Page 82 of Ghost

He stops at the couch. “Ghost needs the coordinates of the confirmed Iron Sinners safe houses. He said you know where those are, and you can get those to him?”

A tinge of irritation surfaces because Ghost could have asked me himself. There’s probably a chain of command, but I miss hearing from him.

“Yeah, I know where he keeps that information.” I turn to Tempe. “Catch up later?”

“Of course.” She drops to the floor to help Austin color, and I follow Venom out of the den to Ghost’s office.

“All he needs are the coordinates?”

Venom nods. “That’s what he asked for.”

“I’ll send it to him.”

Venom disappears while I step into Ghost’s office. It doesn’t feel like him when he’s not here. Desert dust has settled, and there’s no hint of Ghost’s soapy scent—just wood cleaner and a cinnamon plug-in.

Circling his desk, I try not to think about the last thing we did on top of it. He fucked me so hard I was sore for two days.

Almost immediately after, Steel gave the order that they had to leave, and I saw him long enough for him to pack some things and say goodbye, but we never got achance for him to make good on the promises he left me with in here.

Sitting in Ghost’s chair, I start up his computer and wait for the screens to come to life. Once it does, I open our shared drive and type in the password for the surveillance archive. Ghost stores everything in clearly labeled folders, so it’s easy to locate. I find the one with the most recent Iron Sinners locations and drag them into a shared folder so he can access them from wherever he is.

Glancing at the blank spot on his desk where my laptop sat the last time I was in here, I realize I haven’t played my game since Ghost left. And I haven’t heard back from Rider either.

Pulling out my phone, I open my gaming app and find Rider’s name. It’s unusual for him to be silent this long. I glance up at the files and see them still transferring, so I shoot off a quick message to see when he wants to tackle the next raid.

But the second I hit send, a chime rings out from Ghost’s desk.

It’s a strange coincidence. And it makes me think about what Legacy said.

Are there ever really coincidences?

I send another message to be sure, and when I hit send, I hear the chime again.

Something is wrong, and my mind is rejecting the thought settling in.

The first time Rider messaged me was shortly after I moved into the clubhouse. It was nothing but friendly conversation at first. We would game together and talkabout our day. Slowly, it evolved into a friendship, even if I was always careful and spoke generally or with code names in place of actual people.

I told him about Ghost. Confided in him about my crush.

Which is why my hand shakes as I pull open the top drawer to the desk and see a phone staring back at me. I tap the screen to wake it up, and a message with a little owl sits on the screen. The same message I just sent.

Ghost is Rider?

It doesn’t make sense.

I’ve never seen Ghost waste time with video games, and I’ve talked to Rider with Ghost in the room.

Except, Ghost is always looking at his phone. Could it really have been him all along, and I didn’t know it?

Picking up the phone, I unlock the screen and see our messages staring back at me. Confessions, concerns. I see the proof that Ghost has been keeping massive secrets. And as if that isn’t bad enough, there’s a blinking symbol in the corner of the screen that catches my attention.

I shouldn’t keep digging. I shouldn’t open the app that’s staring at me. But I ignore the red flags and click the blinking icon anyway.

An app opens, showing me a series of clubhouse feeds.

Most of them mirror the same rooms on the screens in Ghost’s office. The den, the bars, the hallways. But then, the feeds keep going, and the surveillance moves into areas of the clubhouse I didn’t know Ghost was monitoring.

I click on one labeledOwland see my bed in my room staring back at me. There’s only one place it could be coming from—my computer.

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