6. Chapter 6
McKenna
The engines climbing through the rain belong to the Damned Sinners.
Two black SUVs stop outside the cabin seven minutes after Striker’s call. Hound carries the broken drone to the second vehicle while three other Sinners search the trees and check the road behind us.
The ride down the mountain teaches me the difference between being protected and being hidden.
Striker drives the lead SUV, his attention divided between the road and every movement in the mirrors. Torch occupies the passenger seat, relaying updates from Lock at the clubhouse. Grim sits beside me on the rear bench, keeping one hand over mine while he issues orders through his phone.
The second SUV follows close behind.
Nobody asks whether protecting me is worth the trouble.
Grim’s thumb strokes my knuckles between commands, a private reassurance beneath the hard voice of the man his club follows.
“What about the drone?” I ask when he ends a call.
“Purchased through a Rivers company. Hound found tire tracks on the lower service road, but whoever launched it left before we reached them.”
“So the broker wants me back.”
“Rivers sells certainty. Men pay him because he guarantees the asset reaches the buyer.” Grim’s jaw hardens. “If a contract fails, every predator who uses him sees a broker who cannot control his own operation.”
“I see.”
Anxiety crawls into my chest. Grim feels my pulse jump beneath his fingers.
“Look at me, Angel.”
I turn toward him.
“You are surrounded by my men. Every road behind us is covered, and nobody enters the clubhouse without being seen.”
“You cannot promise nothing will happen.”
“No.” His silver eyes hold mine. “I can promise you will never face it alone.”
The honesty steadies me more than impossible reassurance could.
When we reach the clubhouse, Grim walks me directly to the medical room. Razor waits inside with fresh dressings spread across a metal tray.
“Razor checks you,” Grim says. “A prospect stays outside the door. I’ll be in the meeting room with Striker, Torch, Lock, and Hound.”
“I am not going anywhere.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “That sentence does dangerous things to me.”
He kisses my forehead and leaves before I can recover.
Razor checks my wrists, examines the fading bruises, and makes certain the evacuation did not leave me with any injuries I failed to notice.
Nothing in his examination suggests Grim truly expected him to find one. He sent me here because medicine is something I understand, and understanding makes the walls feel less close.
Razor is returning supplies to the cabinets when a soft knock sounds at the door.
The prospect outside checks the visitors before admitting a woman in her fifties and a teenage boy whose forearm is wrapped in a blood-soaked dish towel.
Fear sharpens both their faces.
Razor’s attention settles on the boy, and any remaining edge leaves his voice.
“The shelter called,” he explains. “A tree limb broke one of the windows during the storm. He caught his arm on the glass while they were boarding it up.”
Razor removes the towel.
The cut is deep enough to need stitches.
“Want to assist?” he asks me.
“Yes.”
The answer comes without hesitation.
I irrigate the wound and help prepare the sterile field while Razor administers the anesthetic. He closes the cut with neat, even sutures, and I keep the boy talking until the last one is tied.
The familiar rhythm gives my mind somewhere useful to go. For several minutes, I am a nurse instead of a woman being hunted.
The boy watches me secure the dressing around his arm.
“Are you one of them?”
I glance toward the Sinner standing guard in the hallway. “I shot their president, so my membership application is probably in trouble.”
The boy smiles for the first time.
His mother squeezes my hand before they leave. “Thank you.”
The words follow me after the door closes.
I came to Roseburn Falls believing my life had narrowed to one terrible bargain. For the first time since Alan revealed the auction, I remember that I have skills no contract gave me and a future that exists beyond the man waiting at a Vegas hotel.
Grim finds me reorganizing Razor’s supplies.
He leans against the doorway, filling it. “You look at home.”
“Your labels are a disaster.”
“Razor keeps half the town alive with that system.”
“Imagine what he could accomplish if he knew where anything was.”
Grim’s mouth moves at one corner.
“Razor says the boy stopped shaking once you started talking to him.”
“He was scared.”
Pride warms Grim’s expression as though calming one frightened teenager is an achievement worth celebrating.
He reaches for me, pauses, and waits.
I close the distance myself.
His arms settle around my waist. The clubhouse continues beyond the room, boots crossing the hall and engines moving through the yard, but the circle of his body feels private.
