Page 1 of Cash’s Trouble

CHAPTER 1

LILLY-ROSE

At five minutes past closing, I finish the notes from my last loan appointment, send the application to underwriting and shut down my terminal. The bank’s front doors have been locked to customers for an hour, and the lobby lights are dim. I glance idly through the front windows and notice Cash, a Kingdom Come biker.

He’s across Main Street beside a black motorcycle, talking to another Kingdom Come guy beneath the shade of a sycamore. His cut hangs open over a charcoal T-shirt fitted closely enough to show the hard shape of his chest. Dark ink covers both forearms, his hair is short, his stubble neat, and his face is unfairly good-looking for a man my father has spent years warning me to avoid. Cash smiles at something the other biker says. It’s barely there, a small tilt at one corner of his mouth, but my stomach still tightens.

“You know the windows work both ways,” Marcy says from the next desk.

I look down at my phone as though I’ve been doing something useful with it. “I’m checking the street before we leave, you know, precautions and all.”

“Of course you are.” She slips her purse over her shoulder and follows my line of sight. “The sheriff’s daughter is conducting a public-safety assessment that happens to be in the direction of a good-looking biker.”

I give her a look, but she only laughs. Marcy has two boys waiting for baseball practice and none of my sense of self-preservation. “Go home before Coach Daniels starts calling.”

“You really should try talking to him someday,” she says, looking out the window at Cash.

“You know that my father is the sheriff in this town and he’d have a stroke.”

“Your father has survived Kingdom Come for twenty years. He can survive you saying hello to one biker.”

Cash isn’t simply patched into the club my father has spent most of his career trying to put down. He moves through Ransom like a man who knows what everyone wants and what it will cost them. I’ve seen him settle an argument without raising his voice and watched a liar talk himself into a corner with one faint smile.

I’ve also seen him catch me staring. He never crosses the street or gives me more than a slow glance, which should make it easy to dismiss my inappropriate questions about his mouth, his tattoos and what all that control would feel like if he stopped using it. It doesn’t.

Marcy leaves through the employee entrance, and I finish the last of the closing routine with the branch manager. Sensitive documents secured, offices checked, alarm set. By the time I step outside, the late-afternoon heat presses against my skin. July in this place smells like hot pavement, river damp and rain that may or may not arrive.

I lock the employee door behind me and look toward the sycamore without pretending it’s accidental. The second biker is gone. Cash remains beside his motorcycle with his arms folded across his chest, and his gaze meets mine immediately, as though he has been waiting for me to come out. My pulse skips. His attention moves over my pale-blue blouse, dark skirt and sensible heels before returning to my face. The look isn’t crude. It’s deliberate, as if he knows exactly how much less careful my thoughts are. I lift my chin and start toward my car.

“Lilly-Rose.”

The voice comes from behind me. I turn and find two men beside a gray SUV I don’t recognize. One is broad through the middle, with thinning sandy hair and a face reddened by the heat. I know him, though we’ve never been introduced. Mick Doran has spent enough evenings drinking at O’Malley’s with Chief Deputy Wade Corbin that I once asked Dad why a career lawman kept company with a man arrested for stolen property and assault. Dad told me to stay away from both of them.

Doran gives me a friendly smile that reaches nowhere near his eyes. “Your dad needs you. Corbin sent us to bring you over.”

The second man opens the SUV’s rear door, and every part of my orderly day goes still. I take my phone from my purse. “Why didn’t my father call me?”

“Something happened. He didn’t have time.” Doran steps closer. “Come on. We’ll explain on the way.”

“I’ll call him now.”

He catches my wrist before I unlock the screen. His fingers clamp hard enough to grind the bones together, and the friendliness drops from his face. “Don’t make this difficult.”

I drive the heel of my shoe down his shin. He swears and jerks me forward. My purse falls, scattering my wallet and keys across the pavement, but I keep hold of my phone and rake its edge across his knuckles. He loosens his grip just enough for me to twist away.

The second man catches me from behind. One arm locks around my waist while his hand closes over my mouth, and panic hits so hard my world seems to tilt. I bite down, hear him curse and throw my head backward. Bone cracks against bone. His grip slips, and I wrench my mouth free long enough to scream.

Doran grabs for my legs as the other man drags me toward the open door. The bank windows reflect the struggle back at me: my blouse pulled crooked, one shoe gone, three bodies twisting beside a vehicle that will be gone before anyone inside the pharmacy understands what they’re seeing. Then Doran is ripped away. Cash hooks an arm across his chest and drives him into the side of the SUV with a metal-shaking impact. He releases him and hits him once. The punch is short, brutal and perfectly placed. Doran folds to the pavement.

The man behind me lets go and reaches inside his jacket. Cash turns, and the smooth man I’ve watched around town disappears. His expression empties as his hand goes beneath his cut, and he moves between us before the other man can finish drawing the gun.

“Try it,” Cash says quietly.

The gunman freezes with a compact pistol half exposed. Cash’s shoulders block most of my view, but I see Doran crawling toward the driver’s door and the SUV’s engine coming alive. Cash could go after him. Instead, he backs me toward the brick wall with one arm extended across my body, keeping himself between me and the weapon.

The gunman jumps into the passenger seat. Tires shriek, the rear door slams while the SUV is already moving, and the vehicle tears out of the lot hard enough to clip the curb. Cash draws his pistol and tracks them for half a second, then lowers it because Main Street is beyond them and people are already turning toward the noise.

He doesn’t chase. Instead, he turns to me. “Where are you hurt?”