Chapter 20
GHOST
The sun had barely cleared the eastern ridge when I walked Tamsin into Stryker’s office.
I had gotten enough sleep to function after the raid and considerably less than I wanted with Tamsin naked in her bed, her thigh hooked over mine, and the scent of sex still caught in the sheets.
Getting dressed instead of rolling her beneath me again had required more discipline than anything waiting on Stryker’s desk.
Recovered job lists, inventory notes, printed messages, and surveillance photographs covered most of the dark wood.
Stryker stood behind the desk with Hawkeye at one side, while Cipher had taken over the smaller table near the wall with a laptop and two portable screens.
Tamsin paused long enough to absorb the amount of paper, then moved into the room with her shoulders squared and the same quiet concentration she carried onto a firing line.
“We separated everything tied to Bellamy,” Stryker told her, tapping the nearest stack. “Tell us what’s important.”
Tamsin nodded and sat in the chair beside mine.
I stayed close enough that my knee rested against hers while she worked, partly because I wanted her within reach and partly because every casual point of contact reminded me how thoroughly she had used that soft body to welcome me home a few hours earlier.
She had ridden me until her curls stuck to her flushed cheeks and my name broke apart in her throat, and my cock reacted to the memory with enough force that I shifted carefully to hide my reaction before one of my brothers noticed and called me out for it.
Most of the first entries confirmed shortages we had already found. Tamsin matched job numbers to recovered case markings, checked dates against the audit list, and explained the occasional abbreviation.
“This one matches the modules we recovered,” she observed, sliding a page toward Cipher. “And these amounts line up with the igniters missing from three separate jobs. They spread the entries out so no single show carried enough loss to trigger a full review.”
Cipher entered the numbers without looking away from his screen. “Same contact sent the storage crew all three schedules.”
“Can you tell who opened them inside the company?” Tamsin asked, leaning toward his monitor.
“Shared account,” Cipher replied with a disgusted curl of his lip. “Bellamy security was built on optimism and bad fucking habits.”
Tamsin sighed as she returned to the list. “That’s becoming painfully clear.”
I let them work while I watched her face. Every few minutes, her brows drew together over a date or quantity, then smoothed once she found the matching record. When one entry stopped her completely, the change was small enough that only I caught it.
Her fingertip stayed planted beside the job number. She read the line once, then again, and reached for the tablet holding the company’s digital reports with a quickness that knocked one photograph sideways. I covered her wrist before she could send anything else to the floor.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This was one of the first displays I supervised by myself.” Tamsin pulled the tablet closer and entered the job number, her lips parting slightly as the report loaded. “I remember it because I checked everything three times and still barely slept the night before.”
The amount on the recovered list matched material found at the storage property.
Bellamy’s final report claimed that same quantity had been fired, damaged, or destroyed during Tamsin’s display, but the field sheet she had saved showed it returning to the warehouse.
She placed the original beside the digital report and traced the numbers with one finger, her expression tightening as the same material appeared in two places it could not have been.
“This job predates the fully electronic closeout system,” she explained, turning the papers so Stryker could see them. “Final adjustments were written into binders after the material came back. Anyone changing a quantity had to write the correction by hand and initial it.”
“Where are the binders?” Stryker asked.
“Locked cabinets inside the administrative office at our test range.” Tamsin’s gaze remained on the recovered list. “The binder for this job should still contain my original total, the handwritten adjustment, and whoever approved it.”
I looked at her. “Who has the keys?”
“Me, my parents, and the operations manager.”
The words settled into the room without anybody wasting breath pretending the answer was harmless. Cipher held out one hand for the job number and began searching an older Bellamy backup he had already copied after all this shit started. Waiting for permission was not something he was very good at.
Tamsin leaned closer to his shoulder while files opened and closed across the screen, and I moved behind her chair, resting one hand along the back.
“Partial digitization project seven years ago,” Cipher muttered as he worked. “Looks like somebody scanned pieces of the older binders and quit halfway through.”
