2. REAPER
REAPER
The Black Thorns bike passed me half a mile from the diner, moving too fast for the wet road and carrying a rider I recognized from three ugly nights at the county line.
I turned around before my brain made the decision.
He had been parked across the highway when I left, sitting in the dark with his headlight off and pretending he wasn't watching the diner.
That was why I had told Callie to lock the back door.
I should have stayed until she finished closing, but she'd looked at me with stubbornness in those green eyes and heat beneath it, and I'd already wanted her more than I had any right to.
Leaving had seemed like the smarter option.
Then a Black Thorns soldier came tearing out from behind the diner, and smart stopped mattering.
I made it back in under two minutes. The parking lot was empty, the front door was locked, and most of the lights inside had been turned off, but I could see Callie standing near the kitchen with a phone pressed to her ear.
Even through the glass, I knew something was wrong.
Her face had lost its color. One hand was wrapped around the phone while the other gripped the edge of the counter hard enough to whiten her knuckles, and she kept looking toward the hallway leading to the back door.
I knocked three times.
She jumped.
When she saw me, relief flashed across her face before suspicion buried it. That one second was enough. Something had happened after I left, and whether she wanted my help or not no longer mattered.
“Open the damn door, sweetheart.”
I stepped closer to the glass. “Saw that Black Thorns bike tearin’ outta here. Open up.”
Her gaze shifted toward the back hallway again as she turned the lock.
I was through the door before she had opened it fully, closing it behind me and throwing the bolt.
She backed up, still holding the phone, and I took in every inch of her before asking a question.
No blood. No torn clothes. No visible bruises.
Her chest was rising too fast beneath the pale blue uniform, but she was standing, alert, and angry enough to be useful.
“He put his hands on you?”
“No.”
“Come inside?”
“No.”
“Then tell me what the hell happened.”
The dispatcher said something through the phone.
Callie pressed it closer to her ear. “Yes, he’s here now. The Iron Flames biker I mentioned. No, he isn’t the man who threatened me.”
The dispatcher clearly asked another question because Callie looked at me with an expression that said she was considering lying.
She closed her eyes briefly. “His name is Reaper.”
“That ain’t my name.”
“It’s the only one you gave me.”
“Chris Sparks.”
I hadn't told a stranger that name in years. The club knew it because it was on paperwork and licenses, but nobody used it. My mother had called me Chris. A few women had tried before learning they preferred the version of me who did not answer.
Callie repeated it to the dispatcher, and hearing my name in her voice did something uncomfortable beneath my ribs.
“The deputies are four minutes away,” she said when the call ended.
“That means seven.”
“You really do time them.”
“Yeah, and they’re always late. Show me where he went.”
She caught my arm before I could reach the hallway. Her fingers closed around bare skin beneath my sleeve, and the contact stopped me more effectively than a loaded gun.
“You are not going out there.”
I looked down at her hand.
She released me immediately, but not before I felt the tremor in her fingers.
“Stay inside, sweetheart.”
“That man saw my daughter’s photograph.”
Everything in me went still.
“Tell me every goddamn word he said.”
“He asked if I had seen anything, then my phone lit up and he saw Maddie. He called her pretty and told me to go get my little girl and forget I came outside.”
My anger didn't come hot. It never did. Hot anger made men careless. It made them shout, swing too soon, and leave witnesses behind. Mine settled coldly into my bones until every thought sharpened around one fact.
The Thorn had threatened a child.
He had signed his own death warrant. He just didn't know it yet.
“Tell me what he looked like.”
“About thirty. Thin face, pale eyes, dark blond hair, maybe six feet tall. There was a scar beneath his chin, and one of the patches on the front of his cut said Viper.”
I knew him.
Viper Colson had been sniffing around Iron Flames territory for months, testing routes, talking to men he thought could be bought, and disappearing every time we got close enough to ask why. He wasn't important enough to make decisions for the Black Thorns, which meant someone higher had sent him.
“You know him?” Callie said.
“Yeah.”
Her breath caught. “Who is he?”
“A dead man who ain’t realized it yet.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s all the answer you need right now.”
She stepped into my path when I moved again, forcing me to stop or walk through her. She was small compared to me, but she held her ground as though size had never won an argument in her life.
“I have spent years dealing with a man who decided what I needed to know, what I was allowed to do, and when I should keep my mouth shut,” she said. “I’m not doing it again.”
The words told me more than she meant them to.
“Your girl’s daddy?”
“That is none of your business.”
“He still around?”
“No.”
“He know where you live?”
Her eyes hardened. “Everyone knows where I live. This is a small town.”
That meant yes. It also meant there was an ex in the picture who had taught her to hear control in every instruction, even when the instruction was meant to keep her alive.
I understood men like that. I had put more than one of them in the hospital.
“I ain’t him, sweetheart.”
“You don’t know who he is.”
“Don’t need to. I know what you looked like when you said it.”
For the first time since I entered the diner, she had no reply.
I stepped closer, moving slowly enough that she could stop me. My fingers closed lightly around her wrist, feeling her pulse race beneath my thumb, and I turned her hand over to check the red marks in her palm.
“What happened here?”
“The key.”
“You were holdin’ it like a weapon?”
“I didn’t have anything else.”
“You did good.”
Her gaze lifted to mine. “I was terrified.”
