CHAPTER 23
Moved Up
°°°
The drive to The Wrenhouse should have taken twelve minutes. Emery made it in eight, her hands steady on the wheel despite the adrenaline screaming through her system, some old instinct telling her that speed mattered more than caution now that the timeline had collapsed out from under all of them.
She'd been three blocks from the property when Ghost's first alert came through, close enough to the plan's original staging point that turning back felt more dangerous than pressing forward.
The night outside her windshield had gone strange and heightened, every streetlight too bright, every shadow suggesting movement that probably wasn't there, her whole nervous system running on the specific, focused clarity that came only in the minutes before something irreversible.
Ghost's voice came through her phone on speaker, clipped and urgent. "Perimeter's not set yet, Emery. Two of our guys are still fifteen minutes out. I need you to wait for backup before you go anywhere near that building."
"There's no time to wait. If Ruiz's people are already moving, and the office has documents in it that matter — the deed file, the financing paperwork, everything we've built this whole plan around — I can't just let them destroy it or take it before anyone gets there.
" She took the final turn onto the property too fast, tires protesting against the gravel.
"I'll stay in the truck until you tell me it's clear.
I just need to be close enough to see what's happening. "
"Emery — "
"I'm not going in blind, Ghost. I'm staying in the truck.
" She killed the engine at the edge of the lot, keeping enough distance to see the building clearly while staying out of the direct light spilling from the office windows.
"But somebody needs eyes on this property right now, and right now that's me. "
The Wrenhouse looked wrong in a way she couldn't immediately articulate — too many lights on for this hour, shapes moving behind the office curtains that didn't match the shape of anyone who belonged there.
She counted at least two vehicles in the lot that she didn't recognize, parked at odd angles that suggested haste rather than the careful diplomacy of a scheduled negotiation.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Rhys. Five minutes out. Do not leave the truck.
She didn't leave the truck. She sat with her hands white-knuckled on the wheel, watching shadows move behind the curtains, cataloguing every detail she could make out in case it mattered later — the number of figures, the general shape of them, anything Ghost's team might need once they actually arrived.
A shadow detached itself from the building and moved toward the parking lot, and Emery's whole body went cold with recognition.
Not one of Ghost's men. A stranger, moving with the deliberate, unhurried confidence of someone who believed himself completely unwatched, heading directly toward her truck.
She counted the distance between them instinctively, the way she might measure a seam before committing to a cut — thirty feet, maybe less, closing steadily.
Her mind ran through options with a clarity that surprised her even in the moment: duck below the dash and hope the darkness hid her silhouette, or trust the engine and her own reflexes over waiting to see what he actually wanted.
There wasn't time to weigh both properly.
There was only the decision itself, arriving fast and absolute.
She had seconds to decide. Lock the doors and hope the darkness hid her, or start the engine and risk the sound drawing his attention before she could actually get moving.
She chose the second option, turning the key with a hand that shook only slightly, and the engine caught just as the man's head snapped toward the sound.
He didn't run. He walked, faster now, but still with that same terrible confidence, and Emery threw the truck into reverse, gravel spraying as she swung around toward the road, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat.
He got close enough to slap a hand against her rear window before she cleared the lot, the sound of it like a gunshot in the confined space of the truck cab, and Emery screamed despite herself, foot flooring the accelerator, the truck fishtailing slightly on the gravel before finding traction and surging forward onto the paved road.
She checked her mirrors obsessively for the first several blocks, half-certain she'd see headlights following, and the specific, ordinary details of the road — a stop sign, a porch light, a dog barking somewhere behind a fence — took on a strange, hyper-vivid clarity, her body still flooded with enough adrenaline that even safety felt like something she had to actively verify rather than simply trust.
She didn't stop until she was three blocks away, pulled over at a dark curb with her whole body shaking, adrenaline crashing through her system in violent waves. Her phone was already ringing — Rhys.
"Em. Em, are you okay, Ghost said someone approached the truck — "
"I'm okay." Her voice came out thin and unsteady, nothing like the composed tone she'd managed on the phone with Ghost minutes ago. "I'm okay, Rhys, I got out, I'm three blocks away, I'm — "
She stopped, the old instinct rising fast and automatic, the familiar pull to smooth this over immediately, to tell him she was fine before he could hear how badly she wasn't, to protect him from the full weight of her own fear the way she'd protected people from her feelings her whole life.
