Underneath the bite in his tone I can see exactly where his mind has gone. Me with that biker over top of me. The sound ofbone breaking under his hands. That first night he almost lost me.
“Max, you can’t disappear without saying anything,” says Wyatt, gentler.
“The grocery store’s in town.” Jake shrugs. “And we needed groceries.”
Damian joins him at the counter, and the two of them start unpacking the bags.
“That’s not the point,” Ryder presses.
“I didn’t go anywhere near the hangar,” I argue. “I just wanted to do something productive. I’ll lose my mind sitting around here doing nothing if you four do everything.”
Ryder pushes off the counter looking restless and paces a few steps. “We have to know it’s safe before you go anywhere. That’s the entire point of recon. You don’t go out anywhere until we say the area’s clean.”
“Well…it is clean,” I shoot back. “Or at least, it’s not what you think.”
He freezes mid-step, back rigid.
“Why,” he says slowly, “do you say that like you know something we don’t?”
Jake’s head lifts. Damian stops halfway through shelving a jar of pasta sauce.
My heart thuds. I shouldn’t have opened that door. Not like that. But it’s open now.
“I didn’t go looking for anyone,” I say. “But…I ran into someone I know. From the club.”
Ryder goes absolutely still. No one says anything. So I continue.
“Babydoll. She’s one of the old ladies. I’ve known her forever.”
“You left the house when you were specifically told not to and you ran into a fucking club member?”
“It was an accident,” I say quickly. “A coincidence. She wasn’t looking for me, and she’s not a threat. She—”
“Max—”
“I talked to her,” I cut in. “And she told me things. Important things.”
On the other side of the counter, Jake, still going through the last of the grocery bags, pulls out ice cream and cheers, holding it up to Damian.
Ryder’s hand shoots out with lethal precision, like he has eyes in the back of his head, and grabs the neck of the bag, pulling it away from Jake. Jake’s attention snaps to Ryder.
“Will you two fucking shut up?” Ryder hisses. “Just put that in the goddamn freezer.”
Then he looks at me and motions to the table. “Sit.”
So I take a seat at the table next to Wyatt and start talking. Jake and Damian start making pasta while I’m talking but they’re listening.
I tell them about running into Babydoll in the grocery store. About following her to the Bean & Barrel. About the men left at the clubhouse—how few they are, how scared, how dissatisfied. I tell them about the suits showing up two days ago. The way they breezed through Billy’s office and Silas’s tech room like they knew the floor plan. The black box that opened the biometric locks. Ryder’s brow is in a deep furrow as he listens, but he doesn’t interrupt me.
“She said Silas spent a lot of time in the new barracks buildings out back. She didn’t know what he was doing, but she thought he was ‘up to something’ back there.”
Jake waggles his eyebrows from the stove. “Backup systems.”
“Maybe,” says Ryder.
Wyatt leans back, running a hand over his chin. “Clubhouse did not look hostile,” he says. “We did a perimeter sweep but it looked dead. No activity. No cars.”
“Yeah,” cuts in Damian. “I saw one guy out back smoking. Looked like he was in pajamas. It felt like we were checking out a deserted housing project.”
