Chapter 21
twenty-one
Ghost didn’t remember turning off the engine. Didn’t remember hauling the laptop and phone out of the truck. When he hit the Hub, it was as if his body was running on pure adrenaline, no room for hesitation or doubt.
The wind battered the open door behind him, banging it against the wall, but he ignored the racket and crossed to the desk, shoving the stuff on top aside—maps, notebooks, gear, all of it. Cinder flinched back at the noise, hackles up, tail stiff.
He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. He just yanked the blackout curtains all the way shut and hit the lights, plunging the place into a darkness broken only by the cold glow of the monitors.
He dropped into the chair, pain zigzagging up his spine, and grabbed the cheap burner cell he’d kept charged in a Faraday pouch for exactly this purpose. The number was dark ops—buried so deep in encrypted layers that even the government would have to bleed to find it.
His thumb hovered over the call button.
This was a bad idea. A truly fucking suicidal idea. But he didn’t have any other cards left to play.
He hit dial.
The line pinged off satellites, then rang once, twice, three times. The fourth ring was just static, then a click—open line, but no voice.
He waited, breathing through the acid eating at his throat. His hands wanted to shake, but he forced them still against the edge of the desk. Cinder whined, pacing at his feet, her anxiety a mirror for his own.
Finally, a woman laughed. “Well,” Isolde Mara said in the low, unbothered purr of a voice that had once talked him into all kinds of evil shit, back when he was angry at the world and wanted to hurt everyone. “Ghost. Is that you?”
“Cut the shit. You know it is.”
A pause as an old lighter clicked. She’d always made a ritual of lighting her cigarettes. After a moment, she exhaled, and he swore he could smell the smoke through the phone.
“It’s been a long time. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He focused on the far wall, his free hand curling into a fist, nails digging half-moons into his palm. “You’re going to listen. And you’re going to listen carefully.”
Her sigh said she was bored already, but he heard the annoyance just under it. She hadn’t expected this. Good.
“You release Naomi Lefthand—unharmed, immediately. If you don’t, or if anything happens to her, the drive is going to every major media outlet in the world. Evidence, ops, every name you ever burned to climb that ladder. I will salt the earth so nothing grows back.”
She was silent for a long moment. On screen, the motion cameras flickered with static, lightning cracking the night and painting the whole Hub in bone-white flashes.
A soft, dangerous laugh carried through the speaker. “Have you been drinking, Owen? Because I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Who is Naomi Lefthand? Should I be jealous?”
He bared his teeth, ignoring her use of his real name, ignoring the hook she wanted him to bite. “Don’t insult my intelligence. I know you’re behind this.”
Another low chuckle. “I’m flattered, really.”
He slammed his fist down on the desk, rattling the monitors so hard that two of them went black. “Naomi has nothing to do with… us.”
“Oh, there’s still an us?”
His stomach roiled. He could hear her smiling.
Could picture the razor-sharp slash of her mouth, the way she’d always gotten off on being in control.
Even when he had her stripped bare, wrists tied above her head, a knife at her throat, she never let him have the last word.
Sometimes he wondered if that was why he’d let her put a bullet through his shoulder in that basement in Bucharest. Maybe he’d wanted her to win.
The wind battered the Hub, rattling the windows. He wanted to put his fist through the glass, just to feel something sharp and real. Instead, he gripped the phone and forced himself to breathe.
“There was never an us. You made that perfectly clear when you sent me to prison to further your political career.”
Another drag on her cigarette. He could picture her in that glass tower in D.C., heels up on the desk, face all marble and poison. Playing him the way she always had.
“Don’t be dramatic, darling. You made your own bed. I just saw an opportunity and took it. Anyone in my position would have.”
He resisted the urge to hurl the phone against the wall. “I’m not interested in rehashing the past.”
A pause. She let the silence stretch, probably savoring the fact she had him right where she wanted.
“Tell me, Owen, do the men you work with at the Ridge know who you really are? Or did you spin them the same bullshit you tried to sell me all those years ago?”
He said nothing. Just stared at the screens, barely seeing them. His hands had gone numb. “Release Naomi. Now. Or the drive goes live.”
“You’re bluffing. You won’t release it because your crimes are on there, too.”
“And I’ve already served my time thanks to you. They can’t charge me twice.”
She went quiet. Not a breath or sound, just dead air on the line.
He could picture her thinking it through, cool and clinical. Calculating risk, damage, all the ways the truth might kill her.
On screen, lightning split the field behind the Hub. Crazy flickers of white, a digital afterimage that made every shadow in the room pulse with static. Cinder pressed up against his knees, tense, not so much as a whine now. She could feel the edge in him.
He waited.
“Cute,” Isolde finally purred. “You really care about this one, don’t you? Is she better than me, Owen?”
“She’s not you,” he said, each syllable ground out between his teeth. “That’s the entire point.”
Isolde’s laugh was sharp and sounded way too close. “Oh, darling. I hope you told her about Bucharest. About what really happened. Or is she still in that sweet phase where she believes you’re one of the good guys?”
He let the words roll off. None of it mattered. Not her games, her appetite for pain, or the way she always circled back to the wreckage between them. Only one thing mattered now.
“Bring her back, Isolde. Whole. Breathing. You know I’ll follow through.”
“I believe you will,” she purred. “The trouble is, I didn’t take your little FBI girlfriend.
I have no use for her, professional or otherwise, so maybe you should look somewhere closer to home.
Domestic enemies, not foreign. People in your own backyard.
” She inhaled. Exhaled. “But this has been fun, Ghost. Thank you for reminding me you’re still alive. It’s… useful.”
She disconnected.
He dropped the phone on the desk, staring at it like it might bite him. He hated that snake of a woman with bone-deep fury, and would trust Satan himself before trusting her again, but…
He believed her.
She hadn’t taken Naomi.
It felt like he’d just cut his own throat for nothing.
Cinder nosed at his knee, tail low, eyes huge and uncertain. She whined again, a soft, mournful sound she’d never made for anyone else.
He couldn’t look at her. Not now.
The monitors blinked as the storm outside raged, thunder rolling so loud that the roof itself vibrated. He watched the lightning flash against the blackened window and caught a glimpse of his own reflection—a gaunt mask, eyes gone feral, a man so far from home he might as well have never had one.
Alone. Not just tactically. Soul deep.
He shoved Cinder back, harder than he meant to. She recoiled, confusion etched in every line of her body, then crept a few paces away and sank to the floor.
He wanted to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come. He was poison. Everything he touched broke or suffered or disappeared.
He was running out of moves, and now the woman he’d spent half his life fearing and hating had him by the balls all over again.
He gripped the edge of the desk until pain cut through the panic.
He was back in that old cell again. Locked in, lights off, the world reduced to static.
Cinder edged forward, belly to the floor, and let out a tiny whimper. “No.” He threw out a hand, not letting her any closer. “Stay.”
He didn’t deserve comfort. Didn’t deserve anything.