Chapter Fifteen
SAGE
Two SUVs roll onto the highway from a side road nearly half a mile behind us. Dust hangs in the air for a moment before the wind tears it away. They fall into step with our speed so smoothly they could almost disappear into the traffic. Almost.
A knot tightens low in my stomach before I understand what my instincts are trying to tell me.
Ghost’s left hand leaves the grip, and it finds my knee. One firm squeeze.
Not reassurance, instruction.
Hold on.
Then his hand is back on the handlebars. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have missed it completely.
But I don’t miss it.
Not this time.
Koa is already moving. I feel it more than I see it at first, his bike drifting out of formation until he’s running alongside Sin, both of them watching the same stretch of road in their mirrors with a focus that only comes when instinct arrives before certainty.
Ghost has seen it too. I know because the easy rhythm beneath me has disappeared completely. Every movement of the bike has sharpened beneath my hands, smoother somehow, more deliberate, like every muscle in his body has settled into a different gear.
The SUVs close the distance.
The one in the left lane edges forward until it’s level with Deek, hanging there for a heartbeat that stretches a fraction too long.
Something inside me goes cold, then it commits.
The SUV snaps hard across the lane, its front quarter panel slamming into Deek’s front wheel with a violent crack that punches straight through the roar of the motorcycles.
Deek’s Harley bucks sideways. His handlebars wrench violently to the left as the bike fishtails across the lane, the rear tire hunting for grip while he wrestles eight hundred pounds of motorcycle that suddenly wants to throw him onto the asphalt.
“Deek!” I hear myself shout, though my voice disappears beneath the engines.
Bear swerves wide to avoid him, missing Deek by what looks like inches.
Mace has nowhere to go. He throws his bike onto the shoulder in an attempt to avoid the collision, but the loose gravel catches his front tire.
The Harley slides out from beneath him in an explosion of dust and stone, the bike cartwheeling once before crashing onto its side while Mace tumbles hard, rolling down the embankment.
The neat, staggered formation we’d been riding in only seconds ago fractures around us as brothers scatter instinctively, every rider making split-second decisions to avoid becoming the next bike to go down.
Sin’s voice cuts through the comms, calm enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Pack tight. Now.”
Ghost hauls me forward with one hard pull until I’m plastered against his back, my helmet bumping lightly against his as the Harley surges beneath us. Bikes close in from both sides, engines roaring as the brothers tighten the formation until there’s barely any daylight between us.
It takes me one heartbeat to understand why.
He just put himself between the people who are trying to hunt us and me.
My arms lock around his waist so tightly I can feel the hard bands of muscle beneath his cut. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until my lungs start to burn.
The trailing SUV suddenly lunges forward, and its rear window slides down. The man leaning out isn’t looking at the pack.
He is looking at us.
My stomach drops so violently it feels as though I have missed a step at the edge of a cliff.
“Ghost!” The word tears out of me before I even know I’m saying it.
“They’re armed!” Koa’s voice rips through the comms at the same moment.
Sin doesn’t hesitate. “Return it.”
The first gunshot cracks through the desert. For half a second, my brain refuses to understand what I have heard. Then another follows, and another, each blast punching through the roar of engines until the entire valley seems to explode around us.
Something whistles past my helmet, so close I feel the rush of air skim my cheek.
I scream as another round slams into Ghost’s Harley with a deafening metallic crack. Sparks burst from the side near the fuel tank, bright against the afternoon sun, and fragments of metal spray across the road before disappearing beneath the wheels behind us.
“Oh my God!” The words barely leave my mouth before Ghost throws the Harley sideways just enough to spoil the shooter’s angle.
The movement should terrify me. Instead, it feels impossibly controlled, like the motorcycle isn’t reacting, it’s listening.
More shots crack through the air, and suddenly something burns across my upper arm as if someone dragged a blade through fire over my skin. I gasp, my hand flying to it before I even think, and when I pull it away, my glove comes back streaked with blood.
For one impossible heartbeat I can only look at it.
They hit me.
I’ve been shot.
Not badly.
But enough to make the reality of what’s happening crash into me with crushing force.
They’re trying to kill us.
They’re trying to kill me.
“Ghost…” My voice shakes so badly I barely recognize it.
