Chapter Five
The nursery was a death trap.
Quarry stood at the edge of the property while Meredith finished loading the last of her cuttings, running tactical assessment on autopilot. Open ground on all sides. No natural barriers. Her house sat at the property edge with windows facing four directions—every one of them a point of entry.
If Taber came back with more men, there was nowhere to defend. Nowhere to fall back. Just two acres of exposed dirt and a woman too stubborn to run.
Not anymore.
"That's everything." Meredith climbed out of her truck and wiped her hands on her jeans. Dirt under her nails, exhaustion in her eyes, and still standing like she could fight the whole world if it came for her. "The house can sit. Everything I can't replace is in that truck bed."
Six years of breeding stock wrapped in wet newspaper. Her life's work in a Ford F-150.
Quarry walked to his bike and threw a leg over. "Stay close. The roads I'm taking don't show up on GPS."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere Hardt can't find."
She didn't argue. Just climbed into her truck and started the engine, headlights cutting across the property she was leaving behind. In his mirror, Quarry watched her face—jaw set, eyes straight ahead, hands steady on the wheel.
Backbone like steel.
He kicked his bike to life and pulled out, leading her down the access road and away from everything she'd built.
The back roads wound through hollers that didn't have names on any map.
Quarry had learned these routes his first year with the club—escape paths, supply runs, the hidden arteries that connected Ridgerunner territory like veins through muscle.
He led Meredith through switchbacks that would lose any tail, past abandoned farms and forgotten churches, deeper into country that belonged to hill folk and outlaws.
Her headlights stayed steady in his mirrors.
Never fell back, never hesitated, even when the roads turned to gravel and the gravel turned to dirt.
She drove like someone who'd grown up on these curves, which she probably had.
Ruth Sloan's granddaughter would know the Ozarks the way Quarry knew pressure and stone.
Thirty minutes in, he pulled off at a wide spot where the road overlooked a valley full of fog. She stopped beside him and rolled down her window.
"Checking if I'm still awake?"
"Checking if you're still with me."
Her mouth curved—the first real smile he'd seen since they met. "I told you. I've been driving these roads since I was sixteen."
"That's not what I meant."
She held his gaze through the window, and something passed between them. Understanding, maybe. Or the recognition that this thing building between them wasn't going away just because they had bigger problems.
"I'm with you," she said quietly. "Lead the way."
Quarry nodded and pulled back onto the road. His chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with the ride.
The cabin sat on a wooded ridge with sight lines in three directions and a single access road that could be blocked with one vehicle.
Quarry killed his engine in the gravel clearing and listened. Wind through pines. An owl somewhere in the dark. Nothing mechanical, nothing human except the rumble of Meredith's truck as she pulled in beside him.
"This is it?"
He dismounted and walked to her driver's door. "Club property. Off the books. Hardt's people could search for a month and never find it."
She climbed out and looked around, taking in the cabin's weathered porch, the dense tree line, the darkness that pressed in on all sides. "It's isolated."
"That's the point."
"What if they find us anyway?"
Quarry stepped closer. Close enough to see the pulse in her throat, the way her breath came quick and shallow. "Then they find out what happens when you corner a Ridgerunner on his own ground."
She should have stepped back. Should have put distance between them, maintained the professional boundary that was already crumbling.
Instead, she tilted her chin up and met his eyes. "Our own ground. You brought me here. That makes it mine too."
Something hot and possessive uncurled in his chest. "Yeah. It does."
He made himself turn away before he did something stupid. "Stay here. I need to check the perimeter."
"Quarry."
He stopped.
"Thank you." Her voice was soft in the dark. "For the cabin. For not making me leave the cuttings behind. For..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Just thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. We're just getting started."
He walked the tree line while she started unloading, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he checked sight lines and approach routes.
The cabin had been used before—brothers on the run, witnesses who needed hiding, anyone who required a place that didn't exist on paper.
It was stocked with basics: water, canned goods, first aid.
Enough to survive a siege if it came to that.
He hoped it wouldn't come to that.
By the time he finished the perimeter check, Meredith had the cabin door open and light spilling across the porch. He found her in the small kitchen, arranging cuttings in glasses of water, mason jars, anything that would hold liquid.
She'd transformed the counter into a makeshift propagation station.
"The light's not great in here," she said without turning around. "But there's a window facing east. Morning sun should keep them alive until I can get them into proper soil."
Quarry leaned against the doorframe and watched her work. Her hands moved with practiced certainty, stripping lower leaves, checking stem health, positioning each cutting with care. She handled plants the way he handled demolition equipment—confident, precise, intimate with the tools of her trade.
"You really built all this from scratch?"
"Every bit of it." She placed the last cutting and stepped back, surveying her work.
"Started with seeds I saved from my grandmother's garden.
Grew them out, selected the strongest, propagated those.
Six years of choosing the best genetics, the healthiest specimens.
