Chapter Five
Edge pulled Angela through the back door of Shore Blooms as headlights swept across the parking lot.
Two vans. Coming fast from both ends of the block, cutting off the obvious exits. Tony had made his call, and backup had arrived in under four minutes. These assholes were organized.
"Stay close." Edge pushed Angela toward the shadows along the building's edge, keeping his body between her and the approaching lights. "Don't run unless I tell you to run."
"I can't see—"
"You don't need to see. You need to follow."
He moved them through the narrow gap between Shore Blooms and the dental office next door, broken shells crunching under their feet.
The alley opened onto a side street—residential, quiet, the kind of neighborhood where porch lights clicked off by nine and nobody looked out their windows after dark.
His bike was two blocks north. Too far.
Edge changed direction, pulling Angela west toward the older part of Margate where summer mansions sat empty behind iron gates.
The vans had cut off the main roads, but these streets weren't on any delivery route.
They were private, protected, and right now, they were his best chance of getting this woman out alive.
"Where are we going?" Angela's voice was steady. Scared but controlled. Good.
"Somewhere they can't follow."
He heard an engine behind them. Headlights washed across the street ahead as a van turned onto the block, moving slow, hunting.
Edge pulled Angela into the shadow of a hedge and pressed her against the fence. His hand covered her mouth—not rough, just firm—and he bent his head close to her ear.
"Don't move. Don't breathe."
The van rolled past. Edge could see two silhouettes in the front seats, heads turning, scanning the sidewalks and driveways. They were looking for a woman running scared, maybe a man on a motorcycle. They weren't looking for two shadows pressed against a hedge in someone's front yard.
Angela's heart pounded against his chest. He could feel it even through their jackets, even through the adrenaline coursing through his own blood. Her body was warm and small and fit against his like she'd been designed to be there.
Focus.
The van turned at the next corner. Edge gave it a five-count before he released Angela's mouth and stepped back.
"This way."
He led her through backyards and service entrances, past swimming pools covered for winter and patios that wouldn't see a barbecue until June.
Angela kept up. No complaints, no demands to stop, no hysterics.
Just quiet footsteps behind him and steady breathing that said she was scared but handling it.
Edge had seen soldiers crack under less pressure. This florist was holding together like she'd been built for chaos.
They came out on Amherst Avenue, a block of old-money estates where the owners probably didn't visit more than twice a year. Edge knew every one of these properties—which ones had security systems, which ones had caretakers, which ones sat dark and empty from September to May.
The Whitfield place. Third from the corner. Eight thousand square feet of beachfront excess, owned by some hedge fund manager who'd bought it as an investment and never spent a single night inside.
Edge bypassed the front gate and led Angela along the privacy wall to a service entrance he'd used before. The lock was old, easy. Thirty seconds and they were through.
"Stay here." He positioned her behind a bank of overgrown shrubs, out of sight from the street. "I'm getting my bike."
"You're leaving me?"
"For five minutes." He caught her eyes in the darkness, held them. "Nobody knows this place. You'll be safe."
"And if you don't come back?"
"Then you run. Head toward the beach, find a house with lights on, bang on the door until someone calls the cops." His hand came up to cup her face—an instinct, not a decision. "But I'm coming back."
Angela's breath caught. He felt it against his palm, the small hitch that said she was reacting to him in ways that had nothing to do with fear.
He made himself let go.
Five minutes. Eight blocks. Edge cut through yards he knew by memory, avoiding the streets where Vitale's men would be circling. His bike was where he'd left it, chrome catching the moonlight, engine rumbling to life at the first kick.
The ride back felt longer than five minutes. Every second was a second Angela was alone in the dark, every corner was a chance to run into one of those hunting vans. He pushed the Harley harder than he should have through residential streets, not caring who heard the engine.
She was right where he'd left her.
Relief hit him like a fist to the chest. Which was stupid—he'd known she'd be there, known she was smart enough to stay put—but seeing her emerge from the shadows with her chin up and her shoulders square did something to him he couldn't name.
"Get on." He kept his voice level. "Hold tight and don't let go."
Angela climbed onto the bike behind him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her thighs pressed against his hips, her chest flat against his back. Every inch of contact registered in Edge's awareness like a brand.
Mine.
The thought came from somewhere primal. Somewhere that didn't care about timing or circumstances or the fact that he'd known this woman for less than an hour.
She's mine now.
He kicked the bike into gear and tore out of the Whitfield driveway, heading north toward Ventnor. The vans would be focused on Margate, on her apartment, on the obvious places she might run. They wouldn't expect her to vanish into the shore towns they thought they were taking over.
The chase found them on Atlantic Avenue.
Two vans, coming from opposite directions, converging on the single road that ran along the shore. Edge saw them at the same time they saw him—headlights swinging toward the motorcycle, engines roaring as they accelerated.
Angela's arms tightened around him. She didn't scream. Didn't panic. Just held on.
Edge leaned into a turn that would have dumped a lesser rider, cutting across oncoming traffic into a residential side street. The vans followed, but they were slower, heavier, not built for the tight corners and narrow alleys that made up the old part of Margate.
He pushed the Harley through a gap between parked cars that shouldn't have fit.
Felt Angela press tighter against his back, trusting him, moving with him instead of against him.
Another turn, another narrow escape, and then they were through—shooting out onto Ventnor Avenue with the vans still three blocks behind.
Edge didn't slow down until he hit the safehouse.
It wasn't much. A rental property the Outlaws kept off the books, used for situations exactly like this one. Small beach house on a quiet street, nothing that would draw attention.
He pulled into the single-car garage and killed the engine. The silence was sudden and complete after the roar of the chase.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Angela's arms stayed locked around his waist. Her face pressed into the back of his jacket. Her whole body trembled.
Not during the chase. Not during the violence. Not during any of it.
Now.
Edge swung off the bike and turned to catch her as she slid off after him. Her legs buckled—adrenaline crash, he recognized it—and he caught her before she hit the concrete.
"Easy." His arms went around her, holding her up, holding her close. "I've got you."
"I'm fine." Her voice shook. Her hands fisted in his jacket. "I'm fine. I'm—"
"You're allowed to not be fine." He pulled her tighter against his chest, not caring that it crossed every line he usually kept between himself and civilians. "You just took on three men with pruning shears and outran a drug operation's kill squad. You can shake."
A sound escaped her. Half laugh, half sob. Her face buried into his shoulder, and she let herself crack.
Edge held her.
The safehouse was cold, the garage was dark, and somewhere out there, Vitale's men were tearing apart Margate looking for a florist who'd slipped through their fingers.
But right now, right here, the only thing that mattered was the woman trembling in his arms.
The woman who'd fought when most people would have frozen.
The woman who'd held on through a chase that could have killed them both.
The woman who was his now, whether she knew it yet or not.
Angela finally stopped shaking. She pulled back, just enough to look up at him, her eyes still wet but steadier than they had any right to be.
"Thank you," she whispered. "For coming back."
Edge didn't answer with words.
He just kept holding her, kept watching the garage door like he expected Vitale's men to crash through it at any moment, kept feeling her heartbeat gradually slow against his chest.
The running was over.
But whatever this was—whatever had sparked to life between them in that flower shop and burned hotter with every mile of the chase—was just getting started.