Even Ghost’s secret hope of seeing co-eds was shattered. This highway was a bridge between nothing and nowhere, its only tenants gross, hairy truck drivers and mine workers and one group of sexy bikers running illegal market gear. Every now and again they would pass some family packed into a fuel-efficient car on their way to God-knew-where, but otherwise, the highway was dull as dishwater.
“Seriously, I’m gonna fall asleep at the helm.” Tommy’s laughing voice cut through the static and noise and sounded in Ghost’s ear.
Will piped calmly on the line. “That would definitely not be advisable.”
Ghost’s stomach was rumbling. “Any good places to eat in this Burling joint?”
Someone from Eagleton answered, but he wasn’t sure who. Not Lucero, at least, because there was no southern drawl. “There’s a couple cafés.”
“I’m gonna eat a whole cherry pie,” said Ghost.
“Ghost, keep the line clear.” It was Jase this time, using his dad voice.
Ghost rolled his eyes and clicked the button again. “Roger, your honor.” He felt that bitterness again and revved the throttle on his bike, roaring past Tommy and nearly up to the bumper of the Volkswagen van they’d been trailing the last five miles. Tommy was right on his heels, keeping pace with his speed as Ghost changed lanes and roared past the van, and past the white service truck ahead of that. The van was just ahead, rolling smoothly in the right lane.
They had the fast lane mostly clear for a good half-mile, so Ghost didn’t bother to get back behind the van, and cruised alongside and just a bit slower. Their orders had been to not make the escort look glaringly obvious, but he figured the run was almost done, and no one was around to give a shit anyway. He wanted a change of scenery. At least instead of staring at the ass-end of that hippy-mobile, he had an open horizon in front of him, the sky a vibrant mix of gradient blues that always seemed to come with warming spring.
The wind felt good on his face. The ride had been boring, but Ghost always tried to pull even a little bit of pleasure from all of his tasks. He took a big deep breath and gave a glance over to the van. At his angle, he could see inside the cabin just a bit thanks to the driver’s side door mirror. Or at least, he could see the grumpy, scowling face of Lucero and his gray-streaked beard, eyes hidden behind big dark sunglasses.
Ghost’s gaze flicked back to the road in front of him, and found it still empty. Back to the mirror, he took another glance at Lucero.
Something was wrong. Was he nodding off?
It was only a few seconds of time in the end, but to Ghost it felt like everything slowed to a painful crawl. As his mind formed the question, in the mirror he saw Lucero’s head loll and then fully drop, chin against chest. His body tipped to the side toward the window. Ghost felt his hands close hard on the brake levers of his bike before he even realized he’d made the decision to do it.
The screech of tires soared into the air as the van swerved, like Lucero’s body had, left toward the window and toward the fast lane where Tommy was still riding at full speed.
Ghost watched in helpless horror from his slowing bike as the van reared hard toward Tommy. He had the conscious thought that he was about to watch his favorite kid brother become a Jackson Pollock painting on the highway.
But Tommy wasn’t blind. As soon as he caught the van coming in his periphery, he revved his engine hard. Tommy leaned back as his bike jolted forward with sudden force. The van twisted by behind him. He almost made it clear, but the shiny chrome edge of the van’s front bumper swiped Tommy’s rear tire, and send him wobbling and fighting to keep his balance.
It was too much force. Tommy wheeled hard left off the road and into the desert scrub of the highway median until he finally lost control of the bike and tried to bail. His bike skittered like a toy across the rocky earth. Ghost watched Tommy’s body hit the ground like he was a crash test dummy, all flopping limbs and grotesque angles, until he disappeared from view.
Ghost didn’t even see the brake lights on the van blaze on as it continued off the highway and onto the flat desert scrub, hitting rough bumps and ditches until it finally came to a hard stop, tires spinning uselessly in a deep narrow canal. The van tipped with an aching moan and stopped, dust swirling into the atmosphere.
Ghost clicked on the walkie button. “Get the fuck up here now, and call an ambulance! We have a situation!”
Voices howled in worried response, but Ghost ignored them and twisted his throttle hard to catch up. He pulled off the road and stopped his bike, dashing out into the scrub toward Tommy’s crash site. Cars on the highway still mostly rushed by unbothered, but a few were slowing down as they passed.
“Tommy!” yelled Ghost as he jumped over short green bushes. Tommy’s bike smoked in the dirt, but Ghost found its rider about fifty feet away, his body broken and twisted on the rocks. He was still conscious.
“Oh, fucking God,” said Ghost. He whipped off his cut and stuffed it under Tommy’s head carefully as he ran his gaze up and down Tommy’s body. Both of his legs and one of his arms were broken, and stuff around his ribs did not look right. Half his face was red and raw, torn by the rocks and plants as he fell. Blood and tears mixed down his face as he moaned in pain.
