Chapter 34
thirty-four
“Want to go for a ride?” he asked, the words coming out more abruptly than he’d intended.
Surprise flickered across Naomi’s face, followed by cautious interest. “Now?”
“Unless your ribs are bothering you too much.” He kept his tone neutral, giving her room to decline without feeling challenged.
“No, they’re okay.” She glanced down at her clothes—his shirt over her tank top, jeans, boots that would work fine for riding. “I’m not exactly dressed for it, but I’d like that.”
Ghost dismounted in one fluid movement, keeping a firm grip on Coyote’s reins. The stallion stamped restlessly, impatient with standing still. “Not on him,” he clarified. “He’s not great with new riders. I’ve got someone better suited for you.”
He led Coyote back to the small corral where Lazy Susan was dozing in a patch of sunshine, her golden coat gleaming. The buckskin mare didn’t even lift her head when they approached, though one ear swiveled lazily in their direction.
“This is Lazy Susan,” Ghost said, transferring Coyote to the hitching post. “She’s Walker’s initiation mare.”
Naomi moved to the fence, studying the mare with obvious amusement. “Initiation mare?”
Ghost’s mouth quirked. “She humbles newcomers. Tests their patience.” He unsaddled Coyote with practiced efficiency, his hands moving through the familiar motions while his mind raced ahead.
Where would he take her? What would he say?
How much detail did she need to understand what kind of man he’d been?
“She doesn’t look very intimidating,” Naomi observed as he set Coyote’s saddle aside.
“That’s her superpower.” He retrieved Lazy Susan’s saddle and bridle from the tack room, then approached the mare, who finally lifted her head with a long-suffering sigh. “You don’t realize you’re being played until it’s too late.”
Lazy Susan accepted the bridle with minimal fuss, though she made a point of stretching her neck as high as possible, forcing Ghost to reach up. As he swung the saddle onto her back, the mare dramatically expanded her ribcage, a classic trick to ensure the cinch would be loose once she exhaled.
“I see you,” he told her quietly, waiting until she gave up and released her breath before tightening the cinch properly.
Naomi laughed, the sound light and clear in the morning air. “I’m getting the feeling you two have history.”
“She’s tried every trick in the book with me.” He adjusted the stirrups to accommodate Naomi’s shorter legs. “But I’ve got her number.”
The mare swung her broad head around to give him a look that clearly questioned this assertion.
When everything was ready, Ghost led Lazy Susan to the mounting block and offered his hand to Naomi.
She took it without hesitation, her palm warm against his as she stepped up.
He held the mare steady—unnecessarily, given Lazy Susan’s complete disinterest in sudden movements—while Naomi settled into the saddle.
“Comfortable?” he asked, handing her the reins.
She nodded, adjusting her position slightly. “It’s been a while, but I think I remember the basics.”
“She’s not going to do anything unexpected.” Ghost retrieved Coyote, swinging back up into his saddle with practiced ease. “In fact, getting her to do anything at all is the usual challenge.”
They set off at a walk, following a trail that wound through the eastern edge of Valor Ridge.
Lazy Susan plodded along at her trademark glacial pace, carefully selecting each hoof placement as if the well-worn path might contain hidden traps.
Coyote danced sideways, irritated at being held to such a slow speed, but Ghost kept him in check with subtle pressure from his calves.
“Is she actually moving?” Naomi asked after a few minutes, the smile in her voice taking any sting from the words. “I think that rock we just passed is keeping pace with us.”
“She likes to savor the journey,” Ghost replied dryly. “According to Walker, the record for completing this loop is four hours. She got distracted by a particularly interesting patch of clover.”
Naomi laughed, the sound washing over him like warm water. “And here I thought horseback riding was supposed to be efficient transportation.”
“Not with Her Majesty.” He nodded toward the mare, who had indeed slowed even further to investigate a cluster of wildflowers along the path. “She has many names around here. Land Sloth. Glue Stick. Princess Stubborn. They all fit.”
“I’m sensing a theme.” Naomi nudged the mare gently with her heels. Lazy Susan acknowledged the cue with a philosophical ear flick and continued her careful examination of the flowers.
They followed the trail as it curved toward a small meadow, golden with late summer grasses and sheltered by a stand of aspens. Ghost steered Coyote toward it, and Lazy Susan, apparently deciding the meadow might contain superior grazing opportunities, picked up her pace marginally to follow.
