Page 16 of Jayson
“Then we make it hard for anyone to find her,” Mason growls, voice low and deliberate. Power clings to him in the silence after, heavy and absolute. His gaze swings from me to Ghost, then snaps back to me like a warning shot.
And just like that, I know. I knowexactlywhat he’s thinking. This isn’t just about a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not even about cleanup. It’s about consequence. Legacy. The kind of fallout that scorches whole empires to ash. If this goes sideways—if a single whisper gets out—he doesn’t just lose two soldiers. He loseseverything.
The Moreno family bleeds. Kanyan goes down. Ghost goes back to jail, his forehead stamped ‘never to be released’. Maybe this time, he’ll get the chair. The Gattis take a hit.And Seattle burns. It’s the kind of fallout there’s no coming back from.
The girl in the basement? She’s not just a girl. She’s a liability. A loaded gun with no safety and a full magazine pointed right at the heart of everything we’ve built. And the worst part? They’re not wrong.
Ghost sneers. “Shesawus. Sheknowsour faces. She knows ourvoices,” Ghost presses. “She could ID us.”
Silence envelopes us. The kind that means everyone’s thinking the same thing—they just don’t like where it leads.
Ghost’s knuckles drum once on the table—an impatient tattoo that rattles my molars—before he finally speaks.
“Your witness is a loose thread, Caluna,” he says, voice flat. “And loose threads? They unravel bodies. You want her breathing? Fine. But think fast, because if she so much assneezeswrong, I’ll stitch her mouth shut myself.”
I meet his stare, steady. “You’ll have to get through me first.”
One dark brow rises. “You ready to die for this girl?”
“No.” My throat feels sanded raw. “I’m just not willing to carry the weight of a dead woman on my conscience.”
Ghost’s laugh is short and brittle. “And yet, you killed her father in cold blood.”
“That was different and you know it.”
“Different?” He leans forward, fingertip stabbing the air between us. “This one’s onyou, Caluna. When it all goes to hell? Don’t expect me to clean up the mess.”
He straightens, shoulders rigid, fury banked but burning. Every word feels like a brand pressed to my skin.
Kanyan steps in, slicing the air between us. “Enough.”
Ghost huffs but obeys, retreating two paces, glare still locked on me.
Kanyan pins me with a glacial stare. “Talk to the girl. Figure out where her head’s at, and whether she can be steered.”
“Understood.”
He turns to Mason. “I want eyes inside the precinct by nightfall. If the cops evenwhisperour name, I want to hear it in real time.”
Mason nods once—calm, lethal. “I’ll plug in with my contact.”
Kanyan’s gaze swings back to me. “Until then, you don’t sleep, you don’t blink. She coughs, you’re there with water. She prays, you’re the amen. And if she whispers one syllable we can’t afford?—”
“I’ll silence it,” I say, voice iron. “Whatever it takes.”
“See that you do.”
The meeting breaks. Chairs scrape. Ghost brushes past, shoulder checking mine hard enough to jar bone. His parting look isn’t anger—it’s funeral certainty.Told you so,loaded and waiting.
They file out and the door clicks shut behind them, leaving me alone with the echo of my own heartbeat.
Keira Bishop—my witness, my hostage, my detonator—is two hours away by road and one wrong decision from ruining us all.
And I just volunteered to hold the wire while the clock keeps ticking.
8
KEIRA
