Chapter 24
GHOST
The secured property sat deep inside Black Crowns land, far enough from the county road that nobody passing through Sable Canyon would hear what happened inside the old concrete workshop.
One exterior light burned over the steel door, throwing a hard white circle across the packed dirt and the bikes lined beneath the overhang.
I killed my engine, crossed the yard without slowing, and carried the image of bruises circling Tamsin’s wrists through the door with me.
Stryker and Hawkeye stood near a scarred worktable while Smoke and Breach each took a wall on opposite sides of the room. Len and the outside crew leader had been secured to steel chairs several feet apart, their wrists bound behind them and their ankles locked to the chair legs.
Len lifted his head when I entered. One side of his face was scraped from the fight near the maintenance trail, but contempt still twisted his mouth when his gaze settled on me.
The stupid bastard looked past me toward the door as though Tamsin might have followed, then glared when he realized I had come alone.
“She cost me everything.”
I crossed the remaining distance and hit him before the last word fully cleared his mouth.
My fist broke his nose and knocked the chair onto its side, sending him crashing into the concrete with a strangled grunt.
Blood immediately poured over his mouth, but his eyes remained open and aware when I crouched beside him.
Stryker looked down at the red spreading across Len’s face. “We need that part working, Ghost.”
I caught the chair by its frame and hauled it upright with Len still strapped to it. “Then he should use it better.”
“True,” Stryker grunted.
Len coughed blood onto his shirt and tried to straighten, though the bindings kept his shoulders pulled back. Rage made his eyes watery and unfocused, but he managed to look at me as if I was the unreasonable man in the room. I flexed my bruised hand once, then rested it on the back of his chair.
“Anybody else inside Bellamy knowingly help you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Try that again without deciding how much truth I deserve.”
“I worked alone inside the company,” Len spat, blood bubbling briefly at one nostril. “Nobody else knew what I was doing.”
I watched his face rather than his mouth. Nothing in the answer shifted his eyes or changed his breathing. “Credentials.”
“I used the shared operations account, copied two supervisor badges, and kept the rear-door code from being updated.” Len swallowed, wincing when the movement jarred his broken nose. “I could see dispatch, schedules, transfer requests, and final inventory.”
I pulled the knife from my belt and opened it with one hand. Len’s eyes dropped to the blade, and the first honest trace of panic widened them. I caught his right wrist, cut the restraint only long enough to drag his hand across the chair arm, then pinned it there with my palm.
“You put a device beneath her fucking truck,” I reminded him, bending his index finger backward until the tendons pulled tight.
“You left her tied inside a building with a timer running. I’m gonna ask once more, and this finger is only the start if I hear hesitation. Is there another active device?”
“No,” he gasped. “There isn’t.”
“What did you divert during the last round of thefts?”
Len listed the inventory, and it matched enough of what we had recovered to make the answer believable.
With some incentive, he admitted to compromising the rack and shutdown at the fundraiser, and placing the secondary device the crew had built for him.
He also gave me the details on the warehouse fire.
“The bomb under her truck?” I asked.
Len’s eyes shifted toward the crew leader. That single movement told me where the order originated, but it did nothing to reduce his responsibility.
“I gave them her schedule and vehicle information,” he admitted. “One of their men placed it.”
I sliced off the tip of one finger, and his breathing came fast and wet through his broken nose while I folded the damaged hand back into his lap.
“That was for making me ask twice.” I wiped my blade clean against his shirt before closing it. “Lie again, and I’ll start choosing things you need more.”
The crew leader had watched the exchange without moving, though the muscles along his jaw had tightened.
He was older than most of the men we took at the range, with the battered face of someone who had mistaken surviving violence for being good at it.
His attention moved from Len’s ruined finger to Stryker when our president stepped in front of him.
“Where’s the backup stock?” Stryker asked.
“Don’t know what you mean,” the man replied, settling deeper into the chair.
Stryker looked at me. “He needs encouragement.”
The crew leader’s gaze snapped back to mine before I had taken a step. All that hard-man bullshit vanished beneath the memory of Len’s scream. “There’s a lockup off Henshaw.”
