Chapter Twenty-Nine
GHOST
The Next Day
Three years of financial records fill the screen before I turn it toward Sage.
Every folder that opened a little too easily. Every source that called before I even reached out. Every document that surfaced in my searches like it had been waiting there just for me.
“Travis Cole,” I say.
Her eyebrows climb. “Calloway’s chief of staff?”
I nod. “Three years ago, he started copying everything. Financial records, shell companies, internal emails, every dirty transaction Calloway thought nobody else was seeing.”
She glances back at the screen. “He was building a case.”
“For himself.”
“Why?”
“Insurance.” I lean back in my chair. “Men like Calloway don’t retire their chief of staff. They bury them with the books.”
“So, he’s been feeding you all this?”
“Not intentionally.” I shake my head. “He buried the evidence where someone with the right skill set might find it if something happened to him… I found it.”
Her eyes narrow as she pieces it together. “So, Calloway doesn’t know.”
“Not yet.”
She sits back in her chair, looking from the tablet to me. “Which means?”
“Travis is both our biggest advantage and our biggest liability.”
Understanding flashes across her face.
“Because if Calloway figures out someone’s talking…”
“Travis dies.” She goes quiet. “That’s…” She exhales slowly. “That’s a hell of a strategy to build around.”
“Dangerous and useful.” I hold her gaze. “In that order.”
She is quiet for a long moment, her fingers resting against the edge of the desk, and I let her sit with it because I know she needs the space to turn it over before she speaks again. Finally, she looks up at me. “Can we use it?”
“Already have been. We just didn’t know we were.”
Something shifts across her face. It’s not quite a smile, more like the look she gets when a problem finally stops being one.
I know that look.
Somewhere along the way, I’ve learned most of them, and I couldn’t tell when that happened.
We are still working through the rest of it, mapping how far Travis’ information can be trusted and where it needs independent confirmation, when her phone buzzes against the desk. She glances at it without much interest, ignoring it.
Then my own phone lights up with a text from Piper.
Piper: Car behind me. Been there for three blocks. Clearly following me.
There’s an attached image, and I am up out of the chair before I finish reading the second line.
Sage’s head snaps toward me. “What?”
“Piper’s being followed.”
Sage is already on her feet. “What? How is she even out on her own?”
I tilt my head. “That is something I’d like to know too. But right now, this is what we need to worry about.” I rotate the phone toward her—Piper’s text, the photograph, and the sedan half a block behind her.
The color drains from Sage’s face. “Oh my God, Ghost… oh my God!”
“She’s still moving. She had the right idea sending me the plates. She’s in public, so they won’t move on her if she stays walking on the main street.”
I pull out my cell and type off a club-wide text.
Me: ALERT! Piper in trouble, I’m assessing the situation, be on standby.
My laptop is already awake by the time I reach it.
The registration software opens before the chair has stopped rolling backward.
I drag Piper’s photograph into the recognition software, cropping the plate before the image finishes loading.
Six characters resolve into sharp focus.
The search runs automatically, pulling from state registration first, then commercial ownership records.
A result populates almost immediately.
Registered to an LLC.
I click through.
Another shell. Another holding company. Another layer designed to make whoever owns the vehicle disappear into paperwork.
My jaw tightens, but I keep digging.
The ownership tree opens one document at a time until the same registered office appears—the same nominee director, the same accounting firm.
My stomach sinks before the final document loads.
Waterton Security Holdings.
I was hoping I was wrong.
“Ghost?”
I don’t answer immediately, then grab my cut from the back of the chair. “It’s them.”
Sin, Koa, and Nitro walk into the clubhouse and spot me, but I shake my head at them, and they stand down as Sage’s breath catches. “No…” She snatches up her phone, already typing. “I’m calling Piper.”
“Do it.”
It rings once, twice, then straight to voicemail.
Sage swears under her breath. “Come on… come on…” She tries again.
Nothing.
When she looks at me, the fear she’s been holding back is written all over her face. “Ghost…”
I’m already moving.
She catches her keys off the bench. “I’m coming with you.”
My hand snaps out, grabbing her wrist, probably a little too forcefully. “No.”
She stops. “Excuse me?”
I meet her eyes, pleading with her. “You stay here.”
Her chin lifts in defiance. “The hell I do!”
“Sage—”
“That’s my sister—”
“Exactly! I need level heads out there, and I love you, Sage, but you won’t have one.” The words land between us. “Go to Sin. Tell him where I’m headed. Then stay where I can find you.”
