Chapter 4
Marley heard the bikes before she saw them.
Two engines, running hard up the back road. Different from the Razorback rumble she'd learned to dread—cleaner, more controlled. The sound of men who knew exactly where they were going and what they'd do when they got there.
She set down the glass she'd been washing and watched the door.
The Razorbacks heard it too. Six of them tonight, a skeleton crew while Maddox ran whatever business kept him busy.
Brock Yates was in charge, the big bastard who'd helped hold Hank down while Maddox broke his arm.
He sat at the back table like he owned it, cards spread in front of him, a half-empty bottle at his elbow.
The engines cut out. Boots on gravel. Two sets, heavy and unhurried.
The door swung open, and the man from last night walked in like he was ordering a beer.
Marley's breath caught.
He looked different tonight. Same lean build, same scarred hands, same quiet intensity in those lake-water eyes—but there was something else now. Purpose. The coiled readiness of a man who'd come to handle a problem.
And he'd brought backup.
The man beside him was older, bigger, with a jaw that looked carved from the limestone bluffs and hands the size of dinner plates. His cut read VP on the front—Vice President. This wasn't some prospect running solo reconnaissance anymore.
This was the Ridgerunners coming to take back what was theirs.
Yates stood up so fast his chair hit the floor. "Bar's reserved."
The younger one—Wake, she'd heard someone call him last night—didn't even slow down. He walked to the bar like Yates hadn't spoken, like the six Razorbacks reaching for whatever weapons they had tucked in their waistbands were furniture instead of threats.
"Two beers," he said to Marley. "Whatever's cold."
She stared at him. "Are you insane?"
Something flickered in his eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or appreciation. "Just thirsty."
"I said the bar's reserved." Yates was moving now, circling toward them with that roadhouse swagger that said he'd put men in the hospital and enjoyed it. "You Ridgerunner boys don't hear so good?"
The VP turned around slow. He didn't say anything. Didn't have to. The look on his face said everything—bored contempt for men who talked when they should've been running.
"Sit down," he said. Two words. Flat as stone.
Yates laughed. "You think your patches scare me? We've got six men in here and more on the way. You're outnumbered, old man."
The VP moved faster than a man his size should have been able to. One hand closed around Yates's throat, lifted him clean off his feet, and slammed him back into his chair hard enough to crack the wood. The whole thing took maybe two seconds.
"I said sit down."
The bar went dead silent.
Marley watched Yates gasp for air, his face going purple, his hands scrabbling uselessly at the VP's wrist. The other Razorbacks had frozen—guns half-drawn, knives half-out, none of them willing to make the first move against a man who'd just manhandled their leader like a child.
"Here's how this works." The VP's voice was calm, almost conversational. "You're in a Ridgerunner-friendly bar. You've been drinking Ridgerunner-friendly liquor. And you've been treating a Ridgerunner-friendly bartender like she works for you."
He released Yates, who sucked in air with a wet, desperate sound.
"That ends tonight."
Marley felt something shift in her chest. Something that had been wound tight for three days—three days of pouring drinks and smiling through her teeth and watching these bastards treat her bar like their personal clubhouse—finally started to loosen.
She came around the bar.
Wake's head turned, tracking her movement. She felt his eyes on her like a physical weight, hot and intense, and some part of her brain that wasn't focused on the immediate danger wondered what it would feel like to have those eyes on her somewhere private.
Focus, Marley.
She stopped in front of Yates's table, close enough to smell the fear-sweat under his cheap cologne. The other Razorbacks watched her with varying degrees of surprise and contempt—who was this bartender, and what the hell did she think she was doing?
"You're eighty-sixed," she said.
Yates stared at her. "What?"
"Eighty-sixed. Banned. You and every other Razorback who's walked through that door." Marley crossed her arms over her chest and met his eyes without flinching. "This is my bar. You don't drink here. You don't play pool here. You don't hold your little card games here. You find somewhere else."
"You can't—"
"I just did."
Yates's face twisted. For a moment Marley thought he was going to lunge at her anyway, VP be damned. She'd seen that look before—on drunk tourists, on handsy locals, on every man who thought a woman behind a bar was an invitation instead of a boundary.
But then Wake moved.
