Page 53 of Ghost’s Awakening

I stayed under the window and let my heart do what it wanted for a while. My hands had started shaking, and I let them do that too. Nobody was there to see it.

Then I clicked back to two-way. "Coming out."

The earpiece stayed silent.

Blade was standing beside the bikes when I came back around the corner, arms folded, and he watched me come out of the dark the way he'd watched me cross a hundred training floors, reading my feet before my face.

Up close, the worry was on him. Blade didn't wear it the way other people did. It was in the stillness, the way his arms had locked across his chest, the muscle standing out along his jaw, and the way his eyes went over me once, fast, head to boots, checking me for blood before they came back up.

"Algún día me vas a matar del susto, chico."

"One day you're going to scare me to death, kid."

"They didn't see me."

"They could've seen you, hermano." His voice came out louder. "You went quiet with a thud and glass crunching in my ear."

"I landed on it. I didn't break it." I held the camera up between us. "Door confirmed. Three of his inner circle. No faces. But the night, Blade… I've got the night."

He took the camera. Turned it over without looking at the screen, looking at me instead, and I watched two things fight it out in his face. Half of him wanted to take a strip off me. The other half had just watched his best work come home clean, and the muscle in his jaw let go by a fraction.

"Report." The camera went into his jacket.

"Thursday. Initiation night. His whole crew shows up, and every fighter he's had his eye on gets one more look in front of him. The ones who win get called up to the box." I made myself slow down. "And his money's on Caleb…"

Something under my jacket started to crawl.

Because I could see it, the way my head saw everything, ahead of time and in color. Caleb in that ring with the building dressed for a party. Caleb winning, because Caleb always won. Gravedigger leaning down to make his offer, and I knew exactly what word was going to come out of Caleb's mouth into that hanging mic, in that room, to that face.

My skin went cold in a way the desert had nothing to do with.

Then the other thought landed, worse for coming second. One more look. That was no fight night. That was a test, the last one, in front of the man himself, and whatever Gravedigger put across from Caleb on Thursday wasn't going to be a drunk off a barstool. It was going to be the best thing he had.

"Ghost." Blade's hand was on my shoulder. I hadn't seen it land. "You stopped."

"He has to prove himself one more time." It came out slower than anything I'd said all night. "In front of him. With the best they've got."

Blade didn't tell me it would be fine. He never had. He held my eyes a second longer, and then he gave me the only thing that had ever helped.

"Then we build him for it."

My phone went off against my leg.

Two in the morning, and the screen said Vega. The name alone put weight on me before I'd answered, because there was one reason a man posted on a hospital called at that hour, and it wasn't to say goodnight. Everything in me went quiet and ready. I had it to my ear before the second buzz.

"Vega. What's wrong?"

"Ghost." Wind on his end, his breath quick. "Two men in private-ambulance uniforms came in the front five minutes ago! Van's in the structure, second level. I followed them in. They put paperwork on the desk.

"It was a transfer order. Liam Rossi, tonight, to a specialist facility, and the woman at the desk didn't like it, I could see her not liking it from across the lobby, but she read it and she said the numbers check."

The numbers check. Caleb's old phone, open on a bench in that building. Tyler had said it in the kitchen with Caleb's phone in his hand. They can see everything the account sees. Of course the numbers checked. They were the real numbers.

"Where are they now?" My words came out rushed.

"She's stalling. Calling upstairs. The floor's saying nobody moves an ICU patient at two in the morning without the attending, and the attending's in at seven. But they're not leaving. Santos and Valkyrie have eyes on the van up on two, and Ghost, that van's big. Cargo. Windows blacked. Two are inside the hospital, but if these are the pit guys, the ones he's been building⁠—"

"Then they're trained, and there's more of them." I was already on the bike. "Twenty minutes. Help the receptionist stall them if you must."