Chapter Thirty-Three
GHOST
The Next Morning
Travis Cole, Calloway’s chief of staff, lives on the kind of street where kids ride bikes after school and neighbors mow each other’s lawns on weekends.
Quiet, predictable, and safe.
He leaves the house at seven thirty almost every morning, coffee in one hand, laptop bag over his shoulder, never once looking over it. He has no reason to.
Until today.
Travis Cole’s routine is exactly what I expected.
It’s what happens after he gets home that catches my attention.
Two phone calls.
The first lasts twelve minutes and goes straight to his lawyer. The second lands with a private security firm I’ve never seen connected to him before. Different company, different ownership, and nothing that traces back to Calloway or Waterton.
He is making it personal.
I sit back in my chair, reading through the report again before closing it.
Smart move.
He’s spent long enough standing beside powerful men to know how quickly they start looking for someone else to blame when everything falls apart.
Lawyers buy you time, but security buys you options. Cole is making sure he has both.
Travis isn’t brave. I’ve known that since the first file I pulled on him. But he’s smart enough to see Calloway’s collapse for what it is, and smart men who work for powerful men start running the moment the ground shifts under someone else’s feet.
He’s already planning his exit. He’s just making sure he has cover first, in case the club comes for him before he gets the chance to disappear.
I sit in the van two houses down and watch the morning light climb over his lawn, and I think about the three men he’s hired to buy himself that head start.
Sin approved Koa and Mace for this one, even with his broken ribs. His call in Church, mine after. No point arguing across the table when a quiet adjustment gets the same result. I caught Slate after Church and laid out the plan. It was settled two minutes later.
Slate would take the street with Static while Koa and Mace made contact.
I’m in the van with the exterior feeds spread across my screens, watching every angle of the property. Koa is barely finished knocking when movement catches behind the downstairs window. Someone is home, and instead of heading straight for the door, they stop long enough to look out at him first.
“You’ve got eyes on you,” I tell him through the comm.
A few seconds later, the front door opens, and the man staring back at Koa isn’t Travis.
Broad across the chest, close-cropped hair, eyes already moving past Koa to the street behind him.
His right hand hangs just a fraction lower than his left, close enough to the pistol riding under his jacket that instinct could do the rest.
This guy isn’t here to answer doors.
It’s Travis’ security—the expensive kind.
His attention settles on Koa and Mace, his expression intensifying like he’s preparing for a fight.
Wrong move.
“Go,” I call through the comms.
Slate explodes around the side of the house. There’s nothing graceful about it. Six-foot-whatever of a Montana rancher hits the guard at full speed, driving him through the doorway hard enough to shake the frame.
“What the fu—” The rest disappears under the impact.
The guard’s hand dives beneath his jacket, fingers stretching for the pistol riding against his ribs, but Slate catches the movement, hooks his arm, and rips him away from the draw.
The two of them slam into the porch, boots scraping across timber as the guard twists hard beneath him, throwing an elbow that clips Slate’s jaw.
“Get the hell off me!”
Koa is already moving. He catches the guard’s wrist just as his fingers brush the grip of the pistol, drives it into the porch with a sickening crack, and plants a boot across his forearm.
The guard snarls, bucks hard enough to lift Slate for a split second, but Slate rides the movement, drops a forearm across his throat, and leans his weight into it. “Ain’t no sense wearin’ yourself out, son,” Slate growls.
The guard fights for another couple of seconds, muscles straining, boots hammering against the porch boards, before the air leaves him in one rough choke.
The struggle drains out of him.
Slate doesn’t move, and neither does Koa. They hold him there until the only thing left making noise is the guard trying to drag a full breath back into his lungs.
Inside, the second guard comes off the sofa the instant the front door erupts.
His eyes flick across Static, Mace, then to the open doorway, and finally land on Slate pinning his partner to the porch outside.
He doesn’t waste time asking questions. His hand shoots for the pistol waiting on the side table.
“Gun!” Koa calls out, already moving. He closes the distance before the guard’s fingers wrap around the grip, catching his wrist and wrenching it sideways. The weapon skitters across the hardwood floor, disappearing beneath the dining table as the guard drives a shoulder into Koa’s chest.
Koa gives ground, boots sliding across the hardwood as the guard drives after him. Two steps is all it takes before the man commits his weight forward.