He gave us everything we needed, identifying a small backup containing material taken during the latest thefts. He confirmed that there were no other devices and the range was their last planned job.
Wraith and Breach headed outside, engines firing moments later while the rest of us remained with the two men who had used Tamsin’s company as an armory.
We did not need a history of every generator, tool, or case the crew had stolen over the years.
We needed to know whether another device was waiting somewhere in our territory, whether another Bellamy employee had been compromised, and whether the range attack was the final move they had prepared before we broke the operation apart.
My hand closed into a fist at my side. Every second spent in this room belonged to Tamsin, which meant these men were going to give us what we needed quickly or stop breathing even faster.
Len twisted toward the crew leader as much as the chair allowed. “You planned the truck.”
“You gave us her routine,” the other man shot back. “Don’t start acting clean now.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Trigger advised from beside the table. “Nobody here is confused about either one of you.”
I stepped between the chairs and looked at Len. “The device at the range. You place it?”
“Yes.”
“Build it?”
“I helped the crew leader assemble the trigger and positioned the case.” His broken hand trembled in his lap while he spoke. “The remote started it early if we needed. The timer handled the rest.”
I believed he was finally too frightened to gamble.
The crew leader confirmed the same thing after Stryker questioned him about his remaining men, recent movements, and the last material they intended to sell.
He knew almost nothing about Bellamy’s internal records beyond what Len handed him, while Len knew little about which businesses the crew had pressured after the stolen components changed hands.
Their arrangement had been built to keep each side useful without sharing more than necessary.
Stryker looked at me. “That closes the immediate threat.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re yours.”
The crew leader jerked against the restraints. “I told you where the lockup was.”
I drew my pistol and stepped in front of him. “That bought you quick.”
His face changed as he understood the only mercy available in the room. I fired once into his chest, close enough that the suppressed shot sounded flat inside the concrete walls. The chair rocked backward, then settled with his head hanging against one shoulder.
Len stared at the body before turning frantic eyes at me when I stopped in front of him. “Tamsin wouldn’t want—”
I struck him again before her name could become another excuse in his mouth. His head snapped sideways, blood spraying across the collar of his shirt while the broken chair leg screeched over the floor. I caught his jaw and forced his face back toward mine.
“You spent years using her name because you thought nobody would believe her over you. Then you put her in a building you planned to burn down. You don’t get to speak for her now.”
I fired, and Len’s body went slack against the restraints, a bullet lodged in his heart. The silence afterward lasted only long enough for me to holster the weapon and turn toward Stryker.
“Smoke, Trigger.” He glanced toward the bodies. “Handle it.”
Smoke looked at the blood across the floor and sighed. “Always the glamorous jobs.”
“You volunteered by standing there,” Hawkeye replied, reaching for a pair of gloves from the worktable.
“I was providing moral support.”
Trigger tossed him a roll of plastic. “Provide it with both fucking hands.”
I left them arguing and crossed to the utility sink in the adjoining room. Stryker appeared in the doorway while I was drying my hands. “Go home. We’ve got this.”
I nodded, then was on my bike less than two minutes later, cutting through the canyon night with the cold air stripping the last trace of that room from my skin.
The front door opened before I reached the porch.
Tamsin stood beneath the light, wearing soft shorts and an oversized shirt, her wild curls loose around her shoulders and one wrist still wrapped from Reaper’s examination.
Her gaze moved over my face, chest, and arms before settling on my bruised hand.
“You were gone an hour and forty-three minutes,” she informed me, holding the door wider.
“Counting?” I asked as I stepped onto the porch.
Pink spread beneath the freckles across her cheeks. “Maybe.”
I crossed the threshold, closed one arm around her waist, and pulled her against me. Her body fitted itself to mine without hesitation, both hands settling carefully over my shoulders. Having her close tore the last of the ice out of my blood.
“Missed me, pretty girl?” I murmured, lowering my mouth toward hers.
“A little.”
“Liar.”
A giggle came from the living room before I could kiss the confession out of her. Jacqueline stood while Bex gathered their bags from beside the couch. Both women looked far too entertained by the color in Tamsin’s face.