Trawler's Temptation (Salt Blood MC #4)

Chapter 1

The Norfolk warehouse smelled like rust and old secrets, and Trawler liked it that way.

He moved through the space with the methodical patience of a man who'd spent fifteen years learning to read violence before it happened.

Shadow pooled in the corners where the overhead lights didn't reach.

Three entry points—main door, loading dock, emergency exit on the east wall.

The emergency exit's hinges were rusted, which meant noise if someone tried to breach.

Good. The loading dock's chain was new, the padlock industrial grade. Better.

He crouched beside a support column, running his scarred knuckles along the concrete foundation. No cracks. Structure was solid. The building would hold if things went sideways.

Most men his size couldn't move silent. Trawler had learned to ghost through spaces like smoke, all that bulk condensed into something that didn't announce itself. Made people nervous when they finally noticed him—like finding a mountain had appeared while they weren't looking.

He pulled a small notebook from his cut and documented the vulnerabilities: sight lines from the windows, blind spots behind the shipping containers stacked along the north wall, the fact that the motion sensors covered the main floor but not the mezzanine.

Fixable. Everything was fixable if you understood where the threats lived.

An hour later, he had the assessment complete.

New camera positions, motion sensors for the upper level, reinforced locks on all three entry points.

The club used this space for storage—legitimate bike parts mixed with the kind of inventory that didn't show up on any manifest. Brothers needed to know their shit was secure.

Trawler made sure it was.

Church ran long that evening, brothers gathered around the scarred wooden table in the compound's main room while Anchor laid out business.

The Salt Blood president had a voice like an anchor chain—heavy, deliberate, impossible to ignore.

Fourth-generation waterman who'd traded crab pots for chrome when regulations killed the family trade, and he ran the club the same way his grandfather ran fishing crews: with steady authority that didn't need volume.

"Trawler." Anchor's blue eyes found him at the far end of the table. "Norfolk warehouse."

"Secure." Trawler kept his report short. Words cost energy, and he'd rather spend that energy watching, listening, cataloging the threats most people missed. "Three vulnerabilities identified. Fixed by end of week."

Hurricane leaned back in his chair, military posture even when he was trying to look relaxed. The VP's broken nose caught the overhead light, and his cold smile said he was thinking about the kind of problems that ended with someone bleeding. "Anyone sniffing around we should know about?"

"Dock workers. Curious, not hostile. I'll have a conversation."

That got a few low chuckles from around the table. Trawler's conversations didn't involve much talking.

Compass spoke up from Anchor's left, the road captain's green eyes sharp as always. "Route from the compound's clean. I ran it twice this week. No new surveillance, no unfamiliar vehicles."

The meeting continued—territory reports, upcoming runs, the usual business of keeping two hundred miles of Virginia coastline under Salt Blood control.

Trawler listened with half his attention, the other half cataloging exits, monitoring the brothers' body language, doing what he always did: watching for the threats that hadn't materialized yet.

When Anchor finally called the meeting, brothers scattered toward the bar or out to the lot where fifty Harleys gleamed under the security lights.

The compound—a converted seafood processing plant on the edge of Harborview—had become more home than any place Trawler had lived in thirty-eight years.

The clubhouse bar built from old dock pilings.

The massive garage where brothers worked on their bikes.

The gravel lot facing the water, fire pit made from a ship's anchor windlass.

He grabbed his helmet and headed for his bike. The need for a drink had been building all day, and not the kind he'd find at the compound. Too many brothers, too much noise, too many people who might want to talk.

Trawler didn't do talking.

The Rusty Hook sat on the edge of Port Mason like something the tide had forgotten to take. Weathered siding, neon sign with half the letters burned out, gravel lot that had seen better decades. The kind of place tourists drove past without a second glance, which was exactly why Trawler liked it.

He'd been coming here for three months, ever since he discovered the owner didn't try to make conversation and the beer was cold enough to hurt. Simple pleasures for a simple man—if you defined simple as someone who could kill you six different ways before you finished your drink.

The parking lot held the usual collection of battered pickups and work trucks.

Port Mason was a fishing village in its death throes, the kind of place where men still hauled crab pots for a living even though the living got harder every year.

Working people. Real people. The kind Salt Blood existed to protect.

