Page 4 of Prospect’s Curvy Vinyl Girl

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Tyler

Green ink stares up from the scratched oak counter. Grant’s stoic face on the fifty-dollar bill. My fingers lift off the worn paper. The transaction is done. The lie is cemented.

She’s looking at me.

Gravity shifts. The floorboards of the Vinyl Vault angle violently toward the woman standing on the other side of the register. The air pressure in the room drops, sucking the oxygen from my lungs, replacing it with a thick tension that tastes like copper and warm dust.

The Ignition.

My brothers talk about it in the dark hours at the clubhouse. They talk about it like a violent act of nature. Sentinels, Drifters, Wardens—they all got struck. The irreversible lock of the soul. The key turning in an engine that’s been waiting its life to run. I thought I was immune. A deadbolt slamming shut in a locked chamber. The mechanism the brothers warned me about. You can’t light up a dead man.

But she marched right up to me in the soft rock section. She slid her hand into the crook of my elbow. She looked at two Silver Serpent Syndicate enforcers with asset lists in their hands, and she claimed me. Cousin from Portland.

The spark caught the fumes of whatever is left of the man underneath the deep-cover operative, and the structure went up in flames in a microsecond.

She didn’t flinch. She lied for a stranger. She dragged me out of the crosshairs and put herself squarely in them. Now she’s mine.

That’s the only truth left in the world.

I don’t know her middle name. I don’t care. The certainty roaring through my bloodstream leaves no room for logic. She’s my woman. The instinct claws at the back of my skull, demanding I drag her away from the counter, lock the front door, and stand guard over her until the end of time.

She picks up the fifty-dollar bill. Her fingers are long. Capable. Ink-stained at the tips. The amber lamplight from the vintage desk lamp catches the gold flecks in her dark irises and the stray hairs escaping the messy bun on top of her head.

"You're staying," she says. It isn’t a question. Her voice is grounded. Sassy. She’s unaware of the territorial war happening inside my head.

"I'm staying."

My voice sounds rough. Unused. It’s the voice of a man who’s spent eight months speaking in the flat, unmemorable cadence of a drifter named Tom. Tom drinks black coffee so no one remembers his order. Tom wears generic clothes. Tom doesn’t exist.

Tyler exists. Tyler is a Broken Halos prospect. Tyler bleeds for his club. Tyler wants to wrap his hand around the nape of her neck and claim her right here on the oak counter.

The enforcers scanned me against their list. They cross-referenced my face. They’ll remember Tom from Portland. They’ll remember he’s Wendy’s cousin. The cover is linked to her shop now. I’m inside her trap, and she’s inside mine. If I walk out that glass front door and disappear, they’ll come back. They’ll tear this place apart looking for the ghost. They’ll interrogate her. They’ll hurt her.

The thought of another man putting his hands on her sends a spike of violence into my veins. The muscles in my arms lock. My jaw clamps shut so hard my teeth ache. I’ll slaughter every breathing soul in Crimson Hollow before I let them touch a single hair on her head.

I turn my back to her. I need to read the room. I need a tactical layout.

The Vinyl Vault is a narrow, warm corridor of a shop on the decaying main street of Crimson Hollow. Floor-to-ceiling vinyl records organized by decade. A vintage turntable running behind the counter, spinning some quiet, scratching B-side. The smell of old paper sleeves and warm dust hangs thick in the air. It’s the only honest business in a dishonest town.

I scan the sightlines like a battlefield map. The front windows are large. Too much glass. The amber light casts shadows against the walls, creating blind spots near the discount bins. The aisles are narrow. Good for creating bottlenecks. Bad for crossfire.

Through the glass, the street’s quiet. Crimson Hollow operates under the administrating thumb of the Syndicate. They aren’t hiding in the shadows anymore. The Lieutenant on the Hollow Routes runs this town like a corrupt corporation. They operate openly. They run published enforcer schedules.

Every Tuesday at 3:00 p.m., a mid-level enforcer visits the civilian businesses on this block. He collects "protection" money. I know this because I’ve been tracking him for eight months. Every Tuesday, I park the Civic down the block at 2:45 p.m., sight line on her front glass. I stay through the collection. I watch the enforcer threaten her. I calculate the pressure it would take to crush his windpipe. I never get out. I never walk through her door. I just drink black coffee from a dented thermos and memorize his face. Today is the first time I’ve ever set foot inside her shop.

But today isn’t Tuesday. Today, the enforcers came early. They were hunting assets. And she stepped into the line of fire.

My gaze drifts down the street. Parked two spaces away from the shop is a battered 1992 Honda Civic with out-of-state plates. My cover car.

The sight of the rusted hood drags up a memory from eight months ago. Standing outside the clubhouse Chapel in the freezing wind. Mac, the retired military mechanic and unofficial den mother to the prospects, walked out of the wooden doors. He stopped in front of me. He tossed a set of tarnished keys into my chest. I caught them.

He looked at me with flat, unreadable eyes. He spoke four sentences. She runs rough in second gear. The heater is shot. Keep the tank above half. Don't get attached to the car.

He turned around and walked away. The gravel crunched under his boots.

Ten minutes later, Daniel Gunnar walked out of the same Chapel doors. The club tracker and digital security expert. He dropped a manila envelope onto the outdoor picnic table. He didn’t say a single word. He just turned and walked back inside.