Biker’s Temptation

Inside The Gates

The compound was nothing like I expected.

I don't know what I'd pictured. Rust and chain link, maybe. Gravel and bad lighting and the smell of motor oil soaking into everything. What I got instead was a gated property the size of a small neighborhood, with actual buildings, a proper fence that looked like it could stop a truck, and enough security cameras blinking red in the dark to make a government facility jealous.

Jasper pulled the car through the gate, and it rolled shut behind us with a sound like a vault locking.

I counted my breaths. In through the nose. Out slow.

"You're doing that thing," Jasper said from the driver's seat.

"What thing."

"The thing where you're pretending to be calm, but your hands are doing something else entirely." He glanced at my lap. I looked down. My fingers were twisted together so tight my knuckles had gone pale.

I released them. "I'm fine."

"Sure you are." He didn't sound convinced, but he didn't push it either, which I appreciated more than I could say.

Kane had taken a different vehicle back with Ryker. Asher had disappeared before we even pulled out of the bar parking lot and I hadn't seen where he went. Jasper had been designated my driver without anyone asking me how I felt about that, and I'd been too tired and too scared to argue.

He parked outside a long low building that looked like a converted warehouse. Inside it was warm, well lit, with actual furniture that someone had clearly put thought into. Couches that looked like they'd been sat in a thousand times. A kitchen with a proper stove. A hallway branching off into rooms.

"Guest room is the last door on the left," Jasper said, dropping into a chair like he lived there. He did live there, I reminded myself. This was his home.

"Thank you," I said. And then, because it needed saying: "For back there. At the bar."

He looked at me with something more serious than his usual easy expression. "Corbin is not the worst thing that's going to come through that door looking for you, is he."

It wasn't really a question.

"No," I admitted. "Probably not."

He nodded slowly. "Get some sleep, Wren. Tomorrow's going to ask a lot of you."

The room was small and clean with a bed that had actual fresh sheets and a lock on the door that worked. I sat on the edge of the mattress and finally let myself shake for a few minutes because I'd been holding it in since Ohio and my body had decided it was done cooperating.

Sixty thousand dollars.

Donovan's family had put sixty thousand dollars on my head and pushed it into criminal networks before I'd even made it two states away. That wasn't desperation. That was precision. They'd planned for me to run. They'd planned for exactly this.

Which meant they knew I had something.

I pulled my duffel open and dug to the very bottom where I'd sewn a thin pocket into the lining six months ago when I first started suspecting Donovan wasn't who he said he was. Inside the pocket was a USB drive no bigger than my thumbnail.

Eighteen months of financial records. Transfer logs. Shell company documentation. Everything I'd been quietly copying for eight months before Donovan realized I was suspicious and moved first.

I'd never told a single person it existed.

I pressed it into my palm and stared at the ceiling until my heartbeat finally settled.

Sleep came anyway, heavy and dreamless, because my body was done regardless of what my brain wanted.

I woke up to voices.

Low and serious, bleeding through the wall from the room next to mine. I lay still and listened without meaning to, because the walls were thin, and the conversation was not quiet enough.

Kane's voice first. "Donovan Hale."

Then Asher, measured and careful. "I've heard the name before. That's all I said."

"That's not what your face said."

Silence.

Then Asher again, slower. "His family has connections that go further than a fraud case, Kane. If they're pushing bounties into MC networks, it means they're not worried about exposure. That kind of confidence comes from having people in the right places."

"Law enforcement."

"Maybe higher."

My blood went cold.

I had known Donovan's family was powerful. Old money, old connections, the kind of people who got charges dropped and made investigations disappear. But the way Asher said higher made something shift in my chest like a door I'd thought was locked swinging open in the dark.

"And the girl?" Kane's voice.

"I don't know yet." A pause. "But I want to."

I pressed my back against the headboard and gripped the USB drive until the edge of it cut into my palm.

They didn't know about the drive. Nobody knew about the drive. And whatever Asher Hale knew about Donovan's family, he was keeping it sealed behind that quiet, unreadable face of his, which meant either he was protecting me or he was protecting himself.

I needed to figure out which one before I made another mistake.

Morning came gray and cold through the small window. I dressed fast and stepped into the hallway and nearly walked straight into a wall of muscle.

Ryker.

He was leaning against the opposite wall like he'd been there all night, arms folded, eyes already open and on me before I'd finished turning the door handle.

"Did you sleep out here," I said.

He said nothing. Just pushed off the wall and walked toward the kitchen like the answer was too obvious to say out loud.

I followed him, because the alternative was standing in the hallway alone.

He poured two cups of coffee and set one in front of me without asking how I took it. Then he slid a phone across the counter.

Not his phone. A cheap prepaid brick with one number already loaded into it.

"Kane wants you to make a call," Ryker said. First words he'd spoken directly to me.

I looked at the number on the screen. Area code I didn't recognize.

"Who is this," I asked.

Ryker wrapped both hands around his mug and looked at me over the rim.

"The person who put the bounty on you," he said. "Wants to make you an offer."