Page 54 of Ghost’s Awakening

"Twenty—"

"Fifteen." I hung up on whatever came next.

The whole night went flat and small in my hands. A door in a wall was a thing for Thursday. This was now, and it was Liam, and Gravedigger was reaching for him while Caleb slept. Insurance, so Caleb would do as he was told.

Blade's engine caught before mine did. He knew.

"Liam." I gave it to him anyway, through the helmet.

"Ride." His visor came down on the word.

13

PAPERWORK

GHOST

The desert at a hundred and ten was a tunnel with no walls.

The cold came in flat across my throat. My headlight threw a white hole down the road and the black ate it back up on either side, Blade's light steady in my mirror.

No traffic. No cops. The city came up as a smear of orange lights on the sky, then the long lit spine of Charleston, and I ran every blurred light with my head doing the one thing I'd told it not to, which was show me pictures.

A gurney. A van with blacked windows. Liam, who'd squeezed a finger twice this week, strapped to a board and rolled into the dark by two men in uniforms nobody had checked while they held papers that seemed official, but were not.

And Caleb asleep in my bed, thirteen miles away, not knowing what was happening to his brother.

We came into the entrance of the back parking structure, engines off, coasting, and Vega stepped out from behind a pillar at the foot of the ramp with a hand up, barely visible in the dark.

"Second level!" Low, fast, his eyes wide and moving. "The van hasn't moved. The two went inside twenty minutes ago. Santos and Valkyrie are up there."

"Show me." My voice came out even. My hand was already inside my jacket, on the Glock.

We went up the stairwell, cold concrete and pine cleaner. The second level opened flat and wide, half full of cars with dew on their roofs. Santos and Valkyrie were crouched behind a pickup at the far end, and we hurried toward them.

The van sat forty feet past them. White. Cargo. Blacked windows, a magnetic logo peeling at one corner. I looked up, and I saw why it was parked there.

"Cameras." I got low beside Santos. "Every fifty feet along the beams."

"And the van's in the one spot none of them can see." Santos didn't move his eyes off the van. "Clocked that twenty minutes ago, when they pulled in. Somebody walked this level in daylight and picked it."

Which meant whatever happened in that spot wasn't going to be on any screen.

Valkyrie was on his other side. Even crouched she was a lot of woman, a couple of inches taller than me standing, with shoulders that had been built hauling on a ranch before Blade tore the place open and brought her out with the rest. Hair pulled back tight in a ponytail. Hands flat and still on her thighs. "Two in the van. Maybe three. Can't see through the glass."

"Anybody seen you?" Blade, from behind me.

"Nobody came to look." Her eyes never left the van. "They think they're the only ones awake."

Boots hit the stairwell behind us. Hard soles on concrete, two sets climbing fast, the sound coming up the well and spreading across the level the way sound did in a place built to hold cars. My hand tightened on the Glock. Nobody of ours walked like they owned the building.

We went flat behind the tailgate and two men came up onto the level in white uniform shirts, walking fast, the one in front talking over his shoulder.

"—finally gave in. She's calling the floor. Get the gurney out and get the van around to the bay before somebody up there changes their mind."

Under my breath, so low nobody caught it: "Thank you."

Whoever she was, she'd looked at paperwork that checked and hadn't liked it, and she'd bought us twenty minutes with a slow hand and a phone. Anything less, and we'd be riding into an empty structure right now.