while every active session tied to her accounts was terminated.
Each vulnerable password was replaced with something no one would guess or force from recycled data.
I removed location sharing she didn’t know was active, killed advertising identifiers that followed her between applications, and routed the new handset through a protected number that wouldn’t appear in any record.
Her old number remained active, but Bex would never use it again.
I transferred it into an isolated virtual receiver that couldn’t reach the club network, Black Castle systems, or anything connected to her replacement phone.
Shutting the line down would tell the people hunting her that we’d recognized the threat, but leaving it open gave them a place to expose themselves without ever reaching my woman.
Anyone calling or messaging the number would believe it still belonged to her, while every attempt would be captured.
A knock sounded before Bishop entered, carrying a prospect application.
He set the file beside my keyboard and pointed to military-service dates that overlapped with a county jail record the applicant had omitted.
It took less than a minute to confirm that the man had used his dead brother’s discharge papers to manufacture a Special Forces history he’d never earned, and the hardening in Bishop’s face told me the prospect would not make it beyond the outer gate again.
“Anything else?” I asked, closing the falsified record and sliding the file back to him.
“Not unless you want to explain to the motherfucker why lying about a dead Green Beret was a bad fucking idea.”
“No.”
Bishop tucked the file under one arm. “Thought so.”
Nomad arrived before the door shut behind him, needing six encrypted radios and tracking modules for the teams watching Stowe’s vehicles and the county employees with privileged access.
I loaded the current keys, assigned the units to the operation, and passed them over with instructions to rotate frequencies before every shift.
Club work continued around me without waiting for Bex’s crisis to become convenient, which was how it always was.
Men still needed vetting, routes still needed securing, and every brother relying on our communications expected me to make certain nobody else was listening.
Ghost came to collect the equipment from Nomad while I was fitting Bex’s new phone into a protective case.
His dark eyes moved from the sealed device to my face, and the slow shift at one corner of his mouth warned me he’d found something entertaining in the middle of a situation that wasn’t. “That hands-off plan didn’t live long.”
“It was based on flawed assumptions.” I inserted the encrypted authentication key and waited for the device to recognize it.
Ghost took the radio case from the desk. “That’s a lot of syllables for saying you were full of shit.”
“Fuck off.”
His grin widened as he headed for the door. “Already planned on it.”
I finished by tying Bex’s emergency alert to my phone, Stryker’s office, the compound response system, and Black Castle’s staffed operations center.
Her image from the gate camera was added to the access profile along with Raines’s SUV, her own vehicle, the new number, and a code that could open the compound’s emergency entrance if the ordinary gate failed.
The profile marked her as protected family rather than a guest, which meant no brother on watch would delay her while trying to reach me for authorization.
Bex did not have a patch, access to club systems, or permission to wander through secure rooms simply because she belonged to me, but she had the full protection of every man wearing Black Crowns colors.
No one outside the club needed to understand the distinction, and anyone who tested it would learn too late that protected family carried more consequences than a temporary client ever could.
I locked down the office, returned the temporary handset to storage, and headed for the kitchen with Bex’s new phone in my pocket.
Her laugh reached me through the swinging door before I pushed it open, warm enough to pull my attention straight across the room.
She sat beside Jacqueline with the remains of breakfast in front of her, while Mara tried to add another piece of bacon to her plate.
My cock thickened as Bex tipped her head back and laughed at something Dot said, the movement exposing the soft line of her throat above the loose collar of her shirt.
After spending so long pretending distance qualified as control, I wanted her beneath my hands often enough that the separation of the past half hour had begun irritating me.
Halo entered through the other kitchen door carrying a mug, freshly returned from an overnight transport run and apparently unaware of who sat at the table until he looked up.
His gaze touched Bex’s face with nothing more than recognition, but he changed direction to introduce himself, and my body moved before he came within arm’s reach.
I stepped behind her chair, wrapped one hand around her waist, and drew her lightly against my front while placing myself between her and the approaching brother.
“Bex, Halo.” I let my thumb settle against the soft curve above her hip. “Halo, Rebecca Raines.”
He stopped a respectful distance away, looked at my hand spanning her waist, then met my eyes. “Thought you were keeping your distance.”
“That policy changed.”
He dipped his chin toward Bex and welcomed her to the compound before taking his coffee toward the far counter, leaving Jacqueline with amusement tucked into her expression and both older women pretending to be deeply interested in the eggs.
Bex turned her head enough to look up at me, and the faint pink spreading across her cheeks made the pressure behind my zipper considerably worse. She made no attempt to remove my hand, though, settling more fully into my hold. “Was that necessary?”
