Page 13 of Ghost’s Awakening

Ghost went past me and pointed at the nearest bed. "Sit. I'll find you something warm, it's freezing in here." He crossed his arms and threw in a fast, exaggerated shiver. "Left my jacket back here before the operation. Couldn't wear leather into that place. Might as well have walked in with a sign around my neck that said rival biker, please shoot me."

He crossed to a tall cabinet and hauled it open, digging through the shelves. I watched him. The quick hands, the way his weight never fully picked a foot to settle on, his mouth running with nobody asking it to. The Ghost from the pit and this Ghost were two men sharing one body.

He came back with a folded gray blanket and held it out. I reached, and my fingers brushed his.

The contact was brief. The pad of my finger dragged across his knuckle as I took the blanket. A fraction of a second. Yet something went through my hand and climbed my wrist. Quick and bright, the cold snap you get off a metal rail in January. Static. Had to be. Dry desert air, the ride, the cold. My skin had touched somebody else's without a fist behind it for the first time in months, and my nerves didn't know what to do with it.

I pulled the thick blanket free and dragged it around my shoulders, and the warmth dropped over me heavy and immediate.

I sat and touched my nose, careful. It hurt, but the cartilage held. Not broken. I'd kept my eyes on the enforcer's fists the whole time they worked me over in that corridor. I tracked every punch, rolling my head a hair with each one to smooth out the force. I couldn't slip anything with my arms pinned behind me. But I could ride the hits, and riding them was the whole difference between a bruise and a break.

Ghost was by the cabinet, and when I looked up his eyes were on me. He opened his mouth.

I beat him to it.

"Where am I?" It came out level, but the edge rode underneath. I'd followed him here because the other option was a locked warehouse full of men who wanted me hurt. That didn't make this place safe. I was shirtless and bleeding in a building I didn't know, ringed by armed strangers, while my brother was in a hospital bed thirteen miles off. Gratitude only stretched so far.

Ghost blinked. His mouth shut, opened again, and I watched him catch himself, a visible reset, a small nod like he'd answered some question of his own about why I'd ask.

"Right. Yeah. Of course." He leaned back on the cabinet. "You're at the Steel Phoenixes compound. We're a motorcycle club. A brotherhood." The word landed with weight, like he'd said it enough times to mean it all the way down. "We do custom builds, restorations, contract work. Legit, mostly."

"Mostly."

His cheeks went pink. A shade of it, up from his neck under the fluorescents. "We've had some… situations. Other crews. Things that got complicated." The restlessness dimmed while he talked, his face settling into something harder and darker, the animation bleeding off. "The man you saw tonight. On the mezzanine. We've been dealing with him and his operations for years. He's hurt people we care about. We thought we'd finished it. Then—" He stopped. His jaw set.

"But he's back."

Ghost looked at me. "He's back. We knew he'd be, just not when."

"So. Normal biker brotherhood." I pulled the blanket tighter. "With a little stealth work in illegal fight pits on the side."

The pink deepened. He leaned in like he had a defense loaded, one hand already coming up, the first word half-formed, when the door swung wide.

The silver-eyed man, Reaper, held it all the way open, his arm out, the gesture near formal, like he was clearing the way for the most important person in the building. Watching who came through, maybe he was.

Shorter than the rest by a few inches, lean and wiry, all quick angles. Half-Asian, I figured, maybe Japanese or Korean crossed with something else, features sharp and fine. A white tank showed arms roped with lean muscle. Dark hair, mussed from sleep, standing up in places, and the light caught streaks of violet running through it.

He came straight to me and stopped a foot away, close enough that I leaned back on the bed just to hold some space between us. Not from fear, but from the directness of it. His dark eyes locked on my face and moved over it, clinical and warm at once, reading my injuries the way I'd read a man's stance across a mat.

"Name." Not a question. His eyes hadn't left the swelling.

"Caleb."

"Kai." No hand offered, his eyes still working. "Multiple contusions. Swelling's local, no deviation on the nose, so it's not broken. Either the guys who did this can't punch, or you know how to move with a hit." His gaze dropped to my torso, tracking the bruises, then to my taped knuckles. Something shifted in his face, a small nod, a question he'd answered without asking it. "Fighter. How long?"

"Twenty years."

"Style?"

"Taekwondo, mostly. Plus some other things."

"Mm." He was already moving to the cabinets, pulling drawers open fast, hands sure, like he'd done this plenty of times with the lights off. "I'm going to clean these cuts and get a better look at that eye. Swelling reads superficial, but I want to rule out anything on the orbit. Sit still."

Reaper had settled against the wall by the door, arms crossed. I'd expected him to watch me. Every one of them should have been watching me, a stranger loose in a room full of their gear and their people.

He wasn't watching me. He was watching Kai. Those silver-gray eyes tracked the smaller man around the room, and it had nothing to do with security. The way they softened when Kai crouched for a low drawer. The way his arms came loose across his chest when Kai stepped in close to me.

These people weren't worried about me. They'd been settled around each other so long the worry didn't reach that far. Whatever this place was, whatever they did out here, the walls between them had come down years ago. I was the only thing in the room nobody knew.