Page 23 of Ghost’s Awakening

I took the last turn too fast and the tires barked in protest, the back end sliding an inch before the tread bit. The UMC complex rose ahead, the main building flat and wide against the sky, the parking structure hunched to the south.

Please be here. Please be in one piece.

I pulled into the front lot and killed the engine. Reaper rolled in beside me. Tank swung into a spot near the entrance, facing out, engine off but staying on the bike. The shotgun across his back sat under his cut, and you'd only catch the outline of it if you knew to look. He'd put himself where he could see the lot entrance and the hospital doors both.

I pulled my helmet off. "Tank's staying out here?"

"Tank's staying." Reaper freed his own helmet and ran a hand over his buzz cut. "A man with a shotgun walking into a hospital lobby is a conversation nobody needs to have."

Irish appeared at my shoulder, visor up, helmet swinging from one hand. "So the plan's what? Walk in and ask nicely?"

"The plan is I go in, find Caleb, and make sure he's breathing."

"And if they don't let you in?" Reaper's eyebrow went up a hair.

"Then I'll be very polite about not taking no for an answer." I started for the doors. "Try to look friendly."

"I always look friendly!" Irish's hand went to his chest, a comical wounded look on his face.

"You look like you're about to rob someone."

"That's my friendly face!"

The sliding doors opened into a lobby that smelled like floor cleaner and recycled air and the thin sweetness of vending-machine coffee. Fluorescents, beige walls, a row of plastic chairs half-filled with people who looked like they'd been there all night. A reception desk against the far wall, a woman in blue scrubs behind it, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead and a pen tucked behind one ear.

When she looked up at me, her face gave away nothing at all. She'd watched every kind of trouble come through those doors, and it had taught her to keep her expression flat until she'd decided what you were.

"Morning." I gave her my best try at a normal smile. "Here to see a patient. Liam, up in the ICU. I'm a friend."

She looked at me. Then past me. I watched her eyes travel over my shoulder and widen a fraction, taking in whatever Reaper and Irish looked like from the far side of a reception desk.

I glanced back. Reaper stood six feet behind me, arms crossed, leather cut over a dark shirt, his silver-gray eyes moving across the lobby and marking the exits and the chairs and the people in them without seeming to think about it. Irish beside him, helmet still in hand, grinning, his red undercut catching the light. Together they looked like the cover of an album you'd buy to upset your parents.

"They're also friends." I tried the smile again.

Her eyebrow climbed a quarter inch. "ICU visitation is immediate family only. I can't let friends up, no matter how many of you turn up." She pulled the glasses down onto her nose and looked at her screen. "And Liam already has a visitor. Family member checked in before seven."

My pulse jumped. Before seven. A family member.

Caleb was here.

"That's actually why I came." I stepped in closer and dropped my voice. Half a performance, at most. "That family member, Caleb. Liam's brother. I saw him last night and he was hurt, pretty bad, and he took off before anybody could patch him up right. I think he came straight here. I just need to know he's okay."

Something shifted in her face. The professional flat softened at the edges, and she took the glasses off again.

"That boy. Caleb. I've seen him come visit before. I let him up without ID because I know he's the brother." She shook her head, slow. "Came in this morning looking like somebody had dragged him across a parking lot. Barefoot. Bleeding. I tried to sit him down and look at those cuts and he wouldn't hear it. Went straight up without stopping." She held my eyes a beat. "Whatever he's tangled up in, he won't say. Just sits in that chair by his brother."

"I know. That's why I'm here. I'll take care of him."

She studied me. I could feel the weighing behind it, the wondering of whether I was a man who'd help another or who'd make it worse. I kept my hands where she could see them and my face open and did my level best not to look like someone who'd put a man's head through a concrete floor ten hours ago.

"Five minutes." She aimed the pen at me. "I'm coming up in five, and whoever isn't family is coming back down with me. Room two seventeen."

"That's all I need."

"Just you. Your friends wait here."

"Understood."