Chapter 6
Stockton was waiting when Trish opened the laundromat at six a.m.
He leaned against his Harley in the parking lot, arms crossed, watching the street with eyes that had probably been open all night.
The leather cut hung heavy on his shoulders.
In the gray morning light, he looked like something carved from the neighborhood itself—weathered and stubborn and refusing to break.
"You're early," she said.
"We need to talk."
Something in his voice made her stomach tighten. Not fear—she'd stopped being afraid of him somewhere around night three of the fake laundry routine. But the seriousness in his tone said this wasn't a social call.
"Inside," she said, unlocking the door.
He followed her in, and she felt him scanning the room—checking windows, noting exits, cataloging threats she couldn't see. The fluorescent lights flickered on, humming their familiar song.
"Coffee?" she asked.
"No." He turned to face her. "You can't stay here anymore."
Trish set her keys on the counter and crossed her arms. "Excuse me?"
"Big T has been checking your locks at midnight. Running the perimeter. That's not surveillance—that's preparation." His voice was flat. Certain. "Warren's going to move on you directly. Maybe soon. Maybe tonight."
"So I'm supposed to—what? Run? Hide?" She shook her head. "The laundromat closes at ten. I go home. That's my routine."
"Your routine's going to get you killed."
"And your alternative is?"
"Safehouse in Bridgeport. Wolf territory. One of my brothers on the door around the clock." He stepped closer, and she caught the scent of leather and something else—motor oil, maybe, or the cold Chicago night he'd been sitting in. "You stay there until we handle Warren. Then you come back."
"And what happens to the laundromat while I'm hiding in your safehouse?"
"It stays open. We post protection during hours. When you close, the place goes dark and you go to ground."
"The lights stay on." She heard the edge in her own voice. "That's the whole point. Mae kept this place open until ten every night for twenty-three years. I've done the same for ten. The lights staying on is what tells people this is a safe place—"
"A dead woman doesn't keep any lights on."
The words hit like a slap.
Trish stared at him. He stared back, and there was nothing soft in his gaze—just the hard truth of a man who'd seen too many people die because they'd been brave instead of smart.
"You don't get to make this decision for me," she said.
"I'm not making it for you. I'm telling you the situation.
" He didn't move closer, but somehow the distance between them felt smaller.
"You've been holding this ground alone for six weeks.
Fighting an enemy who has sixteen men, prison discipline, and no rules.
You've done something most people couldn't do—stood up when everyone else folded. "
"But?"
"But this isn't about standing anymore. Warren's done trying to break you. Now he's going to remove you." Stockton's jaw tightened. "I've seen it happen. Good people who thought their principles would protect them. They don't. They just make the funeral sadder."
Trish's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the counter to hide it.
"I've been taking care of myself for a long time."
"I know."
"I buried my husband when I was thirty-two. I've run this place through recessions and gang wars and nights when I was the only person in the building. I don't need some biker telling me where I can and can't—"
"This isn't about what you need." He cut her off, and there was something new in his voice—heat, intensity, the barely leashed energy of a man who was done being patient. "This is about what I'm not willing to let happen."
The words hung in the air between them.
Not willing to let happen. Like her safety was his responsibility. Like what happened to her mattered to him personally, not just as a mission or a territorial issue.
Trish opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. Opened it again.
"You've known me for a week," she said quietly.
"I've known what kind of woman you are for longer than that." His eyes held hers. "Mae talked about you. Her niece in the city, working herself to the bone, too stubborn to quit even when quitting made sense. She was proud of you."
Trish felt something crack in her chest. A wall she'd been holding up for so long she'd forgotten it was there.
"She never told me," she managed.
"She never told anyone. But I listened." Stockton's voice softened—just a fraction, just enough to make him seem human instead of carved from stone. "You've been fighting alone. You don't have to anymore."
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Outside, a car passed on the street, ordinary and oblivious to the conversation happening inside.
"How long?" she asked.
"Until Warren's done."
"And how long is that?"
"As long as it takes."
She should argue. Should tell him she didn't need protection, didn't need some motorcycle club deciding her life for her. She'd been independent for forty years. She didn't answer to anyone.
But his eyes were steady, and his voice was certain, and somewhere underneath the stubborn pride that had kept her alive this long, she was so goddamn tired of being the only one standing guard.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm bringing laundry."
Something shifted in his face. Not quite a smile, but close. "What?"
"Laundry. Clothes. Things to fold." She grabbed her keys and headed for the back stairs that led to her apartment. "If I'm going to be locked in a safehouse, I'm not going to sit around doing nothing. I'll bring my own work."
She felt him following her up the narrow staircase, felt his presence filling the small apartment she'd lived in for ten years. It wasn't much—a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen that was more of a corner—but it was hers, and having him in it felt strange. Intimate.
He checked the windows before she could tell him to stop. Looked at the locks. Scanned the room like he was memorizing escape routes.
