Page 40 of Diesel’s Desire

“He’s not wrong that it’d end your career.” Jenson glances at Diesel, something passing between them too fast for me to read, and when he looks back at me, his voice has gone flatter, more careful. “Pemberton funded the mayor’s last two campaigns. Wrote checks big enough that nobody on the county council so much as clears their throat without checking which way he’s leaning first. And the mayor’s the one who reappoints your Chief every term.”

My stomach drops. “So Morris isn’t protecting Pemberton. He’s protecting his own job.”

“Probably.” Jenson’s tone stays even, but there’s something almost gentle underneath it, like he’s breaking bad news to somebody he doesn’t want to see get hurt worse than she already is. “Man’s got maybe two years left before retirement. He’s not gonna torch that for a hunch, even a good one. Even yours.”

I sit back, and the frustration that’s been sitting low in my gut finally boils up into something I can’t swallow down anymore. “So that’s it. I’ve got a pattern, four girls, and a name that keeps showing up in every single file, and I can’t even walk up to his front gate and ask him a question, because the law I swore to uphold is the exact thing tying my hands behind my back.”

Nobody says anything for a second. Evan’s jaw works, and he exchanges another look with Jenson. I wait for one of them to speak.

“We can go where you can’t,” Jenson says finally.

I blink. “What?”

“We raid the estate.” He says it like he’s suggesting we order takeout instead of committing a felony. “Quiet. In and out. If she’s there, we bring her home and figure out how to get her back to her family without it tracing to you, us, or anybody official. If she’s not there—” He shrugs, one shoulder. “No harm done. Nobody official ever knew we looked.”

“No harm done.” I stare at him. “You’re talking about breaking into the home of the wealthiest, best-connected man in this county.”

“We’ve broken into worse for less good reason,” Diesel says, and there’s no humor in it, just fact, flat and simple.

I know exactly what he means by that. I know what this club does when the sun goes down, know it the way I know most things about them—half rumor, half instinct, never quite enough to prove in a courtroom. Guns, moving through this county and probably three states past it if half of what crosses my desk is even close to accurate. The department spent years building cases that, if they ever come together right, end with men in this room in handcuffs.

And here I am, sitting in their clubhouse, asking them to break federal and state law on my behalf because the law itself won’t move fast enough to save a little girl.

I think about that for exactly as long as it takes to feel sick about it. Then I turn my phone over, unlock it, and slide it across the table until Addison’s school picture is facing all three of them—round cheeks, missing front tooth, two uneven pigtails.

Jenson looks at it a long moment. Doesn’t say anything.

Evan doesn’t either, but something shifts in his face, something that looks less like an outlaw calculating risk and more like a man who’s spent the last week watching me run myself into the ground over exactly this.

“Do it,” I say, before I can talk myself back out of it. “Whatever you need to do it clean, do it.”

“You sure?” Jenson asks, and it’s not a challenge, just a real question, giving me the exit if I want it.

“No.” I meet his eyes. “But she’s been gone for almost a week, and I’ve got nothing else. I’m coming with you,” I add, looking at Evan now, because that part feels non-negotiable in my head even as the words leave my mouth.

He shakes his head before I finish the sentence. “No, you’re not.”

“Excuse me?”

“You show up on Pemberton’s property and it ties every single thing that happens there directly back to you.” His voice stays gentle, but there’s steel under it. “You need to be somewhere with a timestamp on it. Somewhere that puts you nowhere near Pemberton’s front gate tonight, no matter what happens on it.”

“He’s right,” Jenson says. “Being there only puts you at more risk, Officer. You’ve already put enough on the line.”

I hate that he’s right. I hate it the exact same way I hate Morris being right about the funding and the litigation and the whole rotten machine that’s been protecting Douglas Pemberton for years while parents lied to their neighbors about relief they didn’t feel.

“Where do you want me,” I ask, and my voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.

“The station,” Evan says. “Working late on something boring. Paperwork, radar logs, whatever puts your ass in a chair with a deputy walking past who can vouch for you later.”

“And if it goes wrong out there?”

“It won’t.”

“Evan.”

He looks at me then, really looks, and for a second I forget about the club and my job, and it’s just him, steady and certain in a way that used to terrify me at eighteen and terrifies me differently now.

“If it goes wrong,” he says, quiet, “you won’t know a thing about it. That’s the whole point.”