“Did you find anything?”
“Lock traced one of Rivers’s corporate cards to the motel near the bus station. Hound pulled the exterior camera footage. Alan arrived there in Rivers’s car last night.”
My stomach drops. “My brother is here?”
“Unless someone borrowed his face.”
“Are they still at the motel?”
“Hound is confirming before we move.”
“I want to confront Alan.”
“No.”
The answer comes too quickly.
I step out of his arms. “A contract cannot buy my obedience, but sleeping with you gives you the right to demand it?”
Regret crosses his face. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“It is what you said.”
“Rivers may be using your brother as bait.”
“Then explain the risk and let me decide whether to face it.”
Grim scrubs a hand over his jaw. I watch the battle between the president who controls threats and the man who promised he would never control me.
“You’re right,” he says.
The concession does not come easily. That makes it matter.
“I hate that you’re right,” he continues. “I want you behind locked doors until every man hunting you is in the ground.”
“That sounds inconvenient for the men.”
His mouth twitches. “You have no idea.”
“I don’t need permission to face my brother. I need the truth about the danger before I walk into it, and I need to know you’ll stand with me when I do.”
His gaze holds mine. “You’ll have both.”
“Starting with Alan?”
“Starting with learning how to protect yourself before we go near him.”
Grim takes me to the club’s indoor range inside a reinforced outbuilding beyond the garage. He gives me safety glasses and ear protection before placing a pistol on the bench.
This time, the weapon is unloaded.
He shows me the empty chamber, then teaches me how to check it myself. Only after I confirm there is no ammunition inside does he place the pistol in my hands.
“Feet apart,” he says. “Lean forward a little.”
“If you tell me to relax, I will shoot you again.”
“You are holding an empty gun.”
“Details.”
“May I?”
I nod.
He moves behind me, his chest warm against my back. His uninjured arm reaches around me, and his hand covers mine as he adjusts my grip.
“I was careless at the station,” he says near my ear. “I needed you to believe you had power over what happened next, and I put it in your hand before teaching you how to carry it. That was my mistake.”
“I pulled the trigger.”
“We can share the blame.” His mouth brushes the hair near my temple. “I still keep the scar.”
I glance at him. “You think it will scar?”
“I intend to show people where my woman marked me.”
My breath catches. “Your woman?”
His gaze turns molten. “Tell me the words offend you.”
They should. I was listed, purchased, and described as property by men who never cared what I wanted.
From Grim, the words feel different because he has never used them to take a choice away.
“They don’t.”
“Then get used to hearing them.”
He steps away, loads the pistol, and hands it back to me with the muzzle pointed downrange.
My first shot hits the outer edge of the target. The second lands closer to the center. By the sixth, my hands have stopped trembling.
Grim brings the target forward and studies the grouping.
“Better.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m thinking about every man who may regret giving you a reason to practice.”
I lower the weapon, remove my finger from the trigger, and engage the safety before placing it on the bench.
“Including you?”
Grim clears the pistol and sets it aside. Then he pulls me against him.
“When it comes to me, I prefer your hands occupied in other ways.”
The kiss that follows leaves little doubt about what he means.
His phone vibrates before I can slide my hands beneath his shirt. He mutters something against my mouth and checks the screen.
“Hound confirmed Alan is in room twelve,” he says. “Rivers has the room beside him. Striker and Torch are assembling the team.”
My newly steady pulse accelerates again.
“When do we go?”
“After dark.”
“We?”
Grim’s expression makes it clear how much the answer costs him.
“We,” he confirms. “You stay with Lock in the command vehicle until Striker clears the building. Once it is secure, you can speak to Alan with me beside you. You follow every safety instruction the first time it is given.”
“Those sound like conditions.”
“They are safety rules for an active operation. Every person in that vehicle follows them, including me.”
“That sounds almost reasonable.”
“My heart prefers reasonable when you are involved.”
I touch his face. “Your heart survived a bullet.”
“The bullet missed it.” His silver eyes hold mine. “You didn’t.”
The answer steals the rest of my argument.
I rise on my toes and kiss him.
“Then let’s go get my life back.”