Chapter Fifteen #2
A minute later, Mace appears, one arm slung over Koa’s shoulders.
He’s limping badly, every other step making him grit his teeth, his cut torn open across one shoulder where he’d hit the gravel.
Dirt streaks one side of his face, blood trickles from a split above his eyebrow, and both palms are scraped raw despite the gloves he’d been wearing.
One knee of his jeans is shredded clean through, and even from here, I can see him favoring his ribs every time he breathes.
“Well,” Mace mutters as Koa guides him back toward us. “That was rude.”
A bark of laughter escapes Deek before he immediately remembers he’s supposed to be angry. “My bike!” He stalks over to the mangled Harley lying on its side, pointing accusingly at the twisted front wheel. “Did you bastards see what they did to my goddamn front end?”
Bear snorts. “We also saw Mace eat half the shoulder.”
“I’m aware!” Deek throws his hands in the air. “I’m capable of being angry at multiple things at once,” he says as he holds out his leg, showing the tears in his jeans from the impacts.
Ghost drops into a crouch in front of Mace before he’s even settled against the roadside barrier. His hands are already checking him over, pressing carefully along his shoulder and ribs, his eyes fixed on Mace’s face instead of the injuries.
Deek finally tears his attention away from what used to be his front wheel and actually looks at Mace.
His gaze drags from the blood running down the side of his face to the shredded knee of his jeans before settling on the awkward way he’s protecting his left side.
He blows out a slow breath through his nose.
“Well…” He points at Mace with two fingers. “You look like shit.”
Mace shifts on the barrier, trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt. “Thanks.” He winces. “I was aiming for rugged.”
Bear laughs. “I think you overshot.”
Mace flips him off without looking. The movement immediately makes him suck in a sharp breath, his free hand instinctively finding his ribs.
Ghost notices it straightaway, moving over Mace’s ribs, and I wrap my arms around myself to stop my body from shaking with the adrenaline rush. “So… ribs? Broken?”
Mace grimaces. “Yeah… probably.”
Deek folds his arms across his chest, studying him for another second before quietly shaking his head. “You scared the hell outta us, bro.”
The words hang there. Just long enough for Mace to glance up at him with raised eyebrows. Then, because Deek is physically incapable of leaving a sincere moment alone…
“If you scratch another bike, I’m charging you with crimes against humanity.”
Laughter ripples through the group. Even Mace manages one before immediately regretting it, grabbing at his side with a groan.
“See?” Deek points triumphantly. “You laugh, you’re alive.”
“That’s not how modern medicine works,” Mace mutters through clenched teeth.
“But it is how I check. You laugh… you’re good.”
Ghost doesn’t even look up. “It’s not how it works, Deek.”
Deek waves a dismissive hand. “You’re ruining my diagnostic process.”
Ghost completely ignores him, his attention never leaving Mace. “You dizzy?”
“A little.”
“You black out?”
Mace shakes his head. “No.”
“You remember going down?”
Mace snorts out a laugh. “I remember introducing my face to the Nevada desert.”
A few of the brothers chuckle.
Ghost’s expression doesn’t change. “Can you lift your arm?”
Mace tries. His arm gets halfway before his face twists in pain, and it drops straight back to his lap. “That’s gonna be a no.”
Ghost nods once. “Thought so.” He rises to his feet, dusting his hands together before looking at Sin. “Probably a couple fractured ribs. Shoulder took a decent hit. He needs scans before we call it anything else.”
Sin nods once. “We’ll get him checked.”
Only then do I realize every brother is still standing.
Still counting.
Eyes moving from one face to the next, making sure everyone who rode out is still here.
Nobody says it out loud, but the relief settles over the group anyway, quiet and heavy beneath the buzz—not the good kind—that’s still humming through all of us.
Because Deek can replace a front wheel.
Mace will heal.
And somehow, against all odds…
Everybody will go home.
Only once Ghost is satisfied Mace isn’t about to collapse does the attention of the club shift. The questions that had been circling unspoken since the first shot was fired finally find somewhere to land.
The crippled SUV still sits thirty feet off the highway, its front corner buried in scrub where the blown tire dragged it to a stop. Steam curls lazily from beneath the crumpled hood, the windshield fractured into a spiderweb of white cracks that catch the afternoon sun.
Nobody inside has made another move.
