Chapter 19
nineteen
The truck ate gravel, headlights cutting through rain-softened darkness like twin blades.
Ghost pushed the engine hard enough to make the chassis groan, one hand white-knuckled on the wheel, the other scrolling through camera feeds on his phone.
Nothing new. The last transmission showed two men at the back door, then static.
He wasn’t a praying man, but at that moment, he prayed with everything in him that Naomi was okay.
Cinder sat rigid in the passenger seat, ears forward, almost vibrating with urgency.
The cabin appeared ahead, a lone porch light swinging wildly in the wind. He wanted to gun the truck up the drive, but training took over—no headlights or engine noise to announce his approach. Surprise was his best weapon right now.
He killed the engine halfway up the drive and continued on foot, Cinder at his side.
“Find Naomi,” he whispered to Cinder.
The dog shot forward, a black streak against the night. He followed and drew his gun. The weight of it felt too familiar in his palm. Each step was careful, his eyes sweeping for movement, ears straining past the whistle of wind through pine.
The back door had been forced—not picked, not finessed, but broken with brute force. Wood splinters littered the small back porch. A boot print stood clear in the mud beside the step, deep enough to suggest a heavy man or someone carrying weight.
Inside, the lights were on, but the house was silent, eerily so. Cinder’s nails clicked against the hardwood as she moved room to room, nose working frantically, a low whine building in her throat. The sound sent ice through Ghost’s veins.
Cinder never whined.
Naomi’s evening came to him in snapshots as he scanned the room—a laptop closed on the table; car keys and shoes untouched by the front door; an unopened bottle of wine and a half-empty glass of whiskey on the counter.
One of the kitchen drawers was open, and a quick glance inside revealed that a knife was missing from the butcher block.
He moved through the space with mechanical precision, cataloging every detail while something inside him coiled tighter with each discovery. A chair overturned. A lamp askew on a side table. The rug rumpled where someone had clearly struggled.
But not enough blood for a killing. Just a few drops near the kitchen—bright red, recent.
“She fought,” he murmured to Cinder, who circled back to him, ears pinned flat against her skull.
He checked the bedroom next. The bed was made, tidy, but a suitcase lay open on top, clothes a chaotic pile inside like she’d recently dug through it.
Her bathroom counter held the mundane intimacy of daily life—toothbrush standing in a cup, hair tie looped around a bottle of lotion, a tube of mascara.
He felt like an intruder, witnessing pieces of her that weren’t meant for him to see.
Back in the living room, Ghost crouched by the laptop and pulled his sleeve down over his hand to open the lid. Whatever Naomi had been looking at before they took her was still there, locked behind a password. He could break it, but not here.
Headlights swept across the front window, followed by the sound of tires on gravel. A car door slammed. Footsteps crunched, moving light and fast toward the cabin.
Fuck.
Cinder growled, and he shushed her, dragging her back into the shadows in the corner of the kitchen under the loft’s stairs.
The front door burst open, and a woman with strawberry blond hair stormed in. “Sorry! I know I’m late. I—” She stopped short, glancing around the empty cabin. “Nomi?”
Ghost recognized her immediately. Greta Dougherty, the wilderness guide who ran Summit Outfitters and headed up Bravlin County Search and Rescue.
She was the kind of woman who looked like she belonged in the wild more than town—sunburned nose, windblown braid, jacket dusted with trail grit.
He’d seen her around town before, usually behind the wheel of a mud-splattered red Jeep with a black lab hanging its head out the passenger window.
“What the hell? Where are you?” Greta muttered, pulling out her phone. She dialed a number, then waited, foot tapping impatiently. “Come on, pick up.”
Ghost heard the distinctive sound of a vibrating phone from somewhere nearby. Greta looked toward the sound and crossed the living room, crouching by the couch.
Now was his chance to escape.
As she ducked to look under the couch, he slipped out from the shadows and grabbed the laptop before edging toward the back door. Cinder followed, but kept one suspicious eye on Greta.
“Naomi?” she called again, louder this time. “Are you here? Why is your phone—” She broke off abruptly and swore, straightening with a second phone in hand.
Naomi’s phone.
Ghost froze. He needed to move, to vanish, but she was already turning, already seeing the shadow by the door.
“Who the hell are you?” Greta demanded. “What are you doing in Naomi’s house?”