“Probably when they realized how many years were in those cabinets,” Tamsin quipped, but the faint humor vanished when a scanned page filled the monitor.
Her original count sat near the top in handwriting I recognized from the field sheets Tamsin had kept at home.
Lower on the page, another hand had increased the reported usage and placed two initials beside the altered figure.
Tamsin stared at them long enough that the color slowly receded from beneath her freckles.
Cipher opened a second scanned closeout page tied to material recovered the night before. The same slanted handwriting changed another total, and the same initials marked the correction. Tamsin’s breath left quietly as she raised one hand toward the screen without touching it.
“He changed it.”
I came around the chair and closed my hand around the back of her neck.
Her skin was warm beneath my palm, but the muscles there had gone rigid while betrayal hollowed the softness from her face.
The bastard had taught her the business, watched her work twice as hard to earn respect and authority, then used records carrying her name to hide his thefts.
I wanted Len in a room without windows with his hand spread across a table while I caused some damage for every time he’d written Tamsin’s name beside one of his lies.
But the steady pressure of my thumb beneath her hair kept my attention on the woman he had hurt instead of the bones I intended to break.
“I need the originals,” Tamsin muttered, pulling in a careful breath. “The scans only cover part of the binder.”
“Would you normally request them through the system?” Stryker asked.
He didn’t make the obvious assumption that the owner’s daughter could access whatever she wanted whenever she pleased. Because it had been clear from the start that this wasn’t how Tamsin operated. She’d done everything by the book so no one could accuse her of favoritism.
“Yes. The range office receives the retrieval request.”
“Which means he sees it,” Hawkeye concluded.
Tamsin looked at me. Her blue eyes remained hurt, but anger was beginning to harden beneath it. “He’ll know we found the old job number.”
I kept my hand at her neck. “Send it.”
Cipher got into the system and angled the laptop toward her. Tamsin entered the request, and I watched the submission go through without changing expression. We already knew Len was dirty. Letting him see the request gave him a reason to move while Black Crowns were watching.
The call came nineteen minutes later. Tamsin’s phone vibrated against the desk, Len’s name appearing on the screen while every conversation in the room stopped. Stryker pointed toward the speaker icon, and she answered with a steadiness that made pride cut through my rage.
“Hello?”
“Tamsin, I just saw your records request.” Len’s concern was smooth enough to sound practiced. “I came out to the range this morning to check the prep building, so I pulled the binders while I was here. They’re on the worktable in the administrative office.”
“That was fast,” she replied, her gaze locked on mine.
“We’ve already lost too many days.” Paper shifted faintly on his end of the call.
“The scheduled range inspection still needs to be completed before we resume full operations. If you come out this afternoon, we can review the binders and handle the inspection at the same time. I’d rather get this resolved before it costs the company another client. ”
Tamsin glanced toward me, and I nodded. “We’ll let you know when we’re on the way.”
She ended the call before he could press for a time.
Stryker leaned one hand on the desk. “A fucking trap.”
Tamsin looked at me. “He expects me to arrive protected. You’ve been beside me all week, so showing up alone would warn him faster than bringing the club.”
“I know, pretty girl. You did exactly the right thing,” I assured her, keeping my voice even while every instinct demanded I put her somewhere three locked doors away from the range.
“You’re not going to fight me on going there?
” She stood and faced me, making herself hold my gaze despite the hurt still sitting behind her eyes.
“I need to be there. I know the normal layout, so I can tell you what he moved. And the range covers too much ground for you to recognize every wrong thing from the road. If I don’t come, he may clear the property before you find whatever is left. ”
I studied her face while everyone waited. Tamsin understood the invitation for what it was, and there was no reckless need to prove herself in the set of her shoulders. She was offering knowledge the club needed while trusting us to build the protection around her.
“I know. But you stay beside me. Anything feels wrong, the inspection ends. You don’t follow him through a door, you don’t step away to check something, and you don’t argue when I move you.”
