Chapter 16
GHOST
Gunshots ring through the air.
Fuck, no.
We’ve just reached the old outbuilding we’ve been using when we have something we don’t want tied directly to the main compound—either because it’s illegal, sensitive, or strategically risky. It’s less about random storage and more about separation and deniability.
We never imagined the fucking Numbnuts would consider using it to store a person.
To keep our arrival lowkey, we parked the trucks a few minutes’ walk down the road and cut the lights, then ran the rest of the way to the building.
The door is standing open a couple of inches, but it’s too dark, both inside and out, to be able to see anything.
Our men surround the building, making sure no one can run and take Camile with them. Still, my mind keeps trying to take me back to the possibility that we’re too late. We went to the wrong place, and now she’s dead.
How will we ever recover from that loss?
We’ll all blame ourselves, but Jack worst of all.
He’s spoken a little about what happened with his wife and how he blames himself for not saving her, and now it’s like history repeating itself all over again.
Is that part of the reason he’s kept Camile at arm’s length?
He says it’s because of his daughter, but perhaps she’s just a convenient excuse. He’s really protecting his heart.
I shoot a look to Jack and Ace.
“Get in there,” Jack orders.
I jerk my chin, and we move at a run. This time, we’ve had no opportunity to scout the outside area or determine how many men we might have to deal with when we’re inside. We’re all out of time.
I don’t like going into unknown situations, but sometimes you have no choice. Just like I always have, I draw my emotions down and bury them deep inside. I think of myself as nothing more than a machine, one who has a mission, and who never fails.
Camile, Camile, Camile.
The image of her already dead, her body bleeding red out onto the floor, her beautiful dark eyes glassy and unseeing, jumps into my head.
Those deeply buried emotions fight to break loose.
It’s like a skittering of tiny creatures inside my chest that want to explode outward and spread through my entire body, taking me down. I can’t let it.
Focus, for fuck’s sake.
Leading the way, with Ace and Jack close at my sides, we burst through the partially open door.
It takes my brain a few seconds to put together what I’m seeing. A young man leaning over a mostly naked Rook and Camile while they cower from the gun he’s aiming at Rook’s skull.
Several other men stand around, looking unsure, while the body of another man lies at their feet. There’s a guy gurgling faintly as blood seeps from his chest. A final man is sitting on the floor, clutching his hand to a bullet hole in his shoulder while dark blood trickles between his fingers.
What the fuck has been going on here? Why is Rook naked?
The only possibility that comes to mind is horrifying, and even though I know he won’t have done anything out of choice, a strange, murderous protectiveness rises in me as I look at Camile’s pale face.
Her trauma is written on every line of her taut features.
Before I have the chance to react, Ace flies through the air in front of me and lands directly on top of the man I’m fairly sure is Ledger, from the photos I’ve seen. They both crash to the floor, and Ledger’s gun goes off, the bullet punching a hole in the ceiling.
Ace knocks the gun out of Ledger’s hand, and it clatters across the floor. One of the other men still standing lurches for it, but I fire a warning shot and aim squarely at his head. “Don’t even think about it.”
He holds his hands up immediately. “Not my fight.”
His friend nods. “We were just paid to be here. We have no idea what’s going down.”
I don’t know if they’re telling the truth, but it tracks.
If they were cartel, they’d not dare say that in front of the man I assume is Ledger.
They must be connected to the Revenants somehow.
Maybe they are hang-arounds, or prospects.
If so, they’re likely dead for getting involved in this clusterfuck.
Ace draws back his fist and punches Ledger viciously in the face.
He hits him again and again, the sound of bone crunching as he breaks the fucker’s nose reverberating in the room.
Ledger grunts and tries his best to fight back, but he doesn’t stand a chance when Ace is like this.
Ace might act like an overgrown puppy most of the time, but when he loses it, he’s lethal.
I let him loose for a few seconds—Ace is wound so tight, he’ll explode—but when it looks as if he’s not going to stop until Ledger is dead, I gesture to Big Mike.
“Get him off Ledger. We need to be able to interrogate the man.”
Big Mike nods and stalks over to pull Ace off Ledger.
“Fucking get off me,” Ace spits as he whirls on Mike.
“Ace, stand the fuck down,” Jack orders from the doorway, where he’s surveying the scene with something unreadable crawling over his face.
