Page 25 of Shadow Strike
Ryder’s smile widened.“I haven’t finished my coffee.”
She reached over and swiped the mug away, dumping the contents into the sink.“You’re done.Get out.”
Ryder looked at CB.“Or what?Your bartender will make me?”
“Yes,” CB said.
He eased next to Regan.
Ryder looked at them both and let out a loud, aggrieved sigh.“You know what you are?”He was looking at CB, not Regan.“You’re a disappointment.To your dad.To me.To every Outlaw who remembers when the Briggs name meant something.”He stood and picked up his sunglasses.“Granddad would be ashamed.”
CB’s breath stuck in his chest for a second.Ryder had been saving that one—the grandfather angle.Ben Briggs, who had built something from nothing, was a mentor to CB.Ryder now used his name to legitimize everything he was doing, like bullying Regan and her mom.
You don’t get to use his name for this.“Regan asked you to leave.”
Ryder buttoned his jacket with the ease of a man who was leaving on his own terms.He slid on his glasses and turned to Regan.“Friday,” he said.“Don’t forget.”
Regan held still, but CB could sense a white-hot flash of anger rip through her.“Oh, don’t worry,” she said.“It’s circled on my calendar with a big red heart next to it.”
“Is that so?”Ryder smirked.“Say hi to your mom for me.”
He winked, heading for the door.The cash box hit the floor.
CB caught her before Regan cleared the bar top.She hit his arm like a hellcat, cursing at Ryder at the top of her lungs.“You effing SOB!”
Ryder paused, glanced back, the smirk still in place.“What was that?”
“Walk away,” CB said, over Regan’s head, “or I’ll walk you out.”
Ryder smiled a real one this time, satisfied.He’d gotten what he came for.He pushed through the door and was gone.
The bar fell silent.
CB kept his arm around Regan’s waist for another three seconds before he released her.Her chest was heaving, her entire body vibrating with rage and fear as she looked up at him with an expression that needed somewhere to go.“He just…”
“Come on,” CB said quietly.
He took her to the storage room.She paced the length of it twice while he stood in the doorjamb and let her.
“He threatened my mother,” she said.“He sat in my bar, drank my coffee, and threatened my mother!”
Technically, it wasn’t a threat on the surface, but they both knew what the underlying meaning was.“That’s how coercion works.He came to bully you.To upset you.”
“He thinks he can scare me?I’ve got news for him.”
Hehadscared her.She was covering it with anger.Anger was safer.It made her feel more in control.
She stopped pacing and faced him.“How can you be calm right now?”
“Because one of us needs to be.”
She threw up her hands, wanting him to be as upset as she was.Needing validation.
“You have every right to feel angry,” he told her.
She paced, fisted and unfisted her hands.“He’s going to hurt her,” she said.“If I don’t figure this out, he’s going to?—”
“I won’t let that happen, Regan.That’s not a reassurance.It’s a statement of intent.Keeping you and Lucy safe is my job, and I don’t fail at my job.”
