Chapter Four
The smell hit her as she was locking the cash drawer.
Sweet. Chemical. Wrong.
Megan froze, keys in hand, her brain taking a full three seconds to catch up with what her nose was telling her. Then the word landed like a brick to the chest:
Gas.
She'd been checking the lines every morning since Levee mentioned it. Every single morning, obsessively, paranoidly, crawling behind the equipment to inspect connections she barely understood. And every morning, nothing.
But this wasn't morning.
This was nine PM on a Saturday, the shop dark except for the security lights, and the air was filling with the sickly-sweet tang of natural gas leaking from somewhere she couldn't see.
Danny Moorehead's place went up three weeks after he told Brandt to shove his buyout offer.
She dropped the keys and lunged for the back door.
The handle didn't move. Locked from the outside—which made no sense, she never locked it from the outside, she always left from the front—
Someone had locked her in.
The gas smell was getting stronger. Her eyes were starting to water. She yanked at the door again, panic clawing up her throat, and then—
The door exploded inward.
Levee came through like a force of nature, six-three and furious, his shoulder still driving forward from the impact that had splintered the frame. He grabbed her arm without a word and hauled her toward the door he'd just destroyed.
"Gas—" she started.
"I know." His voice was steady, eerily calm. "Smelled it from the alley. Move."
She moved.
The night air hit her lungs like a gift, cool and clean after the poison she'd been breathing. Levee didn't stop—he pushed her toward the mouth of the alley, then turned back toward the shop.
"What are you—"
"Shutting it off. Stay here."
He was gone before she could argue, disappearing back into the building she'd just escaped.
Megan stood in the alley with her heart trying to punch through her ribs, counting seconds, watching the back door and waiting for an explosion that would take the only good thing she'd ever built and the only man who'd tried to help her save it.
Twenty seconds. Thirty.
Levee emerged with the same unhurried steadiness he brought to everything, wiping his hands on his jeans.
"Main valve's shut. Building needs to vent before anyone goes back in." He looked at her, really looked, and something flickered in those steady eyes. "You're okay?"
"I'm—" Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard. "I'm okay. How did you—"
"I've been checking the block every night since Thursday.
" He said it like it was obvious. Like spending his evenings walking a gas-rigged street was just standard operating procedure.
"The smell was coming from your ventilation.
Whoever rigged it wanted it to build slow—hit a critical concentration right around the time you'd normally be closing up, locking the door, flipping switches. "
Flipping switches.
The spark that would have ignited everything.
"Jesus Christ," she breathed.
"Sutter's crew." Levee's jaw was tight. "Same technique they used on the other buildings. Gas leak, slow build, accidental ignition. By the time the fire department gets here, it's just another old building with faulty infrastructure."
She should be terrified. Should be shaking, crying, having some kind of normal human reaction to almost being burned alive.
Instead, the fury hit her like a wave.
"Those motherfuckers." The words came out low and vicious. "Those cowardly, shit-eating, contractor-hiring motherfuckers. They tried to—I was in there, I was working, and they—"
"I know." Levee's hand closed around her arm—not restraining, just anchoring. "But we need to move. Sutter's crew is somewhere on this block waiting for a fire that's not going to happen. When they realize you're not burning, they're going to come looking."
As if on cue, headlights swept across the alley mouth.
"Move," Levee said, and they ran.
Clarksdale at night was a maze of backstreets and dead ends, but Levee navigated it like he'd memorized every turn.
They cut through alleys Megan hadn't known existed, ducked behind dumpsters and through gaps in chain-link fences, always moving, always one step ahead of the headlights that kept sweeping through the dark behind them.
Her lungs burned and her legs ached but she kept pace, because stopping meant the men who'd tried to burn her alive would get a second chance.
"Here." Levee pulled her through a gap in a corrugated metal fence and into a lot choked with weeds and rusted equipment. Beyond the debris, a squat building hunched against the Delta sky—a shuttered welding shop, from the look of it, windows dark and doors padlocked.
He produced a key from somewhere and had the padlock off in seconds.
"Inside."
The shop smelled like old iron and machine oil, the kind of honest industrial smell that reminded her of the Memphis shops where she'd apprenticed. Levee shut the door behind them and threw two deadbolts that looked significantly newer than the rest of the building.
"You've been here before," she said.
