3. GUNNER
Chapter three
GUNNER
Islept for maybe two hours before the old couch convinced me there wasn’t much point trying for more.
By five thirty I’d made coffee strong enough to wake the dead, checked the property twice and stripped my pistol across an old towel on the kitchen counter, cleaning it mostly because my hands needed something useful to do while my brain worked through everything Myla had told me the night before.
Nothing had moved beyond the tree line. No unfamiliar tracks cut across the dirt, no tires had come down the road and the house remained as forgotten as Ray had intended when he bought it.
That didn’t mean we were safe.
It only meant nobody had found us yet.
I fitted the slide back onto the pistol as the bedroom door opened behind me.
Myla appeared in yesterday’s jeans and the black shirt I’d left outside her door sometime during the night.
It hung loose around her, sleeves rolled above her wrists, while her dark hair fell tangled around a face that looked better than it had twelve hours earlier but still carried an ugly bruise around one eye.
Beautiful fucking mess.
Exactly the kind of thought I didn’t need.
She stopped when she saw the gun on the counter. “Do normal people make breakfast in this house, or do you just clean weapons until lunch?”
“Coffee’s behind you.”
Myla poured a cup, took one mouthful and looked at me as though I’d personally offended her.
“Jesus Christ. What did you do to this?”
“Made coffee.”
“You made something that could remove rust.”
“Still drinking it.”
She took another reluctant sip, proving my point, then leaned against the counter with one hand resting carefully near her injured side.
I noticed.
Of course I fucking noticed.
“You bleeding?”
“No.”
“Let me check.”
Her eyes narrowed over the rim of the mug. “You do realize I have stitches, not a terminal disease?”
“Yeah, sweetheart, and if you rip ’em open Elaina’s gonna blame me. Sit down.”
There was a pause where she clearly considered arguing purely because she enjoyed it, then she put the coffee aside and sat at the kitchen table.
I grabbed the medical kit and crouched beside her.
The dressing showed only a small patch of dried blood, and once I peeled it back, the stitches looked clean. The bruising around them was worse than yesterday, purple and black spreading across her ribs, with the clear shape of fingers still dark around one upper arm.
That bothered me more than the knife wound.
Whoever had grabbed her had held on hard.
Myla watched my face while I cleaned around the stitches.
“You look angrier than I feel.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Sure.”
I glanced up.
She smiled faintly.
“Your whole face goes blank when you’re pissed.”
Apparently she had started noticing things too.
“Good to know.”
“You were military for eight years. You must’ve learned better lying than that.”
I taped fresh gauze into place and sat back. “Military mostly taught me how to recognize when somebody was about to do something stupid.”
“And yet you joined a motorcycle club.”
“Never said the training worked.”
Her laugh came easier this morning, and I liked hearing it when it wasn’t followed by pain.
Probably liked it too much.
I stood before my attention drifted somewhere it had no business going and started pulling breakfast together from what Ray’s old fridge had to offer.
My cousin kept the power running and checked the place every few months because he hunted nearby, which meant the eggs were fresh enough not to kill us. Myla watched from the table while I cooked, still nursing the coffee she claimed was undrinkable.
“You said this place belonged to your uncle.”
“Yeah.”
“The man in the fishing picture?”
I glanced toward the living room.
“Ray.”
“You were close.”
It wasn’t really a question.
I cracked another egg into the pan and took a second before answering. “My old man drank more than he parented. Ray picked up most of the shit he forgot.”
Myla didn’t immediately start digging for details, which made it easier to keep talking.
“He taught me to shoot, fix engines, hunt, all the useful shit. Made sure I finished school instead of doing something dumb enough to land me inside.”
“And then you joined the Army.”
“Respectable version of doing dumb shit.”
She smiled. “Did you like it?”
“Parts of it. Liked knowing what my job was, liked the guys, liked being good at something that mattered. Rest of it could go fuck itself.”
That seemed enough for her.
I put eggs and toast in front of her, and she looked at the plate with exaggerated surprise.
“This looks normal.”
“Disappointed?”
“I was expecting jerky and whiskey after last night’s chili.”
“It’s six in the morning.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
I shook my head and sat opposite her.
We ate for a while without talking, and the silence had changed since the night before.
It didn’t feel like two strangers waiting for the other one to make a wrong move anymore.
There was something almost comfortable about sitting across from her in Ray’s old kitchen while morning slowly brightened the windows.
I didn’t examine that thought too closely.
Myla eventually put down her fork.
“What happens now?”
There it was.
Reality coming back.
“We stay here until Hawk works out whether the compound is clean enough to move you.”
“And if that takes days?”
“Ain’t keeping you prisoner, sweetheart. You wanna walk out, I’m not locking you in a room.”
Her expression tightened. “But you think I’ll die if I do.”
“I think Rafe found you once, you got away by luck and stubbornness, and next time he’ll plan better.”
“I stayed ahead of him for eight months.”
“Barely.”
The word landed harder than I intended.
Myla’s gaze dropped to her plate, and I saw the wall go up before she said anything.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
I leaned back and let her decide whether she wanted to continue.
For a few seconds she didn’t.
Then she wrapped both hands around the coffee mug and stared into it.
“I used to work accounts for a freight company. Nothing interesting—fuel cards, invoices, warehouse charges, payroll. Then I started finding numbers that didn’t make sense.
Trucks were being paid for routes they never ran, warehouses we supposedly didn’t use were invoicing us, and money kept disappearing into companies that barely existed. ”
“Black Thorns?”
“I didn’t know that at first. I thought somebody was stealing from the company, so I told my manager.”
The way she said it told me what came next.
“He was involved.”
My jaw tightened.
