“Yeah. Sounds fucking insane. But things are adding up, and I need to watch her a little longer before I’m ready to say for certain.”
“Why the hell would she need to stalk you? You’ve been after her since the second she landed in Coral Cay. That makes zero fucking sense.”
“Exactly. It’s got me fucking in the head, brother,” I admit, pushing my hat back on.
Blitz folds his arms, the leather of his kutte creaking. “I’ll let you run with it. But Tomcat, you need to bring this to the club. Having blind spots in our security after today?” He cuts a look at the wreckage behind us. “That’s not something we can sit on. If she’s slipping past our cameras, we need to know how. Because if she can do it, someone with a real grudge can too, and we won’t see them coming any more than we saw this.”
“Heading to her now. You have my word. As soon as I know if they’re one and the same, I bring it to church.”
“Appreciate it.”
We press forearms before I swing onto my bike. “Ride safe, brother.”
“Always,” he says, and then he’s a streak of chrome and exhaust flying out of the lot.
I linger by my bike, eyes fixed on the slick rainbow of oil floating on the water and the battered remains of our boats.
This sabotage isn’t the mess of a woman scorned. I know that brand of chaos, and this isn’t it. This is ice-cold, methodical fury. Someone dismantled what we rely on, and they did so with purpose.
This feels like revenge.
But for what?
My gut is shouting, but the meaning’s tangled. Not yet clear. The answer hovers just out of reach, like a word on the tip of my tongue.
What I can’t ignore is the pile of coincidences staring me down. Marigold slipping through our security like a ghost, and our feeds dying the same night someone came to take something from us.
That’s too much to wave off.
And if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a stupid fucking man.
Most of the time, anyway.
Chapter Ten
Thewindslicesmycheeks as I twist the throttle. I surrender to the speed, hoping it will strip away the fog and tunnel my world down to nothing but asphalt and horizon. But the speed does nothing today. The fog continues to crowd in, sharper than the wind, and my chest tightens with a frustrated ache.
I called Marigold again before leaving the docks, a last desperate attempt for her voice instead of cold, mechanical silence. Same routine for two days. She lets it ring, just long enough for me to picture her staring at my name, then cuts me off, exiling me to the void.
Ignoring a phone is easy. Facing six-feet-plus of scarred leather when he strides into your workplace is a lot fucking harder.
Something about the night at her house is still sitting wrong with me. I know she's physically fine. She was at work the next morning, moving through her shift, upright and breathing. Butthat grip on my gut hasn't loosened, and I've learned not to argue with it.
Other than club runs, I’ve never gone this long without seeing her. Every nerve in my body is howling for her presence.
I should have been here yesterday. But Pope had me elbow-deep in Everglades land disputes, dealing with contractors who were more afraid of gators than they were of the Saint’s Outlaws. By the time I’d handled it, I was hollowed out and bone-tired. Instead of the warmth of her skin, I spent the night tangled in my sheets with a damn cat plushie. A pathetic substitute, but the weight of it in the dark was the only thing that settled the vibration in my blood.
The diner is busy when I pull in. That's normal. What hits me the moment I step through the door isn't.
The life is gone.
Not the customers, not the noise, but the thing that makes this place feel the way it does. That particular current running underneath everything. Conversations are lower than usual, more careful, like people are unconsciously matching the energy of the room without knowing why. I scan through the bodies until I find her.
I hunt for that familiar spark, the wild light only she carries. When I spot her, my heart seizes.
This isn’t her.
Marigold moves through the diner like something that learned how to imitate her but didn't quite get it right. The vivaciousness—that specific, unhinged, lit-up quality she carries like it costs her nothing—it's gone. She doesn't call out when I walk in. Just glances up, clocks me as another customer at the door, and turns back to the person she's already with. The smile she gives them is constructed. Assembled from the right parts in the right order. The moment she turns away, it falls off her face completely.