“You hit?” His voice doesn’t change. Bullets are flying past us, and brothers are returning fire. We are doing highway speeds through the middle of the desert, and somehow he still sounds exactly like the man who’d asked me if I wanted coffee this morning.
I don’t know whether to find that reassuring or terrifying.
“I…” I swallow hard. “Just, my arm.”
“Hold on.” He gives me two words. That’s all. Not because he doesn’t care, but because every part of him is already moving.
His left hand leaves the handlebar.
My heart stops.
“Ghost, what are you—” The pistol appears in his hand so smoothly I don’t even see where it came from, and it shuts me up completely.
The explosion beside my head is so loud my entire body jerks. The concussion punches through my helmet, leaving my ears ringing as the smell of burned gunpowder mixes with desert dust.
For the smallest fraction of a second, all I can think is… Ghost just fired a gun, while we are doing highway speeds.
His arm doesn’t shake.
His breathing doesn’t change.
Nothing about him changes.
His shot punches through the SUV’s windshield, glass erupting in a glittering spray as the driver instinctively jerks the wheel. The vehicle swerves toward the shoulder before correcting, losing just enough ground for Bear to drive his bike into the gap.
Nitro and Koa swing wide, answering with controlled bursts that force the SUV farther back.
Ghost doesn’t chase them or fire again.
The pistol disappears as quickly as it appeared, his hand returning to the handlebars like it never left. His attention is already back where it belongs.
On the road.
On getting me out.
I can feel every tiny movement through him—the shift of his shoulders, the pressure of his knees against the bike, the way he leans into the next bend before the Harley even reaches it, anticipating every curve, every pothole, every threat before it happens.
It’s terrifying.
Not because he is panicking.
Because he isn’t.
There is no hesitation.
No frantic movements.
No shouting.
Just absolute, undeniable control.
Like somewhere inside him there’s a place built for moments exactly like this, and the second the first bullet flew, he stepped into it without a second thought.
I bury my face against his back for half a heartbeat, my fingers clinging to him with everything I have as another bullet cracks somewhere behind us.
The leather beneath my gloves is warm and solid beneath my grip.
Real.
He is real.
He is here.
And with every mile we put between ourselves and that SUV, one thought pounds through my head louder than the engines—he is risking everything to get me home.
My forehead presses harder between his shoulder blades as another burst of gunfire tears across the highway.
Please… I don’t even know who I’m praying to. Just, please don’t let anything happen to Ghost.
The realization hits me almost as hard as the gunfire.
I am not praying for me.
I am praying for him.
The bikes slow one by one, engines dying as we bunch up on the shoulder. Dust settles over hot asphalt and hotter metal. The desert sits around us, like nothing at all just happened.
My hands are shaking against Ghost’s jacket, and I don’t dare let go.
He parks and doesn’t move right away. I can feel him doing exactly what I’m doing, taking stock, breathing, counting what’s still standing. Then he reaches down and covers both my hands with one of his, holding them there against his chest for a long moment. “You okay?”
I’m not.
Not entirely, but I’ve already decided I am not going to say that out loud.
“Yeah.” It comes out steadier than I have any right to expect.
Ghost slides off the bike and helps me down, but instead of letting go, he catches my forearm, his eyes dropping straight to the streak of blood on my sleeve. His fingers carefully push the torn fabric aside, checking the angry graze running along my upper arm.
His jaw tightens, and for one long moment, he just looks at it.
Then his hand leaves my arm and comes up to cup my face.
His palm is warm against my cheek, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that steals every other sound from the world, looking for shock, pain, or anything he might have missed.
When he finds whatever he needed to find, the tension in his shoulders eases by the smallest fraction. A breath leaves him, like he’d been holding it since the first shot was fired. His thumb brushes once across my cheek. “You with me?”
I nod. “I’m okay.”
His forehead almost dips toward mine before he catches himself, his hand lingering one second longer. “Good.” The word is quiet, rough, more exhale than word. Then the moment is gone, and his hand falls away, his attention snapping back to the shoulder where Mace disappeared. “Stay with Bear.”
And just like that, Ghost is moving again.
Bear reaches me, and I watch Koa disappear down the embankment to check on Mace before Koa’s voice carries back toward us.
“He’s up!” Koa calls out.
Relief slams into me so hard my knees almost give out.