Chapter Twenty-Seven
SAGE
Two Days Later
Morning arrives far too quickly. By the time I make it into the office, the coffee in my travel mug has already gone cold, my inbox has doubled overnight, and three new voicemails are waiting for me before I’ve even had a chance to sit down.
I glance out the window to see Liam, legs kicked back as he leans against his bike in the parking lot, and a small smile tugs at the corner of my lips.
I should buy him something as a thank you for babysitting me—again.
Especially seeing as he’d still be sporting a headache.
The last forty-eight hours have settled into something that feels dangerously close to routine.
Coffee.
Paperwork.
Phone calls.
Lawyers.
Repeat.
Ghost left the clubhouse before dawn. By the time I wandered into the kitchen, he’d already been up for hours, chasing one more thread through Calloway’s complaint while the rest of us slept.
Just after nine, my phone buzzed.
Toothpick: Found something.
It took him another twenty minutes to explain it in terms my very sleep-deprived brain could follow.
Buried halfway through the complaint was a procedural defect. Small, technical, and easy to miss unless you knew exactly which regulation had been cited incorrectly.
It wouldn’t kill the investigation.
It wouldn’t make Calloway disappear.
But it would force the regulatory board to correct the error before moving forward.
Ten days.
Ghost had bought Unsilenced ten more days.
Ten days doesn’t sound like much.
But this morning, it feels like breathing room.
By lunchtime, I’m almost starting to believe we might actually survive this, almost.
When a knock lands softly against my office door, I call out, “Come in.”
Meagan, one of our administrative staff, steps inside holding a medium-sized cardboard parcel against her hip. “This just came for you.”
I frown. “I wasn’t expecting anything.”
She shrugs, setting it gently on the corner of my desk. “Courier dropped it off five minutes ago.”
“Thanks, hon.”
She smiles before slipping back into the hallway, quietly pulling the door closed behind her.
The office settles around me again.
Conversations drift faintly through the walls, and a phone rings somewhere down the corridor.
Someone laughs in reception.
Everything feels painfully… normal.
My eyes drop to the parcel.
It’s addressed to me.
Not ‘Unsilenced.’
Not ‘Attention: Executive Director.’
Just Sage Matthews.
My name sits in neat black block letters across the shipping label, with a blank return address, and a chill works its way slowly down my spine.
It’s been delivered here.
Not my apartment.
Whoever sent it knows where I work.
I’m willing to bet they know where I live too.
Somewhere beneath the fear, the late nights, the photographs, and the man inside my apartment, I’d accepted that they were watching me.
But seeing my name printed so neatly across the front of the parcel changes something.
It stops being an assumption. It stops being something I can explain away, and it becomes tangible.
I reach out slowly, resting my fingertips against the cardboard as though touching it too quickly might somehow change whatever is waiting inside.
The box is ordinary—brown cardboard, clear packing tape, one shipping label. Nothing about it looks threatening.
That’s almost worse.
I glance toward the office door. For one ridiculous second, I consider leaving the parcel exactly where it is and pretending I’d never seen it.
My thumb slides beneath the edge of the tape. The sound it makes as it peels away seems impossibly loud, and I wince.
One strip, then another, and by the time I’ve worked my way around the lid, my hands are trembling again.
“Come on…” I whisper to myself, though I’m not entirely sure whether I’m trying to convince myself to open it or not.
I hook my fingers beneath the cardboard flaps, while my heart pounds hard enough that I can feel it.
This is the point where I still have a choice.
The box can stay closed. Whatever’s inside can stay unknown.
The second I open it, I don’t get to unknow it.
I close my eyes for the briefest moment before taking one slow breath and folding the flaps back, and when I look inside, my breath catches.
Photographs.
Glossy.
Freshly printed.
The kind you pick up from the photo counter at a drugstore.
For a second, my brain refuses to process what I’m looking at, but then recognition slams into me.
It’s me, walking out of the clubhouse at dusk, my jacket only half zipped, my head turned toward something outside the frame.
Another.
Ghost standing outside Millie’s bakery on opening day, hands shoved into his pockets while he watched the crowd the way he watches everything, like he was already calculating every possible way something could go wrong.
Another.
My breath catches—the Sunday ride. I’m on the back of Ghost’s bike, my arms wrapped tightly around his waist, my face buried against his shoulder while the rest of the club rides ahead of us.
I remember that moment.
I remember smiling.
