Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Her gaze moved toward Trigger on the porch outside the front window, then returned to me with a softness she made no effort to hide. “You’re acting less like a security consultant and more like someone who thinks my safety belongs to him.”
“It does.” The answer left my mouth without hesitation.
Bex looked down, gathering whatever she needed before meeting my eyes again, and the pleased light there told me the claim had landed exactly where I intended.
My phone vibrated before I could close the distance between us, and I dug it out to see a message from my prez.
Stryker
Office. Twenty minutes. Extra men are five out. Bex’ll be covered while you’re gone.
I disliked every part of leaving except the fact that Stryker would not have called unless the threat had moved beyond my personal response and into club territory. Headlights swept across the front windows as Ghost arrived with two more brothers, filling the approaches with enough Black Crowns firepower to make anyone watching reconsider every decision that had led him here.
“Gotta go to the compound for a bit.” My hand closed around her nape when concern flickered across her expression, bringing her close enough for her breath to touch my mouth. “Stay inside. Don’t open a door, step onto the porch, or even change rooms without one of the brothers knowing.”
Bex rolled her eyes. “That last one feels excessive.”
“I’m fine with excessive.”
“So I noticed.” She placed her palm against my chest, and the contact made every nerve in my body light up. “You’re coming back?”
“Soon as I can.”
“Then I’ll be here.”
It took everything I had, but I resisted the pull toward her lips. Kissing her now would end three weeks of restraint in her kitchen with half my club outside, and the possibility of her father walking in on us at any moment. The fact that I seriously considered it proved logic was in a battle to the death.
I brushed my thumb along the side of her neck, memorizing the shiver that followed before forcing myself to step back. When I opened the front door, I found Raines standing on the porch.
“All these boys have licenses for the weapons they’re carrying, right?”
I paused, then asked, “You really want to know?”
He glared at me, then sighed and muttered, “No.”
“Won’t be long,” I told him before I began a thorough inspection of the house one last time.
Whoever targeted Rebecca Raines had made me face the truth that she was mine, and the only remaining uncertainty was how much of his life I would dismantle before he understood the mistake.
5
CIPHER
The compound gates opened before my bike reached the first camera, and I took the private road too fast for comfort without giving enough of a fuck to slow down. My thoughts remained at Raines’s house, where Bex remained inside a temporary security perimeter. Every rational assessment confirmed she was safe for the next hour, but reason had lost credibility the moment I found a tracker beneath her car and a photograph proving someone had been watching her.
The clubhouse was quiet when I entered through the side door, but I heard the low murmur of voices down the hall. I stepped into the office carrying my laptop beneath one arm while my cut settled heavily across my shoulders. Stryker stood behind his walnut desk facing the entrance, but most everyone else sat around the conference table, where Hawkeye occupied the chair closest to his right, and Ghost leaned back near the far end with a coffee mug between both hands. Judge, Bishop, Nomad, Ledger, Wraith, and Smoke filled the remaining seats, every man already aware that a technical investigation had become something uglier.
I connected the laptop to the secure club network and laid out the sequence of events. Nobody interrupted while I spoke, but the shift around the table told me they heard more than the technical facts. I wasn’t describing a witness anymore, and I was smart enough to know that every brother in the room recognized the difference.
My gaze moved to the small exterior feed in the lower corner of the laptop, where a temporary camera showed the front of Raines’s house and the shadowed line of trees beyond it. Nothing had changed since I checked forty seconds earlier, but I enlarged the image long enough to confirm the porch remained empty and one of the prospects was still visible near the garage. When I returned to the access logs, Stryker’s eyes held enough quiet satisfaction to irritate me.
“That feed tell you something new the last six times?”
I ignored him and continued to scroll through the records.
Ghost’s mouth shifted above his coffee. “Breach hasn’t moved.”
“He adjusted position near the north tree line,” I corrected, surprised at myself for letting him get to me.
“Three whole feet,” Ghost drawled. “Good thing you caught it.”