He stepped out of the shadows, keeping his movements slow and nonthreatening. “Looking for her.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Greta snapped, her gaze dropping to the laptop tucked under his arm. “With her computer? Try again, asshole.”
She dropped the phone and pulled a gun from under her jacket, not pointing it directly at him but making it clear she could if needed. He recognized the stance—not amateur hour. She knew how to handle that weapon.
“My name is Owen Booker. I work at Valor Ridge.”
“I know who you are, Ghost.” She spat the nickname like it tasted bad. “Doesn’t explain why you’re breaking into my best friend’s house and stealing her stuff.”
He weighed his options. The truth would sound insane, but a lie wouldn’t explain the laptop. “I’ve been helping her investigate Leelee Padilla’s disappearance.”
“And so you decided to, what, just waltz in and help yourself to her property?” Greta took a step closer, eyes narrowing. “Put the laptop down. Now.”
Cinder slipped from the shadows, head down, hackles raised. She didn’t make a sound.
“Oh, shit,” Greta whispered and took a half-step back. “Call off the hellhound.”
“Take that gun off me and I will.”
“No.” She looked around, her eyes widening as she noticed the signs of a struggle for the first time. Her attention flicked from the streak of blood on the floor, then back to the knife drawer.
“Oh, God.” Greta’s voice was all gravel. “Where the fuck is she?”
He didn’t bother answering. She already knew.
He set the laptop down on the kitchen table and reached into his pocket. She swung the gun toward him again, and he raised his hands. “I’m just reaching for my phone.”
“Go ahead. Slowly.”
He slid his phone from his pocket and accessed the security feed, then slid the phone across the table to her. “Two men. I caught them on camera. That’s how I knew to come.”
She blinked. “Camera? What camera?”
“Security feeds. I set them up around the cabin the other day.”
Her lips flattened into a scowl, but the gun lowered slightly. “Why? Does Naomi know you’re watching her?”
“Because I’m a paranoid bastard and didn’t like that she had no security measures here.
” He ignored the other question because she wouldn’t like the answer, and they’d already wasted enough time as it was.
He nodded to the phone. “Look at the video. I got an alert twenty minutes ago. Last image was two men forcing the back door. Then it went out.”
She watched the video playback, then exhaled shakily and holstered the gun, but didn’t relax. “I’m calling it in.”
He sneered at the idea of police involvement. “Sheriff Goodwin won’t do shit.”
“Not him,” she snapped. “My SAR team. If she’s only been gone twenty minutes, her trail should be fresh. The dogs can find her.”
He almost told her not to bother. They would’ve put Naomi in a car, and the dogs wouldn’t be able to track that. But Greta was already dialing, voice clipped as she ordered her team to roll out.
He grabbed the laptop again, then Naomi’s phone from the floor where Greta dropped it.
“Hey!”
He ignored her and unlocked the phone as he headed for the door, Cinder right on his heels. Naomi would be pissed that he knew her password, but—
Don’t trust Ghost.
He froze on the front porch and stared at the screen, mind going white-hot with static, and for half a second he couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe.
Headlights splashed across the porch as a Valor Ridge truck rocked to a stop in the driveway.
He was vaguely aware of Jax and Boone jumping out and also heard Greta talking on the phone behind him, but none of it fully registered.
All he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears.
All he could see was that text.
Don’t trust Ghost.
Cinder butted her head against his leg. She wanted to move.
So did he. He shoved the phone in his pocket and tasted metal at the back of his throat as he stalked to his truck, ignoring Jax and Boone’s questions.
He yanked his door open and tossed the laptop and phone onto the seat. Cinder leaped in after it.
Jax jogged up before he could peel out. Rain sheeted down his face, plastering his hair to his skull. “Ghost, what the hell happened? Is Naomi in there?”
He didn’t answer. Just slammed the truck into reverse and gunned it, slewing gravel and mud all over Jax’s jeans and boots. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything right now except the next step.
A step he’d never wanted to take again.
He floored the accelerator, the engine screaming under him while Cinder braced herself on the seat. She didn’t make a sound but bared her teeth at the windshield. His girl wanted violence. So did he.
Fuck!
He slammed his fisted hands against the steering wheel. He should’ve instantly known it wasn’t just some local lowlife who’d grabbed Naomi. It had been too smooth, too professional to be Bravlin County dumbassery or a couple of tweakers looking for a payday.
This was his world. His old world.
And if they had his Naomi, he was going to burn it the fuck down.