Exactly what Koa wanted.
Koa pivots with him, catches the man’s momentum, and slams him face-first into the wall hard enough to rattle the family photographs hanging above it. The guard rebounds with a snarl, throwing a tight right hook that clips Koa across the cheek.
Koa barely seems to notice. He answers with an elbow that folds the guard over at the waist before driving him into the floor.
The breath leaves the man in one violent grunt, but the guard still isn’t finished. His hand scrabbles across the timber, reaching for the pistol now somewhere beneath the table.
Koa catches him by the back of his jacket, hauls him away from it, and plants a knee between his shoulder blades. “Stay. Down!”
Across the room, the third guard never even looks at the gun.
His hand disappears beneath his jacket, not for a weapon, but for the radio clipped to his belt.
His thumb finds the transmit button. “Unit—” Mace covers the space in five long strides.
His shoulder crashes into the guard’s ribs before the second word leaves his mouth, driving him sideways into the kitchen island.
The radio flies free, bouncing once across the countertop before Mace catches it out of thin air and crushes it beneath his boot.
The guard recovers on instinct, exploding off the kitchen island with a sharp elbow that snaps into Mace’s jaw before driving a fist into his ribs hard enough to echo through the house.
The hits land clean, but Mace doesn’t give an inch. He rolls his jaw once, draws a slow breath through his nose, then looks back at the guard with the faintest hint of amusement. “Hell…” A corner of his mouth twitches. “I was rooting for you.”
Confusion flickers across the guard’s face for half a heartbeat, and that’s all Mace needs.
He catches the man’s punching arm, twists through the shoulder with practiced precision, and walks him backward three hard steps before introducing his face to the stainless-steel refrigerator with a dull, echoing thunk.
The guard stumbles, dazed but still stubborn enough to throw another wild swing.
Mace slips it without hurry, hooks a boot behind the man’s ankle, and sends him crashing onto the hardwood.
Before he can scramble back up, Mace plants a knee between his shoulder blades and folds his arm behind his back until the fight drains out of him in one sharp hiss through clenched teeth.
“Stay there, idiot,” Mace says, almost conversationally.
Silence settles over the house.
Three guards.
Three fights.
Less than half a minute.
No gunshots.
No bodies.
Exactly how we planned it.
Koa looks from the unconscious guards to the rest of us before letting out a disappointed sigh. “You know…” he says, folding his arms across his chest, “… I’m the biggest bastard in the room.” He gestures at the three men sprawled across the floor. “And somehow I didn’t get to hit anybody.”
Static shrugs. “Too slow, big man.”
Koa snorts. “Bullshit.”
Slate’s mouth twitches. “Reckon next time we’ll save one for ya.”
“You better,” Koa mutters, stepping over one of the groaning guards. “Starting to feel underappreciated around here.”
Slate glances his way. “Reckon you can carry ’em out instead.”
Koa shakes his head. “That’s not nearly as satisfying.”
I finish up in the van. My brothers have the front of the house.
My job was everything Travis might reach before he realizes the night has gone bad.
Security system, cloud storage, work accounts, the burner phone registered under a company name he thought buried the connection deep enough.
By the time the first body hit the floor inside, his passwords were useless, his cameras now belonged to me, and every door except the one at the back was locked.
Movement flashes across the feed as Travis tears through the kitchen in his robe, glancing toward the front room before making the choice I left him.
Rear door.
Side gate.
Exactly where I need him.
I close the laptop, climb out of the van, and cut through the narrow space between his house and the fence while the fight has all but ended out the front.
There’s no reason to rush. Travis comes through the back door seconds later, robe flapping around his knees as he sprints across the yard toward the gate.
He thinks he found the only way out.
He is just following the route I left open.
I reach the gate first. There’s nowhere left for him to go.
I stop on the other side and wait. The latch rattles as Travis yanks the gate open, and almost runs straight into me.
“What the fuc—” His momentum dies so abruptly he stumbles back a step, chest heaving, the robe hanging open over flannel pajama pants as panic catches up with him.
For a long moment, the backyard falls quiet. There is just the sound of his breathing.
His eyes search my face, looking for something—anger, excitement, hesitation.
He doesn’t find any of it.