3. Static #2
The adrenaline had been carrying me. Hawk's words knocked the props out from under it, and the cold came in all at once, the full weight of a desert night at one in the morning landing on bare skin.
I was shaking. My eye throbbed where the fist had caught it.
The split in my lip cracked open when I set my mouth against the cold, and copper spread across my tongue.
Ghost turned to me, and his whole face fell apart.
The rapid-fire drained out of him and something else flooded in.
His eyes went wide and dropped to me, the bruises, the blood dried down my stomach where it had run off my chin the whole ride.
He looked like he'd been carrying something and had just heard it crack.
"Shit. Shit, I didn't—Hawk, he needs—I should've—" Ghost's eyes jumped from Hawk to the silver-eyed one to me and back, his body tipping into that vibrating thing again, the restlessness sliding over into something close to panic.
"I'm sorry, I got caught up in the report and I didn't even—you've been standing here bleeding this whole time. "
"Ghost." The silver-eyed man spoke for the first time.
Quieter than Hawk, smoother, a calm that sounded worked-in over a long time.
His eyes moved off Ghost and onto me. "I know somebody who can help.
He won't love getting pulled out of bed at this hour, though.
" Back to Ghost. "Take him to the medical bay. I'll go wake him up."
Medical bay.
I looked around at the compound again. The cameras. The gate. The floodlights, the row of bikes. And now a medical bay?
"Come on. Follow me." Ghost was already moving toward a building on the right, quick, his head turning back every few steps to check I was with him, the restless energy back at full burn.
"Get some sleep." The silver-eyed one aimed it at the Latino and the redhead. "Debrief at eight. Church."
Church. Medical bay. A fortress in the desert run by men with road names and a chain of command, and a man called Gravedigger with a whole biker club hunting him. Four months bleeding in an underground pit, and I'd thought that was as strange as my life could possibly get.
I followed Ghost across the lot, gravel and grit catching under my bare feet, the cold biting harder now that I wasn't sealed against the warm back of a man on a moving bike. Funny, how fast you could miss a thing you'd only had for a few minutes.
Ghost reached the building and held the door, leaning in to flip a switch before he stepped aside to let me by, his eyes aimed somewhere past my shoulder. Not meeting mine.
"Thanks." I made it two steps inside before what was in the room stopped me cold.
It was way bigger than I'd expected. A row of beds down the far wall, each with its own rails and monitors.
Glass-fronted cabinets ran both sides, stocked with things I half recognized and plenty I didn't, bandages and bottles and sealed trays of steel.
A table under the window held a laptop and a stack of folders.
The gear wasn't new, but it was the real thing.
IV stands, an oxygen rig, a cart with defib paddles…
It wasn't tidy. Stuff piled on the counters, shoved into corners. But there was an order running under the mess if you knew to look for it.
This wasn't a first-aid box and a bottle of whiskey. This was a room where somebody who knew the work patched up injuries that were never going to see a police report.
Ghost went past me and pointed at the nearest bed.
"Sit. I'll find you something warm, it's freezing in here.
" He crossed his arms and threw in a fast, exaggerated shiver.
"Left my jacket back here before the operation.
Couldn't wear leather into that place. Might as well have walked in with a sign around my neck that said rival biker, please shoot me. "
He crossed to a tall cabinet and hauled it open, digging through the shelves. I watched him. The quick hands, the way his weight never fully picked a foot to settle on, his mouth running with nobody asking it to. The Ghost from the pit and this Ghost were two men sharing one body.
He came back with a folded gray blanket and held it out. I reached, and my fingers brushed his.
The contact was brief. The pad of my finger dragged across his knuckle as I took the blanket.
A fraction of a second. Yet something went through my hand and climbed my wrist. Quick and bright, the cold snap you get off a metal rail in January.
Static. Had to be. Dry desert air, the ride, the cold.
My skin had touched somebody else's without a fist behind it for the first time in months, and my nerves didn't know what to do with it.
I pulled the thick blanket free and dragged it around my shoulders, and the warmth dropped over me heavy and immediate.
I sat and touched my nose, careful. It hurt, but the cartilage held.
Not broken. I'd kept my eyes on the enforcer's fists the whole time they worked me over in that corridor.
I tracked every punch, rolling my head a hair with each one to smooth out the force.
I couldn't slip anything with my arms pinned behind me.
But I could ride the hits, and riding them was the whole difference between a bruise and a break.
Ghost was by the cabinet, and when I looked up his eyes were on me. He opened his mouth.
I beat him to it.
"Where am I?" It came out level, but the edge rode underneath.
I'd followed him here because the other option was a locked warehouse full of men who wanted me hurt.
That didn't make this place safe. I was shirtless and bleeding in a building I didn't know, ringed by armed strangers, while my brother was in a hospital bed thirteen miles off. Gratitude only stretched so far.
Ghost blinked. His mouth shut, opened again, and I watched him catch himself, a visible reset, a small nod like he'd answered some question of his own about why I'd ask.
"Right. Yeah. Of course." He leaned back on the cabinet. "You're at the Steel Phoenixes compound. We're a motorcycle club. A brotherhood." The word landed with weight, like he'd said it enough times to mean it all the way down. "We do custom builds, restorations, contract work. Legit, mostly."
"Mostly."