Myla gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “Two men were waiting outside my apartment that night. They wanted to know what I’d copied and whether I’d gone to the police. I hadn’t done either. I was just stupid enough to believe my boss wasn’t laundering money for a motorcycle club.”
“How’d you get out?”
“One of them got careless.”
I waited.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“I stabbed him with a corkscrew.”
For a second I just stared at her.
“A corkscrew?”
“It was what I could reach.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Myla looked offended. “I was fighting for my life.”
“I know. Just picturing some Black Thorns asshole explaining how a woman took him down with kitchen equipment.”
“He lived.”
“Shame.”
That earned me the smallest smile, but it faded quickly as she looked back at the table.
“I left after that. Changed apartments, jobs, numbers. I stopped talking to people because I didn’t know who was connected to who, and eventually I got good at keeping my head down.”
“For years?”
She nodded.
“What changed eight months ago?”
Her expression closed so fast I knew I’d found the line.
“I’m not ready to tell you that.”
Everything in me wanted the answer. Eight months was when she’d started running again, when Rafe had gone from an old threat to somebody actively hunting her, which meant whatever she wasn’t saying mattered.
Still, she’d given me more this morning than she had last night.
“Alright.”
Myla frowned. “That’s it?”
“What d’you want me to do, drag it outta you?”
“No. I just…” She stopped, visibly frustrated. “You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking exactly like the kind of man I shouldn’t trust and then behaving like somebody I might.”
That landed somewhere deep enough to make me uncomfortable.
I leaned my forearms against the table.
“Then don’t trust me yet.”
She looked surprised.
“You’ve known me half a day, Myla. I ain’t asking you to hand me your life because I made eggs and didn’t steal your flash drive. Watch me. Decide for yourself. Trust me when I’ve earned it.”
For a moment she only studied me.
Then she nodded.
Something changed between us after that.
Nothing dramatic. She didn’t suddenly hand me every secret she had or stop checking where I was when I moved behind her, but the tension in her shoulders eased enough that I noticed.
After breakfast, I took her outside.
The property ran down toward a shallow creek before climbing into pine-covered hills, isolated enough that a vehicle coming up the only usable road would give us plenty of warning. Myla walked beside me more slowly than she probably wanted to, and I shortened my stride without mentioning it.
Naturally, she noticed.
“You don’t need to walk like I’m ninety.”
“You want me to leave you behind?”
“I’m injured, not dying.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a challenge.”
She muttered something rude.
I almost smiled.
Near the edge of the tree line, I stopped and drew my pistol.
Myla immediately went alert.
“What?”
“You said you know how to shoot.”
“I do.”
“How many times you been to a range?”
Her hesitation told me everything.
“Three.”
I laughed.
“Oh, fuck off.”
“You know how to shoot paper while standing still. Ain’t the same thing as somebody shooting back.”
She folded her arms. “You offering to teach me?”
“I’m making sure you don’t put a round through my ass if Rafe finds us.”
Her gaze dropped before she could stop it.
Straight to my ass.
I waited.
When she realized, color rose into her cheeks.
“Don’t.”
“Didn’t say anything, sweetheart.”
“You were about to.”
“Was thinking plenty.”
That got me another glare, but when I held the pistol out grip-first, she took it.
Her stance wasn’t terrible.
Her grip was.
I moved behind her and adjusted both.
Myla went still the moment my chest came close to her back.
“Relax.”
“You’re standing behind me with your hands around mine and there’s a loaded gun involved. I’m doing my best.”
Her voice had changed.
So had her breathing.
I felt both.
“Hand higher on the grip,” I said, keeping my own voice even. “Other one wraps around. Don’t lock your elbows, and quit trying to fight the recoil before it happens.”
My hands covered hers as I adjusted the angle of the pistol.
She smelled like my soap and something warmer underneath it.
I needed to step back.
Instead, I stayed long enough to say, “Sight on the trunk. Breathe out, then squeeze. Don’t jerk it.”
Myla fired.
Bark snapped from the tree several inches left of where she’d aimed.
She looked over her shoulder.
“That was close.”
“Close gets you killed.”
“Do you give everyone pep talks like this?”
“Only the ones I want alive.”
The words came out before I could soften them.
Myla’s expression changed.
I stepped back.
“Again.”
By the fifth round she was grouping them tightly enough that I stopped correcting every shot, and by the seventh there was obvious satisfaction on her face.
She lowered the pistol and smiled at the damaged tree.
“Still think I’m going to shoot your ass?”
“Accidentally? Less worried.”
She turned toward me.
The smile stayed.
We were standing too close.
Again.
My eyes dropped to her mouth, and this time she didn’t pretend not to notice.
Her lips parted slightly.
I could have kissed her.
Hell, I wanted to.
Then I saw the tiny flicker of uncertainty behind the attraction, the part of her still waiting to find out whether wanting something from a man meant losing control of the situation.
That made the decision for me.
I stepped away and held out my hand.
“Keep the pistol.”
Myla blinked. “What?”
I took her smaller gun from her jacket, checked it and handed it back too.
“You carry both.”
“You trust me with two guns?”
“Not particularly.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“Then why give me yours?”
“Because if shit goes wrong, sweetheart, I’d rather take my chances with you armed than helpless.”
Something softened in her face.
Not fear.
Not suspicion.
Something quieter.
We started back toward the house, and halfway there she glanced at me.
“You know I could run with your gun.”
“Yep.”
“And you’d still let me keep it?”
“For now.”
“What if I don’t come back?”
I looked at her.
Really looked.
At the fading bruise around her eye, my shirt hanging loose over her jeans and the stubborn woman who had spent years surviving because nobody else could be trusted to do it for her.
“I’d come get you.”
Myla smiled.
This time she didn’t look away.
Neither did I.
And that was becoming one hell of a problem.