Vortex and Blitz are the only ones here when I shoulder through the door. The security room hums with cold air, the stubborn scent of old coffee mingling with the sharp bite of Cheetos. Since everything blew up last year, we've been running shifts nonstop. Eyes are always on the screens, always combing through the footage.
“What’s up, brother?” Vortex tips his chin at me.
“Need to check some shit. Something happened with Goldie, and I need to know what.”
The change in the room is instant. Both men snap upright, their lazy postures gone. Matching scowls settle on their faces. Marigold is more than a hangaround here. She’s family. She’s fought for every scrap of respect, and half the club would patch her in just for being her.
Not fucking happening, though.
She doesn’t belong to the club. She’s fucking mine. If she ever wears a patch, it’ll be the one that shows the whole fucking world that.
“How far back do you need me to go?” Blitz asks, his fingers blurring over the keyboard, menus flickering across the main monitor.
“From the moment she arrived.”
He scrubs back, the footage rewinding in a jittery, high-speed blur until she bursts onto the screen. Bright hair, wild energy, pure chaos walking into the clubhouse. Watching her move, something inside me both calms and coils tight.
I lean in, my eyes narrowed, looking for the glitch in her step.
“Wait,” I mutter, my hand twitching toward the screen. “There isn’t anything from where she walked through the gate?”
Blitz shakes his head, his eyes glued to the flickering monitors. “Nothing. She doesn’t hit a single camera until she’s already in the clubhouse.”
The fuck?
My pulse, barely steady, crashes into a wild, jagged rhythm. This isn’t some system glitch. No way. That rise of adrenaline, that certainty, tells me I’m seeing someone who’s made this kind of ghost-trick their specialty. Awe and unease flood me in equal measure.
We hunt her through the static haze of the footage. For an hour, she’s nothing but a streak of color weaving through theclub while I’m locked away in the chapel. I catch Bambi, a sweetbutt I’ve called on to pass a slow night, pinning her down outside. No blood, but Marigold’s jaw locks, her head tilting with that dangerous, defiant edge I know by heart.
“I wonder if she really has a knife to show her?” Vortex muses, a hint of a grin in her voice.
I snort. “Of fucking course she does.” My chest expands with a sudden, sharp pride. “It’s Marigold.”
That’s all anyone needs to know. She’s a landmine wrapped in cutoff shorts and combat boots, danger disguised as temptation.
“What the hell? I blinked, and she’s fucking gone,” Blitz exclaims, leaning into the light of the screen.
There’s a tear in the timeline. Ten minutes where she vanishes from existence, then reappears, cool as you please, leaning against the wall with Birdie like she never left.
“Where the hell did she disappear to?” I mutter.
“Don’t fucking know,” Vortex says, his voice losing its humor. “But that’s not good, Tomcat. Our security shouldn’t have blind spots she can find that easily.”
“Wait. Look at this,” Blitz commands, reeling the feed back. “This is where Butcher brings your little gift to you. Watch her.”
I lean closer to the screen as Blitz pans in on Marigold’s face. Zoomed in, the grain is heavy, but I still see it. A glint in her eye, a subtle, sharp curl of her lips. It’s a micro-expression, something meant for her and her alone. It’s the kind of thing you’d miss completely if you weren’t already watching her, already tuned to the frequency of her face.
Then Blitz pulls up a second angle of the room on an adjacent screen. Me, this time. He runs them side by side.
I watch myself on screen. I see the moment I call the gift pathetic. Marigold’s face goes blank, a shutter slamming down over her eyes. I watch my digital self toss the note onto the table,calling it a work of some obsessed chick, then do the same with the plushie cat.
The change in her is visceral. Even through the low-res security feed, I can see the light die in her. It’s a wounded look, a raw, exposed nerve she clearly thought was hidden. She doesn’t look away from me as the brothers start taking jabs at my stalker. With every laugh, every joke, it’s like her sunshine is being bled out of her drop by drop.
My gut twists, but unease gives way to a sharp, dangerous suspicion that lifts me up and sets my nerves on fire.
Why?
I turn the question over.
