Chapter Nineteen
SAGE
I hear his bike long before it reaches my building.
The low rumble rolls through the evening air, bouncing off the concrete walls of the apartment complex before fading again, and somehow I know it’s him before I even cross the room.
Somewhere along the way, I learned the sound of his bike well enough that I know it’s Ghost before I ever see him.
A smile finds me automatically.
He’s here.
I tug the apartment door open before he even has the chance to knock, but my smile disappears just as quickly.
Ghost stands in the hallway exactly where I expected him to be, helmet tucked beneath one arm, the porch light catching the hard line of his jaw. His eyes meet mine for the briefest second, and something low in my stomach tightens.
He’s too still. Ghost is always quiet, but I’ve learned not all of his silences mean the same thing.
Usually, they steady me.
This one feels like the second before a gunshot.
His shoulders are tight beneath the leather of his cut, his jaw set hard enough that I can see the muscle working. Before he’s even said a word, something cold slips into the pit of my stomach.
Whatever brought him here, it isn’t good.
“Ghost?”
He doesn’t answer. His gaze lingers on me for a heartbeat before he steps inside, every movement measured in that familiar Ghost way I’ve grown so used to over the last few months.
Usually, it settles me.
Tonight, it only makes me more nervous.
The faint scent of leather and cedar follows him inside as he crosses to my dining table, setting his helmet down before pulling out a chair and sitting.
Only then does he look back at me.
Whatever brought him here, it wasn’t to spend the evening together.
He places his phone on the table, screen up. A trace of some kind—lines of data I don’t fully understand, connecting one node to another.
The screen stays lit.
A string of numbers.
A timestamp.
My phone number.
I don’t need to lean closer to know what I’m looking at because my stomach already knows.
The apartment suddenly feels far too quiet. The hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the traffic out on the street, the faint tick of the clock above the stove. I hear all of it at once, like my brain has decided to latch onto anything except the phone sitting between us.
His eyes stay on mine. “Someone’s been sending encrypted messages to your phone for ten weeks.”
For a second, the words don’t seem to belong together. They drift across the table and settle somewhere between us while my brain stubbornly refuses to catch up.
I swallow. “You knew this whole time?”
He doesn’t answer straightaway. His gaze slips to the phone before returning to me, and I’ve spent enough time around Ghost now to recognize that pause. He’s choosing his words carefully, stripping them back until only the facts remain.
“I knew messages were leaving the network,” he says quietly. “I didn’t know where they were ending.”
A knot tightens low in my stomach. “When did you find out?”
His nostrils flare. “Tonight.” His voice never rises. If anything, it gets calmer. “I finally traced the endpoint.”
I stare at him. “You’ve been investigating me?”
Something flickers across his face. Gone almost before I catch it.
“I’ve been investigating the messages.” There’s no accusation in his voice or anger, and for some reason, that hurts more.
“I spent weeks trying to prove they weren’t connected to you.
” He looks down at the screen for a moment, his thumb resting against the edge of the phone before he lets out the quietest breath.
“Every time I found another possibility…” his jaw shifts, “… I took it.”
I feel my chest tighten. Because I know exactly what he’s telling me. He wanted to be wrong.
“I kept telling myself somebody had cloned your phone, that the traffic was bouncing through another device. That I’d missed something.” He finally looks back at me, and the disappointment sitting quietly behind his eyes steals whatever air I had left. “I was running out of explanations.”
My fingers curl against my palms.
The lie I’ve spent weeks carrying suddenly feels impossibly heavy.
“There isn’t a version of this where I lie to you now,” I tell him honestly, my own voice barely sounds like mine. “There never was.”
He just watches me, waiting.
Giving me the space to choose.
My eyes drop to the table.
To his phone.
To the proof that I don’t have to keep carrying this alone anymore.
I move to the sofa and take a seat. “I got the first message ten weeks ago.” The words snag hard on the way out. “It came through while I was at work.” I pull in a slow breath that does absolutely nothing to steady me. “I thought it was spam until I opened it.”
Ghost doesn’t interrupt.
He doesn’t ask questions. He sits across from me, completely still, letting me find my own way through it.
“I remember reading it three times because I couldn’t quite make sense of what they were saying.” I let out a humorless laugh, shaking my head at the memory. “Then I realized they knew about the inquiry.” My throat tightens. “They knew things they shouldn’t have known.”
I can still remember exactly how cold I’d felt. Exactly how long I’d stood in the break room at work staring at my phone, convincing myself somebody was bluffing.
“They kept messaging after that.” I finally force myself to look at him again.
“It wasn’t every day.” I wish it had been.
“It was worse.” He waits. “They’d disappear for days, just long enough for me to start hoping they’d gone.
” I blink hard, the memories coming back far more easily than I want them to.
“Then another message would come.” My fingers tighten around each other until the pressure almost hurts.
“The first one was vague. Just enough to let me know they knew what I was working on. They named the inquiry, giving me just enough to start panicking.” I shake my head.
“I spent days convincing myself somebody was bluffing—”
“They weren’t,” he states, interrupting.
I softly shake my head. “No.” The word barely makes it out. “They knew too much.”
Ghost doesn’t interrupt again. He watches me, giving me the room to keep going.
“They started getting… more specific.” I look away from him, staring somewhere over his shoulder instead.
“They stopped talking about the inquiry and started talking about the people in my life.” A muscle moves in his jaw.
“One morning…” My throat tightens around the memory.
“One day they sent me a photograph.” I swallow. “Your bike.”
