Except he didn’t believe that lie—not for one second. It wasn’t just the job.
It was her.
He’d spent years cultivating detachment, but there was something about her that crawled under his skin and wouldn’t shake loose.
Ghost scrubbed a hand over his face, irritation prickling at his skin as he left the dog to her own security sweep and ducked inside the Hub.
Door shut. Deadbolt engaged. Just him and the wall of screens, showing every inch of the perimeter.
Just how he liked it.
Except he didn’t like it. Not really.
He should check the logs. Rerun the overnight feeds, maybe scope for out-of-place vehicles on the main road. Instead, he poured coffee into his chipped blue mug, sat in the swivel chair, and stared at nothing.
He couldn’t focus on the feeds. Not even close.
He couldn’t stop picturing Naomi. The stubborn tilt of her chin. The fire in her eyes. The way she looked at him, not scared or pitying, but like he was a puzzle she actually wanted to solve. The way his body reacted every time she glanced his way.
Annoying.
He set down the mug and spun in his chair. Pulled a battered folder from the locked drawer of his file cabinet and thumbed through his own notes. Timeline for Leelee’s disappearance, color-coded by sighting. Maps with routes highlighted, pins marking the location of every missing woman. The pattern stared him straight in the face, obvious and ugly.
He’d said it last night, in front of the whole Outreach crowd: someone was hunting these women.
But nobody wanted to hear it. Not until Naomi forced them to. Just like she’d forced him out of the shadows and into the crosshairs.
He should be pissed. Should want nothing more than to fade right back into the background, let her take the fallout.
But he wasn’t.
She was reckless, yeah, but she was also right. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he didn’t watch her six, nobody would.
The urge to go back, to see if her lights were on or if she’d already thrown herself into something dangerous, gnawed at him. He’d threatened to show up at sixteen hundred, but if he knew her at all, she wasn’t going to wait for him.
She’d say she would, just to annoy him, and then turn around and do exactly what she damn well pleased.
Ghost scrubbed a hand over his face, irritation prickling at his skin. Hell, what was he even doing here? He’d been trained to let people hang themselves with their own rope and pretend he didn’t care when they went down. But the thought of her showing up at Finch’s place alone, stubborn and unprotected, made every nerve in his body snap tight.
The world outside was waking up, but inside the Hub, time crawled. The dog came back, paws thumping up the porch, and flopped down just outside his door. Loyal little shadow.
He flicked through the overnight feeds, not really seeing them. A battered pickup circled the Ridge entrance, headlights off, but it was just Cody Sims dropping off feed for the horses. Nothing out of place. He triple-checked anyway. Anything to keep his hands busy until he had to report for chores.
At 0730 sharp, Ghost left the Hub and stepped straight into the crisp bite of daybreak. The valley was gray and glimmering, the air wet with dew and the promise of early fall. Cinder ranged ahead, black fur vanishing into the mist, running perimeter like she was the only one who could be trusted to do it right.
If he’d had a choice, he’d have stayed in that dim little office for the next twelve hours, hunched over his files and his screens. But Valor Ridge didn’t run itself, and there were routines here even he wasn’t allowed to ignore.
Jonah was already in the main barn, shoveling muck with the relentless cheer of a man who actually liked starting his day ankle-deep in manure. He greeted Ghost with a nod and a half smile, then hiked his chin toward the second pitchfork.
“Did you sleep in the bunker again?”
Ghost grabbed the fork and waded into the nearest stall. “It’s not a bunker.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You got more cameras in there than the damn casino.”
“Necessary,” Ghost grunted, tossing a sodden mat of straw into the wheelbarrow. “Last week, somebody cut the fence at the north end.”
Jonah’s brows shot up. “You tell Walker?”
