Page 9 of Property of the Bikers

I lean on the bar again. Phone in my pocket, her bag on the hook, Ghost at the wall, the front door behind her. I pull out my phone one more time and type to Cade. Three lines. Woman at the bar. Mira Sokolov. Asking for you by name. Contained. Waiting on your word.

I set the phone down and look at her.

She’s looking back at me with the expression of someone who has done a full assessment of her situation and is waiting to see what the next move is.

“Cade will be here,” I tell her. “You want more water while you wait?”

She looks at her glass. Still half-full. She knows I know that.

“No,” she says.

“Okay.” I straighten and pick up the cloth from where I set it when she walked in. Start wiping down the counter again, the same section I was doing when the door opened, like the last ten minutes were just a natural interruption in an ordinary Thursday night.

She watches me do it. She’s trying to work out whether she’s a guest or something else. I can see it in the way her eyes track the room now, slower than they did when she walked in, recalculating. She knows something shifted. She’s not sure what. She’s sitting on the stool at the corner of the bar with her hands around a water glass and her bag on a hook below the counter and her phone somewhere she can’t currently see, and she walked in here thinking she was walking into a waiting room.

She isn’t in a waiting room.

She’s already inside the process. Has been since the moment she sat down on that stool and let me put her bag on the hook.

My phone buzzes once against the counter. Reeve. Two words: Running it.

I pocket the phone and look up at her.

“Shouldn’t be long,” I say.

She nods. Wraps both hands back around the glass.

Chapter Five

CADE

Jax meets me outside the door instead of inside it, which tells me everything before he opens his mouth.

He’s leaning against the exterior wall with his arms crossed and his breath fogging in the cold Montana air. When he hears my boots on the gravel, he pushes off the wall and comes toward me. No urgency in the way he moves. Jax never lets urgency show in his body because urgency makes other people nervous, and nervous people make noise. But I’ve known him long enough to read what lives underneath the easy posture, and right now what lives there is sharp and alert and paying full attention.

“Woman at the bar,” he says. “Walked in an hour ago. Visibly pregnant, traveling alone, one bag. Asked for you by name.”

I wait.

“Full name,” he adds. “Not Cade. Cade Mercer.” He gives me a beat. “She wanted you specifically. Wouldn’t tell me why. Phone’s in my pocket, bag’s on the hook. Ghost has eyes on the room.”

Mira Sokolov, according to his text. I let the name land, and I don’t do anything with it yet.

“She clean?”

“Reeve’s still running it. Nothing flagged so far. She came in calm, sat down calm, been sitting calm for an hour.” He looks at me steadily. “She’s not scared. That’s either very good or very bad.”

“Which do you think?”

He considers it for a second, which is more consideration than Jax usually needs. “Good,” he says. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

I push through the door.

The bar is running its normal Thursday night. Low and steady, the way it runs when there’s no occasion and no trouble, and the men are just men filling time between one thing and the next. Card game going at the far table, four patches in, chips stacked unevenly, someone losing and not making noise about it yet. Two men are standing at the counter with glasses in front of them, and the loose posture of people who came in after a long day and aren’t in a hurry to leave.

Cole is behind the bar, running a cloth along the counter. He sees me come in and gives me a nod and goes back to what he’s doing, which is the correct response.

I find her in three seconds.