TANK
I’ve guarded thieves, dealers, runners, and men who would bite through their own tongues before giving up a name. Tessa Ward behaves like none of them.
Nothing about her looks like a woman waiting to collect blackmail money. She looks like somebody trying not to show how scared she is.
I sit in the chair with my boots planted between her and the exit, pretending I don’t notice the tear along the thigh of her jeans or the dark marks around her wrist. Harlan said she and Daniel Morrow copied financial records, then tried to squeeze him for cash.
Morrow disappeared with part of the material, and Tessa ran with the rest.
Kane accepted the job after Harlan sent photographs of her vehicle outside the Rivermark, a message demanding payment, and enough old history to make the story fit.
Find her, recover the files, and hold her until Harlan arrived.
No harm and no handover before the property was secured.
The job is just to hold her until he can deal with her.
Kane gave the order, so I brought her in. My loyalty is to him and Kingdom Come MC. It’s never been to Clay Harlan.
Tessa shifts on the mattress, and my attention drops before I can stop it.
She is still wearing the same damp shirt from the hotel, pale fabric streaked with dirt and torn near the hem.
When I carried her from the motel room, my hand spanned most of her hip.
On the bike, her arms tightened around my waist every time I leaned into a curve.
I’ve had women wrap themselves around me before. None of them made it hard to think.
She catches me looking. “Are you waiting for me to confess, or is silent intimidation the full service?”
“I’m waiting for Cash to verify Harlan’s story.”
“And while you wait, I stay locked in here.”
“Yes.” Her mouth tightens, but she doesn’t waste breath asking again. That bothers me more than pleading would. Tessa hears the answer, stores it, and starts looking for another route.
A knock sounds against the door and she goes rigid.
I unlock it and open far enough to take a paper bag and two bottles of water from Cash without giving her space to pass me, not that she’d have a chance of getting out of here if she tried. He stays in the hall, voice low. “Harlan’s message chain looks clean on first pass.”
“Keep digging.”
Cash glances over my shoulder at Tessa, then at the bruise on her wrist. “Kane wants Harlan kept outside the gates when he arrives. Nobody gets her alone until Kane is sure.”
“He won’t.”
Cash leaves. I lock the door again, open the bag, and set it on the dresser within Tessa’s reach. Two wrapped sandwiches, chips, and apples.
She examines the wrappers, then checks the plastic ring beneath one bottle cap. “You think I’m dangerous enough to imprison, but you trust me with an apple.”
“If I thought you could kill me with it, then maybe I wouldn’t have.”
A flicker almost becomes a smile. It dies before reaching her eyes. She opens the water, smells it, and drinks.
She sits on the far edge of the bed. “What crime do you actually think I committed?”
“You stole records from a man who does business outside the law and tried to sell them back to him.”
“That’s Harlan’s answer. I asked for yours.”
“It’s the information I was given.”
“So you don’t have one. You dragged me out of a motel because a criminal said I was also a criminal, and nobody asked why the supposed blackmailer has a smashed phone, no car, and seven dollars in her wallet.”
“Harlan said Morrow had the money.”
“Daniel Morrow was bleeding on the ballroom floor when I ran.”
The words come clean and immediate, with no pause to build drama and no glance to see whether they landed.
“Okay, so what kind of gun was used?”
“Black semiautomatic. I don’t know the model. Harlan held it in his right hand, and the muzzle jumped when he fired. There was one shot while I watched. I heard another near the service stairs, but I didn’t see who fired it.”
“Where were you?”
“Upper gallery, east side. I was photographing plasterwork before demolition. The river doors were chained, so I went through the kitchen and out a broken window when two men came up after me.” She lifts her bruised wrist. “One caught me near the landing. I hit him with the side of my camera, broke my phone when the other slammed me against the wall, and got free when the railing gave. My camera was set to continuous high. One-eight-hundredth shutter speed, ISO thirty-two hundred, eighty-five millimeter lens. The images won’t be pretty, but they’ll be sharp enough. ”
Too exact for panic. Too technical for something invented tonight.
