Chapter Ten #2
Raven stands beside her with coffee in one hand and a knife in the other. Because apparently that woman considers breakfast a combat sport. Her eyes move over Harper. Then me. Then my bare chest beneath my cut.
“Well,” Raven says. “At least the apocalypse waited until after foreplay.”
Harper’s face turns red so fast I almost enjoy it.
Savage appears behind Raven, expression carved from stone. “Not now.”
Raven takes a sip of coffee. “I said after.”
Savage’s jaw ticks before he moves away. Even with danger in the yard, my mouth nearly moves.
Harper points at Raven. “I’m deciding whether I like you.”
“You do,” Raven says. “It’s irritating for both of us.”
Outside, dawn stains the compound gray. Savage stands near the gate with Saint crouched beside a cardboard box sitting in the dirt just inside the fence. No one touches it.
Crimson stands a few feet away, face tight with fury. “Could be a bomb.”
“No ticking,” Saint says.
“Not all bombs tick, genius.”
Saint glances up. “Your insight continues to stun me.”
Raven steps onto the porch beside Harper. “If it were a bomb, Reaper would have put it somewhere men with inflated survival instincts would touch it faster.”
Crimson’s eyes cut to her. “You got bomb expertise now?”
“No. I have idiot expertise. It’s transferable.”
Savage’s mouth twitches once before his gaze cuts through the yard.
I stop near the steps, keeping Harper behind my shoulder. She doesn’t argue this time. That tells me she feels it too. Something bad.
Savage looks at her. “It’s addressed to you.”
My blood goes colder. On the side of the box, written in black marker is Steel’s Medic.
I start toward the box, but her hand catches my wrist. Every man in the yard sees it. Every man in the yard sees me stop.
“Don’t,” she says. Her voice is steady, but her hand is not.
I look down at her fingers around my wrist. Then at her face. “I need to see.”
“No, you want to see. There’s a difference.”
“She’s right,” Raven says.
I look at her. Raven doesn’t flinch. She lifts a brow like she has already survived worse men than me before coffee.
“If Reaper wanted you dead with it, it wouldn’t be sitting unopened,” Saint says.
Crimson snorts. “Unless he figured Steel’s too stupid not to touch it.”
I turn my head slowly, and Crimson’s mouth closes.
Harper steps around me before I can stop her. “What exactly is your job here?”
Crimson blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Because so far your contribution has been criticizing the people actually thinking. Is that an elected position?”
The yard goes silent. Saint looks at the ground. Fury coughs. Raven smiles into her coffee like she just found religion and it came with violence. Savage’s mouth twitches once, deadly and quick.
Crimson’s face darkens. “You don’t know shit about club business.”
“No,” Harper says. “But I know panic dressed as masculinity when I see it.”
Jesus Christ. I am going to have to kill fewer men just to keep watching her do this. Crimson steps forward and so I move. So does Savage. So does Raven. She doesn’t get in front of Harper. She moves beside her.
Crimson stops, but Harper doesn’t even flinch. That does something dangerous to me.
Savage’s voice cuts low. “Back up, Crimson.”
Crimson glares at Harper, then me. “This is the problem.” I go still as he points toward her. “She’s got him leashed. Reaper sees it. Everyone sees it. Steel’s supposed to be our hammer, and now he’s standing around waiting for a medic to tell him when to swing.”
The words hit the yard hard, because they aren’t entirely wrong. That’s why I hate them.
Harper’s hand drops from my wrist, and I feel the loss like a wound.
Before I can speak, Raven laughs, and it’s not a nice sound.
Crimson’s glare shifts to her. “Something funny?”
“You,” Raven says. “Mostly the part where you think a man thinking before he swings means the woman near him is a leash.”
Crimson’s jaw tightens. “Stay out of it.”
Raven steps forward, and Savage says her name once in warning. She ignores him, which tells me a lot about their relationship and nothing I needed to know before dawn.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think I will because men like you are predictable as hell. The second a woman makes a monster pause, you call her a weakness. You never stop to consider maybe the pause is the first smart thing he’s done all week.”
The yard goes deathly still, and Harper’s breath catches softly.
Raven continues, voice calm and sharp. “She isn’t his leash. She’s the reason he’s looking where he swings. You should try it sometime. Might save the rest of us from your mouth.”
Crimson looks at Savage. “You letting her talk to me like that?”
Savage’s expression doesn’t change. “She’s still talking, isn’t she?”
That shuts him up. But Raven’s words only buy a second. This is my fight. My woman. My club.
I step forward, stopping in front of Crimson. “You think I can’t do my job?”
Crimson lifts his chin. “I think Reaper found your weak spot.”