“Being brave don’t mean you weren’t scared. Means you kept thinkin’ anyway.”
Something softened in her face, and the diner suddenly felt too quiet. She was close enough that I could smell coffee and rain in her hair, close enough that the rise of her breasts nearly brushed my chest whenever she breathed. My thumb moved once across the inside of her wrist.
Her lips parted.
I knew fear. I had watched it spread across too many faces to mistake it for anything else.
This was not fear.
Her pulse jumped beneath my hand, and mine answered it. I wanted to pull her against me, feel those soft curves pressed to every hard part of my body, and find out whether she would argue with my mouth on hers as fiercely as she argued with everything else.
Then I remembered why her hands were shaking.
I released her.
“Stay behind me.”
She blinked as though the words had broken something between us. “Reaper—”
“Deputies ain’t here yet, and I need to see what that bastard left before somebody comes back for it. You can wait inside, or you can stay behind me. Those are your choices.”
Her jaw set. “I’m coming.”
“Figured you would.”
The alley smelled of rain, grease, and wet asphalt. Callie pointed toward the loose panel beside the dumpster, and I crouched without touching anything.
The gun was still there.
It was wrapped in a black rag with the orange Iron Flames garage logo printed along one corner.
“Fuck.”
Callie stood close behind me. “That rag is yours.”
“Rag’s ours. Gun ain’t.”
The weapon had been fired recently. Even with the rain, I could smell the faint burned-powder residue when the wind shifted, and the serial number had been scraped from the frame.
Viper had not hidden it well enough to keep it from being found.
He had hidden it somewhere the police would connect to the Iron Flames.
Someone was setting us up.
Sirens sounded from the road as I took out my phone and called Hawk.
He answered on the second ring. “Talk.”
“Viper dumped a gun behind the diner and wrapped it in one of our shop rags. Callie saw him.”
“She safe?”
“For now. Bastard saw a picture of her kid and used it to threaten her.”
The silence that followed felt dangerous.
“Bring them in,” Hawk said.
“Workin’ on it.”
I ended the call as two sheriff’s vehicles pulled into the parking lot. The deputies separated Callie and me, photographed the weapon, and asked the same questions three different ways while rain collected inside the collar of my cut.
She gave them Viper’s description, his road name, the direction he had taken, and every word he had said about Maddie. She was frightened, but she stayed precise, refusing to let either deputy hurry her or twist her answers.
I watched her and understood why Viper had made a mistake. He had seen a tired waitress alone in an alley and assumed fear would silence her. He hadn't seen the fuckin' steel underneath.
By the time the deputies let us leave, it was nearly midnight.
“I need to get Maddie,” Callie said, unlocking a small silver car parked near the diner. “Mrs. Alvarez is waiting.”
“I’m followin’ you.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“The police said they’ll send a patrol past my house.”
“The police were seven minutes late.”
She yanked open the driver’s door. “Do you always have to be right?”
“Nah. Just usually am.”
Her mouth tightened, but I caught the quick flash of heat in her eyes before she climbed into the car.
I followed her across town, keeping close enough to see her taillights while checking every vehicle that stayed behind us longer than two turns.
Nobody followed. That didn't mean Viper had gone far.
Callie stopped outside a small house with flowerpots crowded across the porch and a yellow light burning above the door.
She got out before I had switched off my engine.
“You can wait here,” she said.
“Ain’t happenin’.”
“My daughter is four. It’s midnight, she’s tired, and you look like the reason parents check beneath beds.”
“Then she’ll be glad I’m checkin’ the house before you take her inside.”
“This is my neighbor’s home, not a Black Thorns hideout.”
“Viper knows you got a kid. Until I know how much else he knows, nowhere connected to her is safe.”
The truth hit her hard enough to wipe the argument from her face.
I hated being the one who put that fear there.
I hated Viper more for making it necessary.
Callie climbed the porch steps and knocked softly.
I stayed one pace behind her, watching the street while locks turned on the other side of the door.
An older woman opened it, took one look at my cut, and tightened her hand around the door.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Alvarez,” Callie said quickly. “This is Reaper. He helped me.”
The woman didn't look convinced as a small face appeared beside her hip.
Maddie wore pink pajamas covered in yellow dinosaurs, her dark hair tangled from sleep and one hand curled around the edge of a faded blanket. In the other, she held half a biscuit.
She stared at me.
Most grown men looked away first. Maddie did not even blink.
“Why is he called Reaper?” she asked.
Callie closed her eyes. “Maddie.”
“What?” The kid stepped around Mrs. Alvarez and looked up at me more carefully. “Are you scary?”
“Been told I am.”
“Do you hurt people?”
“When I gotta.”
Callie made a strangled sound, but Maddie only considered my answer before lifting the biscuit.
“Do you want this?” she asked. “Mommy says sharing makes people nicer.”
Nobody had offered me something without wanting anything in return for a long time. I looked from the biscuit to Callie. She was watching me with exhaustion, fear, and something warmer tangled together in her eyes. Everyone else saw the patch, the scars, and the blood on my hands.
Her little girl saw a man who might need a biscuit.
I took it carefully.
“Thank you, Maddie.”
She smiled. “You can call me Mads.”
Something tightened painfully inside my chest.
Viper had threatened this child.
He was going to learn exactly why they called me Reaper.