Page 50 of Challenge Me

The Mustang’s headlights brightened considerably.

Ghost remained beside us, watching with far less patience. His shadow pressed against my back the moment I approached, solid enough that I could feel the hard line of his chest.

“Well?” He demanded. His voice remained quiet, but the Challenger’s engine rolled beneath it like distant thunder. “Did you find the men responsible?”

“Not inside the club, no.” I ignored Ghost’s angry growl. “But I killed the man who let them go free, and I know where they are now.”

Ghost became perfectly still. Even his engine seemed to hold its breath. “Where?” He pressed as I sank into the driver’s seat, settling behind his wheel and inserting the key. I watched as Al pulled Fox out of the neighboring space, the Mustang’s tires chirping against the pavement. They paused at the exit, waiting for us.

I turned Ghost’s ignition; the Hemi roared awake as Ghost’s doors locked around me. His leather tightened against my body, holding me securely as his shadow leaned closer.

“Where are we going?” He asked. “Home?”

“No.” I shifted him into first, guiding him after the Mustang. “Al and Fox are going home.”

The Challenger trembled beneath my hands. “And us?”

I waved farewell to Al, nodding as he waved back and turned, the Mustang’s taillights bright in the dark, driving in the opposite direction from where Ghost and I were heading.

I squeezed Ghost’s wheel and turned his radio back up. Classic rock. “We are going hunting.”

Chapter Eighteen

Ghost

“Don’t worry,” you assured me. “I have a plan.”

I appeared behind you, my shadow rising from the driver’s seat until the weight of my presence pressed against your back, keeping you close as we plunged deep into the industrial outskirts of Houston. “That is precisely why I worry. You can be… reckless,” I murmured against your ear.

“Reckless? Me?” You let out an offended chuckle. “I used to be, perhaps. When I was young.”

“Do I not make you feel young again, darlin’?” My transmission shuddered beneath us as you shifted into a lower gear. You certainly made me feel young again.

I only faintly remembered rolling off the assembly line with fresh paint, untouched leather and an engine built for more than grocery runs and quiet Sunday drives; I wasn’t awake back then. It wasn’t until John had loved me that I truly came alive under hands that tenderly polished my paint and changed my oil long before it needed changing. He had driven me carefully enough that I survived the decades that most other cars did not. You were not as generous with your affection, but I felt the miles falling off my odometer with every touch of your cautious hands, and I felt a rush of gratitude; together, we were out for blood.

Like a bloodhound following a fresh trail, my intake dragged the night into me. I tasted exhaust, damp pavement, old rain, and distant smoke. Silent lots passed on either side of us, fenced businesses crowded with machinery, and warehouses squatting beneath weak security lights. A pair of junkyards stretched along the road, filled with silent cars whose dead headlights stared through the wire fences. The sight made something beneath my hood ache.

“That’s the place.”

I glanced to where you were pointing; at the end of a cluttered drive, one garage stood in the dark, mellow light seeping from underneath its shutter. The air around the building was thick with oil, stale fuel, and men.

The building looked like any of the hundreds of other repair shops scattered throughout the city. Two large rolling doors hid the workshop. Three customer vehicles waited outside, parked beneath a sign bleached nearly white by the Texas sun. An ancient sedan sat on blocks near the fence, its hood missing and its interior exposed to the weather.

Just like the club, nothing about the place demanded attention.

That was the point.

“Don’t stop yet,” you warned as I slowed; reluctantly, I circled the block before returning, my radio and my headlights both turned off, not wanting to bring any early attention to ourselves. My engine’s rumble was impossible to disguise, though, and I hoped that the tinny music I could hear from the warehouse was enough to drown it out as we approached.

It had just started to rain when you pulled me directly in front of the roller door and stopped less than six feet from it. You left my engine running.

“Now what?” I asked, my voice tense and hoarse. Anticipation and fear ran in cold twin blades down my spine, and my fingers drummed nervously against the dash as you studied the building.

I knew you intended to go in alone again, and the thought scared me. You would enter that workshop and dismantle everyone inside–if you were lucky. If no one shot you first.

You didn’t speak straight away, the tension in my cab creeping upward until I was almost ready to turn tail and drive, revenge be damned– and then you gave a small chuckle, squeezing my wheel.

“You know, I spent years building something worth preserving,” you finally said. “A home. A family. An academy. People who rely upon me.” Your thumb stroked my worn leather. “In time, I became so frightened of losing it all that I locked myself inside a cage. I kept all the chaotic parts of myself chained up, and convinced myself that only restraint made me worth loving.”