Chapter 6
The knock came at four in the afternoon, which was the middle of Karen's night.
She'd been asleep for maybe three hours—restless, dream-haunted sleep that left her more tired than when she'd closed her eyes. The apartment above the diner was small and hot, the window unit struggling against the late summer heat.
She opened the door with her hair tangled and her eyes gritty.
Diesel stood in the hallway. Different than she'd seen him before—harder, somehow. The easy grin was gone, replaced by something that made her stomach tighten.
"Get dressed," he said. "You're leaving."
"What? I have a shift in three hours—"
"Not tonight you don't." He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, and suddenly her small apartment felt even smaller. "Pack a bag. Clothes for a few days. Anything you can't live without."
Karen crossed her arms. "You want to tell me what's going on?"
"Clint Harker has been watching your windows."
The words hit her like ice water. She knew Clint—the big one, the one who ran the parking lot operations. She'd seen him directing trucks, seen the way the other men deferred to him.
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been watching him watch you." Diesel's jaw was tight. "Three nights now. He parks at the end of the block around two a.m. and sits there until you turn off your bedroom light. Then he leaves."
Karen's skin crawled. Three nights. Three nights of being watched while she slept, and she'd had no idea.
"That doesn't mean—"
"It means Dale's getting nervous. It means they're keeping tabs on you, making sure you're not talking to anyone, not doing anything that might threaten their operation." Diesel stepped closer, and his voice dropped. "It means you're not safe here anymore."
"I can't just leave. The diner—"
"Will still be here when this is over."
"The overnight shift pays my mortgage. If I close it down—"
"A dead woman doesn't make any shifts at all."
Karen flinched. The words were blunt, brutal, and exactly what she needed to hear.
"Where would I go?"
"We have a place. Safehouse in Bridgeport, off the main roads.
You'll have a brother on the door twenty-four seven, and there's a clear route to the highway if things go sideways.
" Diesel's hand came up to cup her face, and his voice softened.
"I'm not asking, Karen. I'm telling you.
I can't protect you if you're sleeping fifty feet from the men who want to hurt you. "
She should have argued more. Should have insisted on her independence, her right to make her own choices, her refusal to be pushed around by another man who thought he knew what was best for her.
But Diesel wasn't Carlos, her ex-husband who'd controlled her for ten miserable years before she finally walked away. Diesel wasn't demanding obedience. He was asking her to trust him.
And God help her, she did.
"Give me ten minutes," she said.
She packed like a woman who'd learned to travel light—two changes of clothes, toiletries, the envelope of emergency cash she kept hidden in her sock drawer.
The photo of her kids from last Christmas went into the bag too, because some things you didn't leave behind no matter how fast you were moving.
Diesel waited by the door, watching the street through the window. When she emerged with her bag, he nodded once and led her down the back stairs.
His bike was parked in the alley. A black pickup truck idled beside it, engine running.
"You're not riding?"
"Too exposed. They know my bike." He opened the passenger door for her. "Get in."
The drive to Bridgeport took twenty minutes through afternoon traffic. Diesel drove like he did everything else—calm, steady, watching the mirrors more than the road ahead. Karen kept her bag in her lap and tried not to think about what she was leaving behind.
The safehouse was a two-flat on a quiet street, brick facade, nothing that stood out from the neighboring buildings. Diesel pulled into the garage around back, and the door closed behind them before they got out of the truck.
Inside, the apartment was sparse but clean. Living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, windows covered with heavy curtains. A man stood by the front door—tall, silent, with a face that showed nothing and eyes that showed less.
"Karen, this is Fang," Diesel said. "He's going to be here while I'm not."
Fang nodded once. Didn't speak. Didn't need to. Everything about him said violence in a way that made Dale's crew look like amateurs.
"Bathroom's down the hall," Diesel continued. "Kitchen's stocked—basics, nothing fancy. You need anything specific, make a list and I'll get it."
Karen set her bag on the couch. The apartment felt foreign, sterile, like a hotel room in a city she'd never visited. But it was also quiet. No trucks rumbling into the parking lot. No Wade Pruitt leering at her across the counter. No Clint Harker watching her windows while she tried to sleep.
"How long?" she asked.
"Until Dale Berkman is handled. Could be days. Could be longer."
"And my diner?"
