Page 8 of Ranger’s Protection

"Stay close. Don't look at anything you don't have to. Just focus on my back and keep moving."

He grabs the zip-tied snake-tattoo man by the arm and hauls him to his feet. The man stumbles, catches himself, and glares.

Graham ignores him completely.

We step over the body by the door. I try to follow Graham's advice: don't look, just keep moving, but my eyes betray me. I catch a glimpse of the man's face, frozen in permanent surprise, and my stomach lurches.

"Eyes on me," Graham says without turning around. "Nothing else matters right now except getting to the car."

I focus on the back of his jacket. The leather. The patches I can't read from this angle. The way his shoulders move as he drags the prisoner forward.

We make it to the walkway. Down the stairs. Across the parking lot, where four motorcycles sit abandoned, their engines still ticking as they cool.

Nobody stops us.

Nobody sees us.

We reach a sedan parked three buildings down. It’s plain, unremarkable, the kind of car you'd forget immediately after seeing it. Graham opens the back door and shoves the prisoner inside, then slams the door and locks it.

Then he turns to me.

"Front seat," he says. "Buckle up. This is going to be a fast drive."

I climb in. Buckle up with shaking hands. Watch as Graham slides into the driver's seat, starts the engine, and pulls onto the road without a single wasted movement.

We're half a mile from the motel before I realize I'm crying.

"You did good," Graham says, his eyes on the road. "Followed instructions and stayed calm. That's what kept you alive."

"I didn't feel calm," I whisper.

"Nobody does. But you did it anyway. That's what matters."

He reaches over and squeezes my hand once, then puts both hands back on the wheel.

Behind us, in the back seat, the man with the snake tattoo who killed David and tried to kidnap me for Demon sits in furious silence. The scar through his eyebrow has stopped bleeding but left a dark streak down his face. I can see him in the rearview mirror, those eyes that don't blink enough watching me.

I look away.

Ahead of us, somewhere in Millhaven, is a clubhouse full of bikers who are going to have a lot of questions.

And beside me, driving with the same steady competence he's shown since the moment I opened my motel room door, is a man I met twenty minutes ago who just killed someone to keep me safe.

I should be terrified.

Instead, I feel safer than I have in weeks.

The math doesn't make sense.

But for once, I don't care.

Chapter 3 - Ranger

She's stopped crying, which is good.

She's also gone completely silent, which is less good.

I keep one eye on the road and the other on her in my peripheral vision, tracking her breathing, her posture, the way her hands are clenched in her lap. Classic shock response. Adrenaline crash. Her body is processing what just happened, and her brain is trying to catch up.