CHAPTER 19
Ortiz
°°°
"Shoulder's been bothering me," he said, older than most of her regular patients, weathered in a way that read less like age and more like accumulated hard use, his eyes moving around the waiting room with an attention that had nothing to do with impatience and everything to do with cataloging — exits, angles, who else was present — a habit she'd learned, over the past two months, to recognize instantly because she'd watched Tank do the exact same thing in a hundred small unconscious ways.
"I can take a look. Follow me back." She led him to the exam room, aware of Marisol's attention sharpening at the front desk, some instinct passing between the two of them without either saying anything. "What happened to it?"
"Old injury. Acts up sometimes." He settled onto the exam table with an ease that told her he'd been in rooms like this before, plenty of times, and watched her with a directness that made the hair on her arms rise before he'd said anything else worth reacting to.
"You're Lexie. The one who patches up the Ironclad boys. "
She kept her hands steady, kept her voice at the same clinical neutrality she used with every patient, though something in her had already gone very carefully alert. "I treat whoever comes through that door."
"Sure you do." His smile didn't reach his eyes, the same quality she'd noticed in the man who'd mentioned Ortiz's name two weeks ago, and knew, a cold certainty settling into her chest, that this was not a coincidental visit.
"Name's not important. But you can tell Tank Reyes that Ortiz sends his regards. And his interest."
The room seemed to narrow, her pulse picking up in a way she didn't let show on her face, years of professional composure the only thing standing between this moment and the fear trying to climb up her throat. "I don't know who that is."
"You know exactly who that is. You've had a Vultures name land in your ear at least twice now, don't insult either of us pretending otherwise.
" He rolled his shoulder, an idle gesture, watching her with the patient, unhurried attention of a man who had absolutely nowhere else he needed to be.
"Ortiz has been watching this club's little medical arrangement for a while.
Thinks it's clever, actually. Efficient.
A woman like you, patching up patches off the books, no paper trail, no questions asked — that's a resource.
The kind of resource a man in Ortiz's position finds useful, one way or another. "
"I'm not a resource. I'm a nurse."
"You're whatever the situation needs you to be, sweetheart.
That's usually how it goes for people in your position.
" He said it without particular malice, which somehow made it worse, the casual certainty of a man who'd clearly seen this exact conversation work before, on other people, in other rooms. "Here's the thing.
Ortiz doesn't actually want trouble with the Saints.
Trouble's expensive, messy, draws attention nobody needs.
What he wants is a quiet arrangement. Information, mostly.
Nothing that gets anybody hurt, nothing dramatic.
Just somebody keeping an ear open, passing along what she hears.
In exchange, whatever debt got you into this mess in the first place — and don't bother telling me you don't know what I'm talking about — that debt gets forgiven.
Clean slate. Your ex walks away from whatever he owes, and everybody involved gets to just move on with their lives. "
Something cold and clear settled over her fear then, a professional stillness she recognized from a hundred crisis moments in this exact room, the part of her that could hold steady under pressure precisely because falling apart wasn't an option the situation allowed for.
"You're asking me to spy on the club that's kept me safe for the past two months. "
"I'm offering you a way out of a situation you didn't ask to be part of. There's a difference, if you think about it the right way."
"There isn't." She said it flat, certain, feeling something in her chest steady into place even as her pulse continued hammering underneath the calm. "I'm not interested. Whatever you think you're offering, I don't want it."
He studied her for a long moment, something almost approving in his expression, the respect of a man who'd expected resistance and found it more solid than he'd anticipated.
"Ortiz figured you might say that. Man's not stupid — he's watched Reyes get careless over you, and careless men make mistakes, and mistakes are useful.
But he also said to make the offer clean, give you the chance to choose it before things get more complicated than a conversation.
Consider it made." He stood, rolled his shoulder once more, an idle motion that had clearly never actually needed treatment at all.
"You change your mind, there's ways to reach us.
Wouldn't wait too long, though. Ortiz's patience has a shelf life, same as anybody's. "
He left a card on the exam table as he passed her — no name, just a number, the kind of anonymous contact information that existed precisely so it could be denied later — and walked out through the waiting room with the unhurried ease of a man who'd never once doubted he'd get exactly the reaction he wanted, whether she'd agreed to anything or not.
Lexie stood alone in the exam room for a long moment after the door chimed shut behind him, her hands, she realized distantly, shaking in a way they hadn't shaken since the night of the break-in, and made herself breathe, made herself hold onto the clinical stillness that had carried her through the conversation until the actual fear underneath it could catch up to the moment safely.
She called Tank before she'd fully decided to, the same instinct from weeks ago finding his name in her recent messages without her conscious permission.
He arrived in eleven minutes, faster than she'd known was possible from the clubhouse, and the version of him that came through the clinic door was not the careful, economical man from the diner or the vulnerable man who'd told her about Danny two weeks ago.
This man moved like a weapon that had been quietly sheathed for months and had just, without warning, been drawn.
"Tell me everything," he said, and she did, watching his face carefully as she laid it out — the shoulder complaint, the careful cataloging, the offer, the card left on the exam table, Ortiz's name spoken aloud for the first time by someone claiming to represent him directly.
He didn't interrupt. He let her finish the whole account, his jaw tightening by degrees she recognized now as his version of controlled fury, and when she was done he picked up the card from the exam table, turned it over once between two fingers, and set it back down with a precision that told her exactly how much restraint the gesture cost him.
"You did exactly right," he said finally, his voice low, careful, the same deliberate control she'd watched him exercise in the kitchen the day Dez had made his comment about her body. "Telling him no. Calling me after instead of sitting on it. All of it. You handled this exactly right."
"I was scared."
"Being scared and handling it right aren't opposites, Lexie.
You did both." He reached for her then, pulled her into him, and she felt him take one long breath against her hair, the controlled exhale of a man working hard not to let the full size of his fury show in front of the woman he was trying to comfort.
"This isn't just circling anymore. This is direct.
He came at you specifically, tried to turn you against us specifically, and that changes things. "
"Changes them how?"
He didn't answer right away, and something in his silence told her the answer mattered more than he was ready to say out loud in an exam room at five o'clock on a Thursday evening, the last of the daylight going gold and ordinary outside a window that suddenly felt far less safe than it had that morning.
"It means he's decided we're worth the risk of moving on directly," he said finally. "Which means we don't have the luxury of waiting to see what he does next. We move first, or we're always going to be reacting to whatever he decides to do to you next."
She heard the weight underneath to you and realized, standing in his arms with a stranger's business card still sitting on the exam table behind them, that whatever quiet, careful equilibrium they'd built over the past two months had just, irrevocably, tipped into something much more dangerous than either of them had let themselves fully prepare for.