He didn't do anything dramatic. Just stepped forward, putting himself between Marley and Yates, his body angled like a shield. The movement was subtle. Possessive. The kind of thing a man did when something was his and he wasn't going to let anyone touch it.
Marley should have been annoyed. She'd been handling men like Yates since she was sixteen, didn't need some biker she'd met five minutes ago playing protector.
But the way he stood there—solid and certain, daring Yates to try something—made her pulse kick in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
"You heard her," Wake said. "Time to go."
Yates looked from Wake to the VP to the other five Razorbacks, doing the math. Two patched Ridgerunners against six nomads should have been easy odds—but the VP had just put him in a chair with one hand, and the younger one had that quiet readiness that said he knew exactly how to hurt someone.
"Maddox is gonna hear about this," Yates said finally.
"Good." The VP smiled, and it wasn't friendly. "Tell him Limestone sends his regards. Tell him the Anchor is under Ridgerunner protection, and the next Razorback who walks through that door leaves in pieces."
Yates stood up slowly, rubbing his throat where Limestone's fingers had left red marks. He jerked his head at the others, and they filed out one by one—guns holstered, knives sheathed, all that bravado bleeding away as they realized they were outmatched.
At the door, Yates turned back. His eyes found Marley's, and the hatred in them made her stomach clench.
"This isn't over, sweetheart."
"Get out of my bar," she said.
He left. The engines roared to life, headlights sweeping across the windows as the Razorbacks peeled out of the lot and disappeared into the night.
Marley let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"You okay?"
Wake's voice, low and close. She turned to find him right there, closer than she'd realized, those lake-water eyes searching her face like he was cataloging every bruise she didn't have.
"I'm fine." She stepped back, needing space to think. "I've been handling assholes like that since before I could legally drink."
"Noticed." Something warmed in his expression. "That took guts. Coming around the bar like that."
"It's my bar. I'm not letting some nomad trash tell me who can drink here."
Limestone appeared beside them, pulling a stool up to the bar like he'd done it a hundred times. "She's got a mouth on her," he said to Wake. "I like that."
"She's standing right here," Marley said. "And she's got questions. Starting with who the hell you people are and why you just ran off the men who've been terrorizing my bar for three days."
Wake and Limestone exchanged a look. Some silent communication that Marley couldn't read, the kind of shorthand men developed when they trusted each other absolutely.
"Ozark Ridgerunners," Wake said finally. "The Anchor's been friendly territory for years. We protect what's ours."
"Yours." Marley raised an eyebrow. "I don't recall signing anything."
"You didn't have to. You serve Ridgerunner brothers, you treat them fair, you don't water down the drinks." He almost smiled. "That makes you family."
Family. Marley didn't know what to do with that.
She'd spent her whole life surrounded by people who were supposed to be family—her mother chasing bad men, her uncle drinking himself to death, a parade of "uncles" who stayed until they got bored and left without looking back.
Family had never meant protection. It had meant disappointment waiting to happen.
But the way Wake said it...
"They'll be back," she said, pushing the thought away. "Yates will tell Maddox, and Maddox will come with twice as many men."
"Probably."
"That doesn't worry you?"
Wake leaned against the bar, his scarred hands flat on the wood, his eyes holding hers with an intensity that made her skin prickle. "You've got the Ridgerunners at your back now. Whatever comes through that door, we handle it."
"We," she repeated. "I just met you."
"Doesn't matter." He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. "You're under our protection. That means you're ours to keep safe."
Ours. The word sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with the night air coming through the open door.
Limestone cleared his throat. "About those beers."
Marley blinked, then laughed—a real laugh, the first one in three days. "Right. Beers. On the house, for what you just did."
She went behind the bar and pulled two cold bottles, setting them down in front of the men who'd just turned her life upside down.
Wake took his beer but didn't drink. He just watched her, those scarred hands wrapped around the bottle, those intense eyes tracking her every movement like she was something worth watching.
Something worth keeping.
Marley turned away before he could see the flush climbing her cheeks.
Get it together, she told herself. He's just another biker. Just another man who'll leave when something better comes along.
But when she glanced back and caught him still watching, still waiting, still looking at her like she was the only thing in the room that mattered—
She wasn't so sure anymore.