Chapter 12 Ghosts
GHOSTS
TANK
The concrete floor was cold beneath us, but I couldn't bring myself to move.
Tyler's arm was still around my shoulders, solid and warm, anchoring me to something real while the grief worked its way through my system like poison being drawn from a wound.
The worst of the sobbing had passed, leaving behind a hollow ache and the kind of exhaustion that went bone-deep.
My eyes burned. My throat felt like I'd swallowed glass.
But for the first time in six years, the pressure in my chest had eased.
"You don't have to talk about it." Tyler's voice was quiet, his breath stirring the hair at my temple. "We can just sit here. As long as you need."
I turned that over in my mind. The old instinct said to pull away, to rebuild the walls, to thank him for being here and then retreat to somewhere private where I could finish falling apart alone.
That was how I'd always done it. Grief was a solitary thing, something to be endured in darkness where no one could see the cracks.
But Tyler had already seen the cracks. He'd sat with me through the worst of it, hadn't flinched, hadn't tried to fix it. Just stayed.
"Danny was four years younger than me." The words came out rough, scraped raw from crying.
"Our mom split when he was six—just walked out one day and never came back.
Dad tried, but he was working two jobs just to keep us fed.
So I raised Danny, mostly. Made sure he got to school, made sure he ate, taught him how to throw a punch when the neighborhood kids came around looking for trouble. "
Tyler didn't say anything. Just shifted slightly, his hand moving from my shoulder to the back of my neck, a warm pressure that grounded me.
"He was a good kid. Smart as hell, always taking things apart to see how they worked.
By the time he was twelve, he could rebuild a carburetor faster than half the guys at the shop.
Taught himself to ride on a stolen dirt bike—some piece of shit Suzuki that barely ran—and by fifteen he was keeping up with riders twice his age.
" The memories felt distant now, like they belonged to someone else.
"He got his phoenix tattoo that year. Snuck out to some sketchy parlor downtown because he'd heard about the club, about what it meant.
Dad was furious. I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen. "
"But you have one too."
"Got mine three years later, when I prospected." I almost smiled at the memory. "Danny never let me forget that he was first. Used to joke that he'd been Phoenix before I was, that I was just following his lead."
The smile faded as quickly as it had come.
"The pills started after a motorcycle accident.
He was nineteen, laid the bike down on a wet curve, broke his collarbone and three ribs.
Doctors gave him oxycodone for the pain, and for a while it was fine.
Legitimate prescription, reasonable doses.
But then the prescription ran out, and the pain didn't, and Danny discovered that some people's brains just light up different when opioids hit their system. "
"Addiction isn't a choice." Tyler's voice was careful, like he was navigating a minefield. "It's a disease."
"I know that now. Didn't know it then." The bitterness in my own voice surprised me.
"I watched him spiral for four years. Rehab twice, NA meetings, sponsors who tried their best. He'd get clean for a few months, start to seem like himself again, and then something would happen—a bad day, a fight, a moment of weakness—and he'd be back on the pills. Or worse."
I gestured at the Shovelhead across the garage, Danny's project, Danny's dream.
"That bike was supposed to be his salvation.
He found her at a swap meet in Bakersfield eight years ago—rusted out, half the parts missing, looked like someone had left her in a field for a decade.
But Danny saw something in her. Talked the guy down to three hundred bucks and spent the whole drive home telling me what she could be.
" The memory was clear as glass: Danny's face lit up with that particular excitement he got when he was passionate about something, his hands sketching shapes in the air as he described the rebuild.
"He wanted to call her Phoenix. Said she'd rise from the ashes, just like him. "
"Did you work on her together?"
"Every weekend for almost a year. Hunting down parts, cleaning rust, arguing about paint colors—he wanted cherry red, I told him black was classic.
We never did settle it." I had to stop, swallow hard against the tightness in my throat.
"Then he relapsed. Lost his job, lost his apartment, disappeared for three months.
