34. Ghost
34
Ghost
Luna never responded to my last text message, and it’s my first clue that something is wrong.
She’s a light sleeper, and she keeps the volume for her notifications turned up so it will wake her if I message her in the middle of the night. I’ve told her she doesn’t need to do that, while at the same time, I love that she doesn’t want to miss talking to me when she can. She likes knowing where I am as much as I like keeping tabs on her.
But tonight, I didn’t get a response. My message from thirty minutes ago is unread, and I get a bad feeling.
The prospects open the gate to the compound, and I roll up beside Steel.
“Everything good here tonight?” I ask.
“Uneventful.” Ricky shrugs. “Everything okay at the hospital? She left right when you asked.”
“Who left?”
“Luna?” The prospect answers, digging for his phone .
“What are you talking about?” I snap as my stomach plummets.
The prospect skims through his phone while Steel looks between us.
“Something wrong?” Steel asks.
“We’re about to find out.”
“Here.” The prospect reaches his phone out to me. “You texted that Luna’s mom was just admitted, and she needed to get to her right away. You were meeting her there?”
It’s more a question than an answer, and every word fogs my head because I sure as fuck didn’t say that.
“Luna doesn’t know her mom.” My teeth grind, and I grab his phone out of his hand.
I read the message, and I know immediately from the tone of the text that Luna was the one who sent it, even if she masked the sender to make it appear like it came from my phone. I abbreviate all my texts, and she spells everything out. And then there’s the fact that she was nice.
When I give an order, I don’t care how it’s received. It’s a prospect’s job to do what’s expected without questioning me.
I look up at Ricky. “You let Luna leave the compound alone?”
“You said—”
“I didn’t send you this fucking text.” I shove the phone back into his hand. “And you should know better than to let someone leave alone when we’re in the middle of a fucking war. ”
It takes everything in me not to blow his fucking head off. That’s a problem for later. Revving my engine, I start toward the clubhouse.
Luna grew up in foster care, never knowing her mom. The text is a bold-faced lie, which means I need to figure out where she really went.
Behind me, I hear Steel and Legacy’s bikes following me down the long drive that leads to the clubhouse. I cut my engine when I get there and hop off, storming through the front door.
But Legacy is right behind me.
“Ghost.” He jogs to catch up, grabbing my shoulder. “She wouldn’t have just bailed, brother.”
“I know.” I shrug him off, continuing down the hall to my office. “I’m not pissed because I think she’d just fucking leave.”
She wouldn’t.
She can’t.
I won’t survive it.
“What do you think happened then?”
“Someone had to have drawn her out. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I just don’t know why she would listen to them. Fuck.”
When I reach my office, the door is cracked, so I know she’s been in here. I shove it open, and I can still smell the scent of her vanilla lotion hanging in the air. Legacy pauses in the doorway as Steel comes up beside him.
“Don’t tell me to drop this, Prez.” I circle my desk and plant my fists on top of it. “I know we agreed she was my responsibility and that if she brought more shit to the club, then that was it. But that’s not it.”
Steel steps forward, glancing around the room. He looks down at the desk while I watch him approach, but I can’t read what he’s thinking.
Luna was the enemy when I brought her here, and I’ve been dragging my feet on claiming her as my old lady, so she doesn’t have the same protections as Tempe. Steel could order me to let this go, and I’d have to listen. But he’s quiet.
He plants his hand over a piece of paper on my desk, pushing it toward me. “I’m not telling you to let her go, Marcus. I already know she’s yours. She’s ours . We’ll get her back.”
Steel taps the piece of paper on my desk, and I look down to see it’s a note from Luna. The letters swoop and curl. Everything about her is delicate and beautiful.
Picking up the paper, I try to process her words, and what I’ve done sinks in.
I love you.
I’ve never said it to her, even if I have felt it since the first time I locked eyes with that girl. The words never felt big enough to describe what I feel.
Clarity, contentment. Overwhelming peace.
She talks about home like we can build it wherever we want, when really, she’s home to me.
If I thought losing Paulina ended me, I was wrong. If they hurt Luna, I’ll lose all I have left.
“Let us help,” Steel says. “Don’t shut us out right now. We’re only getting her back if we do it together. ”
He’s right.
I’ve lied for this girl.
Taken a brand for this girl.
Reserved my soul for this girl.
But I can’t do this alone.
“Okay.” I drop into my chair and find my focus. “I need to figure out why she left and where she was headed. Until we know that, we’re dead in the water.”
