Page 12 of Ghost’s Awakening

The man beside him was younger. Mid-thirties, maybe. Just as tall, just as built, but leaner, the muscle cut slightly cleaner. Buzz cut. And eyes that stopped me cold. Silver-gray, pale to the point of metal, catching the floodlight the way Ghost's did but colder, older. He walked half a step back and to the right, covering the ground the first one couldn't see. I'd watched that formation my whole life, in dojos and warm-up rooms. This one was the older man's right hand, and he'd held the job for a long time.

"Hawk. Reaper." Ghost's voice came from behind me, fast, and the switch flipped so hard I nearly turned to check it was the same man. The quiet one from the warehouse was gone. This Ghost talked at double speed, words falling over each other, hands going with them.

"We got in clean, I had the room mapped in thirty seconds, exits, enforcers, twelve of them and all trained, and there was a mezzanine, and Blade was dead right about the high ground because Gravedigger was up there, Hawk, right there watching the fights, and he saw me, I held a look too long with one of the fighters and Gravedigger followed it straight back to me and⁠—"

"Slow down." The older one. Hawk. His voice didn't climb. It didn't have to. He seemed accustomed to saying things once, and going by how the yard stayed quiet around him, that had been the arrangement for a long time.

The only one who apparently didn't get the memo was Ghost.

"—and then they dropped the whole building into lockdown, every door, chains, padlocks, and I got through the sweep and went backstage because they had a fighter down there, beating on him for saying no to killing a guy in the ring, and I took the first one and he—" Ghost stabbed a finger at me without looking, "—he took the second one with a kick I have never seen anybody throw that fast, and his moral code, Hawk, this guy refused to put a man down for them, even when knowing what it would cost him, they were about to⁠—"

"Ghost." The tall Latino who'd ridden behind us, the one with the knife sheath riding his belt. His voice came low and clipped, arms folded, watching Ghost with something that split even between patience and warning. "The important parts. Just those."

"I'm giving the important⁠—"

"You're giving every part." The redhead. He'd pulled his helmet, and the floodlight had caught a copper undercut. He was grinning, but the grin sat on a frame that was all shoulders and muscle, so you couldn't quite decide which version of him to trust. "It's way past midnight, brother. I've got a killer and an accountant asleep in my bed who are both going to make me pay for waking them up."

I looked at him. A killer and an accountant. In his bed.

He felt my gaze on him, because his head turned and a pair of bright green eyes hit mine, and he winked. The grin got wider.

I looked away. A killer and an accountant. So the redhead ran two women at once and didn't lose sleep over it? I'd known the type in every kitchen I'd worked. The easy charm, the wink, a grin that said he'd never once had to try and wasn't about to start now.

"Ghost." Hawk again. Same tone, same weight. Ghost shut off mid-word, mouth closing like it cost him something, hands dropping to his sides. I watched it happen in real time. One second, a landslide of words. The next, still. Waiting. Whatever Hawk was to these men, his voice was the hand on the dial.

"Good." Hawk's eyes came to me. He took his time. My face, my bare chest, the bruises, the blood, the tape on my knuckles, the bare feet on cold gravel. He read all of it slowly, laying the pieces down one at a time and holding off on the answer until he had them all.

"I heard Ghost's version." A beat. "I'll want yours. Who you are, what you were doing in there and why, what you saw." His voice dropped half a step. Not softer, more careful. "But first you look like you need a medic and a shirt. That order."

The adrenaline had been carrying me. Hawk's words knocked the props out from under it, and the cold came in all at once, the full weight of a desert night at one in the morning landing on bare skin. I was shaking. My eye throbbed where the fist had caught it. The split in my lip cracked open when I set my mouth against the cold, and copper spread across my tongue.

Ghost turned to me, and his whole face fell apart. The rapid-fire drained out of him and something else flooded in. His eyes went wide and dropped to me, the bruises, the blood dried down my stomach where it had run off my chin the whole ride. He looked like he'd been carrying something and had just heard it crack.

"Shit. Shit, I didn't—Hawk, he needs—I should've—" Ghost's eyes jumped from Hawk to the silver-eyed one to me and back, his body tipping into that vibrating thing again, the restlessness sliding over into something close to panic. "I'm sorry, I got caught up in the report and I didn't even—you've been standing here bleeding this whole time."

"Ghost." The silver-eyed man spoke for the first time. Quieter than Hawk, smoother, a calm that sounded worked-in over a long time. His eyes moved off Ghost and onto me. "I know somebody who can help. He won't love getting pulled out of bed at this hour, though." Back to Ghost. "Take him to the medical bay. I'll go wake him up."

Medical bay.

I looked around at the compound again. The cameras. The gate. The floodlights, the row of bikes. And now a medical bay?

"Come on. Follow me." Ghost was already moving toward a building on the right, quick, his head turning back every few steps to check I was with him, the restless energy back at full burn.

"Get some sleep." The silver-eyed one aimed it at the Latino and the redhead. "Debrief at eight. Church."

Church. Medical bay. A fortress in the desert run by men with road names and a chain of command, and a man called Gravedigger with a whole biker club hunting him. Four months bleeding in an underground pit, and I'd thought that was as strange as my life could possibly get.

I followed Ghost across the lot, gravel and grit catching under my bare feet, the cold biting harder now that I wasn't sealed against the warm back of a man on a moving bike. Funny, how fast you could miss a thing you'd only had for a few minutes.

Ghost reached the building and held the door, leaning in to flip a switch before he stepped aside to let me by, his eyes aimed somewhere past my shoulder. Not meeting mine.

"Thanks." I made it two steps inside before what was in the room stopped me cold.

It was way bigger than I'd expected. A row of beds down the far wall, each with its own rails and monitors. Glass-fronted cabinets ran both sides, stocked with things I half recognized and plenty I didn't, bandages and bottles and sealed trays of steel. A table under the window held a laptop and a stack of folders. The gear wasn't new, but it was the real thing. IV stands, an oxygen rig, a cart with defib paddles…

It wasn't tidy. Stuff piled on the counters, shoved into corners. But there was an order running under the mess if you knew to look for it.

This wasn't a first-aid box and a bottle of whiskey. This was a room where somebody who knew the work patched up injuries that were never going to see a police report.