Julius bucked beneath him, struggling for breath, for leverage. Ghost caught his flailing arm and pinned it to the floor, his other hand drawing back into a fist. One solid blow to the temple would end it. Another to the throat would make sure he never got up again. A third would be for every second Naomi had spent afraid, every bruise on her body, every girl this monster had killed. His muscles coiled, ready to unleash the violence burning in his blood like gasoline.
“Owen,” Naomi’s voice cut through the red haze of his rage. “Owen, don’t.”
His fist froze mid-air.
Julius stared up at him, blood trickling from his nose, his expression wavering between terror and a strange, detached fascination—like he was cataloging Ghost’s rage for future reference. There was something empty in those eyes, something Ghost recognized from mirrors in dark places, from men he’d killed in distant countries whose names he couldn’t remember.
He wasn’t afraid of the violence. Not for himself. But what he saw in Julius’s eyes was a reflection of what Naomi would see in him if he gave in to the killing rage. He’d be no better than the monster beneath him—just another man who solved problems with blood and broken bones.
The realization hit him with more force than the bullet had. Beating Deveraux hadn’t helped anyone, hadn’t made Naomi safer—it had just exposed his darkness, the part of himself he’d worked so hard to contain. Killing Julius might satisfy the primal part of him that demanded vengeance, but it wouldn’t undo what had been done. It wouldn’t bring back Mary Rose or Leelee or any of the others. It would just prove that Ghost was exactly what everyone believed him to be: a killer, a weapon, a man with violence written into his bones.
He lowered his fist slowly. Not from weakness, but from the hardest kind of strength—restraint.
“You don’t get off that easy,” he told Julius, his voice deadly quiet. “You’re going to live. You’re going to face what you’ve done.”
Julius’s lip curled in a sneer, but before he could respond, the cabin door crashed open again. Boone entered first, weapon drawn, with Brandt and Walker close behind. They moved with the coordinated precision of men who’d navigated danger together before, sweeping the room for threats before converging on Ghost and Julius.
“Clear,” Boone barked, holstering his weapon and dropping to one knee beside them. His eyes met Ghost’s, a wordless question passing between them.
“He’s secure,” Ghost managed, the words coming harder now as the adrenaline began to ebb, pain seeping into the spaces it left behind. “Get him off me.”
Brandt and Boone hauled Julius to his feet, none too gently. The marshal slapped cuffs around his wrists with a definitive click that seemed to punctuate the end of Julius’s freedom. The man didn’t resist, his expression shifting into something resembling calm acceptance, like this was all part of some plan Ghost couldn’t see.
“Julius Charlo, you’re under arrest for the murder of Leila Padilla,” Brandt recited, voice flat and official. “And I suspect we’ll be adding charges as we dig deeper.”
“You have no idea what you’ve walked into,” Julius said, smiling that empty smile that made Ghost’s skin crawl. “None of you do.”
Walker had moved to Ava, his weathered hands gentle as he worked at the cords binding her to the chair. The old woman was trembling, silent tears cutting tracks through the makeup on her lined face. Walker murmured something too soft for Ghostto hear, but Ava nodded, her eyes never leaving her grandson as Brandt led him toward the door.
Ghost pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly as his body registered the damage more insistently. The bullet wound throbbed with each heartbeat, a hot coal pressed against his side. His shirt was soaked, dark and wet against his skin. Bad, but not fatal—not yet. He’d survived worse.
“Get him out of here,” he told Brandt, nodding toward Julius. “I need to check on Naomi.”
Naomi. Her name centered him, gave him purpose beyond the pain. She was still tied to the kitchen chair, straining against the bindings, her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that made his chest ache more than his wound.
“Owen,” she said, his real name on her lips still unfamiliar enough to catch him by surprise. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” he lied, forcing his legs to carry him to her. Three steps. That was all he needed. Three steps to reach her, to free her hands, to assure himself she was really okay.
The first step was manageable. His body obeyed, moving forward through sheer force of will.
The second step faltered, his vision tunneling briefly before snapping back into focus. He registered Walker saying something about an ambulance, about pressure on the wound. Irrelevant. Naomi was what mattered.
The third step never came. His legs buckled, the strength leaving them as suddenly as if someone had cut the strings holding him upright. He collapsed to his knees on the worn floorboards, one hand shooting out to catch himself, the other pressed to his side where blood seeped between his fingers.
“Owen!” Naomi’s voice sounded distant, underwater. He tried to look up at her, to tell her he was okay, but the words wouldn’t form.
Then Walker was there, pressing a wadded-up dish towel against his wound with firm pressure that sent a wave of nauseating pain through his abdomen.
“Stay with me, son,” Walker ordered, his voice cutting through the growing fog in Ghost’s mind. “Ambulance is on the way.”
“Naomi,” Ghost managed. His tongue was too thick for his mouth. “Get… her… free.”
“Boone’s got her,” Walker assured. “Just focus on staying awake.”
But the edges of his vision were already darkening, the world receding as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. He was vaguely aware of being lowered to the floor, of Walker’s weathered hands maintaining pressure on his wound, of voices shouting instructions he couldn’t quite follow.
Then Naomi was there, her face filling his narrowing field of vision, her hands cradling his face. She’d been freed from the chair, he realized dimly. Good. She was safe. That was all that mattered.
