Page 44 of Cipher

When he finally looked at me, the man who had made me breakfast that morning was gone. What stared back at me was colder and far more dangerous—a Black Crowns enforcer.

“Nomad is taking him to a secure location.”

I swallowed. “You’re going to question him.”

“Yes.”

Whatever happened next with the man they’d just caught wasn’t going to be clean. Otherwise, they would’ve involved my dad.

Even though my stomach was in knots, I murmured, “Okay.”

Relief at my easy acceptance flashed in his eyes. “I’m taking you home first. Property gets locked down hard. Then I deal with this.”

He stood, and I put my hand in his. The controlled violence under his skin was impossible to miss, but it didn’t scare me.

I was quiet on the way home, gathering my courage to ask something I knew he’d hate. But I didn’t ask until he’d turned the place into a fortress and was headed for the front door. “Let me come with you.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Being with me doesn’t mean you watch when I need to do ugly shit.”

Although I wouldn’t see him any differently, I understood. And really, that wasn’t what I needed anyway. “I want to be there when it’s over.”

He reached up and cupped the side of my neck. “You will be. Right here when I come home to you.”

Dipping his head, he claimed my mouth in a deep kiss. When he pulled back, he murmured, “Stay inside. I’ll call when I’m on my way back.”

Then he was out the door, on his way to do whatever the Black Crowns version of justice required.

And I’d be right here waiting for him to come home.

18

CIPHER

Wraith stood beneath the porch light when I stepped outside, his arms crossed over his cut while Smoke moved somewhere along the dark tree line behind him. Bex remained on the other side of the locked door, protected by hardened glass, internal steel, and enough surveillance to identify a field mouse before it crossed the lower retaining wall, but none of that made leaving her easier. Her taste still clung to my mouth from the kiss I’d given her after refusing to let her come with me, and my cock remained hard beneath my jeans from the way she’d pressed against me while promising to wait where I came home to her.

“If she gets one foot onto that porch and the alarm tells me before you do, even Reaper won’t be able to put you back together,” I warned.

Wraith’s expression remained flat, but the slightest line appeared beside his mouth. “Good to know you’re handling the separation well.”

“I’m handling it better than you will if she gets outside.”

“Understood.” He tipped his chin toward the door, his humor disappearing beneath the job. “Nothing reaches her.”

I took the private road toward the compound with the Harley’s engine ripping through the canyon. The night air cooled the heat Bex had left across my skin without touching the cold pressure sitting deeper, where every photograph of her routes and each piece of surveillance equipment from that case had lodged.

Pike had paid a man to find the holes in my protection, identify when Bex moved, and put another tracker close enough to my woman that the impulse to tear both men apart had become physical.

The building waited in one of the most remote corners of Black Crowns land, tucked beyond a dry wash where the compound’s ordinary traffic never traveled. From outside, it resembled an old utility structure abandoned years ago, but the interior had reinforced walls, soundproofing, steel restraints, medical supplies, a floor drain, and no windows to tell the man inside how long he’d been there.

Nomad’s truck and three bikes sat beneath the overhang when I arrived. I entered through the side door and found Stryker near the rear wall, Hawkeye beside him with his arms crossed, while Judge stood at a steel table arranging photographs and equipment into separate rows. Ghost leaned against the far counter looking almost bored, though his dark eyes tracked every movement made by the man secured to the chair in the center of the room.

Lyle Brenner had blood drying beneath his nose and dirt ground into one side of his face from the moment Falcon put him onto the roadside. His right wrist was fastened to the chair arm, while the left remained free enough to fool him into believing cooperation might improve his position. The cellular trail camera, portable plate reader, fresh magnetic tracker, and printed photographs of Bex’s vehicle and former routes sat on the table in front of him, making denial a waste of breath he attempted anyway.

“I install surveillance equipment,” Brenner insisted when I entered, his voice hoarse but still carrying enough attitude to prove the brothers hadn’t done more than secure him. “That shit’s mine, and I was on public land. You have no right to hold me.”

Stryker’s gaze met mine. “Spent the last twenty minutes hiding behind ignorance. Claims he doesn’t know why the fuck he’s here.”

“He knows.” I looked at Brenner, watching fear spread across his face as he finally recognized me. “He just hasn’t decided the truth scares him less than I do.”