Chapter Seven
Ghost
December 17, 2024, Diamond Creek, Nebraska.
Normally, church was on Saturday nights, once a week with the officers and once a month with all the patched members. Tonight was different. King had decided to pull everyone in and fill them in about everything that had been happening.
It had taken time for King to come to terms with his new family. He explained about Fury and his connection as well as Braesal O’Malley. The brothers had been talking amongst themselves, and a lot of information had been misconstrued in the delivery.
King kept the information about the woman found on the Powell Ranch under wraps like Declan asked. Though Winchester had been made aware, seeing as how it was his family’s land.
Once that was done, we went over the toy drive the town was handling. Every business in town had put out a box for people to donate toys and clothing for children in need.
We also bought toys for every child in town, and Banshee dressed up like Santa and sat in a throne in the middle of Main Street and handed them out a few days before Christmas. It was just one of the ways we gave back to the town that had welcomed us.
Suddenly the church doors opened, and Ellie walked in, tears streaming down her face.
“Ellie, what are you doing?” Ryder asked, but she ignored him, walking straight to King.
“Ellie, honey what’s wrong?”King asked. We all knew something had happened. The old ladies knew not to interrupt church unless it was a dire emergency.
“There was an explosion.” Ellie closed her eyes. “Danny,” she choked out.
Ryder came up behind her and wrapped his arms around his wife. Cash moved and directed Ryder to his chair. He sat down, pulling Ellie into his lap.
King kneeled on the floor in front of them. “What happened to Danny?”
“The Harbor Security Building on 5 th exploded. Sypher was in it. He’s in the hospital,” Bane explained. He had followed her into the room and stood in the doorway.King had invited him to sit in on church but he declined. Said he was on sabbatical from all club shit, not just his.
“Fuck. I told him whatever he was gonna do wouldn’t work.”
Ellie turned to glare at Ryder, and I knew he was in trouble. “You knew?” she sneered.
“I didn’t know anything, baby. I just knew he was planning something. He didn’t tell me what.”
“Fuck.” King bowed his head.
“He asked me to give you something, King.”
King’s head snapped up and he locked eyes with Ellie. She reached out, taking his hand in hers, and slipped something into his palm, curling his fingers around it.
“He said to tell you, time’s up.”
“Fuck!” King cursed, jumping to his feet and yelled, “AMBER!”
What the fuck was going on? Amber stood in the doorway and looked at King. She looked scared and as upset as Ellie, and I wondered if she was better acquainted with Sypher than we realized.
Amber was one of the first girls to come on board when we moved to Diamond Creek. We knew about what her father had done to her and what she had done to him. We knew she had been bought and sold by some sick motherfucker and that the Golden Skulls had rescued her from a cell.
But everything else about Amber was a mystery. Until now, none of us gave her much thought beyond being a club girl. She had rules and only slept with the younger guys, which was fine. There was plenty of pussy to go around. Since Sam and Charlie had moved into the clubhouse with Jack though, Amber was seen less like a club girl and more like a part of the family. She loved taking care of the three girls, and I imagined when the babies were born, she would want to help with them as well.
“You’re on lockdown. You don’t leave the building without a brother, and you don’t leave the compound at all,” King told her.
Amber simply nodded and turned away from the door. There was something going on that only King knew. I turned to look at Nav, and his eyes were focused on his computer. I should have figured he would know what was going on.
“FUCK!” King shouted. He looked up at Bane and asked, “What do you know?”
“As much as you do. Storm called and said the building exploded and Sypher was in it. He survived, barely. But he’s in the hospital. The table put out a call,” Bane said, his eyes moving to Ellie.
“Goddammit!” King slammed his hand on the table, and Ellie jumped.
“I have to call Dante.”
“Ellie, you can’t,” Nav said.
“But he’s still in Oklahoma. He won’t know what happened,” she argued.
“It’s all over the news, baby,” Ryder pointed out.
“But it didn’t say who the victim was. He has to be told,” she insisted.
“Ellie, you can’t tell him. Danny wouldn’t want Dante to know. He would want him to focus on Danika,” Nav said, and I looked at my brother. He hadn’t used Sypher’s road name, and I wondered if that was for Ellie’s benefit.
“What do I say when Dante calls? How do I talk to him and not tell him?”
“You don’t answer,” King said firmly. “Nav, kill Ellie’s phone.”
“King, no! You can’t do that!” she cried.
“I’m sorry Ellie, I have to.” King turned to Nav. “Jessie’s too.”
Nav nodded and focused back on his computer. I knew he would have both phones wiped in a matter of minutes, and unless they memorized Dante’s number, neither woman would be able to contact him for the foreseeable future.
Ellie cried into Ryder’s shoulder, and he glared at King as he held her.
