Page 1 of Wraith’s Promise

Chapter 1 - Quinn

The phone rings at 6:47 in the morning, which is either very good news or very bad news, because nobody calls that early for anything in between.

I'm already awake. I'm always already awake. Four years out of the service and my body still hasn't gotten the memo that it's allowed to sleep past sunrise, that there's no formation to make, no watch to stand.

I'm sitting at my kitchen table with black coffee and a protein bar I don't want, staring at my phone before it even finishes its first buzz, because I know that ringtone. I picked it specifically so I'd know.

"Ranger," I say, and my chest does the thing it always does when I hear his name on the screen: half relief, half dread, because good news from my brother is rare enough that I brace for the other kind.

"Hey, Quinnie." His voice is rough, like he hasn't slept well in a long time.

"You sound like hell."

"Long week." A pause. "You busy?"

I look around my studio apartment: one room, a mattress on a frame I built myself, a rack of free weights in the corner because gym memberships cost money I don't have, and dishes in the sink I should've done yesterday. Busy isn't the word for what my life is. Empty is closer.

"Depends what you're offering," I say.

He laughs, short and surprised, like he wasn't expecting me to make it easy. "There's a job. Guy in the club needs a babysitter. Long-term, live-in probably, good pay. His daughter's five."

I sit up straighter. "What club?"

"Mine."

That's all he says, but it's enough to reorganize every cell in my body. Ranger left three years ago. Not left me, left the life we grew up in, the military, the life our father tried to beat into both of us like discipline was a nail and we were boards that needed straightening. Ranger went in one direction. He found some brotherhood out in a town called Millhaven, some motorcycle club that, from everything he's told me over the phone, sounds less like the outlaw stereotype and more like the family neither of us ever had.

I went another direction. I stayed in the military like Dad wanted, because even after everything, some part of me still wanted to make him proud, which is its own kind of stupid I've spent years trying to unlearn.

We don't talk enough. That's my fault as much as his. Some wounds you don't call your brother about because saying them out loud makes them real, and some nights it's easier to let the silence sit between two people than to admit how much you need them.

"It’s the war, isn’t ?" I ask him.

He's mentioned it before, vaguely, the way you mention weather you're trying not to worry someone about. Some rival club.

"Yeah." No point lying to me; he never has been able to. "It's bad right now. Real bad. We just pulled six women out of a trafficking operation two days ago. Things are escalating, not calming down."

"And you want me to bring a five-year-old into that."

"I want you to protect a five-year-old in that," he says, and there's an edge to his voice now, something urgent. "Her dad's one of us. Good man. Single father, ex-wife walked out on both of them years back. He's trying to keep her safe but he's also trying to fight a war, and he can't be in two places at once. I told him about you. Told him you're the only person I trust with this."

"You told him what I can do?"

"I told him you'd bury anyone who got near her before they hit the ground."

I laugh, but it isn't really funny, because it's true, and because four years ago I would've been proud of that sentence and now I mostly just feel tired carrying it. "You know I don't love this. Another war. Another gun. I did enough of that overseas, Ranger."

"I know." His voice softens. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't trust you'd say no if you needed to."

I look at my ceiling, at the water stain shaped like Florida that's been there since I moved in, and I think about my bank account, which currently has enough to make it two more weeks before I have to make some very unpleasant decisions about which bills matter more than others.

I think about my apartment, silent except for the hum of a refrigerator that's older than some of my exes. I think about how long it's been since I felt like I mattered to anyone, and how long it's been since I've seen my brother's face instead of just heard his voice through a phone speaker.

And I think about a five-year-old girl I've never met.

"What's her name?" I ask.

"Mariah."