"Two bags," she said, pulling a duffel from her closet. "That's all I'm taking."
"Take whatever you need."
"I need to not lose my mind sitting in some stranger's house." She packed fast—clothes, toiletries, the paperback she'd been trying to finish for three months. "So I'm bringing laundry. And coffee. And if your safehouse doesn't have a decent coffee maker, we're stopping at a store."
"It has a coffee maker."
"Decent?"
"Functional."
"That's a no." She zipped the duffel and grabbed a second bag, which she filled with clothes from her hamper. Dirty laundry. Because if she was going to be stuck somewhere without her machines, she was damn well going to have something to fold.
Stockton watched her pack with an expression she couldn't quite read. Not impatience—he seemed perfectly content to wait while she gathered her things. Something else. Something that looked almost like approval.
"You're not what I expected," he said.
"What did you expect?"
"Someone who'd need convincing. Arguments. Proof." He leaned against her doorframe, arms crossed. "You made your decision in thirty seconds."
"I made my decision when you said 'dead woman.'" Trish shouldered both bags and met his gaze. "I'm not stupid. I know Warren's escalating. I've just been pretending I didn't because pretending was easier than admitting I was losing."
"You're not losing."
"No." She pushed past him toward the stairs. "Now I'm retreating. It's different."
The safehouse was a brick two-flat in Bridgeport, quiet block, residential. It looked like every other building on the street—forgettable, anonymous, exactly the kind of place you'd hide someone who needed hiding.
A Wolf she didn't recognize was already on the porch when they pulled up. Big guy. Tattoos. The same watchful stillness all these men seemed to share.
"Lakeshore," Stockton said, introducing him. "He's got your door. Anyone comes through who shouldn't, he handles it."
"Handles it how?"
Stockton's look said the question was naive.
"Right." She grabbed her bags and headed inside.
The apartment was sparse but clean—living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. Better than she'd expected. Someone had put fresh sheets on the bed and coffee in the cabinet, which suggested either thoughtfulness or experience hiding people on short notice.
Probably the second one.
Trish set her bags on the bed and started unpacking. The dirty laundry went in a pile by the window. The clean clothes went in the dresser. The coffee—the good stuff from her apartment—went in the kitchen cabinet above the ancient coffee maker.
She could feel Stockton watching her from the doorway.
"You're settling in fast," he said.
"I fold other people's laundry for a living. I know how to make a space functional." She turned to face him. "What happens now?"
"Now you stay here. Stay safe. Let us do what we do."
"And what's that, exactly?"
"Hunt."
The word hung in the air. Simple. Final. The kind of word that didn't need explanation because its meaning was written in the lines of his face.
"Warren's men are going to notice I'm gone," she said. "They'll look for me."
"Let them look. This neighborhood isn't their territory." Stockton moved through the apartment, checking windows, noting sightlines. The same systematic survey he'd done at the laundromat. "They don't have friends here. They don't have eyes. They're operating blind, and we're not."
She watched him work. The way he moved—unhurried, confident, like he'd done this a hundred times before. Probably had. Twenty years of protecting this neighborhood. Twenty years of moving people to safety and standing between them and whatever was hunting them.
The gray at his temples caught the afternoon light coming through the window. The lines around his eyes looked deeper in the shadows.
He wasn't young. Neither was she. They'd both been carrying things alone for a long time—him with his dead wife and his founding member weight, her with her dead husband and her dying laundromat.
Maybe that was why she trusted him. Not because he was strong, or dangerous, or wore a patch that meant something in this neighborhood. But because he looked at her like he understood what it cost to keep going when everyone else had stopped.
"The laundromat opens tomorrow," she said. "With or without me."
"With protection. I'll have brothers on rotation." He finished his survey and turned to face her. "You'll be back behind that counter as soon as Warren's handled. That's a promise."
"You make a lot of promises."
"I keep them."
She believed him. That was the terrifying part.
Stockton moved toward the door, and she followed him with her eyes—the way his shoulders filled the frame, the way his cut shifted as he walked, the weight he carried in every step.
"Stockton."
He paused. Looked back.
"Thank you," she said. "For..." She gestured vaguely at the apartment, at the situation, at everything. "For giving a damn."
"I gave a damn the first night I walked into your laundromat." His voice was low. Certain. "I just didn't know yet why it mattered."
Then he was gone, and Trish was alone in a stranger's apartment with two bags of laundry and the unsettling realization that she'd just put her life in the hands of a man she'd known for a week.
She pulled the dirty clothes from her bag and started sorting them on the bed. Whites. Darks. Delicates.
Some things didn't change, no matter how much everything else did.
She watched through the window as Stockton talked to Lakeshore on the porch—gestures, nods, the kind of communication that happened between men who'd worked together long enough to not need words.
Then he walked through the apartment one more time, checking windows, checking doors. Moving with the unhurried confidence of a man who'd secured a hundred safe positions.
And the gray at his temples made her trust him more, not less.