I glance back at my president, and she gives me a simple head nod, and I don’t wait to see if she listens.
The clubhouse door slams behind me as I take a second to register that I actually said I love her.
Then I rush out into the lot, my keys already in my hand.
The engine catches on the first turn, the familiar growl rolling beneath me as I pull away from the curb harder than I should, the rear tire biting into the asphalt before the bike straightens beneath me.
Four minutes.
That’s what the navigation says.
I’ve never hated four minutes more.
The city blurs past in streaks of brake lights and traffic signals, every intersection another variable I don’t have time for. I slip between lanes where there’s room, easing around slower cars with practiced precision, the engine climbing as the clubhouse disappears in my mirrors.
Piper isn’t the target.
Sage is.
That makes Piper leverage.
The realization settles like cold steel somewhere behind my ribs.
I tighten my grip on the handlebars, forcing myself to breathe through it. Fear makes people rush, and rushing gets details wrong.
Details keep people alive.
Her text came through less than three minutes ago.
She’d left the coffee shop on foot.
Heading back toward the clubhouse.
Broad daylight. Sidewalks full enough to make an abduction risky, quiet enough that surveillance blends into the background.
If they are only watching.
But if they have decided watching isn’t enough? I kill the thought before it has a chance to finish. There’s no value in imagining outcomes I can’t change.
Find Piper.
Read the scene.
Move.
The bike leans hard into the next corner before settling beneath me again. My eyes work the street automatically, moving from parked cars to shopfronts, lingering just long enough on anyone standing still or watching too closely. Most of it fades as quickly as it arrives.
Nothing.
Another block disappears beneath the tires.
Then, I see her.
Relief hits first, sharp enough that it almost catches me off guard.
Piper walks toward the next intersection cool, calm, and collected.
Coffee cup balanced in one hand, a bag of something, and her phone in the other, her pace steady, her shoulders relaxed enough that anyone watching would assume she hasn’t noticed a thing.
I know better.
Thirty feet behind her, a dark sedan idles against the curb.
Windows tinted.
Engine running.
Two silhouettes in the front seats.
Waiting…
My bike rolls up alongside Piper, slowing until I’m matching her pace. She glances over, catches sight of me beneath the visor, and without missing a step, her eyes sharpen.
I flip the visor up as I slide off the bike. “Get on.”
She lets out a shaky breath, the first sign of her being nervous, and she nods, her eyes beginning to well as she reaches out for me in an embrace.
“You’re okay,” I tell her, and she nods again, watching me instead of the car.
‘Stay here, I’ll be right back,’ I sign to her.
Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “No,” she says in her muted tone.
I weakly smile at her. ‘Stay here,’ I sign again, letting go of her and turning toward the fucking car.
I leave the bike idling behind me and walk toward the sedan.
Every step feels measured.
Not because I’m calm, but because if I let myself move as fast as I want to, one of these assholes is leaving in an ambulance, and that idea is not good.
The driver’s window is cracked open just enough to remind me they’re hiding behind glass.
It won’t help.
I stop beside the door and look at both of them without saying a word.
Five seconds, six, long enough for the driver to stop pretending his pulse isn’t climbing. Long enough for the passenger to realize I saw him reach for the gun under his seat.
“Here’s how this works,” I say quietly. “You leave.” Neither of them moves.
“Or I teach you why following her was your last bad decision. We know who sent you,” I state.
“We know who you work for. And the next time either of you comes anywhere near her, or her sister, or my club, it won’t matter if we’re on a crowded street…
I won’t hold back, and you’ll see the reason I wear this 1% badge. ”
Neither of them says a word. The driver’s jaw tightens, and then the car pulls away from the curb and disappears around the corner, unhurried, like they had somewhere else to be all along.
Piper is watching me when I turn back around. She didn’t get on the fucking bike.
Stubborn, just like her sister!
I close the distance between us, and the second I stop in front of her, some of the tension leaves her shoulders. ‘What did you say to them?’ she signs.
I shrug. ‘Told them how much of a badass I was and not to mess with my girls.’
She studies me for a long moment, longer than the joke deserves, then she smiles, steps forward, and wraps her arms around me.
I hug her back without thinking.
When she pulls away, one eyebrow arches. ‘Your girls?’
I snort. ‘Don’t make it weird.’