Doc's expression softens. "Hasn't slept since they brought you in. Been pacing outside this room half the night."
I don't know what to do with this information. Is he guarding me? Avoiding me? Planning what to say to the woman he thought abandoned him, who has returned as a broken shell?
"Dawn's breaking," Doc says, glancing toward the window. "Try to rest more if you can. Your body needs it."
After he leaves, I know sleep won't return. Instead, I focus on standing again, determined to build back what they took from me. One step. Another. The IV pole provides support as I shuffle toward the window.
Pain radiates through my body with every movement, but it's clean pain. Healing pain. I embrace it as I reach the window and carefully part the blinds.
Morning light reveals a courtyard I don't recognize. The Saints Outlaws must have set up a club in Chicago. I only knew Falcon when they were in ??? . This clubhouse looks more established. A row of motorcycles gleams in the early sun. A few men in leather cuts smoke near a picnic table, passing a thermos between them. A woman carries a basket of laundry from one building to another.
It looks so... normal. Almost domestic. Nothing like the violent criminals the world believes them to be. Nothing like the monsters who kept me.
Movement draws my eye to a figure working on a motorcycle at the far end of the yard. Even from this distance, I'd know him. The set of his shoulders. The way he braces one boot against the ground as he leans over the engine.
Falcon.
Five years haven't changed his outline, though I know they've changed everything else. The easy smile I once kissed is probably gone. The gentle hands that traced paths across my skin have hardened, learned new ways to hurt. The man who once whispered he couldn't live without me learned to do exactly that.
As I watch, he straightens suddenly, as if sensing my gaze. He turns, looking directly at my window. Even across the distance, I feel the connection snap into place between us—a live wire, dangerous and electric.
For five years, I survived by remembering him. By believing that somewhere, he was living the life we'd planned. Happy. Whole.
Instead, he became this—a hardened outlaw who rescues women from the same fate that took me. I wonder what drove him to it. If my disappearance played some part.
He doesn't wave. Doesn't acknowledge our connection. After a long moment, he turns back to his bike, shoulders rigid with tension which I can feel across the yard.
I press my palm against the cool glass, accepting a truth I've been avoiding since I saw his face in that container: the past can't be reclaimed. We can't go back to who we were before. Those people died—his Cara in an instant when I was taken, my Falcon more slowly as hope turned to betrayal turned to whatever hardened shell he wears now.
The only path is forward. And forward means using what I know. The fragments of information gathered over five years of forced invisibility.
I turn from the window as the door opens, revealing Maggie with a tray of food.
"Morning," she says. "You're up. That's good."
I gesture to the chair beside the bed. "Can we talk?"
She sets down the tray, studying my face. "Sure. What about?"
"The ledger," I say, surprising myself with my steadiness. "I might know something about it."
Maggie stills. "What kind of something?"
"I overheard things. When I was..." I swallow hard. "When I was there. The men talked. They thought we weren't listening, or didn't care if we were."
Understanding dawns in her eyes. "I'll get someone."
"Not Falcon," I say quickly. "Not yet. Someone else who's working on it."
She nods slowly. "I know just the person."
As she leaves, I straighten my shoulders despite the pain. They took five years from me. Took my dignity, my freedom, my future. The ledger is my chance to take something back.
My turn to become the nightmare they never saw coming.
Chapter Three
FALCON