“Buddy, it’s okay. Hang on, we’re going to get you help,” said Ghost. He grabbed Tommy’s hand carefully and clicked the walkie on. “Where the fuck are you?! There’s been an accident! We need a helicopter for Tommy.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” yelled Jase over the line. “Where are you?”
“Where’s Lucero and Will?” said a voice that sounded like Shaun, but strained with stress.
“Trust me, you’re not going to miss the smoking wreckage on the roadside.” Ghost stretched out to get a view of the van, still sitting in the ditch some yards back. He couldn’t see any movement. “I don’t have eyes on Will and Lucero, but the van’s not in terrible shape.”
“We have to get the guns out of there,” said Shaun urgently. “I’ve only got two Highway Patrol on my dime and way more first responders are on their way than that.”
“Fuck!” Ghost snarled. He’d completely forgotten about the guns. Tommy groaned from beneath him and Ghost gave his hand a squeeze. “Tommy’s hurt bad. I can’t just leave him here.”
“Ghost, get the fucking guns ready!” said Jase. “You’re not a doctor. You can’t do anything for him. Get to the van and get the guns ready to switch when we pull up. We’re two minutes out.”
Ghost felt a shameful anger rise up in his gut. Jase was right, but right didn’t fucking matter in that moment, not if right was asking him to leave Tommy here bleeding in the dirt by himself. He looked down at his friend and shook his head, furious. “Tommy, hang on. Please, buddy. I want you to think of something that makes you super fucking angry, okay? Anything: terrorists, wife-beaters, people who answer their phones at the movies… get angry, right now. Get angrier than you’ve ever been and you hold on to that anger for me until I get back.”
The noise Tommy made broke what little bit of a heart Ghost had left. There were no audible words involved; it was just pain and fear in vocal form.
“I know, I’m sorry. Shit, be angry at me. But I’m the only one up; I have to go check on Will. And I have to get those guns out of here so we can get you to a good hospital, and not a prison one,” said Ghost. He clutched Tommy’s hand tighter. “Stay angry, bruiser. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Against all his wants and instincts, Ghost stood up and left Tommy there in the dirt. He stalked hard and heated across the scrubland toward the van. On the roadside at a distance, he could see a minivan had parked and a family of portly, pastel-wearing people was gawking, and two of them were on their phones.
The van was tipped at an awkward angle, but luckily it hadn’t flipped or even fallen completely on its side. The engine still hummed softly, one tire spinning in the air. Ghost came around and opened the swinging panel doors on the driver’s side. The fake meat packing boxes that wer
e really full of black market guns had been tossed all over the metal interior like matchsticks. In the passenger seat, Will hung limply against the seat belt across his chest, groaning his way back to consciousness.
The sight of Lucero completely passed out in the driver’s seat brought Ghost to a level of rage he’d never felt before. Every thought in his head became of dragging the motherfucker from the van and beating him to death right there in the desert.
“What the fuck…” came Will’s slurred voice, followed by a sharp howl of pain. He brought his right arm to his chest tenderly.
“Will,” said Ghost. He pulled a grip of the messy boxes onto the desert ground and climbed in the van. “Will, are you all right? How bad are you hurt?”
“My arm,” said Will. Ghost couldn’t see any blood, but Will’s forearm was already twice its size and turning purple. He must have smacked it good on something when they went off road. Ghost followed a tiny river of blood coming from the top of his scalp, but it was just a superficial gash in the jungle of Will’s copper curls. It wasn’t bad, it would just need stitches. He got lucky.
“Just stay there, buddy,” said Ghost. “Don’t move, you might be hurt somewhere else. Help is on the way. I’m right here.”
Will didn’t answer, lulling back into his hazed shock.
Ghost had most of the boxes out of the van and piled by the time the second group of Dogs arrived. The four of them scattered down to the van’s crash site.
“Get these boxes into the other van right fucking now,” said Shaun. Scott and Rick didn’t hesitate, and immediately began hefting the boxes into their arms and up the hill toward the waiting second van. Ghost bent to help, and Shaun was right behind him.
“Will?” said Jase immediately, throwing himself into the van. Ghost heard him exchange quick, quiet words with his best friend before he climbed back out with wet eyes and a steely expression and joined them in lifting boxes.
Once all thirteen boxes were safely on the second van, Ghost raced back to Tommy’s side with Jase close on his heels. When Jase approached close enough to get eyes on Tommy’s injuries, he made a sick noise in his throat.
“Fucking hell,” said Jase as he bent at Tommy’s other side. “Oh, Tommy. Christ. What the fuck happened?”
In the distance, the sound of sirens wailed, pressing closer with every second. Shaun was yelling at the Eagleton Dogs, commanding Scott to get in the driver’s seat of the other van and get out of the area. Rick climbed in with him, and the van sped off into traffic toward Burling.
Ghost took Tommy’s hand again and looked up at Jase with fury in his eyes. “You know goddamn well what the fuck happened. Exactly what I told you what was going to happen.”