By the time he surfaced again, the bike was just sitting here gathering dust, and Danny was a different person.
Hollow. Like something had scooped out everything that made him Danny and left this shell walking around wearing his skin. "
"But he got clean again."
"Eventually. It took another year, another stint in rehab, a sponsor who actually seemed to get through to him.
The last six months of his life, he was more himself than he'd been in years.
Started talking about the Shovelhead again, making plans, getting excited about the future.
He wanted to open a custom shop someday—do restorations, build something real. "
I stared at the bike, at the partially assembled engine, at all the pieces Danny had never gotten to put together.
"The night he died, I was supposed to meet him.
We were going to work on the bike—he'd found a vintage kickstart assembly that was exactly right, couldn't stop talking about it on the phone that afternoon.
But I got held up at the shop. Some bullshit with a supplier, took longer than it should have. By the time I got to his place—"
The words caught in my throat.
"The paramedics were already there. They'd been working on him for twenty minutes, but he was already gone. Needle still in his arm. The whole scene staged to look like he'd fucking relapsed."
Tyler was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of someone who understood exactly what I was describing. "Did you ever wonder whether it was all a farce?"
"I didn't. Not then." I pulled away slightly, just enough to meet his eyes.
"That's the thing. I believed the official story.
Everyone did. Danny Morrison, the addict who couldn't stay clean, finally pushed his luck too far.
His sponsor told me that relapse was part of recovery, that sometimes people just couldn't fight the disease.
And I bought it. I stood at his funeral and listened to people talk about what a shame it was, and I hated him for leaving me. "
The admission hung in the air between us, ugly and raw.
"six years." My voice came out barely above a whisper.
"I spent six years blaming a dead man for his own murder.
Every time I looked at that bike, I felt angry—at him for giving up, at myself for not saving him, at the world for being the kind of place where someone like Danny could just throw it all away.
And the whole time, he hadn't thrown anything away. Someone had taken it from him."
"That's not your fault." Tyler's hand found mine, squeezed hard. "You believed what the evidence showed. What everyone told you. You couldn't have known."
"I should have asked questions. Should have pushed back when the cops closed the case so fast. Should have—"
"Should have gotten yourself killed." Tyler cut me off, his voice firm but gentle. "If you'd started digging back then, you'd have ended up on that kill list right next to Danny. Is that what he would have wanted?"
The question hit harder than I expected.
Danny had always been protective of me, even when he was the one who needed protecting.
Little brother with big brother instincts—he'd never outgrown that stubborn need to watch my back, even after I'd grown taller and stronger and more capable of handling myself.
"No." The word came out rough. "He would have told me to let it go. To keep my head down and stay safe."
"But you're not going to do that."
"They killed my brother." I met Tyler's eyes, letting him see the cold thing that had taken root in my chest alongside the grief.
"They put his name on a list like he was just another problem to be solved.
And then they went after you, and Kai, and Sarah, and everyone else who ever got in their way. I'm not letting that go. Not ever."
Tyler held my gaze for a long moment. Something passed between us—understanding, recognition. He'd spent years running from Cross, hiding, trying to stay safe. And it hadn't worked. The danger had found him anyway.
"Then we burn it down together." His voice was quiet but certain. "All of it. The network, the corruption, Cross. We take it apart piece by piece until there's nothing left."
Together. The word settled into me like a promise.
The afternoon light shifted through the dirty windows as we talked, the shadows growing longer across the garage floor. Our shoulders touched where we sat against the workbench, our voices low, the conversation flowing in fits and starts with silences that didn't need filling.
Tyler had told me about Cross. Not just the facts I'd already heard at church meetings, but the reality of what it had been like to spend three years with a man who'd seemed perfect and turned out to be poison.
"In the beginning, he was everything I thought I wanted.
" Tyler's voice had gone distant, like he was describing something that had happened to someone else.
"Smart, ambitious, passionate about the work.
He made me feel like I was special—like he'd chosen me out of everyone else, and that meant something. "
"What changed?"