Her chin lifted slightly. “I can work with that.”
Stryker nodded. “Show us the range.”
Tamsin pulled up the basic site plan on Cipher’s larger screen and walked us through the property.
The administrative office sat at the front of the main building and opened into the prep and equipment bay, while the front security door required a company credential.
A side maintenance entrance fed into the corridor along the building, and the rear service door opened toward an old maintenance trail used by utility trucks.
“The first bend hides the building from the rest of the trail,” Tamsin explained, tracing the road with one finger. “After that, it connects with the county route about a mile east.”
Stryker looked toward Nomad. “Put two teams beyond that bend before our visible group arrives. Leave the first stretch looking open.”
Nomad studied the contour lines and nodded. “They run that way, they drive straight into us.”
“Hawkeye takes the county side,” Stryker continued, moving his finger to the outer road. “Trigger, Wraith, Breach, and a visible group ride in with us. Everyone else closes the terrain before the manager knows we’re moving.”
Tamsin listened without interrupting. Once the map had given the brothers what they needed, Stryker sent the first teams out ahead and told the rest of us to gear up.
I took Tamsin to my office across the hall, shut the door behind us, and picked up the low-profile ballistic vest I’d retrieved earlier and had left on the desk.
She pulled it over her shirt while I adjusted the fit. My fingers worked beneath the edges at her sides, tightening each strap until the vest sat snug without restricting her breathing.
“Arms up,” I urged.
Tamsin obeyed, lifting them while I ran my hands along her waist and ribs to check the fit.
Her breath changed when my thumbs pressed near the soft underside of her breasts, and pink began spreading across her cheeks as she looked down at me.
I made one final adjustment, then tested whether the vest shifted when I caught her waist and pulled her sharply against me.
“Most men bring flowers when they take a woman out,” she murmured, placing both palms against my chest.
“I brought armed bikers.”
“That’s your idea of romance?”
“Flowers don’t shoot back.”
Her mouth curved despite the nerves shadowing her eyes. I slid her jacket over the vest, checked that the hem and zipper would not catch, then left both hands resting at her waist.
“What do you say if something looks wrong and you don’t want him to know?” I asked.
“I need the updated site map.”
I moved one hand to the back of her neck. “You say that, I’ll know you spotted something. We leave the conversation, and the brothers move.”
“What if he tries to keep us there?”
“He won’t succeed.” The cold promise beneath my answer made her pupils widen, but she stayed close. I gave her the rest without softening any part of it. “You stay beside me at the range. If I say down, you hit the ground, cover your head, and wait until I reach you.”
“I hit the ground and wait for you,” she repeated, her fingers gripping the front of my shirt. “No questions.”
I raised an eyebrow. “No arguing?”
“Not when you’re trying to keep me alive.”
I watched her for another beat, seeing certainty instead of bravado in her expression. She knew my everyday unreasonable shit from an order meant to keep her alive, and she trusted me to know when the difference mattered.
My hand tightened at her neck. “That’s why you’re coming.”
The softness that moved through her face wrapped itself around me, and I lowered my mouth and kissed her slowly.
I took my time with the first taste before my grip tightened and the kiss turned possessive.
Tamsin’s mouth opened beneath mine and she rose onto her toes, fisting both hands in the front of my shirt while I backed her against the closed door.
Her body pressed into mine, the vest between us doing nothing to stop the heat rolling off her or the way my dick throbbed against her stomach.
I slid one hand down to her ass and hauled her closer.
The low sound she made into my mouth suggested she would let me fuck her right here, which made stopping a brutal exercise in priorities.
A fist struck the other side of the door before I found enough discipline to lift my head. Hawkeye’s voice followed, loud and entirely too amused. “At this rate, the assholes at the range are gonna die of old age before we get there.”
I raised my head to glare at the motherfucking cock blocker, even though he couldn’t see it.
“Then the problem solves itself,” I barked before kissing Tamsin again.