Steel’s phone chimes with a text, so he grabs it out of his pocket. “Havoc is heading back with the rest of the crew now. Patch stitched up Chaos, so I should go check on him. We’ll be ready to roll once you give the word. Keep me updated.”
“Hey, Prez…” I say when Steel and Legacy turn to leave, and they freeze, looking back at me. “Thanks.”
“We’ve got your back, Marcus. She’s family.” Steel nods. “We’ll bring her home.”
My brothers leave me alone so I can focus, and I lock myself in my office to search for any clues as to where Luna might have gone. She’s no longer here, but she lingers in the air, and it’s a unique form of torture I didn’t know existed until this moment.
Leaning back, I try to see the room from Luna’s perspective. I try to walk it back and figure out why she was in here, and what happened to make her leave .
My desk drawer is cracked, so I peel it open. The stack of pictures inside is out of order from her going through them. The picture of Luna is on top, and it makes me wish I could pull her out of the photograph and bring her back. Beneath it is a picture of Paulina, and it feels like history repeating itself.
Except she and Paulina are different people. While Paulina was similar to Luna when she was younger, she changed. She fell in with my enemies, and she became more like them than I wanted to admit back then. I accepted her lies because it was easier than seeing through them and admitting all the ways I was failing her.
I wanted to believe her, but I knew things were bad. I knew they were feeding her drugs, and I knew what that club did with their women. I should have done something sooner to get her out of there. By the time I acted, it was too late.
I refuse to let that happen to Luna.
Waking up my computer, I start digging through recently opened files.
I’ve already been through the video footage from my office, so I know that she was on here right before she left. But with the angle, I couldn’t tell what she was looking at.
Whatever she saw on my computer is the reason she disappeared.
There’s nothing there at first, which means she deleted it intentionally to slow me down. She thinks she’s doing what’s right because I’ve kept her in the dark. She has no idea how messy this gets or that I’ve suspected the person who hired her knew her outside of the job posting. It’s possible she thinks she can fix this.
I should have told her more.
It takes me a few minutes to recover what Luna deleted, and once I do, I see a message from the same unknown sender who started threatening me weeks ago, demanding I hand Luna over. The conversation quickly turns to them speaking directly to Luna, confirming they know her well enough to understand how she operates a system.
Whatever she did gave her away.
As I read more, I see why Luna left. They threatened Austin, Bea, the club, her home. She’d never let anyone hurt the people she cares about, so she probably thinks she’s doing the right thing.
She isn’t considering that we’re already at war. They were already coming whether she turned herself over or not.
I type the address they sent her into my phone. Chances are they’ve already moved her, but it’s a starting point.
Leaving my office, I make my way to the bar and see all my brothers gathered. Havoc is organizing the prospects and reassigning who is on patrol as Steel hands out guns and orders.
“Find her?” he asks me.
I shake my head. “Not exactly, but I know where she was headed. ”
We load up into three vans, with Patch driving the one I’m in. Having a medic on hand is always important in retrieval missions, but I hope we don’t need him.
I continue scrolling through my phone while we drive to the warehouse district because something still doesn’t sit right. I assumed this was personal from the beginning, but the fact that they knew her style of hacking feels too specific. She’s been doing that since she was younger, so they could have come into her life at any point. Not to mention that they’re still hanging on after all this time.
Pulling up the address against city records, I look for any ties between the owner and Luna. We know whoever hired her joined the Iron Sinners after Albuquerque, but that’s it.
I search permits and ownership transfers until I find the warehouse they lured Luna to. I’m not surprised to see it’s in the name of a shell corporation because that’s how the Iron Sinners operate. Pulling up that particular business license, I review the names of the associates to see if any stand out. Surprisingly, one does.
Steven Ulysses.
It’s an uncommon last name and familiar to me. I’ve heard it before, but I just can’t place where it was.
Ulysses .
My heart hammers as I put the pieces together, and I think back to all the research I did on Luna when she first came to the clubhouse. I looked into every foster family she stayed with, and after the story she told me in the office, I circled back around to one in particular .
Birch and Maya Ulysses. She lived with them from fifteen to eighteen. They had two kids, and one was named Steven.
“Fuck.” I tip my head back, gripping my phone.
“What is it?” Legacy asks, but I don’t look over at him because that’s when it hits me.
This isn’t business, it’s personal.
He didn’t just hire her to do a job; he tested her for his club so he could bring her in. On top of that, Luna said he was the one to protect her from his father.
He thinks she’s his, and if that’s the case, there’s only one place he’d bring her.
I’d know. I did the same thing.
“I know where they’re taking Luna.” I look over at Legacy. “And we’ve got a problem.”