The man had only been trying to offer support. A lifeline, maybe. And Ghost had burned it on instinct—scorched earth, just like always. Keep them at a distance, before they could get close enough to hurt you.
His chest ached. Not the sharp pain of a fresh cut, but the grinding, dull ache of something old and stubborn.
He sat again, back to the door, and pulled out a battered notepad and wrote out the next six possible steps in the Padilla case.
At some point, Cinder nudged his elbow and made a small sound he’d never heard from her—a whimper, barely audible.He reached to scratch her behind the ears, but his hand trembled. The contact was weirdly grounding, her fur coarse and familiar under his palm.
The quiet was absolute.
Just him, the dog, the whir of the solar inverter and computer fans, and the memory of too many nights spent alone.
Isolation was supposed to be his natural state. The thing that made him efficient, effective—a ghost, untouchable, untraceable, unbreakable.
Except he’d done most of his eight-year stint in solitary. He knew what true loneliness could do to a man. How it clawed at you, hollowed you out until there was nothing left but reflex and hunger.
He’d promised himself, back in that cell, that he’d never let anyone lock him in again. Not physically, not emotionally. Never again.
So why the fuck did he keep building cages around himself?
He looked at the door, the monitor feeds, the blackout curtains. All the work he’d done to make the Hub fortress-level secure. He’d built the perfect prison, all by himself.
And now he was suffocating in it.
Cinder pressed close, leaning into his leg. He didn’t know what this was—she wasn’t normally this needy—but he let his hand rest on her head. It was warm and solid against her side, and for a split second, he allowed himself to lean back.
Maybe he was done here.
Maybe it was time to pull up stakes and vanish again, before the cage closed in for good.
The idea startled him—not because it was new, but because it felt suddenly possible. The urge to run had always been coiled under his skin ever since Boone talked him into staying after he’d tried to leave on his first night at the Ridge.
He’d packed his meager belongings in the dead of night—a duffel with three changes of clothes, a paperback with dog-eared corners, and the fake ID he’d stashed in the lining of his boot. He’d made it as far as the firepit—the center of everything at Valor Ridge, where strangers slowly turned into brothers—when he heard Boone’s voice.
“Going somewhere, Owen?”
Not much startled him, but that gravelly voice from the darkness had. He swung around to find Boone Callahan in one of the Adirondack chairs around the cold fire pit, his black cowboy hat pulled down low over his eyes like he’d been napping there.
“Not your problem.”
“Actually, it is my problem. You signed on for six months here as a condition of your parole. If you leave, I’m obligated by the state of Montana to report you.” Boone had still been smoking back then, and Ghost distinctly remembered the lit cigarette glowing red in the dark as he inhaled. He motioned to one of the empty chairs. “Sit. I have coffee. The good stuff from that new bakery in town.”
Ghost didn’t move. “I’m not on parole.” It was technically true. What he’d had was an arrangement, one brokered by people who owed him and people he owed in turn. “I don’t need to be here.”
Boone shrugged, shoulders rolling beneath his worn flannel shirt. “Maybe not. But Walker thinks you do.”
“Walker doesn’t know me.”
“None of us know you.” Boone dropped the cigarette in the gravel and crushed it under his boot, then reached for a thermos. There were two mugs waiting on the chair’s wide arm, as if Boone had been expecting him. “You don’t let anyone close enough.”
Ghost stared him down, waiting for the threat, the ultimatum—stay or else.
But Boone just poured coffee into a blue mug and held it out. “I’ve been where you are. Looking for the exit before someone locks the door again. I wanted to bail my first week, too. And my second. And pretty much every day until one day, I didn’t.”
“I’m not you.”
“No shit.” Boone’s laugh was rough, like he didn’t use it much. “You’re way more fucked up than I was. And I was a goddamn mess.”
Something about the blunt honesty made Ghost pause. And before he realized it, his feet were moving, carrying him over to take the offered mug. It was warm on his hands and smelled better than the sludge in the coffee pot at the bunkhouse. He took an experimental sip and had to admit, it was really good.
