Chapter 5
FIVE
GHOST
For a moment neither of us says anything else.
The bar has settled back into its usual rhythm around us like the small storm that rolled through earlier never happened.
The jukebox hums through another old rock song.
Pool balls crack against each other in the back corner.
A couple guys at the far end of the counter are arguing about truck routes like their lives depend on it.
Rae moves behind the bar again when someone waves for another round, sliding a couple bottles across the counter and popping the cap off one with the edge of the sink.
She does everything quickly, efficiently, like she’s done the same motions so many times her hands don’t even need instructions anymore.
But every so often she glances back at me.
Like she’s making sure I didn’t vanish.
That thought irritates me enough that I finish the rest of my beer in one slow swallow and set the bottle down on the bar.
I shouldn’t still be here.
The job Mason asked me to do is finished. The three guys who thought they could lean on Wayne won’t be back anytime soon, and hanging around a bar making small talk with an interesting bartender isn’t exactly part of the assignment.
Still.
I find myself watching her one more minute before I finally stand.
The stool legs scrape softly against the floor and Rae looks up immediately.
“Already leaving?” she asks.
I nod once, resting my hand briefly on the bar. “Yeah.”
She studies me for a second like she’s trying to decide whether to argue with that decision. Then she reaches out and grabs the empty bottle, sliding it away with a soft clink.
“Well,” she says, shrugging one shoulder, “thanks again for the pest control.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her eyes flick briefly to the Iron Reapers cut on my back and then back to my face again, that curious expression returning for a moment.
“You’re not going to disappear forever, are you?”
The question catches me off guard just enough that I hesitate.
Not because I don’t know the answer.
Because I do.
Men like me disappear all the time.
That’s kind of the point.
Still, I hear myself say something else.
“I’ll be around.”
Her mouth curves slowly like she knew that was coming.
“Good,” she says, leaning her elbows on the bar again. “Pickle would be very upset if you never came back.”
I shake my head slightly.
“Pickle will survive.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” she says seriously. “He holds grudges.”
I let out a quiet breath that might almost pass for a laugh before turning toward the door.
The music grows louder for a second as I push it open and step outside. The cool night air hits my face immediately, carrying the smell of dust and distant fields that always lingers around small towns like this once the sun goes down.
My bike is still sitting where I left it under the streetlight.
I walk across the gravel lot, the crunch under my boots loud in the quiet. For a second I pause beside the bike and glance back toward the bar. The windows glow warm against the dark, silhouettes of people moving behind the glass while the neon sign buzzes softly.
Somewhere inside that building is a five-foot bartender with a smart mouth and a rescue farm full of animals.
And for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, that thought sticks in my head.
I swing a leg over the bike and start the engine.
The ride home takes about twenty minutes. The roads outside Harlan are mostly empty at this hour, long stretches of asphalt cutting through dark farmland and quiet woods. The wind rushes past my helmet and the steady vibration of the engine beneath me usually clears my head after a night like this.
Tonight it doesn’t.
Because somewhere between The Rust Nail and the highway leading back toward my place, I realize my brain is replaying the conversation inside the bar.
The way Rae leaned on the counter like she owned the place.
The way she said my name.
Cole.
I pull into the small parking lot behind my building and cut the engine.
The apartment complex isn’t much to look at.
Two stories of aging brick with metal railings and outdoor lights that flicker like they’re constantly debating whether to keep working.
A couple of cars sit scattered around the lot, and somewhere in the distance a dog barks once before going quiet again.
I climb the stairs to the second floor and unlock my door.
The apartment inside looks exactly the same as it did this morning.
Small.
Plain.
Bare.
A couch sits in the living room facing a television that hardly ever gets turned on.
The kitchen is barely more than a narrow counter, a refrigerator, and a stove that probably predates the building itself.
There’s a small table with two chairs even though I’ve never had anyone over long enough to use both of them.
I’ve lived here for more than five years.
But anyone walking in would probably assume I moved in last week.
There aren't any pictures on the walls. No decorations. No clutter. Just the bare minimum required to exist comfortably without thinking about it too much.
I kick my boots off near the door and walk into the kitchen, opening the fridge and grabbing a beer before heading back toward the couch. The bottle cap clinks softly against the counter when I twist it off.
The apartment is quiet, and usually that’s exactly how I like it.
Quiet means predictable. Quiet means the world has settled into something steady where nothing unexpected is waiting around the corner.
It’s the kind of silence I’ve built my life around, the kind that lets a man breathe without constantly looking over his shoulder.
But tonight the quiet feels different. It stretches too wide, settles too deep into the walls, leaving my brain with far too much room to wander wherever it wants.
And every time it drifts, it ends up circling right back to the same place.
A small-town bar with neon lights buzzing over the door.
A woman with messy space buns and a septum ring who looks at the world like it’s a joke she’s already figured out.
And a rescue farm full of animals with completely ridiculous names that somehow make perfect sense the second you meet them.
I drop onto the couch and lean my head back, staring at the ceiling while I take a slow drink from the bottle.
For a long moment I just sit there listening to the faint hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic somewhere beyond the building.
Then I mutter quietly to the empty room.
“What the hell was that?”
The ceiling doesn’t answer.
But I already know.
Trouble.
I sit there for a while after saying that, staring at the ceiling and finishing the beer in my hand.
