“Stone.”
I pause, hand on the frame.
“About Isabel.” Josie’s brow furrows. “Something’s wrong with her. I don’t mean the obvious stuff—the bruises. Something else. She’s got somewhere she needs to be, and it’s eating her alive.”
“You think she’s a threat?”
“No. I think she’s scared.” She shakes her head slowly. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I think there’s something she’s not telling us.” She hesitates. “I know you need to protect the club, but don’t spook her. Whatever’s going on, she’s not ready to talk about it.”
“I won’t.”
I mean it. I won’t push Isabel or corner her.
Not unless she gives me a reason.
And if she does—if she puts Josie at risk—then all bets are off.
Josie holds my gaze for a long moment, then nods and lets her eyes close. “Go do your president thing. I’ll be here.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
I leave before I can do something stupid, like kiss her forehead again just because I want to.
Church is already assembled when I walk in.
Hawk, Lee, Tank, Axel, Cash, Bones, Duck, and Steel. All of them grim-faced, all of them waiting. The energy in the room is coiled tight, the kind of tension that precedes violence.
Good. They should be tense. Someone tried to kill my woman in her hospital bed.
“What do we know?” I ask, taking my seat at the head of the table.
“Our guest is awake,” Hawk says, a cold smile playing at his lips. “Took some convincing, but he’s talking.”
The hitman is in the box—a concrete bunker beneath the chapel that most people don’t know exists. When the club bought this property decades ago, the previous owners had been survivalists. They’d dug out a shelter beneath the old outbuilding, reinforced the walls, installed a ventilation system. We repurposed it.
It’s soundproofed, windowless, only accessible through a one way hatch in the chapel floor. Inside is a single room, now divided into two spaces by a single wall of bars. It’s the kind of place where difficult conversations are made to happen—by voluntary or otherwise.
“And?”
“Ivan sent him. Confirmation that Summit’s behind both hits—the car and tonight.”
Ivan. The cartel’s new local fixer, and the bastard who slipped through our fingers after kidnapping my daughter. The rest of them are dead for what they did to Emma.
“So it’s confirmed,” Lee says, jaw tight. “Summit’s cleaning house.”
Bones pulls up footage on his laptop. “Traffic cams caught the SUV that hit Josie. Ring cam footage from two blocks away shows the driver getting into a black Yukon—same model we’ve tracked to Ivan before. Tonight’s guy confirms it. Same handler, same orders.”
“He give up Ivan’s location?” I ask.
“Claims he doesn’t know. Dead drops, burner phones, the usual.” Hawk shrugs. “Could be lying. Want me to ask again?”
“Later.” I lean forward, palms flat on the table. “Josie’s got every piece of evidence against Summit, every connection between their shell companies and the cartel. Without her testimony, the DA’s case falls apart. They know it. We know it. This isn’t going to stop.”
Silence. The weight of it presses down on all of us.
“What about the girl?” Tank asks. “The one who took out the attacker?”
“Isabel. She’s a complication.”