Trawler swung off his Harley and stood for a moment, letting his senses adjust. Humid salt air mixing with motor oil from the bikes, the distant cry of gulls settling for the night, country music bleeding through the bar's thin walls.

Something was wrong.

He felt it before he saw it—that prickle along his spine that had kept him alive through fifteen years of bar fights and security work. The parking lot was too quiet. The trucks were there, but the energy was off. Muted. Like everyone inside was holding their breath.

He pushed through the front door, and the feeling intensified.

The Rusty Hook's interior was exactly as he remembered—pool table in the back corner, long bar along the left wall, scattered tables filled with men who worked with their hands for a living. Jukebox playing Waylon Jennings. Ceiling fans pushing humid air around without much conviction.

Except the pool table wasn't right.

Trawler's eyes cataloged the damage as he moved toward his usual spot at the end of the bar. Cracked slate, torn felt, one leg propped up with what looked like a phone book. That table had been solid three days ago. Someone had taken something heavy to it—baseball bat, maybe, or a crowbar.

He settled onto his stool, back to the wall, sight lines to both exits. The bartender approached, and Trawler let himself look at her properly for the first time.

Bethany Cole. He'd learned her name from the liquor license behind the bar, filed it away the way he filed away everything.

Dark hair pulled back from a face that had seen enough bar fights not to be impressed by posturing.

Compact build, bartender's arms, a mouth that suggested she had opinions and wasn't afraid to share them.

She moved with the efficiency of someone who'd been doing this work for years, but tonight there was tension in her shoulders. The quick smile she offered didn't reach her eyes.

"Beer," Trawler said. The same order he always gave, the same single word that was all their interaction ever required.

But tonight, she hesitated. Just for a second—most people wouldn't have noticed. Trawler noticed everything.

Her gaze flicked to the door, then back to him. "Usual?"

He nodded, watching her pull the tap with hands that were steady but not relaxed. She set the glass in front of him and moved away too quickly, already scanning the room like she was expecting trouble to walk in.

Trawler drank his beer and watched.

Three of the regulars had fresh bruises—a split lip on the old guy in the corner, a black eye on the younger one playing darts, swollen knuckles on the big man near the jukebox. The kind of damage that said someone had made a point, and the point had been received.

The pool table. The bruises. The way Bethany kept watching the door.

Protection racket.

He'd seen it a hundred times in his bouncer years.

Some asshole with muscle decides small businesses owe him money for the privilege of staying open.

Most owners folded—paid up, kept their heads down, hoped the problem would go away.

The ones who didn't fold ended up with broken pool tables and broken regulars.

Not his business. The Rusty Hook was outside Salt Blood's usual territory, and Bethany Cole wasn't anyone he was responsible for protecting.

Except.

She was refilling his glass without him asking, and her hand trembled just slightly as she set it down. Dark eyes met his for a moment—assessing, wary, like she was trying to figure out if he was a threat or something else.

"Quiet tonight," Trawler said. Two words more than he usually offered.

Bethany's laugh was short and sharp. "Yeah. Quiet."

She didn't elaborate, and he didn't push. But he noticed the shotgun mounted under the bar, the way her hand drifted toward it every time the door opened, the rigid set of her spine that said she was bracing for impact.

Someone had rattled this woman, and she was scared but not broken. Still standing behind her bar, still serving drinks, still keeping the lights on even though trouble was clearly coming.

Backbone. Real backbone, not the performed kind.

Trawler finished his second beer and left cash on the bar—more than the drinks cost, though he couldn't have explained why. Bethany Cole wasn't his responsibility. The Rusty Hook wasn't his problem.

But as he pushed through the door into the salt-heavy night air, he found himself cataloging the bar's vulnerabilities the way he'd cataloged the warehouse. Entry points. Sight lines. Fallback positions.

Just in case.

He threw a leg over his Harley, the engine's thunder shattering the quiet of the parking lot. The ride back to the compound would take forty minutes along coastal highways, plenty of time to convince himself that whatever was happening in Port Mason had nothing to do with him.

The woman's dark eyes stayed with him anyway—scared but unflinching, watching that door like she knew exactly what was coming and had decided to meet it standing up.

Trawler didn't do talking. Didn't do involvement. Didn't let people close because people close to him became people he might fail.

But he'd be back tomorrow.

Just to check.