I lean in close enough that he can see exactly what lives behind my eyes.
“No. He found what happens when men like him forget the difference between weakness and reason.” Crimson’s brow tightens, and I continue, my voice low.
“Before Harper, I would have ridden out alone, killed the first man with answers, and maybe walked straight into Reaper’s trap.
That’s what he counted on. That’s what you counted on, because men like you only trust violence when it’s stupid. ”
A muscle jumps in Crimson’s jaw.
I feel the club listening. Every brother. Every prospect. Harper, especially Harper.
“I am still the hammer,” I say. “I just know where to swing now.”
Savage says nothing, and that means I should keep going. So I do.
“Anyone who sees Harper as a leash, they’re blind.
She kept Dante alive, which gave us the warehouse.
She answered Reaper’s call and bought Saint a trace.
She stopped me from giving the enemy exactly what he wanted.
” I step closer. “So you can call her a liability but understand this. You won’t do it twice. ”
Crimson’s eyes flick to Savage.
Savage’s face is cold. “You heard him.”
That’s it. Line drawn. Crimson backs down because he likes living. So he can be smart then...
Saint clears his throat. “As stirring as that was ... box.” He gestures to the package on the ground, and Harper releases a shaky breath behind me.
I want to turn, but I don’t. Not yet.
Saint opens the box carefully with a knife on the end of a pole because he is dramatic but not stupid. The flaps fall open. Inside is a bloodstained paramedic jacket. But it’s not Harper’s.
Wrapped around it’s a strip of black duct tape, holding down a photo of Harper’s apartment window with the broken latch. It’s a grainy shot of her standing in the bedroom, phone in hand, before she knew how close danger had gotten.
My vision goes white at the edges.
Harper makes a sound behind me, small, barely there but enough to gut me.
Raven steps closer to her, not touching, just near. “Breathe.”
Harper does. Once. Twice.
On top of the jacket sits a phone. It starts ringing, and not one person moves. Savage picks it up with gloved fingers and answers on speaker.
Reaper laughs. “Did she like my gift?”
My vision sharpens until the whole world becomes one target I can’t see. Savage says nothing.
Reaper sighs. “Steel there? Or is his medic holding his balls in her little healing hands?”
Harper stiffens at his word, Raven shaking her head as she mutters, “That’s just lazy. Insult work needs improvement.”
‘Steel, stay still.’ I don’t know whose voice says it in my head. Harper’s? Raven’s? Mine? Maybe all three?
Reaper continues, pleased with himself. “I wonder if he touched you with those hands after he killed my men, angel. Did he wash first? Or did you like the blood?”
The yard goes black around the edges as pure, unfiltered rage consumes me.
Harper’s hand finds my back, not my wrist this time, my spine. Her palm presses between my shoulder blades, over my cut, over the patch, over the weapon inside the man.
Anchor or chain?
Raven watches me. Savage watches me. Reaper listens for the break. I don’t give it to him.
Harper steps forward.
“No,” I growl.
She ignores me, eyes on the phone. “Running out of material, Reaper?” The laughter stops. Good girl. No. Not good girl. Her voice stays clean and cold. “You keep sending props because you can’t reach me. That must be embarrassing.”
Reaper breathes hard once. “I can reach anyone.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
Silence descends. Savage’s eyes sharpen. Saint is already tracing.
Raven’s mouth curves faintly. “There she is.”
Harper continues, brutal and bright. “Because you’re hiding. Because you set traps and run before they close. Because you’re not hunting Steel. You’re begging him to chase you.” My chest tightens.
Reaper’s voice drops. “Careful, angel.”
“I told you. Not religious.”
“You will be when you’re praying for mercy.”
I move, but Harper’s hand shoots out, finding my wrist without looking. This time I barely stop.
Reaper hears the movement anyway. “There he is. Does he shake when you touch him?”
Harper looks at me then. And damn her, there’s no fear in her face. Only faith.
“He doesn’t shake,” she says. “He waits because he already knows how this ends.”
Something in me breaks clean open.
Saint lifts two fingers, indicating the trace is running. Savage nods once. “Keep him talking,” he mouths. Harper sees it and keeps going.
“You wanted him wild,” she says. “That’s why you keep using me. But here’s the thing, Reaper. You don’t understand Steel at all.”
Reaper laughs. “I know exactly what he is.”
“No,” Harper says. “You know what he can do. That isn’t the same thing.”
The yard is silent. My men hear every word. So do I. Raven’s eyes flick to mine, and for one second, I see something like understanding there. She knows what it costs to be seen by a woman who refuses to blink.
Reaper’s voice turns venomous. “I’ll show you what he is when I make him choose between you and his club.”
There it is. The real hit.