Page 21 of Grim’s Angel

Striker returns before I can find an answer. The humor has disappeared from his face.

“Meeting room. Hound found the sedan.”

Grim curls my fingers around the cold pack before releasing my wrist and rising from the table.

“McKenna sits in.”

“Already expected her to.”

The meeting room contains a long, scarred wooden table surrounded by heavy chairs. Three men wait inside. One sits in the chair to the left of the head with a file open in front of him. Another works behind a laptop, his fingers moving across the keys. The third stands near the far wall, observing everything with the patience of a hunter.

Razor follows us inside while Striker takes a position near the door.

Grim points to each man.

“Torch, my vice president. Lock handles anything digital. Hound runs our private investigations. Razor keeps us alive. Striker is my enforcer.”

“That explains the personality,” I say.

Striker lifts one eyebrow.

The humor no longer fools me. Since we entered the room, he has kept himself closest to the door while leaving my path to it clear. His attention shifts toward every sound in the hallway before anyone else reacts. Broad shoulders strain beneath his cut, and the relaxed posture does little to conceal the controlled violence underneath.

He looks like the kind of man who can joke during a crisis because danger has never made him nervous.

“Most people blame the shoulders,” he says.

“I hadn’t ruled them out.”

His grin flashes. “I knew I liked you.”

Grim’s chair creaks beneath his hand.

“Respectfully,” Striker adds, without looking away from the hallway.

Grim takes the chair at the head of the table and points to the seat at his right.

“Here, Angel.”

I sit because arguing would draw more attention. The look Striker exchanges with Torch suggests the arrangement is unusual.

Lock glances at the phone in my hand. “With your permission, I can put that behind the club’s secured network while you’re here. Calls and messages will still come through, but tracking it will become harder.”

“Harder?”

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

Grim says nothing. He does not reach for the phone or tell me what to do.

The decision remains mine.

I hand it to Lock.

He connects it to his laptop, changes several settings, and returns it to me.

Hound begins the report. “We found the sedan abandoned six miles outside town. Stolen plates, wiped interior, no usable prints. They left nothing behind except fibers and enough blood to confirm Grim damaged both men.”

Torch taps the file in front of him. “The serial number was filed off. The grip is clean, and the rain took care of anything else. Nothing useful yet.”