His gaze keeps hitting Camile, and for a moment, I think he’s going to go nuclear like Ace, too. But he locks that shit down.
Ace finally calms down enough to go stand against the wall, clenching and unclenching his fists. Two of our men step forward and secure the man Ace was beating.
“Ledger?” I doublecheck with Rook and Camile as I point at the man being hogtied.
He looks like the man I’d been searching for near the compound, but now his face is so bruised and bloodied, he’s hard to recognize, and I need to be sure. He could just be a relative and look similar, in which case, the main guy would still be a threat.
They’re both still huddled on the floor, Rook with his arm tightly around Camile, using his naked body to shelter her from everything happening around them.
Camile nods, but she doesn’t meet my eye, her lips pressed into a thin, tremulous, line.
Rook tightens his arm around her. The bikers Beau sent with us storm in from behind Jack and stare in dismay at the man who is already dead, and the one bleeding out from his chest.
“Fuck,” one of them says.
“They your men?” Jack asks.
“Yes. Beau is going to be pissed.” He shoots Ledger a look. “He’ll want to know how the fuck they were contacted by a cartel in the first place.”
“We can find that out,” Jack says, darkly. “And I think my men will very much enjoy doing so.”
I walk to Camile and Rook, and as I approach her, Camile shrinks back a little. I don’t take it personally and hold my hands out, palms up.
“Are you hurt?” I ask her. “Do you have any injuries?”
“Her injuries are up here.” Rook taps his head hard enough for it to be painful.
He looks shocked to the core. We’re going to have two traumatized people to deal with when we get home, a man to interrogate, and Ace to contain.
My gaze flicks down Camile’s body, making sure she hasn’t been harmed. I freeze in horror. The tan skin of her thighs is streaked with dried white. I check her face and see it there, too, covering part of her cheek, and some in her hair.
Oh, Christ.
“Camile,” I say softly.
She shakes her head, and tears immediately spring to her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare, Ghost.”
I nod. I get it. She’s holding herself together, and me losing it at what they did to her will not help at all.
“I know you,” one of the Revenants says to one of the men from Ledger’s gross little group who hasn’t been shot. “You were looking at prospecting for us a while back. Beau shot you down. How the hell did you get involved in this?”
“Garth offered us some money to help them guard a girl, and we said yes.” The man looks terrified. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“You should have fucking thought about that before you did this.” He turns to Jack.
“Can we take these three back? I think Beau will want to deal with them. They’ve all been sniffing around our club, and Beau wasn’t interested in having them hanging around.
He sent them packing, but they obviously got involved with Garth and Sutton. ”
“Yes. Fucking take the trash.” Jack looks around at the dead and injured.
Sutton was the one shot in the chest, and he’s still breathing, but it’s fast and shallow. He’s not going to last for much longer.
“Please, can I go home?” Camile’s voice is small, but it cuts through the room like a knife, grabbing the attention of every man in there.
“You want to go back to the college?” Ace asks, a note of panic in his tone.
“No. I meant the compound. If you’ll have me there?”
“If?” Jack grumbles. “You’re not going anywhere else, Baby-girl, and you’re not to be alone, ever. You’re always going to have either me, Ace, or Ghost with you. Mike, I want you to stay a while, too, if that’s okay?”
“Of course,” the big man says.
“Or Rook,” Camile adds. When Jack doesn’t answer and Ace only glowers at Rook like he’s going to kill him, she states again, more firmly, “And Rook.”
A muscle twitches beneath Jack’s eye. “If that’s what you want. We’ll discuss it more later. Let’s all get back first. I want you out of here and safe. Can you guys take this cartel piece of shit with you? Put him in the walk-in cooler with the Numbnuts.”
He gestures at Ace and jerks his chin at Ledger. He’s being all business, and Camile looks a little hurt, but I get it. He’s gone into Prez mode, and he just wants her and his men safe.
Ace walks to Ledger and leans in close. “I’m going to have so much fun with you.”
Looking around the room, I see Camile’s clothes, but they’re ruined.
Wet through and balled into a corner, they won’t do her much good, but the shirt she’s wearing doesn’t provide much protection either.
I race outside and back to the truck we parked a way down the path.
There’s a blanket in there, and I grab it and rush back into the outbuilding.
“Here, let me put this around you, okay?”
Camile nods, and I carefully wrap the blanket around her. “When we get you back, you can get cleaned up.”
“What did they do to you?” Ace demands.