"I source materials here for the club armory. Owner's a friend." He was already moving through the space, checking windows, testing doors. "Building's solid. Good sight lines from the second floor. We stay here until I can get brothers to secure your shop."
"Stay here?" Megan looked around at the shadowed equipment, the concrete floor, the distinct lack of anything resembling a bed or a bathroom. "For how long?"
"Long as it takes."
"The hell it will." The anger that had been building since she smelled that gas finally found its target. "I'm not hiding in some abandoned welding shop while Karl Brandt's goons take over my block. I've got clients tomorrow. I've got a business to run. I've got—"
"You've got people trying to kill you." Levee turned to face her, and there was something in his expression she hadn't seen before—frustration, maybe, or the particular exasperation of a man who wasn't used to arguing.
"Your shop is a crime scene. Your back door is in splinters.
And there's a crew of former military contractors driving around Clarksdale right now wondering why the tattoo artist isn't on fire. "
"So I'll sleep in the shop. I've done it before."
"No."
"It's my business. My building. My decision."
"Not anymore."
The words landed between them like a thrown punch. Megan stared at him, fury and disbelief warring in her chest.
"Excuse me?"
Levee took a step toward her, then another, until he was close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"You almost died tonight," he said. His voice was low, rough in a way she hadn't heard before. "If I'd been five minutes later—if I hadn't smelled the gas from the alley—you'd be burning right now. And I am not going to let that happen because you're too stubborn to accept help."
"Too stubborn—" She jabbed a finger into his chest, which was like jabbing a brick wall.
"I have been taking care of myself since I was seventeen years old.
I left home with nothing. I apprenticed in shops where men told me every day that I didn't belong.
I built a business from scratch in a town that wasn't sure a woman tattoo artist was worth the chair. And you think you can just—"
"I think you're alone." His hand came up to catch hers, wrapping around her finger and her fist and holding them against his chest. "I think you've been alone for a long time. And I think tonight proved that alone isn't going to work anymore."
She should pull away. Should tell him to go to hell, that Megan Trask didn't need some quiet giant with sad eyes and calloused hands to validate her existence.
But his heart was beating under her fist. Steady. Strong. The heartbeat of a man who'd kicked down her door and walked into a gas-filled building without hesitation.
"I don't know how to do this," she said, and hated how small her voice sounded.
"Do what?"
"Let someone help." She looked away, jaw tight. "Everyone I've ever counted on has let me down. My mom. My stepdad. Every man I've ever trusted has taken more than he gave. So forgive me if I'm not great at accepting rescue."
Levee was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentler than she'd ever heard it.
"This isn't rescue. This is... tactical support."
She laughed despite herself—a wet, strangled sound. "Tactical support?"
"You're not a damsel. You're a structural asset under threat." His thumb traced across her knuckles, the movement so gentle it made her chest ache. "I'm not saving you. I'm reinforcing the position while you figure out how to save yourself."
"That's..." She shook her head. "That's either the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me, or the weirdest."
"Probably both."
She looked up at him—really looked. The heavy shoulders, the scarred hands, the steady eyes that saw everything and gave away nothing. He was still holding her hand against his chest, his heartbeat a slow, constant rhythm under her palm.
"Fine," she said finally. "I'll stay. But I'm not sitting around waiting for someone else to fix my problems. Tomorrow, we figure out how to take these assholes apart. Together."
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or satisfaction. "Together."
"And you're going to tell me everything you know about Brandt's operation. Every detail. Because if we're doing this, I'm not being the helpless civilian who gets patted on the head and told to stay out of the way."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"Good." She pulled her hand back, though the loss of contact felt sharper than it should have. "Now where the hell am I supposed to sleep in this place?"
Levee actually smiled—a small, barely-there curve of his lips that transformed his face into something almost soft.
"There's a cot in the back. I'll take first watch."
"Of course you will." She turned toward the back of the shop, then stopped. "Levee?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for kicking down my door."
He held her gaze, and for a moment, the space between them felt electric—charged with everything neither of them was ready to say.
"Anytime," he said quietly. "Now get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be loud."
She went, and behind her, she heard him settling into position by the door—the quiet guardian she'd never asked for and was starting to realize she might need.
The cot was thin and the blanket was scratchy, but when she finally closed her eyes, it was his heartbeat she felt against her palm.
Steady. Solid.
Like something built to last.