Bear and Koa head over first, weapons drawn more out of habit than uncertainty. The rest of the brothers spread out behind them, naturally covering the road, the scrub, and each other without a single instruction being spoken.
Ghost brushes his hand lightly against the small of my back as he passes. “Stay here.”
It’s quiet.
Not a command, more pleading, and I nod.
But I only stay where I am for about three seconds before curiosity gets the better of me, following just far enough to see without getting in anyone’s way.
Bear yanks the driver’s door open, and the man inside groans.
He’s alive. His forehead is split open where he’d hit the steering wheel, blood tracking down one side of his face while the deflated airbag hangs limply across his lap.
His eyes flutter open, unfocused at first, before they widen as fifteen armed bikers come into view.
His hand starts drifting toward his waistband.
Koa catches his wrist before it gets there. “I wouldn’t.” The two words land with enough weight that the man’s fingers immediately stop moving.
Bear removes the pistol tucked beneath his jacket before hauling him roughly from the SUV.
The passenger is awake, and he climbs out slower, favoring one leg, only to find Anchor and Nitro waiting with weapons trained squarely on his chest.
Neither man looks particularly interested in making another bad decision.
Sin walks toward them with the same measured stride he uses when walking into Church, and he stops a few feet in front of the driver. “Who sent you?”
The man stares back, blood dripping steadily from his chin into the dirt between his boots.
He says nothing.
Sin gives the smallest nod. “Last time I ask nice.”
Still nothing.
The two men keep their mouths shut while Sin studies them with that unnerving patience of his, as though silence is simply another answer he’ll deal with when he’s ready.
Ghost moves to the passenger side, methodically emptying pockets onto the crumpled hood—wallet, phone, keys, a folding knife. Anchor photographs each item while Ghost keeps working with the same efficiency I’ve watched him bring to every problem since the day we met.
Then his hand pauses.
His fingers disappear back into the inside pocket of the passenger’s jacket before slowly drawing out a folded piece of paper. Nothing about it looks remarkable from where I’m standing. Just another scrap to add to the growing collection spread across the hood.
Ghost unfolds it.
I can’t see what’s on it, but he can.
Whatever he’s looking at steals something out of him so completely that I feel it from twenty feet away. Whatever he’s looking at reaches him in a place I didn’t know could be reached.
I’ve spent months watching Ghost move through the world like he already knows how every problem ends, seeing the pattern before anyone else and working out the next move before the rest of us even realize there’s one to make.
That certainty slips away.
In its place is a stillness so unfamiliar that every conversation around him dies without anyone needing to ask why.
Even Sin notices. His question dies before he asks it, his attention shifting from the two men to Ghost instead.
The silence settles over the highway in a way that has nothing to do with the desert around us and everything to do with the man standing beside that wrecked SUV.
A knot begins to pull tight low in my stomach. I can’t see what he’s found from here. I can only see what it’s done to him.
I’ve watched Ghost solve problems that left everyone else standing still. I’ve watched him uncover things that changed the course of investigations, stare danger in the face without losing that calm, steady presence that somehow makes everyone around him breathe easier.
Whatever he’s holding, this is different.
Ghost finally lifts his head. His eyes find mine across the distance, and something in my chest drops so hard it almost hurts.
I’ve spent months learning the language of his face, the tiny shifts most people never notice, the twitch at the corner of his mouth before he smiles, the way his eyes soften when he looks at me, the focus that settles over him when he’s working.
This? This is something else.
For the first time since I met Ghost, he looks like the ground has just disappeared beneath his feet.
Everything else seems to blur around the edges.
The brothers.
The wrecked SUV.
The wind rolling across the desert.
For one suspended heartbeat, it feels as though it’s only the two of us standing here, and I don’t know what he’s looking at.
I don’t know what was hidden inside that man’s jacket.
I only know that whatever he found has reached into the calmest man I’ve ever known and touched something so deep I don’t recognize him anymore.
Not because he’s angry, but because he isn’t.
That’s what frightens me.
The part of Ghost that never seems to hesitate is still there.
It’s simply changed direction, narrowing into something so absolute it steals the air from my lungs.
His gaze never leaves mine as he carefully folds the photograph back along the same creases he’d opened it with.
He slips it into the inside pocket of his cut with deliberate precision, before finally breaking eye contact.
Then he turns.