"Stays open. We need them thinking nothing's changed." Diesel's hand found the small of her back, steadying. "I've got a prospect who can cover the overnight shift. He's done food service before. Won't be as good as you, but he'll keep the place running."
Karen laughed despite herself. "A biker running my grill."
"Stranger things have happened."
She turned to face him. In the dim light of the safehouse, with the curtains drawn and Fang standing silent by the door, Diesel looked different. Younger, somehow. Or maybe just more real than he'd seemed behind the counter of her diner.
"Thank you," she said. "For all of this. You didn't have to—"
"Yeah, I did."
"Why?"
He was quiet for a moment. His hand was still on her back, warm through her shirt.
"Because I spent fifteen years on the road watching out for myself and nobody else.
Because I lost friends to men like Dale Berkman and didn't do a damn thing about it.
Because when I finally found a place where I belonged, I promised myself I'd never let that kind of thing happen again.
" His eyes met hers. "And because you make the best coffee I've ever had, and I'm not letting some hijacking asshole take that away from me. "
Karen smiled. It felt strange on her face—a real smile, not the fake ones she'd been wearing for four months.
"That's a lot of reasons."
"I've got more. But those'll do for now."
Fang cleared his throat from the doorway. "I'll be in the front room. You need anything, holler."
He disappeared, leaving them alone in the kitchen.
Karen looked around at the sparse cabinets, the basic appliances, the refrigerator that hummed quietly in the corner. Her body still thought it was the middle of the night, and her hands itched for something to do.
"You hungry?" she asked.
"I could eat."
"Then sit down and let me cook."
She found eggs in the fridge, bread in the cabinet, bacon in the freezer. Not much, but enough. She started working—cracking eggs, heating the pan, moving through the familiar rhythms that had defined her life for twenty years.
Diesel sat at the small kitchen table and watched her. Not the way Wade watched her, like she was prey. More like she was something worth paying attention to. Something that mattered.
"It's ten at night," he said after a while.
"I know."
"You're making breakfast."
"My body thinks it's morning. Has for years." She flipped the bacon, added the eggs to another pan. "Overnight shift does that to you. Scrambles your whole sense of time."
"Must be hard. Living backwards from everyone else."
"You get used to it." She plated the food and set it in front of him. "Eat."
He did. Every bite, like it was the best meal he'd ever had instead of basic diner food made in a strange kitchen. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair and looked at her with something that might have been wonder.
"You cooked for me."
"I cook for everyone. That's what I do."
"Not like this." He stood, took his plate to the sink, washed it himself. "This was different."
Karen didn't know what to say to that. So she didn't say anything. Just started cleaning up, putting the kitchen back in order, doing the things her hands knew how to do while her mind tried to catch up with everything that had changed.
Diesel moved through the apartment, checking windows, testing locks, examining sight lines from the street. She watched him work—thorough, careful, missing nothing. When he finally came back to the kitchen, the tension in his shoulders had eased slightly.
"Place is secure," he said. "Fang knows his business. Nobody's getting through that door without going through him first."
"And you? Where will you be?"
"Here tonight. Compound tomorrow—Alpha wants me running surveillance on the warehouse, building a picture of their operation." His hand found hers across the table. "But I'll be back. Every day. I promise."
Karen looked at their joined hands. His were rough, calloused, scarred from years of work she couldn't imagine. Hers were rough too—burns from grills, cuts from knives, the hands of a woman who'd spent her whole life working.
They matched, somehow.
"I believe you," she said quietly.
Diesel squeezed her hand once, then let go. "Get some sleep. Real sleep, not that half-awake thing you've been doing for four months. Fang's on the door, I'm on the couch, and nobody's watching your windows tonight."
Karen nodded. She gathered her bag and walked toward the bedroom, pausing at the doorway.
"Ryan?"
He turned at the sound of his real name. Something flickered across his face—surprise, warmth, hunger quickly suppressed.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For seeing me. For not looking away when it would have been easier."
He held her gaze for a long moment. "Get some sleep, Karen. We've got a long road ahead."
She closed the bedroom door and sat on the edge of the unfamiliar bed. Through the wall, she could hear Diesel moving around the living room, settling in for the night.
For the first time in four months, she wasn't alone.
For the first time in four months, someone was standing between her and the darkness.
She lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Sleep came faster than it had in months—deep and dreamless and safe.
Outside her door, a man with calloused hands and steady eyes kept watch through the night.