Page 25 of Ghost’s Awakening

I took a breath. I was making promises that hadn't been to a vote at Church, and I knew it, and I couldn't stop.

"We're going to end this. Him. All of it."

Caleb was looking at Liam. For a long beat I thought he wasn't going to answer, that he'd heard all of it and decided it wasn't enough, or that it was just noise from a stranger making claims he couldn't back. I wouldn't have blamed him. I'd known him less than a day. He had no reason to trust me, or my brothers, or any of it.

Then I caught it. A small movement, nearly nothing. His little finger, the one nearest Liam's hand, curled an inch closer over the sheet. Still not touching, but narrowing the gap.

"How'd you figure out they were recruiting?" I kept my voice low.

Caleb turned his head and looked at me. My stomach dropped an inch.

"They found me." His voice dropped into something darker. No fear in it. Something harder than fear. "Before I got inside. Four of them on three bikes. One got off, the rest stayed mounted. The one who talked had pit bruises. Healing split lip, week-old mark over the eye. He'd been in the ring too."

He paused. His eyes went to Liam and back to me.

"That Gravebitch's thug told me his boss wants me back in the pit in two weeks."

I almost choked. My brain snagged on Gravebitch for half a second and I had to wrestle down the wildly wrong urge to grin, because this was not the time, but the sheer nerve of calling Victor Graves that in a room with a ventilator running was something I was going to be keeping for a long while.

"He told me the two enforcers from the corridor are down. One dead. One brain-damaged." His voice went flat. "They think I did both. They don't know about you."

The weight of that came down on me. They didn't know I'd been there. My work in that corridor, the ankle sweep that dropped the first man headfirst onto concrete, they'd pinned it on Caleb. But Gravedigger did see me snooping. The Phoenixes were not invisible.

And it meant Caleb was carrying a body count that was half mine.

"Caleb—"

"Two weeks." He cut across me. "Two weeks, or Liam and I find out what comes next. Those were the guy's words." He looked at his brother. "I don't know which is worse. That I killed someone in that corridor. Or that it made the man who put Liam here want me more."

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it, saw the screen, held up a finger to Caleb, and stepped back through the door, easing it to a crack behind me.

The corridor was empty but for the squeak of a cart somewhere off down the hall.

"Status, Ghost." Hawk's voice, flat and demanding and exactly itself.

"I'm with Caleb. He's at UMC, with his brother. He's safe. We all are." It came in a rush. "Hawk, Gravedigger's men got to Caleb before he made it inside. Delivered a message. He's got two weeks before they want him back in the pit. They're recruiting him, it's confirmed. And there are others, other fighters pulled in the same way, and his brother's lying right there with a tube down his⁠—"

"Ghost." Hawk cut clean through it. "Gravedigger wants him. Gravedigger also saw you, which means he knows we're watching. That makes this dangerous for both of you." A pause. "I can hear you want to protect this kid. I heard it the second you opened your mouth in Church. So I'm going to ask you a straight question and I want a straight answer."

I swallowed.

"What are your thoughts?"

"He's a great asset, Hawk." The tactical answer. The one that made sense, that squared the time and the fuel and the four brothers who'd crossed the city. "He's been inside the operation. He can give us names, locations, how the circuit moves. He wants Gravedigger finished more than we do. He fights, he's smart, he had the recruitment angle worked out. He could be⁠—"

"And that's all." Hawk's voice didn't rise. It didn't shift at all. But it landed like a hand closing over a wheel. "You see this kid as an asset. A weapon you're pointing at Gravedigger."

The quiet after that one was mine, and it was ugly, and Hawk let it sit.

I'd given him the tactical answer because the tactical answer was easier than the true one, and he'd seen through it in a sentence, the way he saw through everything. Because the true one was that thing turning over in me every time Caleb's eyes found mine. It was a man's bloody hands held off his brother's clean ones. It was that I'd crossed the whole city with the throttle pinned and the only thing in my head the entire way had been his face.

"No." It came out louder than I'd ever spoken to Hawk. Firmer. "He's not that. I don't want to recruit him. I want to help him." My back straightened against the corridor wall. "He's under my protection, Hawk. Whatever that means and whatever it costs."

Hawk didn't drag the silence this time. "Good. That's what I needed to hear." A beat. "Come back when you're done. Finish your report. And bring him with you, if he'll come."

The line went dead.

I pocketed the phone. Leaned my head back against the wall. Closed my eyes.