Page 21 of Ghost’s Awakening

"So where the hell are we going?" Irish still had his visor up, the grin showing. "Because I left my breakfast behind to get to Church and Nolan's going to eat my bacon, so this better be worth it."

"UMC." The word snapped everything into one point. All the noise and the scenarios and the fear collapsed into a single line. Gravedigger had named the hospital. Caleb had said the man put his brother there. There was exactly one place on earth Caleb would go to. "His brother's at University Medical. That's where he went. Follow me."

Tank's visor dropped. His voice came flat through the helmet. "Ride point, then."

I looked at the road past the open gate. Empty and straight, the low morning sun sitting over the desert, the asphalt still holding the night's cold.

I dropped the visor. Twisted the throttle. The bike surged and the compound fell away behind the gate and three more engines came up at my back, the sound of my brothers following, and one thought sat over all of it, louder than the engines, louder than the wind.

Please be in one piece.

CALEB

An hour and a half earlier

The hospital came into view and my legs nearly went out from under me.

Two and a half hours. Thirteen miles of desert road and cracked sidewalk and dead strip-mall lots, and finally the low sprawl of medical buildings off Charleston. A half marathon at a pace my old instructor would have called reckless for a man with no injuries, let alone one running on bruised ribs, a swelling eye, and bare feet that had gone from pain to numb to bleeding somewhere around mile eight.

I'd caught stares the whole way. A man in fight shorts, barefoot, taped up, running through Henderson at five in the morning and then through the edge of Vegas as the sun came up. A woman walking her dog crossed the street when she saw me. A guy at a gas station tracked me past with his phone half-raised, working out whether to call it in. I hadn't stopped. Hadn't slowed. The dream was still running behind my eyes, the hand on Liam's face, the eyes snapping open, the whisper that blew the whole thing apart.

Help me.

University Medical rose against the morning sky ahead of me. I was coming in from the south, near the parking structure. My lungs were raw. My feet left faint red smears on the concrete. The air was warming but the sweat on my bare chest cooled fast and I was shivering, the muscles across my torso cramping around the bruises.

Almost there. I just had to go around to the main entrance, up to the second floor, into his room. I had to make sure he was still breathing. Make sure no one had been there. Then I could work out the rest.

A low growl rolled in off the street, more felt than heard, a vibration that came up through the concrete and into the soles of my feet before my ears caught up to it.

Motorcycles.

My body went tight. I'd heard that sound recently, felt it under me.

Ghost and his brothers. The Phoenixes had caught up with me. Ghost would understand. He'd help. He'd said I was safe.

I stopped and turned toward the rumbling engine sounds.

Three bikes came around the corner of the structure. Big, dark, chrome and matte black, riding close. Not hurrying, not casual either, the formation tight and deliberate, the engines held at a growl that said they knew exactly where they were headed.

They rolled toward me. One carried a passenger on the back, a fourth man riding pillion. The formation opened as they closed in, and the bikes circled me wide and slow, engines throwing echoes off the concrete, and stopped in a loose ring with me at the center.

The passenger on the lead bike swung off. He pulled his helmet and handed it to the rider he'd been sitting behind.

I saw his face and my stomach dropped.

It wasn't Ghost.

Dark eyes. Flat stare. A healing split lip and a yellow-green bruise above his right brow, about a week old. A curtain of long hair fell onto one side of his head. My height, maybe an inch under, the muscle on him dense and layered, the build of somebody who dealt damage and took it back often enough that it had become part of his shape.

I planted my feet. My hands opened at my sides, palms flat, a reflex too old to need a command. Weight centered. Breathing evened out.

The other three pulled their helmets. Faces I didn't know. Hard eyes, heavy brows, the blank stares of men on a job. I looked for patches, colors, anything with a name on it. Nothing. No cuts, no insignia. Dark jackets, dark jeans, dark blank stares that told me everything I needed to know about what kind of men they were.

"Gravedigger wants you back at the pit." The first man stepped closer. His voice was flat, almost bored, as if he'd forgotten half the message he was tasked with passing along. "You made an impression. The way you fight, those kicks, the speed. He liked it. Even with that mouth on you." A pause. "Don't waste it, kid. He doesn't offer twice."

My jaw tightened. The pieces were dropping fast and none of them made a picture I wanted to look at. The bruises on this one. He'd been in the pit too. A fighter, or one once, pulled out of the circuit into whatever the man was building.

Ghost's people knew Gravedigger. Gravedigger was a biker, or had been. The Phoenixes were at war with him. And the pits weren't only about money.