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Chapter Twenty-Four

Ghost

A res waited to speak until we'd stepped onto the elevator and the doors closed. "How bad's the injury?"

I'd never had a relationship with Helios past his resentment and my apathy. But shockingly, Tier One to Tier One, we could work together professionally.

Ares was another story.

A year and a half younger than his brother, equally as lethal on the battlefield, he had what Helios and I generally lacked. Empathy.

"I'm fine."

Helios handed me the med kit. "Ride with Ares in the van and fix your shit before you get on my plane. I don't want blood on the seats."

I took the bag. "Two vehicles was unnecessary." And doubled our chances of exposure.

"You gave me the address of the military's largest private defense contractor and told me to meet you in two hours. What the fuck did you think I'd do? Fly solo or ride up on my Ducati?"

"I thought you'd follow directions, come by yourself, and leave Ares to protect my sister."

" Our sister," the asshole threw back.

"Not by blood." Feralyn and I had the same father. Helios and Ares's mother married my piece-of-shit sperm donor, Anselm Grayson, then she'd given her sons the asshole's last name.

"GSW?" Ares asked, breaking up the shit between me and his brother.

"Knife wound." The elevator passed the lobby, stopped at the garage level, and the doors slid open. "I thought you were parked across the street."

"We were until the British prick told us to pull into the garage."

Fucking Helios. "He's American." And fucking Conlon. "You blindly take orders now?"

Two paces into the garage, Helios pivoted and got in my face. "One, he called on my encrypted burner, said you were with Alpha, November, and Echo. Two, he identified himself as Force Recon and AES and rattled off half a dozen Tier Ones we knew in common. Three, Ares and I know Alpha and Echo by reputation, and we saw both of them pull into AES headquarters before I took the call. Four, I'm not fucking new. Anything else you need to ask, Ghost ?"

The last word was a taunt and a reminder.

Helios had named me. Three decades ago. First time we met. A fucking playground my piece-of-shit sperm donor had taken us to because I'd had to call an ambulance for my mom. Then the hospital had called him because she'd apparently had him listed as her emergency contact. The fucker had been out with his stepsons, so they all came.

I didn't give Anselm credit for showing. He only did it to avoid scandal and the optics of having a bio kid put into the foster system while his neglected baby mama, a teen he'd knocked up and left, was hospitalized with exhaustion. The fucker had taken us all to a park and told us to go play while the doctors dried out my mom. The second we were out of earshot of him, a cursing seven-year-old Helios had taken aim.

You're not a Grayson. You're a fucking ghost.

Ares had asked what a ghost was. Helios told him it was my name. By the time Anselm drove back to the hospital and dumped me off with a nurse he'd paid a hundred bucks to walk me to my mom's room, I had a new name.

I was eight, but I wasn't fucking ignorant.

Ignoring Helios now, same as I had thirty years ago, I scanned the garage. "Which airfield did you fly into?"

"Again, not fucking new." Helios followed my scan of the garage.

Clocking our six, Ares answered. "Private airstrip northwest of the public airfield at Homestead. I scrubbed our flight plan, and the tail number links to an identical Cessna Citation based out of Alaska that's currently over the Pacific."

Helios glanced at my shirt before he stopped at a tinted-out Tahoe. "Unlike you, we're clean." Opening the driver's door, he got behind the wheel and glanced at Ares. "Take the alternate route to the airstrip."

"Copy that."

Slamming his door shut as he turned over the engine, Helios was already pulling out of the garage by the time Ares opened the rear of the van.

"Don't want me up front?"

Taking the med kit from me but ignoring my sarcasm, he nodded at the cargo area. "Have a seat. I'll look at the wound before we leave."

Ares had been a Delta Force master sergeant known for his sniper skills. He was never a medic, but like all of us, he'd had enough training and experience to patch up basic wounds. Not that I needed the help.

Taking the kit back, I got in the van. "Appreciated, but not necessary. We need to move."

For a half a second, he debated. Then he shook his head. "Fine, but do me a favor."

I opened the med kit. "What?"

"No MacGyver shit. Triage, suture, sterilize, Quikclot—do whatever you have to, but no duct tape."

I glanced up. "How'd you know about the duct tape?"

"Lucky guess." In a rare show of temper, he mimicked his brother and slammed the door shut.

I pulled a Quikclot, tape, and an IV from the med kit.

By the time we were on the road, my wound was covered, the hydration IV was in my arm, and I'd swallowed some Naproxen.

Ares glanced back after taking a turn. "Fourteen minutes to the airstrip. There's a clean shirt in my go bag."

"Copy." Grabbing a black T-shirt, I pulled it on, then used my burner to log into my network and bring the satellite I'd disabled back online.

Two minutes later, the feed populated and I stared.

Fuck.

"Ares, how much fuel was in the Citation when you landed?"

"Just under seven thousand pounds. Why?"

Less than half capacity.

Fuck.

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