Page 2 of Cipher

The deputy saw me coming and straightened before I reached them, so the kid at least possessed a few instincts worth keeping. I stopped close enough to force him back half a step and looked pointedly at the hand resting low on Bex’s waist. “You’re fucking done.”

Bex’s smile vanished. “Excuse me?”

“I was talking to him.”

“I know exactly who you were talking to.” She stepped away from the deputy and faced me with anger brightening her eyes. “You don’t get a say in what I do or with who!”

A muscle shifted once along my jaw. “His hand was too fucking low.”

“It was on my waist.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

The deputy cleared his throat, muttered that he needed another drink, and escaped. Bex watched him leave before turning back to me, her cheeks flushed for reasons that had nothing to do with shyness now. “I don’t belong to you.”

My jaw hardened. “I know.”

Bex poked me hard in the chest. “Then stop acting like I do!”

My gaze dropped to those pink lips, then back to her eyes. Before I could lock it down, I heard her breath catch and knew it had revealed too much.

“You should. That’s the problem.”

I walked away before I did something stupid. The last thing Stryker needed was for Sheriff Raines to notice a club enforcer and his daughter arguing in the middle of his wedding reception.

As I stalked toward the garage, every muscle in my body fought the desire to turn around, throw her over my shoulder, and take her somewhere no deputy could touch her again. Or any other man for that matter.

I couldn’t stop myself from a subtle glance behind me, though. Bex remained on the dance floor with her hands fisted at her sides and fury gathering behind her eyes. I hadn’t needed to see that to know exactly how deeply I’d hurt and angered her. The correct decision had never felt so much like failure. By the time I reached my bike, one fact had become impossible to ignore: I could stay away from Rebecca Raines, or I could stop acting like she belonged to me, but apparently, I couldn’t fucking do both.

1

BEX

It hadn’t taken me long to learn that working dispatch often meant hours of boredom punctuated by adrenaline spikes. This shift had been slow, which allowed me to get some extra studying in for my survey of crime and justice class, just in time for my exam next week.

The radio chirped, and I quickly set down my tablet to focus on my job.

“Dispatch, 2-Adam-14, 10-8 from the traffic stop on Ridge Road.”

“Copy, 2-Adam-14. You’re clear.” I logged the status change without looking away from the screen, then waited a moment to make sure the deputy didn’t need anything else before reaching for my tablet again.

I highlighted an important paragraph, then took a swallow of coffee that had gone bitter hours ago. Luckily, I realized at sixteen that enough cream and sugar could make my dad’s sludge drinkable. No matter how long the coffee sat in the pot at work, I could still stomach it.

I flipped to the next page on my tablet, trying to keep my focus from straying to Cipher again. That man took up too much space in my head, but there wasn’t a woman alive who’d blame me. Not even knowing that he’d refused to dance with me at my best friend’s wedding but still had the nerve to scare one of my dad’s deputies off from dancing with me. And then promptly disappeared for three weeks straight.

The big jerk was too sexy for my own good, though. With his muscular build, he didn’t look like a computer geek at all. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with tanned skin from being out in the Southern California sun. His black hair was thick and a little long at the top, with a lock that my fingers kept itching to push back from his forehead. But it was his eyes that truly captured my attention. They were deep brown with a narrow amber ring, except for when he’d stared down Paul on the dance floor and I could’ve sworn they darkened to almost black. And he had a dense black-and-gray geometric tattoo wrapped around his left forearm that made me wonder if there were more hidden beneath his clothes.

But I had coursework to do and a job that required me to be fully present. One aggravating biker did not get to take up permanent space in my head. So I rolled my shoulders, adjusted the headset, and studied while I waited for the next call.

I had just highlighted another line on the tablet when the 911 line lit up.

“Sable Canyon 911, what is the address of your emergency?”

A woman’s voice came through the line in a shaky whisper. “He’s outside, trying to get into my bedroom through the window. It looks out at the backyard.”

I sat up straighter, one hand moving across the keyboard while I grabbed a pen with the other. “Okay, I’m here with you. Can you tell me your address?”

She rattled it off in a rush, and I added the details to the incident report while I kept her talking.