Chapter 20 Ranger
RANGER
I eased myself out from under her arm one careful inch at a time.
She didn't stir. Her breathing stayed deep and even, her face slack against the pillow in a way that told me she was actually sleeping, not that light, flinching half-sleep she'd been stuck in for weeks. Real sleep. I stood there for a second just watching her chest rise and fall.
Smoke was already in the hallway when I pulled the door open.
I crouched down in front of him. He sat at attention, ears forward, watching me with those sharp dark eyes.
"Guard," I said quietly.
His gaze tracked to the closed bedroom door, then back to me.
"She's yours until I'm back. You don't leave that door."
He dropped his head once, low and slow.
I didn't look back when I walked out. If I looked back, I wouldn't leave. I headed downstairs and outside to meet Ghost.
“You got what I gave you?” Jasmine asked.
“Yeah, baby, I got it,” Ghost said as he tapped the breast pocket of his leather jacket.
“Good,” his girl said as she grabbed his leather jacket by the fabric and pulled him in for a kiss.
I turned my back to them and tended to my bike. The smacking of their lips was enough for me to know what kind of goodbye she gave Ghost, and I didn’t feel like staring at it.
I wondered if Marla would ever do the same for me one of these days.
I shook my head softly, rattling the thought out of my mind.
I did a point-check on my bike, making sure I had everything and that it was secured.
The wind kicked up, causing me to slide my own leather jacket on.
It felt weird, not wearing the one emblazoned with our logo.
But then again, we had clean, blank leather jackets for a reason.
Sometimes we got ourselves into situations where it wasn’t good to identify ourselves.
This would be another situation like that.
“All right,” Ghost said before his engine struck up. “You ready, Range?”
I tossed my leg over my bike. “Ready when you are.”
I looked back one last time at the clubhouse, and what I saw stopped my heart in my chest. There, peering out the main window, with Cap hovering over her with a thumbs up for me, was Marla.
Her hands were cupped against the window as her forehead pressed to it, and when our eyes connected, she smiled.
She smiled like the sun, and her hand waved at me.
I couldn’t help but to wave back.
I wanted to sit there on my bike and stare at her for hours. More than that, I wanted to offer her a ride on my bike. I think she’d love it. Going fast. The wind in her hair. Knowing that no one could catch us or contain us.
One of these days.
Ghost revved his engine, and it pulled me from my trance. I cranked up my bike, relishing the rumble of the engine between my legs. But I stole one last glance back at the clubhouse.
Only to see Marla still standing there.
I had to force myself to push off. I didn’t want to leave her behind. I knew Cap promised to keep an eye on her and make sure she was all right while we were gone. But I was worried about her.
I made her a promise, though.
And if we were lucky, I’d make good on that promise with Ghost.
When Ghost and I finally hit the road, I let myself settle into the rhythm of riding. I hadn’t been on my bike in weeks. Mostly because of Marla. I didn’t want to leave her, especially in a clubhouse full of men. But here lately, she made a lot of progress.
The reason she made progress wasn’t good, but she was progressing nonetheless.
Ghost’s voice came alive in my Bluetooth headset. “Your girl’s getting stronger.”
“She’s not my girl,” I said as I rode up beside him.
He chuckled. “Whatever you say.”
“Do you really think we’re gonna find her friend at the law firm?”
“Doc seems adamant, and I’ve never seen him this adamant.”
“He was adamant that one time when he ate seafood.”
Ghost snickered. “I’ve never seen anyone projectile vomit like that before.”
Words fell silent between us, and I closed my eyes for a moment.
I didn’t do it often when I was riding. Only for a second or two.
But the feeling of the wind whipping around me while I careened down the road was something I always enjoyed.
Whenever I rode, it felt like the Earth wrapped me up.
It felt like time stopped, like the world waited for me to enjoy myself before it got back to turning.
It was the only thing that made life worth living some days, my bike.
And Marla.
I shook the thought from my head like a set of Yahtzee dice.
The ride was long. We kept a low profile, going the speed limit, never running the yellow lights.
We needed eyes off us if we were going to pull this off, and I still didn’t know what we were doing with our bikes once we got into city limits.
Sure I supposed we could tramp around on our bikes, revving our engines and looking like assholes.