Jase’s face fell, blank and white.
“Lucero,” growled Ghost. “This is all Lucero.”
~ NINE ~
Bridget
She really wanted to like the tea the headmistress had given her for her birthday this year, but it didn’t matter what kind of sugar or honey she put it in it, Bridget couldn’t finish a cup. Feeling shameful anyway, she went to the sink and poured out the rest of her mug with a sour face, and then decided to get the kettle boiling for a cup of some reliable Lady Gray.
The school week had flown by, and she could hardly believe she was already thinking about what to make for Thursday evening dinner. All the emotional excitement around Toby and Ghost was making her typically routine life quite a bit more complicated, even if one of them was positive and interesting.
She hadn’t yet figured out what she was going to wear on her dinner date with Ghost; what would a guy like him want to do on a first date, anyway? Bridget tended to dress for the crash, not for the ride. She didn’t want to pick out her hottest cocktail number, only to have him be a nut and suggest laser tag, which seemed utterly possible.
Like he was reading her mind, suddenly Ghost’s name and number lit up on the bright screen of her cell phone. Bridget almost didn’t notice the call coming in. She wasn’t expecting to talk to anyone tonight, least of all Ghost. They had texted back and forth a bit while he was out of town doing whatever, flirting and prodding with each other every few hours, until he stopped responding altogether yesterday. But he’d clearly said he planned to take her out on Friday.
Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, and she scoffed at herself with a smile. She bit her lip and answered. “Hello?”
“God, you even sound hot on the phone,” he said.
Bridget laughed and said playfully, “Who is this?”
“I am literally whoever you want me to be.”
“I think I’ll just take you as yourself for now, reserving the option for future trades, of course.”
“It’s only prudent,” he said with a laugh.
“I thought you were still out of town,” she said.
Ghost sighed. There was something very heavy in it, and it made Bridget realize that even though he was still cracking jokes, his voice wasn’t as airy as it had been before. “Nah, I came back early. We had a problem… something went wrong.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Is it… can you even tell me what happened? I don’t know how this works with a biker club.”
“I can tell you the part that sucks,” he said. “But honestly, I’d like to wait for that, if it’s all the same to you.”
Bridget felt sad. Whatever it was clearly had him down. “Sure. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”
“You are a unicorn among zombie hordes. Do you have plans tonight?”
Bridget looked around the empty kitchen, as if the answer would pop out at her. “Oh, uh… no, I guess not. I was just about to figure out what to have for dinner.”
“I know we talked about dinner tomorrow, but after this week, I could really use some company that is both gorgeous and not stupid. Do you think you could help me out with that?”
Bridget laughed. She felt a slight hesitation in her heart and bit her thumb. She was a planner, not really a spontaneous person on the regular, and especially not with men. She’d just been burned too many times. Now she approached them like a coyote sniffing at bait in a trap: slowly, with open eyes, and a mind for biting. She liked her interactions with them to be controlled and safe.
But she realized, somehow, that she already felt safer about Ghost than she did most men at this stage. The thought both upset and relaxed her. Maybe it was just how badly she wanted to feel his hard body pressed up against hers, and see if all his swagger was for show.
In the end her fire won out, and she said, “Sure. I can do that. Do you want to go out, or stay in?”
“A night in sounds magical to me.”
“I kind of feel the same. Well, how about I just add an extra serving to dinner and you join me?”
“Just tell me what time to be there.”
They decided on eight, which gave Bridget just an hour to come up with something to feed them both. She opted for Italian, mostly because she had been on a kick for some prosciutto last grocery shopping trip, and filled her whole fridge with sundry cheeses, meats, olives, and wine. She laid out stark white serving plates with the goods, and added some different crackers and bread, then made a Caesar salad in a big, blue bowl. She didn’t know what kind of food Ghost was into, but she hadn’t met a person yet she couldn’t talk into enjoying a traditional Italian spread.
As eight o’clock crept closer, Bridget got more nervous, eventually to the point that she couldn’t focus on the book she tried to read on the couch. She changed her clothes twice and eventually settled on a pair of jean shorts that showed off her lean legs, and a casual white t-shirt. She liked the way the outfit softened her without making her feel like she was a doll being stuffed into a dress. She brushed through her straight blonde hair and gargled with mouthwash before she was finally settled with how she looked.
“Ghost,” she said to herself in the mirror with a chuckle. “You’re about to have dinner with a grown man named Ghost.”
&n
bsp; The doorbell chimed. Bridget tilted her head, amazed. “How does he keep doing that?” She shoved away the last of her beauty supplies under the sink and headed out to answer the door. One hand on the knob, she took a big deep breath and swung the door open.
With the setting sunlight at his back, Ghost stood there smiling, holding a gorgeous bouquet of bright flowers that he bought from a store instead of pulling from a live garden. When he saw her in the doorway, his smile turned into something a little closer to stunned arousal.
Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance Page 8