Chapter Four
Wrong Window
Steel
I know because I’m staring at my phone, waiting for her to text, when it happens. I’m not sleeping and not even trying. Sleep is for men who don’t have enemies circling a woman’s apartment while she pretends she can handle danger with sarcasm and a broken window latch.
Her name lights up the screen, and my blood goes cold.
I answer before the first ring finishes. “Harper.”
Breathing. Fast. Controlled but wrong. Like she’s trying to make panic behave, and it keeps slipping its leash.
“There’s someone at my window.”
The world narrows. Not to fear, fear is too slow. This is purpose.
“Where are you?”
“In my bedroom.”
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes.”
“And the lights?”
“They’re off,” she says softly.
“Good girl.” The words are out before I can kill them.
Silence snaps tight over the line. Even now, even scared, she has enough fire left to hate that.
“Don’t start with me,” she whispers, and the corner of my mouth moves into an almost smile.
“Not starting. Stay away from the window.”
“Really? Because I was about to invite him in for tea.” There she is. Sharp mouth. Shaking voice. Spine still made of steel.
I’m already moving, boots on, gun tucked into my waistband, cut over my shoulders, and keys in my fist.
“Bedroom closet,” I say. “Get inside. Close the door. Don’t hang up.”
“I’m not hiding in my closet,” she hisses.
“You are.”
“No.”
I stop at my bike, jaw locked so hard it hurts. “Harper.”
“Don’t use that voice.”
“Then listen the first time.”
Another tap comes through the phone. Soft but deliberate, and my vision goes red at the edges. Her breath catches, and that sound does something bad to me. Something primitive. Something that doesn’t care about club politics or restraint or whether the men outside her building are useful alive.
“Closet,” I say again, lower, and this time, she moves.
I hear it, bare feet on floorboards, a door creaking, fabric rustling, and her breath too loud in my ear.
“Okay,” she whispers. “I’m in.”
“Sit down.”
“I am.”
“Is there anything you can use as a weapon?”
“A shoe.”
“What kind?”
“One with a heel.”
“Good. Aim for the eyes.”
A tiny, terrified laugh escapes her. “You’re insane.”
“That sounds about right.”
I swing onto my bike, and the engine roars alive under me. Too loud for this hour, but that’s too fucking bad.
“I’m five minutes out,” I tell her.
“What if they get in before you get here?” she asks, and for the first time, I hear real fear in her voice.
I feel it too, and I don’t waste breath pretending otherwise. “I’m five minutes out.”
“Steel.”
The way she says my name cuts under my ribs. Not Marcus. Not gargoyle. Not asshole. Steel.
“What?”
“Don’t hang up.”
My hand tightens around the throttle. “Never.”
I ride like hell is chasing me. The city blurs. Red lights become suggestions. Empty streets stretch under my tires while Harper’s breathing fills my helmet speaker. Every inhale is too sharp. Every exhale too thin.
I hear another sound through the line. Glass, not breaking, but scraping. Someone is testing the window.
My teeth grind together. “Talk to me,” I say.
“I’m going to throw up.”
“Later.”
“Your bedside manner sucks.”
“You’re not my patient.”
“Thank God,” she huffs, and I imagine her rolling her eyes.
The scrape comes again, and Harper goes silent. I don’t like her silence.
“Harper.”
“I’m here.”
“Keep talking.” I need to keep her attention off what is happening outside.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
“I hate your bike.” The words fall from her lips, and from anyone else I would be offended.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. It’s obnoxious.” She is poking me, trying to get a reaction.
“It’s fast,” I point out like an idiot.
“It’s loud,” she counters.
“You heard me leave earlier?”
She pauses before she answers quietly, “Yes.”
That one word does things to me that it shouldn’t. She heard me leave. She listened for it. She noticed when I was gone.
I cut down a side street and push the bike harder. “I’m close.”
“Steel.”
“What?”
“I think he’s inside.”
Everything in me shuts off. No noise. No heat. No heartbeat. Only purpose.
“What did you hear?”
“The window. Something opened. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t...” Her voice cracks. Not much but enough.
I turn the corner onto her street with my lights off and kill the engine before I reach the building. The bike rolls silently to the curb. Her apartment is on the third floor with her bedroom window facing the alley.
I see the shape immediately. A man crouched on the fire escape outside her window, half-hidden in shadow, one hand prying at the frame.
He’s not inside, not yet.
“Stay in the closet,” I say.
“Are you here?”
“Yes.”
The man freezes at the sound of my boots on the metal ladder. He turns, but he’s too slow. I climb the fire escape fast, every step ringing beneath me. He reaches for his waistband. I grab his wrist before the weapon clears and break it against the railing.
His scream splits the night, and Harper gasps through the phone.