" Her voice went tight. "Twenty of them are dead now.
Burned in my fire pit because some developer wanted a parking lot. "
Quarry pushed off the doorframe and crossed to her. She didn't move when he stopped at her shoulder, close enough to feel her warmth.
"You're going to rebuild."
"I know." She touched one of the cuttings, a gentle brush of fingertips against new growth. "These will root in a few weeks if I keep them healthy. Six months to transplanting size. A year before they're ready for sale." She laughed, the sound bitter. "If I still have a nursery to sell them from."
"You will."
She turned to face him, and the movement brought them closer than he'd intended. Her eyes were dark in the dim kitchen light, searching his face for something he wasn't sure he could give.
"You sound certain."
"I am."
"Why? You don't know me. You don't owe me anything. Your mother bought tomato plants from me one time."
Quarry looked at her—really looked. At the dirt still smudged on her cheek, the exhaustion pulling at her features, the fierce determination underneath it all. At the way she'd stood in front of a skid steer with nothing but her body and refused to move.
"You stood your ground tonight," he said. "Against six men and a piece of equipment that could have killed you. You didn't run. Didn't hide. You planted yourself between them and your greenhouse and dared them to go through you."
"I didn't have much choice."
"Everyone's got a choice. You chose to fight." He reached out and brushed dirt from her cheek, his thumb lingering against her skin. "Woman like that? She doesn't lose her land to some developer with hired muscle. She doesn't lose anything she's not ready to give up."
Meredith's breath caught. He felt it—felt the slight hitch, the way her body swayed toward him before she caught herself.
"And what if I'm ready to give something up?"
The question hung between them, heavy with implication. Quarry's hand was still on her face, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. She wasn't pulling away.
"Then you let me know." His voice came out rough, barely controlled. "Because I'm not taking anything you're not offering."
"Noble."
"Practical. You've got enough people trying to take things from you. I'm not going to be one of them."
Something shifted in her expression. Softened. She turned her face into his palm, just slightly, just enough for her lips to brush his skin.
"You're not like what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Someone rougher. Cruder. Less..." She searched for the word. "Careful."
His mouth curved. "I can be rough when it counts. But you're not a problem I need to break down, Meredith. You're something else entirely."
She pulled back, not far, just enough to meet his eyes. "What am I, then?"
The answer sat on his tongue, heavy with truth: Mine. He wanted to say it. Wanted to close the distance between them and show her exactly what she was becoming to him.
But not tonight. Not when she was running on adrenaline and fear, displaced from her home, dependent on him for safety. When he claimed her—and he was going to claim her, that much was already certain—it would be because she wanted it, not because she needed it.
"Get some sleep." He dropped his hand and stepped back. "I'll take first watch."
Disappointment flickered across her face, quickly hidden. "The perimeter's secure. You said so yourself."
"Doesn't mean I'm not watching."
She studied him for a long moment, reading something in his face that he wasn't sure he wanted her to see. Then she nodded.
"There's a couch in the main room. I saw blankets in the closet."
"I'm not sleeping inside."
"Then where—"
"Porch. Clear sight lines to the road." He was already moving toward the door, putting distance between them before his self-control cracked. "Lock the door behind me. Don't open it for anyone except me."
"Quarry."
He stopped at the threshold.
"Your real name." Her voice was quiet, almost tentative. "What is it?"
The question caught him off guard. His road name was who he was now—had been for years. The man he'd been before, the one who'd given his body to a quarry that threw him away, felt like a stranger.
But she was standing there with plant cuttings in water and dirt on her hands, asking to know him. The real him.
"Davis," he said. "Davis Holt."
She tested the name silently, her lips shaping the syllables. Then she smiled—small and private, just for him.
"Goodnight, Quarry."
Not Davis. She'd asked for his real name and then chosen his road name anyway, like she understood that both were true and one was more important.
"Goodnight, Meredith."
He pulled the door closed behind him and heard the lock click into place. The porch had a wooden chair, weathered but solid, positioned where he could see the access road and most of the clearing. He settled into it and let the night sounds wash over him.
Through the window, he could see Meredith moving in the kitchen. Adjusting her cuttings, shifting glasses to catch the best angle from the east-facing window. Making sure the living pieces of her life's work would survive until morning.
Six years of building something from nothing.
Quarry understood that kind of work. Understood what it cost to pour yourself into something that might not survive. The difference was, the quarry had broken him and given nothing back. Meredith's nursery had given her everything—purpose, independence, connection to a grandmother she'd loved.
Hardt wanted to bury it under concrete.
Quarry watched the woman in the kitchen tend her plants with gentle hands, and something settled in his chest like stone. Like certainty.
Not happening. Not while he was breathing.
The cuttings glowed pale green in the kitchen light, fragile and alive, proof that some things were worth protecting even when they couldn't protect themselves.
He stayed on the porch until her bedroom light went off, then settled deeper into the chair and watched the road.