For the first time since he walked into my apartment, something changes.
His shoulders pull a fraction tighter.
“I zoomed in because I thought…” I let out a shaky breath. “I don’t even know what I thought.” I laugh once, but there’s no humor in it. “I could see the scratch on the tank.” His eyes never leave mine.
“The one on the left-hand side that annoys the hell out of me,” he says quietly.
I nod. “That’s when I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“They weren’t guessing anymore.”
The room feels unbearably still. “They’d been close enough to photograph your bike, at the clubhouse. They threatened you, Ghost… threatened to break you.”
Ghost’s gaze drops briefly to the table before lifting again.
I keep talking because stopping suddenly feels impossible.
“After that…” I rub my palms against my jeans, trying to warm fingers that suddenly feel frozen.
“Everything became a threat.” I draw a slow breath.
“They found Piper.” The words hang between us.
“They knew she’d just started at the studio.
They knew about the state contract before she’d even finished unpacking boxes in my apartment. ”
Ghost closes his eyes for the briefest second, and when they open again, they’re darker somehow.
“They said the committee could kill the contract on a technicality.” He says nothing. “I kept telling myself I could f-fix it.” My voice cracks. “That if I slowed the inquiry down, bought myself a little time, maybe they’d lose interest.”
“So that’s why you put it on hold?”
I nod. “I told everyone we needed another review. More evidence. More corroboration.” I shake my head. “I kept dressing it up as process because admitting what I was actually doing felt too much like surrender.”
Silence settles between us again, and this time it feels heavier.
“I wasn’t scared for me anymore.” The words leave before I have the chance to stop them. “I was scared for Piper, for you…” I meet his eyes. “And then they sent another message.”
Ghost goes completely still. “What did it say?”
I can still see it.
Every word.
Every punctuation mark.
“It didn’t have your name.” I feel my chest tighten all over again.
“It didn’t need to.” My voice drops to almost nothing.
“It said…” I close my eyes for a second.
“ ‘The biker keeps looking in places he doesn’t belong. Tell him to stop before somebody decides motorcycles are easier to replace than people.’ ”
The apartment falls silent.
Not the comfortable silence I’ve come to know with Ghost.
The other kind.
The silence that follows presses against my ribs until every breath starts feeling like something I have to remember to do.
“I knew exactly what would happen if I told you.” The words barely make it out.
I lift my eyes to his, the tears burning hot enough that blinking only makes them worse. “You would’ve gone looking for them.”
His jaw shifts.
Not with anger, with certainty.
“Hell, yeah, I would have.” The answer comes so quickly it almost steals my next breath.
I let out something that almost becomes a laugh before it catches. “Exactly my point, Ghost!” I shake my head, wrapping my arms around myself because suddenly I don’t know what else to do with them. “You would’ve stopped sleeping.”
One corner of his mouth threatens to move. “Probably.”
“You would’ve buried yourself behind those screens until you found them.”
“I would’ve.”
“You would’ve put yourself between me and every damn threat they made.”
His eyes lock onto mine. “Every fucking time.” The certainty in his voice shatters whatever I’d been holding together.
A tear slips free before I can stop it, warm against my cheek.
Then another.
I brush impatiently at them with the heel of my hand, frustrated that they’re there at all. “I k-know,” I whisper, my voice cracking despite everything I’m doing to hold it steady. “That’s the problem, Ghost.”
He doesn’t say anything.
He just looks at me.
I’ve cried in front of Marley.
I’ve cried in front of Piper.
Hell, I cried in front of Ro at the clubhouse after Ghost shot those men on the road.
But I’ve never, not once, cried in front of Ghost.
For a second, he looks almost… caught. Like every instinct he has is pulling him in a different direction. His hands tighten once against his thighs before relaxing again.
“You keep trying to protect everybody else,” I whisper.
“So do you.” His voice is quieter now. The edge he had when he first walked through the door has disappeared. Or maybe it’s being buried beneath something else.
I laugh again, but this time it hurts. “That’s different.”
“No.” The single word lands between us. “It isn’t.”
I look away because suddenly I can’t keep holding his gaze.
“I wasn’t trying to be brave.” The admission leaves me before I can stop it.
“I was terrified.” The room blurs. “They came after us on the Sunday ride… they ran brothers off the road. They fucking shot at us!” I let out a shaky breath.
“They tailed Piper when she went for coffee!” I throw my hands in the air.
“I woke up every morning wondering who the next message was going to be about.” My fingers twist together so tightly they’re beginning to ache.
“Some days I’d convince myself it had stopped…
” I shake my head, “… and then my phone would buzz, and I’d feel sick before I even picked it up. ”
Ghost’s breathing changes, only slightly, but enough that I hear it.
“I kept waiting for them to say they’d taken Piper.” I swallow. “Or you!” Silence. “I don’t know how to lose my sister, Ghost.” The words snag in my throat. “And I…” my voice finally breaks, “… I-I couldn’t survive losing you too.”
The apartment goes completely still. Ghost’s eyes close, only for a heartbeat, and when they open again, something inside them has changed.
The disappointment is still there.
The hurt is still there.
But it’s fighting for space with something infinitely more dangerous—the overwhelming need to reach for me.
But he doesn’t.
I can see him choosing not to.
He watches me with that impossible stillness that somehow hurts more than if he’d shouted.
My eyes drop to my hands. “I know I should’ve told you. I know I hurt you.” The words blur as another tear slips free. “I’m sor—”
“Objection!”
I jerk back in shock, slowly lifting my head. “What?”