“Don’t listen,” I tell her.
Then I slam the man’s face into the brick. Once. Twice. His body goes loose, but not completely limp. I strip the knife from his belt and toss it down into the alley. Then I pin him by the throat against the railing and let him see me.
Recognition hits.
His broken mouth opens around blood. “Steel.”
“Wrong window,” I reply through gritted teeth.
He gurgles. I squeeze until his eyes bulge.
“Who sent you?” I demand.
He claws at my arm with his good hand. His nails scrape over tattooed skin. Pointless. Weak. “Vultures,” he chokes.
“I want a name.”
“I don’t...”
I drive my knee into his ribs, and something cracks.
“Give me a name.”
“Reaper,” he wheezes. “Reaper said to scare her. Just scare her.”
Scare her. I look through the cracked gap in Harper’s window, into her dark bedroom. Small and quiet. A life untouched by men like him or me, until we dragged blood across her doorstep.
Just scare her.
My hand tightens, and the man’s feet kick once.
“Steel?” Harper’s voice cuts through the phone. “Steel, talk to me.”
It saves his life. Not because I have mercy but because I don’t want to scare her any more. I loosen my grip enough for him to suck air.
“You crawl back to Reaper,” I say into his bloody face, “and you tell him Harper Quinn is under Sons’ protection.” His eyes roll, and I shake him hard enough to snap him back to attention. “No. You tell him she’s under mine.”
The difference matters. It will start a war faster. Not that I give a single flying fuck.
I throw him down the fire escape stairs. He hits the landing below with a crash and a wet groan. He’s alive, barely useful, but good enough.
I climb through Harper’s window.
The room smells like her. Clean sheets, tea, hospital soap, and fear. My boots hit her bedroom floor, and I lock the window behind me with the pathetic little latch that started this whole thing. Then I cross to the closet.
“Harper.” No answer.
I knock once on the door. Softly. Which is ridiculous, considering I just climbed through her window after turning a man into a message.
“It’s me.”
The door opens slowly. She’s sitting on the floor, knees drawn to her chest, phone gripped in one hand and a black high heel in the other.
Her hair is loose around her face, and her eyes are huge. She’s alive, and that’s the only thing keeping me from going back outside and finishing what I started.
She stares at me. Then at the blood on my knuckles. Then back at my face.
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
Her throat works. “Did you want to?”
“Yes.” Honesty lands between us like a bomb.
She absorbs it, and I watch her do it. I watch the medic, the woman, the survivor, all fight for room behind her eyes.
“You climbed through my window,” she says.
“He was on the fire escape.”
“That doesn’t answer my statement.”
“No.”
Her laugh shakes and breaks halfway through. She presses a hand to her mouth as if she could force it back down.
I crouch in front of her. Slowly. Carefully. “I’m not touching you,” I say.
Her eyes snap to mine. “I know.”
“You’re safe.”
“I don’t feel safe.” That cuts deeper than it should.
I nod once. “Fair.”
Her fingers tighten around the heel. “There was a man at my window.”
“Yes.”
“Because of your club.”
“Yes.”
“And you came.”
I hold her stare. “Yes.”
She looks away first, breath shuddering out of her. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate that I called you.”
“I know that too.”
“I hate that it helped.” That one gets under my ribs and stays there.
I stand because staying on my knees in front of her feels too much like begging, and I have no right to beg from a woman whose life just got cracked open by my world.
“We need to move you.”
Her head jerks up. “No.”
“Harper.”
“No. Absolutely not. I am not going to your clubhouse.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“I can call the police.”
“You can.”
“Stop saying that like it means nothing.”
“It means paperwork. Maybe a patrol car for fifteen minutes. Maybe they take a report. Maybe someone leaks your name before sunrise.”
She pales. I hate being right. I hate that she knows it too.
“I have a shift tomorrow,” she says.
“No.”
Her eyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“No shift.”
“You don’t get to decide if I go to work.”
“I do when men are climbing through your window.”
“They didn’t climb through my window. You did.”
“He opened it.”
“And you bled on my floor.”
I look down. A few drops stain the worn boards near my boot. I almost apologize but the words stick in my throat like a bone.
Her face shifts. Less fear now. More anger. Anger is easier for both of us.
“Sit,” she says suddenly.
I frown. “What?”
“Sit. Down.”
“No.”
She rises from the closet floor, still holding the heel like she might use it on me. “Your hand is bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“I swear to God, if one more man bleeds in front of me and tells me he’s fine, I’m going to commit a felony.”
Despite everything, my mouth almost curves.
She points toward the bed. “Sit, Steel.”
I should refuse. I should put distance between us. Call Savage. Call Saint. Sweep the building. Drag her to the compound where walls and guns and men I trust can stand between her and the Vultures.