Chapter Four
Closing shift was muscle memory.
Patty wiped down the counter in long strokes, the same motion her mother had used for twenty-two years. The pie case held three slices of pecan and half a lemon meringue—she'd store them in the walk-in, bring them out fresh tomorrow. The coffee pots were rinsed, the grill scraped, the floor swept.
Eight PM. Right on schedule.
The plywood over the front window had been replaced with real glass two days ago—Foxfire had sent men with tools and materials, brothers who'd fixed the frame without asking for payment and left without saying much beyond club takes care of its own.
She wasn't sure when she'd become the club's own. Wasn't sure she minded.
The rumble of engines in the parking lot made her look up.
Not motorcycles. Trucks.
Four men came through the door before she could reach for the shotgun behind the register. Big, armed, moving with the coordinated aggression of men who'd done this before. The leader was heavy, aggressive—the same man who'd treated her counter like a truck stop bathroom months ago.
Marco Rios.
"Kitchen's closed," Patty said, her voice steadier than her heartbeat.
Rios smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"We're not here for food."
One of his men kicked the pie case. Glass shattered, pecan and meringue splattering across the floor her mother had swept every night for two decades.
"That was my mother's recipe."
"Your mother should've taught you to keep your mouth shut." Rios moved closer, his bulk filling the space between the counter and the door. "The highway isn't your business. The trucks aren't your business. What you told that deputy isn't your business."
"Everything on this stretch of road is my business. I've been watching it since I could see over this counter."
"Then stop watching." He grabbed a stool and hurled it through the new window. Glass exploded into the parking lot. "Next time, it won't be a stool. It'll be a truck. Sixty miles an hour, straight through what's left of this shithole."
Patty's hand closed around the cast-iron skillet on the stove.
Her grandmother's skillet. Seasoned by three generations of Harmon women. Heavy enough to crack a skull if you swung it right.
"Get out of my mother's kitchen."
Rios laughed. "You're going to fight four armed men with a frying pan?"
"It's not a frying pan. It's cast iron." She raised it, feeling the familiar weight. "And I'm not fighting. I'm warning."
"Warning us of what?"
The roar of motorcycles split the night.
Rios's head snapped toward the door. Headlights flooded through the broken window—three bikes, four, cutting across the parking lot like a cavalry charge. The lead rider was already off his machine before it stopped rolling, moving with a speed that made the armed men look frozen.
Foxfire.
He hit Rios's closest man before anyone could react—a blur of fists and fury that dropped the escort in two seconds flat. The brothers behind him engaged the others, the diner erupting into chaos as bodies collided and furniture splintered.
Rios grabbed for his gun.
Patty swung the skillet.
The cast iron connected with his forearm before he could clear the holster. Rios howled, the weapon clattering across the floor, and Patty was already swinging again—this time at his head, the same motion she used to flip pancakes, just harder.
He ducked. Caught her wrist. Twisted.
Pain shot up her arm, but she didn't let go of the skillet.
"You stupid—"
Foxfire hit him from behind.
The impact sent Rios staggering into the counter, and Foxfire was on him before he could recover—fast, vicious, the kind of violence that didn't leave room for defense. Three hits. Four. Rios crumpled against the pie case remains, blood streaming from his nose.
"We're leaving." Foxfire grabbed Patty's arm. "Now."
"My diner—"
"Will still be here tomorrow. You won't if we stay."
Sirens in the distance. Someone had called the cops.
Foxfire pulled her toward the back door, his hand tight on her wrist, the brothers already mounting their bikes in the lot. Rios's men were down, groaning, but more would be coming. Garza's operation didn't take losses quietly.
"My truck—"
"Leave it."
"I'm not getting on a motorcycle."
"You are tonight." He pushed through the back door into the alley where his bike waited, engine still running from his arrival. "Get on. Hold tight. Don't let go."
She was on the bike before she could argue, the skillet still clutched in one hand, her apron still dusted with flour from the pies Rios's man had destroyed. Foxfire swung on in front of her, and then they were moving—fast, faster than she'd ever traveled, the Delta night blurring past.
The highway opened up ahead of them. Foxfire didn't slow down.
Headlights appeared behind them. Pursuit. Rios's backup, or reinforcements from the warehouse—it didn't matter. What mattered was the speed, the wind tearing at her hair, the solid warmth of Foxfire's back against her chest.