But that sort of defeated the purpose of keeping a low profile.
Until Ghost banked a hard left just past the city limit sign for Bryersville.
“Follow me,” he said as my helmet’s speakers came alive again, “got us a storage unit. We can bank our bikes there and walk the rest of the way.”
I chuckled. “And here I thought we were just gonna fly around with our dicks hanging out.”
“I don’t think your girl would like your dick flying around for others to see.”
“She’s not my girl.”
“Whatever you say.”
I turned toward him and shot him a glare through my helmet.
Not that he saw it, but it made me feel better.
I wasn’t Marla’s man. She was reclaiming herself again.
She was healing. She finally busted out of that fearful shell she built up to survive, and I was simply the mechanism through which she flourished.
That was a hell of a lot different than what Ghost and Jasmine were doing.
Or Cap and Ariel.
Or Wrecker and Amanda.
Eventually, after weaving our way through the back alleyways of Bryersville, with horns honking and the city buildings standing tall over our heads, Ghost pulled into a small storage unit place.
We trailed all the way to the outskirts of it, right to a set of garage-like structures that were all fused together into one building.
With a big black building looming not too far away.
“That’s where we’re headed,” Ghost said with a nod of his head as he banked his bike.
I watched him throw his leg over and hop off before he walked up to one of the storage units and keyed in a code.
“The big, black building?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said as the storage door rolled up. “We’re about half a mile away from it here. We can walk the rest of the way.”
“Fine by me.”
I rolled my bike into the storage unit just after Ghost got his situated, and I saw that he had a few other things outfitted in this unit. He had a gun cabinet in the corner, and when he ripped off his leather gloves to use his thumb print to open it, the metal door came flying open.
“Should take one, just in case,” he mumbled as he reached for a pistol.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said as I walked over and took in his display of knives.
Fucking hell, I loved wielding knives.
“Take whatever you want, we’ll clean it down and hang it up once we’re done,” Ghost said.
I just nodded before I plucked two knives off the gun cabinet wall. I holstered them to my jeans, then plucked a taser and slid it in my back pocket, just to be safe. With Ghost taking a couple of pistols in with him, I decided to go a slightly different route.
Just in case we really got up close and personal with some assholes.
“All right, let’s get moving. It’s almost midnight,” Ghost said.
“How long have formal working hours been done for the building?” I asked as the two of us exited the unit.
“Their official hours say they close at eight,” he said as he keyed in the code to close the storage door.
The creaking of the door echoed with us through the night as we took a back fence entrance and started a straight-line beeline toward the looming building of the law firm.
The mile-long walk to the building was basically silent.
Our heads were on swivels, and the closer we got to the building, the more finicky Ghost became with the sounds.
We stopped at every creak and rattle. I turned my head with every shadowed movement.
We kept our footsteps silent and stuck to the shadows, especially since darkness was Ghost’s strong point.
Until finally, we came to a side entrance.
“Do you have the schematics?” I whispered as I came up behind him.
He just patted his leather jacket breast pocket again. “I got drawings.”
I paused. “Drawings?”
He peered over his shoulder at me. “Your girl isn’t the only one who can draw maps.”
I sighed. “Ghost, she’s not my girl. We’re not dating or anything.”
He chuckled. “Whatever you say.”
I paused. “Wait, seriously, you didn’t bring the schematics?”
“Do you know how fucking massive those schematics are? There’s at least one page for each fucking floor in those schematics. How the hell was I supposed to bring all that shit?”
He had a point. I was used to looking at digital documents, but printing out schematics was a whole other thing.
“All right,” I said, accepting the conversation. “The hell do we do about this door, then?”
“If Jasmine’s right…”
I watched him fish out what looked like a key.
I furrowed my brow as I watched him wipe it off, and then he drew in a deep breath.
My gaze watched as he slid the key into the lock.
My jaw dropped when his fingers were actually able to turn it.
But I was practically ready to laugh with glee when the door popped open.
Like the building ushered us in.
Ghost held up his fist, signaling that this was the point in the plan where we had to go silent. I nodded as he poked his head into the building, and I decided to look up and scour for any cameras. I didn’t find any, however.
Interesting.
That a law firm didn’t have cameras of their side—
“Oof,” I grunted as my body got yanked inside.