Page 7 of Reaper

Two more men occupied the couch against the east wall. One was stripped to his waist, a tattoo gun in his hand, working on the other’s shoulder. They both turned. The needle stopped buzzing.

Another man stood at the gun rack, running a cleaning rod through a shotgun barrel. He set the rod down slowly.

The sixth was by the refrigerator, door open, hand inside reaching for a beer. He didn’t pull the beer out. Just stood there with the cold air washing over his chest, watching us.

The room went quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that happens when people stop talking. The kind that happens when the air itself seems to stop moving. Six pairs of eyes shifted from the woman to me, and then—because these men had been doing this long enough to read the room before the room finished forming—to my right hand.

My knuckles were flecked with blood.

Not much. A fine spray, dried to a dull brown against the skin. I hadn’t noticed it in the gravel lot. The floodlight had been too harsh, too white, washing out the detail. Under the swinging bulb’s warmer glow, the spatter stood out like punctuation.

Dox’s eyes fixed on it. Something flickered across his face, gone before it fully landed.

“Reaper.”

Just my name. Flat. Waiting.

I stepped further into the room, the woman behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her body but not close enough to suggest she was hiding. She wasn’t hiding. She was standing her ground in a glitter skeleton hoodie in a room full of armed men who hadn’t expected company, and the only thing in her posture that gave anything away was the way her right hand had curled into a loose fist at her thigh.

“Intercepted an attempted hit,” I said. “County festival. Hayride queue. Man with a nine and no ID tracking her through the crowd. Professional movement. Burner phone. No serial on the weapon.”

Dox didn’t blink. “You put him down?”

“He’s breathing. For now.”

The prospect set the carburetor on the bench. The man with the tattoo gun powered it down and set it carefully on the table beside the couch. The shotgun cleaner picked up his rod again but didn’t resume working. Just held it. The refrigerator door swung shut with a soft click.

Dox looked at Lila. Really looked. The same way I had, back at the gravel lot.

“Who’s she to you?”

The question hung in the air. Heavy. Loaded with implications that every man in the room understood without having them spelled out. I’d brought a woman to the clubhouse. Not a club girl. Not a prospect’s girlfriend. A stranger. A woman who’d been the target of a professional hit, who’d watched me put a man on the ground, and who was now standing in our space with silence in her eyes while I had blood on my knuckles.

I met Dox’s gaze and held it.

“Nobody. Yet.”

“I’m Lila,” she murmured loud enough for only me to hear.

Six men waiting on the next words out of my mouth, every one of them knowing that whatever came next would cost something.

“She carries the club’s protection,” I said. “Starting now.”

Dox’s expression didn’t change. “That’s not your call to make.”

“It is when I’m the one who intercepted the hit. It is when the alternative is dropping her at the county line and hoping whoever sent that man doesn’t have friends with better timing.”

“Club protection means club resources. Club exposure. Club risk.”

“I’m aware of the math.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the workbench, the Jim Beam bottle catching the swinging light. “You know what happens when we put our mark on someone. That’s not a courtesy. That’s a declaration. Anyone comes looking for her after that, they’re not just coming for her. They’re coming for us. And we answer that. Every time. No exceptions.”

“I know.”

“Then say it.”