Page 35 of Shadow Strike
“Goodnight, Regan.”
He watched her pad down the hall.Her door closed, and he released a long exhale.
A smart man would remind himself of the operational parameters of his assignment.The timeline.The fact that his job here had a defined endpoint.
Regan was in the middle of the most dangerous thing she’d ever done.The last thing either of them needed was the complication of whatever was happening between them.
And this note from his father was more than a request for crackers.CB didn’t believe for a moment that Wade had even written it.Or that he’d called Jimmy and ordered him to deliver it to the Hill house.
Ryder was playing games.With Reganandwith CB.
He was aware of all of that.He was also aware that he was in trouble.
Not the Ryder kind.A worse kind.The kind that crept up on you while you were protecting someone and found yourself falling for them.
He’d been careful for a long time about a lot of things.He knew the dangers of going behind enemy lines and what it took to get back to safety.He’d been an expert at counterintelligence, and it looked like he was going to need those skills for this assignment, too.
Regan had shattered his careful approach on the first day at the bar.She’d asked him to cross the line between her and his family.
In the guest room, he lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.He turned it all over and over in his mind.
He was still thinking about where it all led when his phone lit up on the nightstand.
A text.Not Mack.Not Garrett.
Ryder.
He picked up the phone.
Need to talk.Just us.No Shadow Point, no Regan.I have information about Wade you need to hear.Information you don’t want your pretty bartender finding out about.
He read it over again, dissecting what it meant.What it might mean.
Ryder had been running plays like this since they were teenagers, and this one had all the classic hallmarks—the invitation, the urgency, the information held just out of reach.You had to come to the table to gain access to it.Do his bidding.
Ryder wanted CB away from Shadow Point’s resources and away from Regan, and he’d found the one lever that might work.
Wade.
CB set the phone back on the nightstand.
His father was still connected to the Outlaws in ways that went beyond loyalty and memory.Wade had built a life inside that organization, and a stroke hadn’t erased thirty years of entanglement.Ryder probably had something on Wade that could complicate the federal case Claire was building, something that could put his father in the crosshairs.CB needed to know what it was.
He picked the phone back up.When and where?
CHAPTERNINE
Regan sliced lemons like a madwoman.Her hands needed something to do while her mind circled back to last night.
The kiss that had turned into something more—her hands in CB’s hair, her back against the wall, both of them breathing hard when the security alarm had startled them.
And after the late-night visit by an Outlaw, she’d gone to bed aching and confused.She’d woken up the same way.
She wrung out the rag and draped it over the edge of the sink, and circled back to being lonely.Feeling alone.That had to be it.Between the endless hours, the financial stress, and the weight of trying to save her father’s legacy, dating had fallen completely off her radar.
And now here was CB—this impossibly handsome, quietly brilliant man who listened when she talked and looked at her like she mattered.
Handsome.Smart.Caring.A triple whammy she hadn’t been prepared for.
