Page 83 of The Reaper
For a second, I let myself believe that maybe this was just another late night coming home. No notes, no shadows in the harbor, no sense of someone breathing down my neck. Just me, back from an evening with a man who made me forget what danger felt like.
Then I saw the look on Caleb’s face.
He had one hand on my elbow, steadying me off the last step, but his eyes were already tracking past me—toward the street. He was in motion before I could ask.
“What is it?” I called after him.
He didn’t answer. Just lengthened his stride until I had to jog to keep up, the damp air clinging to my skin as we cut across the lot to where his car was parked.
Ryker Dane was leaning against the passenger side.
I stopped dead. I’d only heard his name in Caleb’s stories—half-formed mentions of “my new brother” in the way people reference someone who’s both blood and battlefield. He looked like both: broad shouldered, squared stance, dark hair buzzed short, eyes scanning the shadows like the night owed him something.
“You’re late,” Ryker said to Caleb, pushing off the car.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” Caleb replied, unlocking the door.
“You’ve got it.” Ryker’s gaze slid to me then, sharp enough to feel. “Meghan, right?”
I nodded, the sound of my name on his lips grounding me even as my stomach tightened. “And you’re Ryker.”
“That’s me,” he said, but didn’t offer his hand. His attention was already swinging back to Caleb. “We’ve got a problem.”
The car doors shut with a heavy thud that seemed to seal us into some unspoken code I didn’t speak yet.
“What happened?” Caleb asked.
“Promenade,” Ryker said. “Southwest dining room window—big one facing the street—broken out. Neighbor heard it around ten, called it in.”
I felt my pulse spike. “Called who in?”
“The cops,” Ryker said, like it was obvious. “Norton handled it.”
“Norton?” Caleb asked.
“Eric Norton,” Ryker clarified. “Detective. I had to get him out of bed.”
Caleb’s mouth pressed flat. “Bet he loved that.”
“Not as much as he’s gonna love keeping his mouth shut,” Ryker said. “He’s good for it. Knew you wouldn’t want uniforms crawling your kitchen.”
He was right. The thought of some patrol officer poking around my restaurant at midnight made my stomach turn. “Why wouldn’t I want the cops involved?” I asked, even though a part of me already knew.
“Because you want this quiet,” Ryker said evenly. “And cops don’t do quiet. They do reports. They do questions. And they do press.”
My mouth went dry. “So what, Norton just … looked the other way?”
Ryker’s gaze didn’t waver. “He made it go away.”
There was weight in that—an unspoken understanding that “go away” meant more than I wanted to unpack right now.
“What about the window?” Caleb asked.
“Boarded. No entry inside. Whoever did it wanted to make a point, not clean you out.”
The words landed like a cold hand on my neck. “What kind of point?” I asked.
Ryker reached into his jacket and pulled out an evidence bag. Inside was a single sheet of thick white paper, folded once. Ryker unfolded it and held it up so I could read.
