Chapter 7
Trawler woke to the sound of engines.
He was off the storage room cot and moving before his eyes fully opened, grabbing his piece from under the pillow, phone already in his other hand. The text to Hurricane was four words: They're here. Eight plus.
The response came back in seconds: Two minutes out.
Two minutes. He could work with two minutes.
Through the storage room's grimy window, he watched the convoy pull into the parking lot. Three trucks, headlights cutting through the darkness, disgorging men like a wound bleeding soldiers. Eight, just like he'd estimated. Nine—no, ten. Dunlap had brought everyone.
They moved with purpose, spreading out around the building. Two toward the back door. Three toward the front. The rest hanging back with what looked like gas cans and road flares.
Arson, Trawler realized. They weren't here to send a message. They were here to burn the place down.
With Bethany inside.
Something cold and savage uncoiled in his chest. She was upstairs in the apartment, sleeping in her own bed for the first time in days because he'd promised her it was safe. Because he'd told her he was watching the doors.
He was done watching.
Trawler slipped out the storage room's side window, dropping into the shadows behind the dumpsters. The motion sensors he'd installed two days ago had been disabled—cut wires, professional job. Someone on Jessup's crew knew what they were doing.
Didn't matter. He didn't need technology to handle this.
The first two went down without a sound. They'd been assigned to the back entrance, focused on picking the lock, not watching their six. Trawler's arm wrapped around one throat while his fist caved in the other's temple. A wet crunch, a strangled gurgle, and both men crumpled into the gravel.
He took a gun off the first body, checked the magazine. Full. Jessup's boys came prepared.
Voices at the front—Dunlap's drawl carrying through the night air: "Kick it in. We torch the place and get gone before anyone sees smoke."
Trawler circled the building, keeping to the shadows. Three men at the front door, Dunlap directing from behind like the coward he was. Five more spread across the parking lot, gas cans in hand, waiting for the signal.
His phone buzzed once. Hurricane's signal—brothers in position.
Trawler stepped out of the shadows.
"Hey."
Ten heads swiveled toward him. Dunlap's eyes went wide in the glow of a distant streetlight, recognition and fear warring across his weasel face.
"You," he breathed.
"Me."
The parking lot erupted.
Hurricane and Riptide hit from the east, engines roaring, bikes becoming weapons as they scattered the men with the gas cans.
Trawler had a heartbeat to appreciate the chaos—bodies diving, cans tumbling, a road flare spinning through the air like a dying star—before the three at the front door opened fire.
He moved.
Bullets chewed gravel where he'd been standing.
He closed the distance in a dead sprint, too fast for men who'd expected an ambush, not a charging bull.
His shoulder caught the first shooter in the chest, driving him back into the door frame with a crack of breaking ribs.
The second got the pistol across his jaw—teeth flew, blood sprayed, and he went down screaming.
The third was smarter. He dropped his gun and ran.
Hurricane's bike intercepted him before he made it ten feet, the VP clotheslining him with a forearm that sent him spinning into unconsciousness.
Where's Dunlap?
Trawler spun, scanning the chaos. Brothers had the parking lot locked down—Riptide grappling with a man twice his size, Hurricane putting boot to someone's ribs, engines and screams and the copper smell of blood filling the night.
There. Dunlap was running for the trucks, that broken wrist in a cast, his good hand fumbling for keys.
Not tonight.
Trawler caught him in three strides, grabbing the back of his jacket and spinning him around. Dunlap's back hit the truck's door with enough force to buckle the metal. His face went white, all that smug mockery from the bar replaced with animal terror.
"Please," he gasped. "Please, I was just following orders, Jessup made me—"
"You broke her pool table."
"What?"
Trawler's hand closed around his throat. "You broke her pool table. Beat her regulars. Put your hands on her."
Dunlap clawed at his wrist, feet kicking uselessly against the truck. "I didn't—I was just—"
"You came here to burn down her bar." Trawler leaned close, letting Dunlap see exactly what was looking back at him. Not a man. Something older. Something hungry. "With her inside."
"I didn't know she was—"
"Doesn't matter."
He squeezed.
Dunlap's eyes bulged. His mouth opened and closed, no sound coming out, just the wet rasp of a throat being crushed. His good hand beat against Trawler's arm, weakening with every second, until the blows became taps, and the taps became nothing.
Trawler held on. Held on past the point of unconsciousness, past the point of surrender, until something gave beneath his fingers and Dunlap's body went limp in a way that meant forever.
He let go. The collector slid down the truck's door, leaving a smear of blood from where his head had cracked against the window. Dead eyes stared at nothing, the man who'd terrorized Bethany for a month finally understanding what real threat assessment looked like.
That was for her.
The parking lot had gone quiet. Trawler turned to find Hurricane watching him, blood on his knuckles, something like respect in his cold smile.
"Dunlap?"
"Done."
"Good." Hurricane kicked the unconscious man at his feet. "These assholes are Jessup's B-team. Collectors and hired muscle. The smart ones ran when they saw the patches."
"How many down?"
"Eight neutralized. Two got away—headed east, probably reporting back already." Hurricane's smile sharpened. "Jessup's gonna know his torch job failed. Gonna know Salt Blood put down his top collector like a sick dog."