He cut left without warning, the bike leaning so hard she thought they'd go down. They didn't. They shot through a gap in the guardrail onto an access road she'd never noticed, gravel spraying, the pursuing headlights overshooting the turn.
"Hold on!"
She was already holding on. Both arms wrapped around his waist, the skillet pressed between them, her face buried against his leather cut. The road twisted, narrowed, became something that wasn't quite a road at all—just packed dirt between cotton fields that stretched to the black horizon.
Foxfire rode like he fought. No hesitation, no second-guessing, just pure instinct driving every turn. The pursuit fell behind, lost in the maze of back roads and access cuts that only someone who'd ridden every mile of this highway could navigate.
After what felt like hours but was probably minutes, he slowed.
A building materialized from the darkness. Low, squat, the kind of roadside bar that had died when the highway traffic shifted to faster routes. Boarded windows. Peeling sign. The corpse of a business that had probably served cold beer and bad decisions for decades before it went under.
Foxfire killed the engine.
"Where are we?"
"Safehouse." He swung off the bike and helped her down. Her legs were shaking. "Used to be a bar called Red's. Closed two years ago owing me forty bucks for a tab I never paid."
"You're hiding us in a place that owes you money?"
"I figure we're even now."
The door was locked, but Foxfire had it open in seconds—skills she decided not to ask about. Inside, the bar was frozen in time: dusty bottles behind the counter, stools still lined up, the ghost of cigarette smoke in the air.
Patty stood in the middle of the dead room and realized she was still holding the skillet.
"You brought the pan." Foxfire's voice held something that might have been admiration.
"It was my grandmother's." She set it on the bar, her hands trembling now that the adrenaline was fading. "I wasn't leaving it for those bastards."
"You hit Rios with it."
"I hit him twice. Would've been three times if you hadn't shown up."
Foxfire was looking at her like he was seeing something new. Something that changed whatever picture he'd been building.
"You could've run. When they came through the door. You could've gone out the back and let them trash the place."
"It's my mother's diner."
"Most people would've run."
"Most people didn't learn to crack eggs before they could read." Patty met his eyes, her jaw set despite the shaking in her hands. "Most people don't have twenty-two years of their mother's life in a twelve-seat building on a highway nobody cares about. I'm not most people."
"No." His voice was quiet now, the restless energy stilled. "You're not."
She looked around the dead bar—the dusty bottles, the abandoned stools, the silence where music and laughter used to live. A business that had died while hers was still fighting to survive.
"They'll come back. Rios, or someone worse. They'll keep coming until they've burned me out or I've given up."
"They'll stop coming when Garza's in the ground and his corridor is dead."
"And until then?"
"Until then, you're not alone." He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the knife scars on his hands, the sharp lines of his face, the intensity in his eyes that went beyond the restless energy.
"I'm not leaving you unprotected. The club's not leaving you unprotected.
Whatever it takes, however long it takes. "
"Because I'm on your highway?"
"Because you grabbed a skillet and swung at a man with a gun." The corner of his mouth curved. "Because you knew my breakfast order before I asked. Because you open at five AM even when someone's put a brick through your window."
"Those aren't reasons to protect someone."
"They're reasons to protect you."
The words landed somewhere in her chest and stayed there, warm despite the fear still trembling in her hands.
"My mother kept this diner open through two recessions and a stroke." Patty's voice was steady now, the shaking fading. "She worked sixteen-hour days with a bad hip and worse knees. She memorized every regular's order, remembered their kids' names, poured coffee for strangers who became family."
"Sounds like someone worth fighting for."
"She's in a nursing home now. Doesn't recognize me most days." The words hurt, but she said them anyway. "The diner is all I have left of her. The counter, the kitchen, the cast-iron skillet that made a dent in Marco Rios's arm. That's her legacy. That's what I'm protecting."
"And you're not giving it up."
"Not to Garza. Not to Rios. Not to anyone with a truck and a threat." She picked up the skillet again, feeling its familiar weight. "A woman whose mother kept a diner open through everything I just described isn't going to lose it to a man who thinks he owns the highway."
Foxfire was staring at her.
Not with the restless energy that defined him. Not with the quick grin that came before the fight. Something deeper. Something that looked almost like wonder.
"Nobody's ever—" He stopped. Shook his head. "I've known a lot of people who talk tough. Most of them fold when the real trouble shows up."
"I'm not most people."
"No. You're really, really not."
The look on his face said he believed her more than he'd believed anything in years.