It was a perfect spot—secluded, quiet, with a view of the mountains in the distance. Private enough for the conversation he needed to have. Ghost dismounted and ground-tied Coyote, who immediately lowered his head to graze, the training session’s tension forgotten in the presence of fresh grass.
He moved to help Naomi down, reaching up to place his hands at her waist. She slid into his arms with easy grace, her body warm and solid against his for a brief, electric moment before her boots touched the ground.
Lazy Susan immediately dropped her head to graze with single-minded focus, the reins dragging on the ground, forgotten.
“She’s definitely found her calling,” Naomi observed with a smile, watching the mare attack the grass like she was starving rather than well-fed.
Ghost didn’t smile back. Couldn’t. The weight of what he needed to say pressed against his chest, making it hard to breathe. He took her hand and led her to a flat boulder at the edge of the meadow, warm from the sun.
“I need to tell you something.” His voice came out rough, edged with tension. “About my past. About who I was. Before.”
Naomi’s expression sobered, but she didn’t pull away. “Okay.”
Where to start? How to explain the man he’d been—cold, calculating, willing to cross any line for the mission or for his own gain? He stared out at the mountains, gathering his thoughts.
“You know I worked for the CIA.” It wasn’t a question. She’d read his file, or at least the parts that weren’t redacted beyond recognition. “What you don’t know—what isn’t in that file—is what I did while I was there.”
He told her everything. About the off-books task force, targeting arms traffickers around the world.
About Isolde, his handler, and how they’d gone from hunting criminals to becoming them.
How they’d skimmed weapons, sold them back through intermediaries, laundered the profits through shell companies.
How he’d told himself it was just exploiting a broken system, not hurting anyone who wasn’t already corrupt.
“People died because of choices I made,” he said, unable to look at her face, afraid of what he might see there.
“I didn’t pull the trigger, but I put the guns in the hands of people who did.
I knew what they’d do with them. I just didn’t care.
I didn’t care about much of anything back then, and I was so fucking good at being bad,” he said, his voice flat.
“There was a woman… Isolde. Together, we were unstoppable. We had intel no one else could get, contacts nobody else could touch. We went places even the Agency wouldn’t go.
Did things that would never be authorized. ”
He’d never said these things aloud before, had never put words to the darkness that lived inside him. But Naomi deserved to know. All of it.
“There was a warlord in Somalia. Nasir Aaden. He was supplying weapons to terrorist cells across East Africa. The Agency wanted him taken down, but diplomatically—sanctions, pressure from allies, the usual bureaucratic bullshit that never works.” He paused, the memory sharp as glass.
“Isolde and I had a different approach. We set up Aaden. We fed him intel about a rival faction planning to assassinate him. When he moved against them, we made sure the evidence pointed back to him ordering an unprovoked attack on a village. Twenty-six civilians died.”
He forced himself to meet Naomi’s eyes, needing to see her reaction, but her face remained carefully neutral, giving nothing away.
“I told myself it was necessary. That those deaths were acceptable collateral damage in service of the greater good. But the truth is, I just didn’t care. I was too busy playing god, too caught up in the power, the adrenaline. Too deep in Isolde’s web.”
The fox pendant glinted at Naomi’s throat as she shifted slightly beside him. The silence stretched between them, and he wished she’d give him something.
Anger.
Disgust.
Anything but the carefully composed mask.
“Then it all went to hell.” He had to drag the words from deep in his chest, where the blackest parts of him lived. “Our operation got blown wide open. I still don’t know who talked, but suddenly we were exposed.”
The memory sliced through him, sharp as the day it happened. The raid on his apartment at 3 AM. The flash-bangs. The shouting. The cold bite of handcuffs.
“Isolde set me up to take the fall. She’d been preparing for months, building a paper trail that made me look like a rogue agent.
Planted evidence in my apartment. Offshore accounts in my name that I’d never touched.
She even had recordings of conversations we’d never had—perfect voice duplications, courtesy of CIA deep fake technology that wasn’t supposed to exist yet. ”
He clenched his jaw, the familiar rage rising like bile in his throat. Even now, years later, the betrayal burned just as hot. “Eight years. That’s what it cost me, though she wanted me put away for life. And—” His throat closed around the words.