Chapter 5
Wake watched Marley lock up the bar and knew they had maybe two hours.
Two hours before Yates got to Maddox. Two hours before Maddox rounded up every Razorback he had. Two hours before a dozen angry nomads came roaring up that back road looking for blood.
The Anchor was a fixed location. Marley lived in the apartment above it. Which meant the woman who'd just told the Razorbacks to get out of her bar was sleeping twenty feet from the front door they'd be kicking in.
Not happening.
"You can't stay here tonight," he said.
Marley turned from the door, keys still in her hand. In the yellow glow of the parking lot's single light, she looked tired. Worn down by three days of fear and fury. But her chin came up anyway, stubborn as hell.
"This is my bar. I'm not running."
"I'm not asking you to run. I'm asking you to be smart." Wake closed the distance between them, stopping close enough to see the shadows under her eyes. "Maddox is coming back. Tonight, tomorrow—doesn't matter. When he does, you're the first person he's going to hurt."
"I've handled—"
"You've handled drunks." The words came out harder than he meant.
"You've handled handsy tourists and locals who can't hold their liquor.
This is different. These men kill people, Marley.
They break bones for fun and burn down buildings when they're bored.
You can't handle that. Nobody can. Not alone. "
She stared at him, something shifting in her expression. He'd used her name. He hadn't even realized it until it was out—hadn't asked for it, had just pulled it from somewhere, the way you know things about people who matter before you have any right to know them.
"How do you know my name?"
"Sign on the building says Boone's Rusty Anchor." He almost smiled. "Figured Boone was probably you."
"My uncle." Her voice went flat. "He's dead."
Wake filed that away. Dead uncle, inherited bar, the kind of history that explained why a woman would pour drinks for men who'd broken her bouncer's arm rather than walk away.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But that doesn't change anything. You're not safe here."
"And where am I supposed to go? I don't have family. I don't have friends with spare rooms. Everything I own is in that apartment."
"Then we pack what you need and get you somewhere they can't find you."
She laughed—a sharp, bitter sound. "Just like that. Some biker I met an hour ago is going to whisk me away to safety."
"Yeah." Wake met her eyes and held them. "Just like that."
Something passed between them. He felt it like a current, hot and electric, the same charge he'd felt when their fingers brushed over a beer bottle in a room full of men who wanted to hurt her. She felt it too—he could see it in the way her breath caught, the way her hand tightened on her keys.
"Why?" she asked. "You don't know me. You don't owe me anything."
Because you looked at me across a room full of Razorbacks and tried to warn me away from your own fight. Because you came around that bar and told them to get out even though you were scared. Because something about you makes me want to put myself between you and every bad thing in the world.
He didn't say any of that.
"Ridgerunners protect their own," he said instead. "You're ours now. That means you're mine to keep safe."
The words hung in the air between them. Mine. He hadn't meant to say it like that—possessive, claiming, like she was something that belonged to him. But he didn't take it back.
Marley's eyes widened slightly. Her lips parted like she was going to argue.
Then she nodded.
"Fine. Give me ten minutes."
She disappeared up the exterior stairs to her apartment. Wake pulled out his phone and called Limestone, who'd headed back to the compound after the Razorbacks cleared out.
"I'm taking her to the cove cabin," he said. "The one off Miller Road."
"You sure that's smart?" Limestone's voice was careful. "Prospect taking a woman to a safe house alone?"
"You got a better idea?"
Silence. Then: "Keep your head on straight. She's under protection, not claimed."
Not yet. The thought came unbidden, and Wake shoved it aside. "I know."
"Do you?" A pause. "I saw the way you looked at her, brother. Saw the way she looked at you too. Just remember—she's scared, she's vulnerable, and you're the man keeping her safe. Don't confuse gratitude for something else."
Wake wanted to argue. Wanted to say that what he'd felt when Marley met his eyes across that bar had nothing to do with gratitude and everything to do with something deeper. But Limestone wasn't wrong. The situation was complicated. Moving too fast could make it worse.
"I'll check in tomorrow," he said, and hung up.
Marley came down ten minutes later with a duffel bag over her shoulder and a lockbox under her arm. She'd changed into jeans and boots and a flannel shirt that looked soft enough to sleep in. Her hair was still in that messy ponytail, loose strands framing her face.
She looked good. Real. Like a woman who'd grown up working and never stopped.
"That everything?" Wake asked.
"Everything I need." She nodded at the lockbox. "Cash, papers, the gun my uncle left me. Everything else can burn."
He almost smiled. "It won't come to that."
"You don't know that."
"No," he admitted. "But I'll make sure you're not there if it does."