I remember thinking nobody was watching.
Another photograph slips free.
Piper—my stomach drops. She’s standing outside the grocery store, one reusable bag hooked over her wrist while she digs through her handbag for her keys, completely unaware someone is close enough to capture the freckles across her nose.
The angle… dear God. The person behind the camera couldn’t have been more than twenty feet away.
The blood drains from my face.
“No…” The whisper barely leaves my lips.
The photographs slide through suddenly numb fingers, spreading across my desk one after another until they cover the paperwork Ghost and I had spent half the night putting together.
They have been watching us.
Not just me, but Ghost, Piper, and the club.
Anyone close enough to matter.
The realization settles like ice in my veins.
This isn’t surveillance. It is a promise.
We know where you sleep.
We know where you work.
We know who you love.
And we’re close enough to touch all of it.
There’s no note tucked inside the packaging. There doesn’t need to be one. The message is the photographs themselves, and I understand it the moment I see my sister’s face staring back at me from someone else’s goddamn camera.
The photographs are back inside the box before I realize I’m the one who put them there.
I don’t remember doing it.
I just need them out of sight.
Out of reach.
Out of my hands.
My chair scrapes sharply across the floor as I stand, the sound making me flinch. The office suddenly feels too small, the walls pressing in around me, every conversation drifting through the hallway outside somehow impossibly loud.
I can’t stay here.
I scoop the box up against my chest and leave my office before I can think myself out of it.
Someone calls my name as I pass reception. I don’t answer.
The elevator takes forever, and every second it refuses to arrive feels like another second those photographs exist inside the building with me. By the time the doors finally slide open, my pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.
The afternoon sun hits me the moment I step outside, warm against my skin, completely at odds with the cold spreading through my chest.
I make it to my car, climb inside, lock the doors, then sit there. I hear a gentle knock on my window, and I glance up to see Liam smiling at me, but I ignore him, turning back to the passenger side of the car.
The parcel rests on the passenger seat, its flaps still folded back. I can see the corner of one glossy photograph peeking out from inside.
I don’t even have to pull it back out to know which one it is—Piper. The thought of someone standing close enough to photograph her while she searched her handbag for her keys twists something deep inside me.
She never even knew they were there.
“Sage, can you open the door?” Liam calls out, tapping on my window again.
My hands shake as I reach for my phone, and Ghost answers before the first ring finishes. “Hey, bab—”
“They’ve been following us for weeks!” The words come out before he has a chance to finish. “They have photographs, Ghost.” My fingers tighten around the steering wheel until my knuckles ache. “Of me. You. Piper.”
Silence. Not because the call has dropped, but because he’s listening.
“They delivered them here.” I swallow against the knot climbing my throat. “To Unsilenced.” Another heartbeat passes.
“What kind of photographs?” His voice has changed and gone completely flat. The kind of flat that usually comes a split second before something breaks.
Knock. Knock. Knock. “Sage!” Liam yells now.
I pull one photograph halfway from the box, staring at it even though I wish I weren’t. “The clubhouse.” I rifle through the box. “Millie’s bakery.” I keep digging. “The Sunday ride…” my voice catches, “… and P-Piper.”
There’s movement down the line, then the low rumble of his motorcycle, making me exhale in relief. “Is that Liam? Is he there with you?”
I glance at the window to see Liam’s panicked face. “Yeah, he’s outside the car.”
“Good, make sure he stays with you.”
“Ghost…”
“How close were the photos?”
I stare at the photograph, and my stomach rolls. “Close enough to see the freckles on her face.”
The engine beneath him suddenly roars louder as he accelerates. The sound comes through my phone speaker, hard and angry enough that I can almost picture the desert blurring around him.
“They photographed Piper?” he asks, quieter than before.
“Yeah.”
A long breath leaves him. “Were there any notes?”
“No.”
“Anything written inside the box?”
I shake my head before remembering he can’t see me. “No.”
“You opened it?”
“I…” I glance toward the parcel beside me. “Yeah.”
Another slow breath. “That’s all right.” His voice stays steady. “Don’t touch it again.”
“Okay.”
“Leave everything exactly where it is.”
“I will.”
“Sage?”
I flare my nostrils. “Yeah?”
“I need you to stay in your car.” My eyes lift automatically, scanning the parking lot, wondering how he knew where I was. “I can do that.”
“I’m coming.” The line goes dead.
“Sage, what’s going on!” Liam bangs on the window again.