“Church is over. Everybody out except the officers.”
I remained in my seat as the brothers shuffled from the room. When the doors closed and only the nine of us sat around the table, King turned to Nav.
“What can you find?”
“The table got an anonymous call. They know Sypher survived. They issued the order. Ten million for the first person to kill him.”
“Son of a bitch!” King rubbed the back of his neck. Everyone was quiet as we waited for him. “Where is he?”
“St. John’s Presbyterian.”
“Keep an eye on him. I want to know the minute he wakes up or the minute he doesn’t,” King ordered.
“Prez, what’s goin’ on?” Blade asked.
“A fucking war. I don’t want anyone talking outside this room. As far as the Biker Federation is concerned, we know nothing.”
“Um, we don’t know anything. What the fuck is going on?” Cash asked. “Why is Amber on lockdown?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t tell us?” Cash stood from his chair, and we all sat wide-eyed as our president and VP faced off with each other.
“Just what I fucking said!”
“Prez, we need to know what’s going on if we are going to protect Amber and our women,” Jack pointed out.
“Listen, you all know how much I hate fucking secrets. But right now, I am trying to protect you all. I need you to fucking trust me.”
“Nav,” I called out.
My brother looked up, and I swear he had a deer-in-the-headlights look but it was gone too fast to be sure.
“What do you know about Amber?” I asked.
“I gave King all the information on Amber when I did the background check. There wasn’t much.”
“You haven’t looked into her further?” Gunner asked.
“There wasn’t any need to. Amber is solid. Whatever is going on, I trust King.” With that, Nav went back to his computer. The fucker definitely knew more than he was sharing.
“What does Amber have to do with Sypher?” Cash wasn’t letting it go.
“I can’t fucking tell you. No one but Sypher and one other person knows what I know. The other person is only a threat if something happens to Amber. And we won’t let anything fucking happen to her.”
“Doesn’t Amber know?” Gunner asked.
“No.” King sat in his chair. Looking over at the brothers in the room, he asked us, “Do you trust me?”
“Yea, we fucking trust you,” I said. My brothers followed behind me until it got to Cash. “Brother?”
He glared at King. “This was why we fucking left, brother. Don’t start this shit here.”
What was he talking about? We left because we wanted to get out of the outlaw shit. I looked at King, and he stared at Cash.
“As soon as I can tell you, I will. I don’t like this fucking shit any more than you do. But I have to protect her. I gave my word.”
Cash let out a heavy sigh. “Ok.”
That was it.
It was done.
We all trusted King; there was no question about that. He told us what he could. And the rest of the club wouldn’t know anything more until they needed to.
It was what they signed up for.
It was what we all signed up for. When we agreed to join the Silver Shadows, we understood there would be times we would have to follow our president on blind faith.
This was one of those times.
When we walked out of church into the main room, the brothers were scattered around. Ryder had taken Ellie and the girls home. Beck, Sam, and Rachel were on the couch with Amber.
King said Amber didn’t know what was going on and why she needed to be protected. But how could she not? I understood not knowing who you needed to be protected from. But not knowing why didn’t make any fucking sense.
I sat at the bar with Bane. He wasn’t as bad as the club brother who dropped him off led us to believe. He was gruff, and he drank a lot. But fuck, we all drank a lot.
None of us understood why he was still here, though. He had initially shown up and talked to Dec about the charges against Ellie’s parents. They had forged his name on some medical documents, trying to get a conservatorship set up over Ellie.
After he came here to meet Ellie, he stayed. King told him he could stay as long as he wanted. He accepted and showed no signs of leaving anytime soon.
He was watching the women. Most importantly, Amber. Bane was a member of the Soulless Sinners MC out of New York City. Jingles had grown up hearing about them, and of course Matlock knew Fury. The rest of us only knew what we had heard.
“Amber doesn’t go for the older guys,” I told him. Figured I would save him the embarrassment of being turned down. Amber was gorgeous and more than a few of us had been disappointed by her rules, but we respected them.
“Don’t want to fuck her. Trying to figure out why she looks familiar.” Bane lifted his drink to his lips before asking, “How long has she been here?”
“Five years. Showed up at the first party we had when we set up and never left.”
“Where was she before that?” he asked.
“Don’t know.” The lie rolled easily off my tongue. All the officers knew some of her background, but I wasn’t sharing it with Bane. We might have opened our doors to him because he was a biker, but he was still a fucking stranger.
“You didn’t run a background check?”
“We did,” I confirmed.
He nodded, understanding I wouldn’t tell him shit.
Standing from his chair and emptying his glass, he set it back on the bar and said something that should have shocked me. But given what we had been through the last six months or so, I thought it might be a good idea to bring it up in church.