Page 43 of Shadow Strike
That was a promise.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Regan thanked Lynx for the ride and climbed out of his truck, her keys already in hand.He walked her to the door, his eyes scanning the dark tree line around the property.
“I need to access the house,” he said.
He was her new bodyguard.
Because CB hadn’t come back.
She let them inside, tapped the code into the security system so the alarm didn’t go off, and waited for him to go through the house.
He returned to the foyer.“I’ll be right outside,” he told her.“Have a good night.”
It was already after one.She locked the door behind him and reset the security system.
The house was too quiet.No click of Desi’s nails on the hardwood.No low murmur of the television from Lucy’s room.No creak of CB moving through the guest room, the steady presence she’d gotten used to hearing through the walls.
She dropped her bag on the kitchen counter and stood in the stillness, irritation crawling up her spine.A few days.That’s all it had been.A few days of CB in her space, and already his absence felt like a missing tooth—a gap she kept probing with her tongue.
She didn’t want to need him here.She didn’t want to notice that the house felt emptier without him.
But she did.And she hated it.
Her phone showed no missed calls, no texts.Nothing from him since he’d walked out of the bar and driven off to wherever he’d really gone.Not to see Wade—she was certain of that.Whatever business he’d had tonight, he hadn’t wanted her anywhere near it.
The smell of the bar clung to her skin.Fryer grease.spilled beer, and the faint cigarette smoke that always drifted in from the parking lot.She needed a shower.She needed to wash this day off and try to think clearly about what came next.
The bathroom filled with steam as she stood under the hot water, letting it pound against her shoulders.She replayed the night in fragments.CB’s flat refusal.The wall dropping over his expression.The Outlaws filling up the pool tables, watching her work.Lynx’s silent presence, competent but unfamiliar.
Underneath all of it, the question that wouldn’t stop circling: What was CB hiding?
She stayed in the shower until the water turned cold, then toweled off and wrapped herself in a dry towel.Her hair dripped down her back as she padded barefoot to her bedroom, already thinking about falling into bed and trying to sleep.
She pushed open the door and stopped.
CB sat in the chair by her window, forearms braced on his knees.
Regan’s hand flew to her chest and the knot she’d made there with the towel.“What the hell?”
He didn’t move.His face was unreadable in the low light from the bedside lamp, but she could see the tension in his shoulders, the set of his jaw.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“You could have texted.Or knocked.Or done literally anything other than sit in my bedroom while I was in the shower.”Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, but she didn’t care.She was tired and angry and standing here in nothing but a towel while he looked at her with those steady green eyes.
“I needed to see you in person.”
“Why?So you could explain where you actually went tonight?”She moved farther into the room, putting the bed between them like a barrier.“Because I know it wasn’t to see your father.”
CB was quiet for a moment.“You’re right.It wasn’t.”
“So where were you?”
“Meeting with Ryder.”
Regan stared at him, her mind racing through possibilities, none of them good.“You met with Ryder.Why?”
