Chapter 22
twenty-two
The Hub door flew open hard enough to punch a hole in the wall.
Jax came through first, boots slapping wet on the wood. Boone was behind him, rain skimming off the brim of his hat. Greta followed right on their heels.
Boone’s dark blue eyes swept the place, taking in Ghost’s grip on the desk, the mess on the floor, and Cinder frozen right where he’d told her to stay.
“You do something stupid?”
The question landed like a spark in dry tinder, and in a heartbeat, Ghost was on his feet and nose-to-nose with Boone, knocking the cowboy’s hat off his head. He wanted Boone to swing first. Wanted a reason to stop feeling everything except the exquisite clarity of a fight.
But Boone just stared at him, jaw set, eyes flat. “Well?”
Something inside Ghost snapped. Five minutes ago, he’d nearly begged a sociopath for mercy. Now the violence had nowhere to go but out.
The phone went first, smashing into the far wall, plastic shattering, the battery skittering across the floor. He grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it.
“Ghost!” Jax shouted.
But he was already gone. Somewhere else entirely. Back in that cell where the walls closed in, where the light never changed, where he’d spent three years before they even told him what he was charged with. Back in the place where he was nothing but a number and a means to an end.
Boone murmured, “Let him burn it out,” but Jax moved up anyway, putting himself in the blast zone.
“Ghost, man, we need to—”
He snarled and wrenched away, upending the chair and driving it into the floor, splintering a leg.
Jax raised his hands and took a step back. Cinder yelped and made for the gap behind the lockers, watching him with the betrayed eyes of a dog who’d hoped he might be different.
And still he couldn’t stop.
It wasn’t enough.
Nothing would be enough.
He seized a stack of files and flung them across the room, papers exploding like white birds.
“She’s gone,” he rasped, his voice hardly recognizable to his own ears. “They took her, and I can’t—”
The words choked off as he upended a shelf of equipment. Monitors crashed to the floor, their hard drives bouncing and splitting open. Each act of destruction felt like tearing off a piece of his own skin, but he couldn’t stop.
A new shadow filled the door: Bear, built like a freight train, moving with the calm of a man who’d seen real violence and didn’t mind stepping into it.
“Jesus.” He crossed the room in two steps, dodged the next swing, and slammed Ghost into the wall so hard the air left his lungs.
Ghost twisted, pure instinct, kicking, trying to rip loose.
Bear didn’t let go even when he caught the big guy in the jaw. “Enough.”
His shoulder shrieked; his chest filled with broken glass. His nerves were on fire, scraping down to bone. He tried bringing his knee up, but Bear absorbed the blow.
“Fucking knock it off,” Bear growled and held him tight, muscles locked, every inch of him unyielding. “Anger doesn’t help. You think it does until it ruins everything. Trust me.”
He thrashed for another second, but then the anger gave way to exhaustion, his body going limp in Bear’s grip.
The fight drained out of him like blood from a wound, leaving him hollow.
His ribs ached where Bear had slammed him into the wall, but the pain was a distant thing, meaningless compared to the fear eating through his chest.
Nobody moved.
Bear kept him pinned, waiting for the signal that it was over. Boone’s boots edged into his vision, then stopped. Jax hung back with Greta… and others.
Jonah, Anson, X, and River all stood in the doorway, staring at the wreckage with varying degrees of shock on their faces. Even King was there, the big dog silent for once, his ears pinned flat against his skull.
Fuck. Everyone had seen that meltdown.
“You done?” Boone asked, voice flat.
Ghost didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His throat felt scorched.
When Bear eased up, he slid to the floor.
His palms bled. His knuckles, too. His ears rang with static, vision tunneling to pinpricks.
The Hub—his sanctuary, his domain—lay in ruins around him.
Broken glass glittered on the floor like fallen stars.
Smashed monitors. Shattered plastic. Papers everywhere, fluttering in the draft from the open door.
The silence stretched, broken only by the rasp of his breathing and the storm hammering the roof.
Ghost closed his eyes, pain radiating through his body. Naomi was gone. He’d put himself back on Isolde’s radar. And he’d just destroyed the only place he’d ever felt in control.
“She’s gone,” he said again, softer this time, the words like sand in his throat.
Boone knelt in front of him, boots crunching on broken glass. “Who took her?”
“Don’t know.” He shook his head, feeling each muscle in his neck strain with the effort. “Two men. Professional. In and out, no trace.” He forced himself to meet Boone’s eyes. “I called Isolde.”
Boone’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing, just waited for more. He and Walker were the only ones here who knew what that meant.
“She claims she didn’t take Naomi, but she knows something.” Ghost dragged a hand across his face, feeling the stubble rasp against his palm. “Said I should look closer to home.”
“And you believe her?” Boone’s voice held no judgment, just the steady question of a man who’d seen enough lies to last several lifetimes.
Ghost hesitated. Isolde was a liar, a manipulator, a snake in human skin. But this time... “Yeah. I do.”
Boone gave it one more second, then straightened and held out a hand. “Then we have work to do.”
We.
Ghost looked at the outstretched hand for a moment, then at the men crowded into the doorway.
Both River and X were uncharacteristically serious, neither of them mouthing off for once.
Jonah looked as somber as Ghost had ever seen him, arms crossed, jaw tight.
Bear loomed in the background like a mountain, blood on his lip where Ghost had caught him with that wild swing.
Anson hovered at the edge of the group, keeping Greta and Cinder out of the line of fire in case things exploded again.
And Jax stood apart from the others, eyes fixed on Ghost, not on the destruction. He wasn’t surprised. Wasn’t judging. Just waiting, like he’d known all along this storm was coming.
They were all there. For him. For Naomi.
Ghost swallowed hard and looked back at Boone’s outstretched hand, the calluses there, the small scars along the knuckles.
He’d spent three years building walls around himself here, keeping these men at a distance, refusing to need anyone.
Now they stood in the wreckage of his sanctuary, offering help he didn’t deserve.
“You want to find her?” Boone asked, voice gravel-rough. “Then get up.”
He took Boone’s hand and let the man haul him to his feet.
His legs shook. Every muscle in his body felt wrung out, twisted. He braced himself against the wall, fighting the vertigo that threatened to take his knees out from under him.
Cinder broke away from Anson and crept toward him, tail low but wagging tentatively.
She stopped at his feet, eyes searching his face.
The betrayal was gone, replaced with something else—a look that cut him deeper than any blade.
Trust. Despite everything, despite the way he’d lashed out, she still trusted him.
Ghost dropped his hand to her head, and she leaned into it, body quivering with relief.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words meant only for her.
Boone cleared his throat. “Alright,” he said, turning to the others, all business. “Let’s go find Ghost’s woman.”