3. Chapter 3 #2
Razor glances at him. “I’m examining her.”
“I can see that.”
“Your face suggests otherwise.”
“Finish.”
Something warm unfurls low in my stomach. Being the object of Grim’s attention is dangerous enough. Apparently, so is being the object of his jealousy.
“Nothing feels broken,” Razor says. “Ice for fifteen minutes. If the swelling gets worse or your fingers become numb, I want an X-ray.”
He activates a cold pack and holds it out.
Grim takes it, then looks at me. “May I?”
I nod.
His good hand supports my forearm while he settles the cold pack over the bruises. The same man who threatened to remove a hand for leaving those marks touches me as though too much pressure might add another.
“I can hold it,” I say.
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t I?”
His silver eyes hold mine. “Because I want to take care of you.”
My pulse trips beneath his fingers.
Razor clears his throat. “Fifteen minutes.”
“I heard you,” Grim says.
“Still under review?” he asks me.
“Your judgment?”
“Me.”
The single word lands lower than it should.
“Absolutely.”
“Good.” His silver eyes darken. “Stay close enough to complete the assessment.”
My heart stumbles.
Striker returns before I can find an answer. The humor has disappeared from his face.
“Meeting room. Hound found the sedan.”
Grim curls my fingers around the cold pack before releasing my wrist and rising from the table.
“McKenna sits in.”
“Already expected her to.”
The meeting room contains a long, scarred wooden table surrounded by heavy chairs.
Three men wait inside. One sits in the chair to the left of the head with a file open in front of him.
Another works behind a laptop, his fingers moving across the keys.
The third stands near the far wall, observing everything with the patience of a hunter.
Razor follows us inside while Striker takes a position near the door.
Grim points to each man.
“Torch, my vice president. Lock handles anything digital. Hound runs our private investigations. Razor keeps us alive. Striker is my enforcer.”
“That explains the personality,” I say.
Striker lifts one eyebrow.
The humor no longer fools me. Since we entered the room, he has kept himself closest to the door while leaving my path to it clear.
His attention shifts toward every sound in the hallway before anyone else reacts.
Broad shoulders strain beneath his cut, and the relaxed posture does little to conceal the controlled violence underneath.
He looks like the kind of man who can joke during a crisis because danger has never made him nervous.
“Most people blame the shoulders,” he says.
“I hadn’t ruled them out.”
His grin flashes. “I knew I liked you.”
Grim’s chair creaks beneath his hand.
“Respectfully,” Striker adds, without looking away from the hallway.
Grim takes the chair at the head of the table and points to the seat at his right.
“Here, Angel.”
I sit because arguing would draw more attention. The look Striker exchanges with Torch suggests the arrangement is unusual.
Lock glances at the phone in my hand. “With your permission, I can put that behind the club’s secured network while you’re here. Calls and messages will still come through, but tracking it will become harder.”
“Harder?”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
Grim says nothing. He does not reach for the phone or tell me what to do.
The decision remains mine.
I hand it to Lock.
He connects it to his laptop, changes several settings, and returns it to me.
Hound begins the report. “We found the sedan abandoned six miles outside town. Stolen plates, wiped interior, no usable prints. They left nothing behind except fibers and enough blood to confirm Grim damaged both men.”
Torch taps the file in front of him. “The serial number was filed off. The grip is clean, and the rain took care of anything else. Nothing useful yet.”
“The station camera was redirected before the bus arrived,” Lock adds.
“Someone accessed the municipal system and turned it toward the road for eleven minutes. The broker is Cyrus Rivers. He has no visible connection to the buyer, and the client request came through three shell companies. I’m tracing all of them. ”
“The payment?” Grim asks.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand total,” Lock says. “Half cleared this morning. The balance was due when you reached Vegas.”
The figure empties the air from my lungs.
It is more than my parents’ house is worth.
Someone offered a quarter of a million dollars to make certain I reached the man who bought me.
“Return the cleared payment,” Grim says. “Reject the balance.”
Lock looks up. “All of it goes back?”
“Every cent.”
“The shelter’s winter budget and the clubhouse repairs were tied to that contract,” Striker says quietly.
“Then we find the money somewhere else.”
Silence settles over the table.
“Agreed,” Razor says.
Torch nods next. Hound follows, then Lock and Striker.
Every man in the room agrees to lose money that could protect vulnerable women because keeping it would make them part of what happened to me. No one asks what I can offer them in return.
I stare at Grim. “You’re giving up that much because I changed my mind?”
“We’re returning it because the job was a lie.”