The apartment is quiet except for the refrigerator running in the kitchen and the occasional car passing outside.
Most nights I like it like this. I come home, take my boots off, have a beer, and the place stays quiet until I go to bed.
Tonight the quiet isn’t helping.
My brain keeps going back to the same thing.
Those three guys.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees, looking down at the floor while I think through the night again from the beginning.
Mason asked me to ride out to Harlan and check on Wayne and The Rust Nail.
Dagger said someone had been bothering him about protection, and Wayne isn’t the kind of guy who usually asks for help unless something is actually wrong.
Harlan isn’t far from Jackson. It’s a thirty-minute ride if traffic is light, which means anyone working in that town could easily be coming from somewhere else.
Those guys didn’t seem like locals.
And they didn’t seem nervous about being there either.
They’d been showing up all week, Rae said that herself. If that’s true, then they thought they could keep doing it without someone stepping in.
That usually means somebody bigger is backing them.
I reach over and grab my phone off the table.
If there’s one guy in the club who can figure out who those three were, it’s Riot. Roman Kovacs has access to more cameras and databases than anyone else I know, and he’s good at pulling information together fast.
I open the message thread and type.
Ghost: Need you to pull camera footage around The Rust Nail in Harlan.
The typing bubble pops up almost right away.
Riot: Well hello to you too.
Riot: This a friendly request or did you break something again?
I lean back against the couch and type.
Ghost: Three guys harassing the bar owner.
Ghost: Late thirties. One slick hair, two with him.
Ghost: I ran them off tonight.
A few seconds go by before he answers.
Riot: “Ran them off” meaning…?
I type back.
Ghost: Parking lot conversation got physical.
Another pause.
Then:
Riot: Of course it did.
Riot: Give me a minute.
I set the phone down and get up to grab another beer from the fridge. When I come back and sit down again the phone buzzes.
I pick it up.
Riot: Harlan has city cameras at the highway intersection and two gas stations within a block of that bar.
Riot: Rusty Iron itself doesn’t have outside cameras though.
That doesn’t surprise me.
Ghost: Pull what you can.
Ghost: They’ve been showing up all week.
A moment later another message comes through.
Riot: That sounds like the start of something.
Ghost: That’s what I’m thinking.
There’s a longer pause before the next message appears.
Riot: You don’t usually text me about three random guys.
I stare at the message for a second because he’s right.
Normally I would have handled it and moved on. Three guys trying to scare a bar owner wouldn’t be worth digging into. But something about the way they acted tonight stuck with me.
They didn’t seem surprised to see my cut.
And they didn’t seem worried until things actually got physical.
I type back.
Ghost: Got a bad feeling about it.
The reply comes quickly.
Riot: That’s reassuring.
Riot: I’ll pull footage and run their faces.
Riot: If they’ve been around town there will be something.
I nod to myself and type.
Ghost: Let me know.
I set the phone down on the table and lean back into the couch, stretching my legs out in front of me.
The apartment settles back into its usual quiet, the kind that normally helps me shut my brain off after a long day.
I take another drink of the beer and stare across the room at the blank wall above the television.
But my head won’t stay quiet.
Instead it keeps going back to the same place.
The Rust Nail.
And the bartender.
Rae.
I shift slightly on the couch and rub a hand across the back of my neck while I think about the way she leaned on the bar when we were talking. She didn’t fidget. Didn’t act nervous. She just stood there like she belonged in that space and had nothing to prove to anyone around her.
That alone makes her different from most people.
Most women I meet either try too hard to get my attention or they avoid eye contact completely once they notice the cut on my back. Rae did neither. She looked straight at me the second I walked in like she was trying to figure out exactly what kind of man had just stepped through the door.
And when those three guys started leaning on Wayne, she didn’t hesitate.
She stepped in like it was automatic.
Like protecting that place was just something she did.
I take another drink and set the bottle down on the table.
The way she talked about the bar sticks with me. Not like it was just a job. Not like it was somewhere she clocked in and out every day.
She talked about it like it was home.
And the way she looked at Wayne when she mentioned him… that wasn’t just employee loyalty either. There was something deeper there. The kind of connection people have when someone showed up for them at a time when nobody else did.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees again, staring down at the floor.
She said she started working there when she was sixteen.
Sixteen.
That means Wayne gave a kid a job and a place to land when she probably didn’t have anywhere else to go.
And now she’s standing behind that bar ten years later like it’s something worth defending.
That part pulls at something in my chest I’m not used to feeling.
Because the question that keeps coming up in my head doesn’t make sense.
Why would anyone give her up?
A woman like that doesn’t end up alone unless someone made a bad decision somewhere along the way.
Or a lot of them.
I lean back again and rub a hand across my face.
Normally when I leave a bar, the people in it stay there. They’re just faces I’ll probably never see again, and I don’t spend time thinking about them once I’m gone.
But Rae…
She’s still in my head.
The way she tilted her head when she looked at me.
The way she didn’t hesitate to walk into a dark parking lot just to see how things would play out.
The way she talked about her animals like they were family.
I let out a slow breath and stare at the ceiling again.
“Jesus,” I mutter quietly.
Then I shake my head once and reach for the beer again.
Because I’ve known that woman for maybe an hour.
And somehow she’s still taking up space in my head like she’s been there a lot longer.