Page 69 of Ghost's Obsession

“There are three entry options,” Siege tells us. “Rigs wanted to breach from the back loading bay area, which is a good call. The front’s too open. The east wall has a steel door, but we believe it might be welded shut. The back loading dock is our best play. There’s a drop behind it, the truck ramp is also not operational. If you scale the back ladder, you’ll hit a secondary service door.”

I study the layout as Rigs speaks, “That’s our point. Siege will lead the breach, like always. Me and Ghost will follow.”

I speak up, “Until I get Heather back, Merc sticks to me like a fuckin’ shadow or I give him a dirt nap.”

Merc just grunts, “Got it.” He’s still wearing borrowed clothing. Just black gear. He’s clearly carrying the weight of someone trying to undo years of wrong.

I turn to him. “Now is not the time to get cute and betray our limited trust in you. If you so much as breathe wrong, I will put you down. Clear?”

His jaw flexes. “Yeah, I just wanna make sure things go off without any bloodshed.”

“Use our encrypted chat to communicate,” Zen reminds us. “Carnage never used to be tech savvy, but we can’t take anything for granted.”

I check my weapons over and over again, just to pass the time, as the others finish preparing.

Siege can see how anxious I am and tries his best to be supportive. “Heather is tough,” Siege says quietly, behind me.

Glancing at my club president, I tell him, “I wish Carnage had left her the fuck alone and took out all his aggression on me.” My voice sounds wrought with emotion.

“We’ll get her out of there,” Siege tells me one last time before walking off.

Merc zips up his vest. “I want a shot at him.”

“Not a fucking chance,” I say. “He helped Butch kill Claw. Siege’s kids don’t have a fucking grandfather because of that bastard.”

“You know none of the rest of us had anything to do with that particular fuckery, right? It was all Butch, Hawk, and Carnage. None of the rest of us found out until the deed was done.”

I look him in the eye. “You need to tell that shit to Siege. He’s been grieving over his old man’s death for years. He deserves to know the real truth of what happened.”

Merc gives me a firm nod and glances away. “I wish it hadn’t turned out the way it did with Claw. He was a good man.”

***

When we step outside, a flash of lightning lights up the sky and thunder rolls over the ridgeline. No matter what the weather’s like, this mission goes forward. Those fuckers took Heather from me. Now, I’m coming to take her back.

We walk out to our bikes and Merc gets into one of the vans. I call out to Merc, “I’ll meet you there. Be on the lookout for me.”

Our engines come to life, their throaty roar sounding off one after another in unison. Time to bring her home, I tell myself.

The road snakes through the pines, all blacktop and shadows. We ride staggered, lights off, only the faint red glow of taillights blinking in the dark like heartbeats.

Every mile, bump, and curve in the road brings us closer to her—but also closer to him. I am personally looking forward to taking Carnage apart, one piece at a time. That man is an arrogant piece of shit, in need of a good ass-kicking for far too long.

The wind blows through my clothing, but it’s not what’s making me cold. It’s the heavy weight sitting on my shoulders, the kind of feeling that won’t go away until Heather is safe at my side and scores are settled. I’ve felt that same weight before, in war zones mostly. But never like this. Not when the thing on the line is someone close to my heart.

Siege leads the front, with Rigs at his side with a rifle strapped tight to his back. The rest of the brothers are all lined up in neat rows of two.

Heather was desperate enough to scratch that message into a van. Took her shot when she had it, believing I would find it. And I did. Now, there ain’t nothin’ or nobody gonna get between me and him. As my bike eats up miles of the open road my mind is filled up with images of my woman. How she was when I left her this morning. That can’t be the last image I have of her. I can’t let that bastard take her.

I am pulled from my internal thoughts by the thunder of a dozen or more bikes surrounding us. They’re not enemies, though. Every single one of them is wearing a Sons of Rage cut. If I didn’t already know, I wouldn’t have to be half-smart to figure out why they joined up with us on this lonely stretch of highway. They’re Brittany’s people—her family. And they are here to take apart the man who hurt her. If they want a piece of Carnage, they’ll have to get to the back of the line.

Chapter 22

Heather

Igot my fill of chocolate-covered peanuts a while ago and am sipping on my second water bottle, thanks to Grime. If it was up to Carnage, I’d still be wearing the gag, dying of thirst with an empty stomach.

As I watch him pace, mumbling under his breath and lost in his own thoughts, I realize something. I’ve never truly hated anyone before—not until I watched him casually slam Brittany into the glass case. He treated her like an object, a thing that didn’t matter.

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