“Yeah.”
Bex’s lips twitched because she understood that logic had very little to do with why I’d moved so fast, but she let me keep the lie intact in front of everyone else. “Thank you for protecting me from a friendly introduction.”
“You’re welcome.”
Jacqueline covered a laugh with her glass, while Mara muttered something about men becoming impossible the second they decided a woman belonged to them. I ignored both, pulled the phone from my pocket, and held it out to her.
She accepted the new device and studied the arrangement on the screen. “You moved everything.”
“New number. Your father, Jacqueline, work, school, and the contacts you use regularly already have it. Anybody else reaches you after I clear them.”
“After you clear them?” she echoed.
“Yeah.”
“That’s not overbearing at all.”
“Wasn’t intended to be subtle, baby.” I tapped the edge of the phone. “Old number is still active inside an isolated monitor. Anyone who tries to threaten you through it reaches me instead.”
The teasing faded from her expression as she absorbed the reason behind the control. She looked up at me with the open trust that did dangerous things to my heart.
I stepped away before the old ladies got a clearer view of exactly how hard she made me. Jacqueline stood and hugged Bex again while Mara wrapped enough food for several meals. Dot added a container of cookies despite Bex’s assurance that I probably had food at the house.
We left the clubhouse a few minutes later, my hand returning to the base of her spine before the front door finished closing.
The drive from the compound to my house followed a narrow private road deeper into the Black Crowns acreage, winding through oak groves and rocky slopes where cameras disappeared into trees and sensors sat beneath ground that looked untouched.
Bex watched the landscape through the passenger window while I kept one hand on the wheel and the other near her thigh, resisting the urge to close it over the soft denim every time the road curved.
She remained quiet until we passed the final controlled gate, then turned toward me when her new phone chimed to confirm that her access code had been accepted. “You already put me in your fancy system.”
“Wouldn’t have brought you out here without doing it.”
Her smile turned soft as she looked at the phone again. “Protected family?”
“That’s what you are.”
She rested her hand over mine. The simple contact sent a hot pulse through my cock and tightened something deeper beneath my ribs as I turned my palm and threaded our fingers together. Bex watched our joined hands for a moment before facing the road again with pleasure warming her cheeks.
My house appeared beyond the next rise, built low against the hillside in dark stone, cedar, and glass designed to turn reflective when the exterior security system engaged.
The property sat outside the main compound, but inside land the Black Crowns controlled, far enough away to give me privacy and close enough that armed brothers could reach the front door in minutes.
No public road crossed the ridge, no neighboring house overlooked the grounds, and anyone approaching through the canyon passed enough hidden cameras to build a complete record before reaching the gate.
Bex leaned toward the windshield as I parked beneath the covered drive. “This is where you live?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful.” Surprise softened her voice as she took in the broad porch, the oak shading one end of the house, and the glass reflecting the morning sun. “I expected something more…”
“Thought I’d live in a bunker, didn’t you?”
Her blush deepened. “It’s not like I was expecting a doomsday prepper. But maybe a little more like military barracks.”
“Nope.” I pushed open my door, suppressing a grin. “The doomsday shit is only in the basement.”
Her laugh followed me out of the SUV. I opened her door, kept one hand around her waist until both feet touched the ground, then went to the rear hatch while she turned slowly to study the property.
The two suitcases and sealed box I’d packed from her old house sat behind the bags she had chosen, and Bex’s gaze rested on them before shifting to me with curiosity she’d apparently been saving since she first spotted them.
“You packed more of my stuff?”
“You forgot some things,” I grunted as I lifted both suitcases and hooked one duffel over my shoulder, leaving only the tote for her.
“I packed a lot of my clothes and all of my toiletries.”
“Exactly.”
Her mouth opened, then closed as she considered the argument and realized it wasn’t going to improve with effort. She silently followed me through the front door, pausing long enough for the security system to recognize her face and new phone before the locks engaged behind us.
I crossed the foyer and climbed up the stairs, carrying the bags down the upper hall and into my bedroom. The room was functional with a large bed, dark furniture, secure windows, attached bath, and nothing personal beyond the dog tags I removed before sleeping.
I set the bags beside the closet and turned to find her looking back toward the hall. “This isn’t the guest room.”
“I know.”
“Then why are my bags in here?”
“Because you’re staying with me.” I stepped close enough to watch her breath hitch, then wrapped one hand around her nape and let my thumb settle below her ear. “You sleep in my bed, Bex.”
“Oh.”
I tightened my hand around her nape and watched desire darken her eyes, already calculating how long before my control slipped. “The guest room is for people who leave, and you’re not going anywhere.”