It could still be rehearsed. People have built better lies for less money.
But Harlan described a willing partner who knew what she was taking and how to profit from it.
He didn’t describe someone who can tell me which ballroom doors were chained because she tested them while running for her life.
“Unlock the account now. Let me see.”
“No. You’ll erase the photographs before Harlan even reaches the gate.”
“I don’t work for Harlan.”
“You abducted me from that motel on his orders.”
The answer lands where it should. “I took you because Kane accepted the contract.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.” She studies me, perhaps expecting an excuse I don’t give, then eats two bites of the sandwich without tasting either.
Her still damp shirt clings across her shoulders. The room is warm, but she keeps shivering in small bursts she tries to hide. I open the second dresser drawer and take out a clean black T-shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Your clothes are wet. Put this on before you freeze.”
She looks from the shirt to me, suspicion fighting discomfort, then snatches it from my hand. “Turn around.”
“Fine.” I face the door.
Fabric rustles behind me. My shoulders lock as I picture the torn shirt lifting over her head and the body I felt pressed against me on the bike. I stare at the chipped paint above the lock and remind myself she is here under an order. She cannot walk out, and whatever my body wants is irrelevant.
“You can turn back around now.”
The shirt reaches halfway down her thighs. The sleeves hang almost to her elbows, and the black cotton makes her skin look pale against the bruises. The sight hits somewhere primitive. My room, my bed, and my shirt against her body.
Mine is the first word my mind supplies, and the one thing she is definitely not. She is my prisoner.
I sit again before she notices what the sight does to me. Rain taps gently at the narrow window. Music from the bar reaches us in broken bass notes, mixed with tools banging from the garage and an engine turning over outside. Tessa listens to all of it.
“How many men are outside this room?”
“Enough.”
“How many gates?”
“One vehicle gate, one rear service gate.”
Her gaze sharpens because I answered. “Cameras and armed guards?”
“Yes. So don’t even think about it.”
“And Harlan is coming tomorrow because he expects you to hand me over.”
“He expects to recover what belongs to him.”
“He expects you to make me disappear afterward.”
The certainty in her voice presses against the doubts already forming. “Why didn’t you go to Sheriff Miller?”
“My phone was destroyed, my car was blocked at the hotel, and I didn’t know which cops Harlan owns.
I reached the motel on foot. Before I could work out who to call, you used a key to walk in.
I’m guessing you intimidated the motel clerk into giving it to you.
” She glares at me accusingly, and I give nothing away.
Sheriff Sam Miller has spent years trying to put Kingdom Come in jail. Harlan buying him seems unlikely, but unlikely isn’t impossible. Under King, money reached places nobody discussed afterward.
My phone vibrates, and it’s Cash. I stand and turn slightly while I answer, keeping Tessa at the edge of my vision. “Yes?”
“She might be telling you the truth. It looks like she was booked to do what she said she was. She has a legitimate business, website and everything.”
“Connection to Morrow?”
“Nothing yet. I’m still checking. Give me twenty.”
I end the call and realize I took my eyes off her for a second. She’s gone. I find the bathroom door almost closed.
I cross the room, shove it open, and see Tessa balanced on the toilet tank with both hands braced against the narrow window frame. She has forced the screen outward and pushed her shoulders through an opening barely wide enough for her head.
“Stop. The drop is twenty feet onto concrete.”
“I noticed.”
Her bare foot slips against the porcelain.
I catch her around the waist before her head strikes the frame.
Momentum pulls her backward into me, and the toilet lid cracks beneath my boot as I take her weight.
She fights instantly, elbow driving toward my ribs, but there is nowhere for either of us to move.
I hold her long enough to get her off the tank, then carry her into the bedroom and set her down.
Tessa spins around to face me, breathing hard. “Don’t touch me. Just unlock the door.”