She felt the words forming — I'm fine, really, don't worry — and made herself, deliberately, painfully, stop.
She thought, in the space of that one held breath, about every version of this moment she'd lived before — the peacekeeper child learning to swallow bad news so the house stayed calm, the young wife who noticed the small warning signs and decided noticing them wasn't worth the conflict of saying so out loud, the woman who'd spent eleven months building a life around never again being the one who absorbed things silently.
She thought about Dally, sixteen years old, telling her that if two people were going to figure this out, somebody actually had to say things.
She thought about how easy it would be, right now, in the dark, adrenaline still roaring through her, to let the old habit win one more time.
She didn't let it win.
"I'm not okay," she said instead, her voice breaking on the admission.
"I'm scared, Rhys. I'm really scared right now.
A man touched my truck, he was right there, and I don't — I don't think I've ever been that frightened in my life, and I don't want to pretend I'm fine just to make this easier for you to hear. "
The silence on the other end lasted only a second, but she felt the weight of it anyway, some old fear that honesty like this would be too much, would ask something of him he couldn't give.
"Thank you," he said, and his voice had gone rough with something that sounded almost like relief. "Thank you for telling me the truth instead of managing me. I need to hear that you're scared, Em. I need you to never stop telling me that, especially now."
Something in her chest cracked open at the response, the specific, unexpected gift of being believed and held rather than reassured away. "Where are you? You said five minutes."
"I'm — " He stopped, and she heard something frustrated and urgent color his voice.
"I'm stuck. Preacher called an emergency meeting the second Ghost reported movement at The Wrenhouse, and he's insisting I come to the clubhouse first before I go anywhere near you, wants to coordinate the club's response properly instead of me riding in alone.
I'm arguing with him right now, Em, and it's costing me time I don't have. "
"Why would he do that? You need to get to me."
"Because he still thinks like a President managing a crisis, not like — " Rhys's voice cracked with frustration.
"He wants full club coordination before anyone moves, because that's how you avoid getting people killed in a real fight.
I understand the logic. I hate the logic right now, but I understand it.
He's not wrong that riding in there alone, angry and unprepared, could get me hurt without actually helping you. "
Emery closed her eyes, forcing herself to think past the fear, past the desperate want to have him beside her immediately, some part of her recognizing, even through the terror, that this was its own kind of test — whether she could tolerate him making a genuinely reasonable choice that still, in the moment, felt unbearable.
"Okay. Then coordinate. I'm safe right now, three blocks away, doors locked, engine running.
Do what you need to do to make sure whoever comes to that property does it right, instead of rushing in and making things worse. "
"Em — "
"I mean it, Rhys. I just told you I was scared instead of pretending I wasn't. I need you to trust that when I tell you I'm safe enough to wait, I actually mean that too.
" Her voice had steadied, some old competence reasserting itself even through the lingering adrenaline.
"Go finish whatever you need to finish. Call me the second you're moving. "
She heard him exhale, long and unsteady, some visible war finishing itself out on the other end of the line. "Three minutes. I promise you, three minutes, and I'm done arguing with my uncle about proper procedure."
"Three minutes," she repeated, and ended the call, sitting alone in the dark truck with her heart still hammering, watching the road behind her for any sign of the man who'd slapped his hand against her window, and found, in the waiting, that naming her fear out loud to Rhys had done something the silence never had — it had made the fear feel survivable instead of something she had to carry entirely alone.
She sat with that realization for the full three minutes, turning it over with the same careful attention she'd give any piece of information that actually mattered.
For nine years of marriage, and eleven months of separation before that, she'd operated under the assumption that her fear was a burden other people shouldn't have to carry — that voicing it plainly, without softening or apology, was somehow an imposition on whoever had to hear it.
Tonight had proven the opposite. Rhys hadn't buckled under the weight of her honesty.
He'd met it, matched it, and something in the exchange had made both of them steadier rather than more fragile.
She wondered, watching the empty road behind her, how many other fears she'd spent years quietly absorbing alone that might have felt exactly this survivable if she'd only said them out loud.
Her phone buzzed again. Ghost. "We've got eyes on the property now. Whoever was inside is gone — cleared out fast once they realized someone spotted them. But Emery, they left something behind. You need to see this when Rhys gets there. I don't think this is over tonight."