He led her to the old pickup parked behind the bar—a rust-spotted Chevy that had probably been old when her uncle bought it. She threw her bag in the back and climbed behind the wheel, and Wake mounted his bike at the edge of the lot.
"Follow me," he said. "Stay close, kill your headlights when I kill mine. The back roads are dark, but I know them. Don't lose sight of my taillight."
"I've been driving these roads since I was fourteen."
"Not running from men who want to hurt you, you haven't."
She didn't argue.
Wake pulled out first, checking the main road for any sign of Razorback bikes. Clear. He opened up the throttle and headed east, away from the highway, into the tangle of back roads that wound through the hollows like veins through a body.
He knew these roads. Had driven them a hundred times running parts from the marina to lakeside cabins, delivering generators and boat batteries to customers who lived where the pavement ended.
The Ozarks were full of places like that—gravel lanes that didn't show up on GPS, properties that existed in the spaces between official maps.
The cabin on Miller Road was one of them. Club property, technically—a safe house for brothers who needed to disappear for a while. One bedroom, one bathroom, a dock on a private cove that nobody bothered because the water was too shallow for speedboats.
He killed his headlight at the turnoff and watched Marley's truck go dark behind him. Good. She listened. Didn't question, didn't argue, just followed his lead because a woman who'd grown up in a bar knew when to trust the man getting her out.
The cabin appeared through the trees, dark and quiet. Wake pulled up to the porch and killed his engine, listening to the night. Cicadas. Water lapping against the dock. The distant hum of a boat motor somewhere across the lake.
No bikes. No engines. No threats.
He was off his bike before Marley's truck had fully stopped, checking the cabin's perimeter with quick, practiced movements. Door locked, windows intact, no signs of forced entry. The generator was cold, which meant no one had been here in weeks.
Good.
Marley met him at the porch with her bag and her lockbox, her eyes scanning the tree line with the wariness of someone who'd learned not to trust quiet. "This is it?"
"This is it." He pulled the spare key from under the third porch board—old habit, old hiding spot—and unlocked the door. "One bedroom, running water, propane for the stove. Generator's around back if you need power, but I wouldn't run it unless you have to. Sound carries on the lake."
She stepped past him into the dark cabin, and he caught her scent—whiskey and something floral, probably shampoo. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
Keep your head on straight.
"Kitchen's through there," he said, pointing. "Bedroom's on the right. There's a dock out back if you need to clear your head."
Marley set her things on the old wooden table and looked around. The cabin was sparse—bare walls, minimal furniture, the kind of place designed for function rather than comfort. But it was clean, and it was safe, and right now that was all that mattered.
"How long?" she asked.
"Until we handle the Razorbacks. Could be days. Could be longer."
"And you're going to—what? Stay here and guard me?"
"Tonight, yeah." He moved to the window, checking the sight lines to the road. "Tomorrow we figure out next steps. Right now, all that matters is that you're somewhere Maddox can't find you."
She was quiet for a moment. He could feel her watching him, cataloging his movements, trying to read him the way she probably read customers at her bar.
"You're good at this," she said finally. "Taking charge. Making plans."
"I'm a prospect. It's my job."
"No." She moved closer, and Wake's whole body went tight. "You're good at it because you care. That's different."
He turned to face her. She was standing maybe two feet away, close enough that he could see the pulse beating in her throat. Close enough that if he reached out, he could touch her.
He didn't.
"Get some sleep," he said. "I'll take the couch."
"Wake—"
"We'll talk tomorrow." He stepped back, putting distance between them. "You're exhausted. You're scared. Whatever you're feeling right now, it's not the time to act on it."
Her jaw tightened. For a moment he thought she was going to argue—to tell him he didn't get to decide what she felt or when she felt it.
Instead, she nodded. "Fine. Tomorrow."
She grabbed her bag and headed for the bedroom, pausing at the door to look back at him. "Thank you. For getting me out."
"That's my job."
"No," she said again. "It's not."
She disappeared into the bedroom. The door closed behind her.
Wake let out a breath and dropped onto the couch, scrubbing a hand over his face. Limestone's voice echoed in his head: Don't confuse gratitude for something else.
He wasn't confused. He knew exactly what he felt when he looked at Marley Boone. Knew exactly what that charge between them meant.
But she was under his protection. Which meant his feelings could wait.
He pulled his gun from his waistband and set it on the table beside the couch. Then he settled back against the cushions and watched the door, listening to the night, keeping guard while she slept.
Through the thin walls, he heard her moving around the kitchen. Cabinets opening and closing. The clink of glasses. The soft sound of water running.
Checking the inventory. Because a bartender's first instinct was to know what was on the shelf.
Wake smiled in the darkness and let himself watch the door.