“No.”
“Of course not. You get to play the dangerous asshole, drag me wherever you want, then act offended when I don’t sit quietly in your shirt and eat your food.”
“I’m not offended.”
“You’re trying very hard to make me believe you’re a bad man.”
The words stop me, and she sees it before pressing harder. “The leather MC cut, the gun, the silence. You keep performing the part because it’s easier than asking whether the job is wrong.”
“You should believe I’m what I appear to be.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Nobody has ever said that to me. Men believe I’m bad before I enter a room. Women sometimes like it until they get close enough to understand it isn’t an act. King saw what I could do when I was nineteen and turned it into my place in the club. Even Kane has never questioned what I am.
Tessa does it while furious, trapped, and wearing bruises I failed to ask enough questions about.
“You really don’t know me.”
“I know you could’ve hurt me at the motel and didn’t.
You could’ve thrown me down just now, but you caught my head.
You turned around while I changed, locked your weapons away, and keep looking at my wrist like you want to find the man who bruised it.
” She steps close and presses one finger to my chest. “That doesn’t make this okay.
It makes it worse, because part of you knows better and you’re still keeping that door locked. ”
Her finger remains against my cut. Heat spreads from that single point through my body.
“You need to step back.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll discover another terrible secret?”
“Tessa…” She lifts her chin, daring me to finish, but I lose the words when my gaze drops to her mouth.
Her eyes lower to mine. Anger changes shape between us, turning dense and hot enough to fill the room. She curls her hand into my cut, yanks me down, and kisses me.
There is nothing tentative in it; her mouth hits mine hard, all fury and unwanted hunger, and my control breaks on contact.
I catch the back of her neck and drive her against the wall, taking the kiss deeper as she opens for me.
She makes a rough sound and pulls harder on my cut, bringing every inch of her body against mine.
I taste anger. Her nails scrape the short hair at the back of my head. I press my thigh between hers and feel her heat.
She arches into it, tearing a sound from my chest. I kiss along her jaw, then return to her mouth before I put my lips anywhere else. Her hands move over my neck and shoulders while mine close around her hips beneath the hem of my shirt.
One lift would put her around my waist and three steps would put her on my bed, but that isn’t what my assignment is, and the door is still locked.
I release her so fast she catches herself against the wall. My chest heaves, and Tessa’s lips are swollen, her eyes dark with the same hunger burning through me.
“I won’t touch you while that door is locked. I’m many things, but I’m not that.”
Her expression flashes from shock to fury. “You were touching me five seconds ago.”
“And I’m stopping now.”
I put the chair between us because distance is the only control I have left. Tessa stands against the wall in my shirt, breath unsteady, looking like she wants to slap me, kiss me again, or do both.
Stopping hasn’t cooled anything. It has stripped away the last layer of denial. She wants me, and I’m already too far gone for wanting to be the problem.
My phone rings again. Cash’s name on the screen feels like an intrusion I may hurt him for later, which is unreasonable enough to prove how badly she has gotten under my skin.
I answer with a clipped, “Talk.”
“It looks like she never met Morrow. That blackmail message Harlan sent didn’t come from her number. We’d need to check her laptop to be certain.” I look at Tessa. She has crossed her arms over my shirt, but it doesn’t hide the rise and fall of her chest.
“Send everything to Kane.”
“Already did. He says we verify the pictures before Harlan gets within a mile of her.”
That order settles the last of it. Kane accepted a contract built from convincing evidence. Now that it is coming apart, he looks again.
I end the call, take Tessa’s laptop from the camera bag, and set it on the bed in front of her. The kiss still hangs between us, hot and unfinished, but something else has entered the room now. The first thin edge of belief.
“We were told you were hired and that this is your photography business. Cash found no connection between you and Morrow, and the demand Harlan gave us was possibly fabricated.” I open the laptop and turn it toward her. “Show me what he’s willing to kill to recover.”