Riptide jogged over, barely winded despite the blood running down his forearm. "Building's clear. No fire damage, no breach. She's still inside?"
"Apartment upstairs." Trawler was already moving toward the bar. "I need to—"
The front door swung open.
Bethany stood in the doorway, shotgun raised, hair wild, wearing an oversized t-shirt that barely reached her thighs. Her eyes swept the parking lot—the bodies, the blood, the trucks with bullet holes and broken windows.
Then she found him.
"Trawler."
He crossed the distance without thinking, some gravitational pull that had nothing to do with protection and everything to do with need. She was alive. Unhurt. Still standing with that shotgun like she'd have put a hole in anyone who came through her door.
His woman. His.
The thought hit him like a freight train, staggering in its intensity. He'd killed for her. Would kill again. Would burn down the whole coast if that's what it took to keep her safe.
"You're hurt," she said, reaching for his face.
He caught her hand before she could touch him, not trusting himself. The adrenaline was still surging, the violence too fresh, and if she touched him now he'd do something they couldn't take back.
"Not my blood."
"There are bodies in my parking lot."
"Yeah."
"That man by the truck—"
"Dunlap." He said the name like a curse. "He won't touch you again."
Her breath caught. He watched her process it—the violence, the death, the reality of what protection meant when men like Jessup were involved. Watched for the fear, the disgust, the realization that she'd invited something dangerous into her life.
Instead, she stepped closer.
"He came to burn down my bar."
"Yes."
"With me inside."
"He didn't get the chance."
Her free hand—the one not holding the shotgun—pressed flat against his chest. He could feel her palm through his shirt, feel the heat of her seeping into his skin.
"You killed him."
"I did."
"For me."
Something cracked in her voice. Not fear. Not horror. Something rawer, more primal—recognition, maybe. Understanding. The acknowledgment that he'd taken a life to protect hers, and she wasn't running from it.
"Bethany." His voice came out wrecked. "We need to move. Jessup knows his crew failed. He'll send more—worse. This place isn't safe anymore."
"Where?"
"The compound. Salt Blood territory." He forced himself to think tactically, to push past the roar in his blood. "You'll be protected. Brothers everywhere, security I can control. Until this is finished."
"My bar—"
"Will be here when you get back." He covered her hand with his, pressing it harder against his chest. "But you won't be if you stay. Jessup doesn't make the same mistake twice. Next time, he'll send an army."
Hurricane appeared beside them, respectfully distant, giving them space. "She coming with us?"
Trawler looked at Bethany. Her dark eyes were huge in the pre-dawn darkness, processing too much too fast. Behind her, The Rusty Hook stood intact—saved, for now. But the bodies in the parking lot were a promise of worse to come.
"I can't leave," she whispered. "This is everything I have. Everything I built."
"It's a building." Trawler cupped her face with his free hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Buildings can be rebuilt. You can't."
"Trawler—"
"I'm asking." The words felt wrong in his mouth—he didn't ask, didn't request, didn't negotiate. But for her, he'd learn. "Come with me. Let me keep you safe. Please."
Her jaw worked. He could see the war playing out behind her eyes—pride versus pragmatism, stubbornness versus survival. She was a woman who'd never bent, never folded, never let anyone else fight her battles.
But she'd also watched him kill a man who'd come to burn her alive. She knew what they were dealing with now.
"Okay," she breathed. "Okay. I'll come."
Relief hit him so hard his knees almost buckled. He pulled her against his chest, shotgun and all, burying his face in her wild hair. She smelled like sleep and fear and something uniquely her, and he breathed it in like a man who'd been drowning.
"Pack a bag," he said against her hair. "Five minutes. Just the essentials."
"I don't know what's essential."
"Whatever you can't live without." He released her, stepping back before he lost the ability to let go entirely. "Five minutes. I'll handle the rest."
She nodded and disappeared back into the bar. Trawler stood in the doorway, watching her go, feeling something fundamental shift inside his chest.
Hurricane clapped him on the shoulder. "Brother. You good?"
No. He wasn't good. He was standing in a parking lot full of broken men, blood on his hands, heart hammering against his ribs because a woman with a shotgun and too much backbone had just agreed to let him protect her.
He wasn't good. He was something else entirely.
"Get the trucks moved," he said. "Bodies to the marshes. I want this lot clean before sunrise."
"And Dunlap?"
Trawler looked at the crumpled form by the truck. The man who'd put bruises on her regulars, broken her property, grabbed her wrist hard enough to leave marks. The man who'd come in the night to burn down everything she'd built.
"Let Jessup find him."
Hurricane's smile turned vicious. "A message."
"The only kind he'll understand." Trawler cracked his neck, feeling the adrenaline finally start to fade. "Bethany's mine. The bar's mine. Anyone else comes for what's mine, they end up the same way."
"Damn." Hurricane shook his head, something like wonder in his voice. "Never thought I'd see the day. Big silent Trawler, falling hard."
"Shut up."
"Brother, I'm not judging. She's got backbone. Stood there with that shotgun like she'd have dropped anyone who came through the door."
"She would have."
"I know." Hurricane's hand squeezed his shoulder. "That's why she fits. That's why this works."
Inside the bar, a light came on upstairs. Bethany, packing her life into a bag.
Trawler watched the window and waited for his woman to come back to him.