Page 19 of A Witchy Spell Ride (31 Days of Trick or Treat, Bikers and Mobsters #15)

Cross set a small kit on the desk. “Give me your phone,” he said. At my look, he added, “I promise I will not read your texts. I don’t want to know what you send Briar at two in the morning.”

“It’s memes,” Briar said. “Mostly.”

“And threats,” Cross said. “Occasionally.”

I handed him the phone. He plugged it into something that looked like it belonged in a spy movie. Numbers scrolled. He watched, calm and intent. “Do you have any cameras in your apartment we didn’t install?”

“No.”

He nodded once. “Then the photo was taken with a phone.”

Ghost leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded, watching me more than the room. “Angle?”

I closed my eyes and saw it again: the couch, my head on his chest, the window’s reflection a faint smear beyond. “Low,” I said. “From the kitchen door maybe. Or the hallway. Not too close.”

Cross typed. “Time stamp?”

“I found it at 8:12,” I said. “Envelope was cold. Could’ve been placed before dawn.”

Ghost’s jaw flexed. “While I was here.”

“While you were here,” I said, and I didn’t mean it like blame, but it lay between us anyway.

He looked away first. “We’re adding a camera to your hallway,” he said. “And one to the vent. And one to the—”

“Bathroom mirror,” Briar said cheerfully. “We’ll film you brushing your teeth and sell it to your fans.”

I flipped her off. She grinned, softer at the edges.

Reaper’s phone buzzed. He answered, face going stony as he listened. “Uh-huh. Send it.” He hung up and looked at Ghost. “Camera two blocks from the shop caught the sedan at 3:04 a.m. Driver stops. Lights off. Door opens two inches and shuts. Either he’s flexing or he lost his nerve.”

“Or he had a partner,” Ghost said. “And the partner didn’t show.”

The idea made my skin crawl new. Not one him. Two.

Cross’s device chimed. “There were three connection attempts to your Wi-Fi at 2:37, 2:42, and 3:01,” he said to me without looking up. “Wrong passwords. He was close enough to try. He’s fishing.”

“Fishing for what?” I asked.

“Presence,” Ghost said. “Proof you were home. Proof he could touch your life without touching you.”

“Congratulations,” Briar said brightly to the air. “You’ve touched a lawyer, a biker, and a woman with knives. Prize is a funeral.”

Reaper cut her a look that said enough. Then, to me, “You sleep here today. You eat. You shower with the door cracked and someone outside. You don’t argue.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I lied.

“You always do,” he said, but his mouth softened. “Later, we talk about how you kept this for weeks and made me find out like this.”

“Later,” I said.

He nodded once. Deal.

Ghost pushed off the doorjamb. “Come on,” he said. “Food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Good,” he said, “because I ordered too much.”

We ate at the bar; bowls of gumbo that tasted like someone remembered the exact ache that needed softening. Men drifted in and out, pretending not to look at me, failing at it. Some squeezed my shoulder, light. Some nodded and moved on. It was too much and not enough and exactly what I could take.

When the bowl was empty, Ghost slid a glass of water over. “Drink.”

I drank. He watched the door and the window and nothing else, except I could feel him watching me too, like I was a page he’d memorized and kept reading anyway.

After, I showered in the tiny bathroom off the office while Briar sat on the other side of the door and narrated an article about pigeons to keep me from jumping at every pipe groan.

“Did you know they recognize human faces?” she said. “Which is why you should never insult a pigeon. They will hold grudges.”

“Like you,” I said.

“Exactly like me.”

The water ran cold too fast. I dressed in the hoodie and jeans from my bag and stepped back into the office smelling like soap and nerves.

Ghost stood by the window, back to me, talking low into his phone. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ll walk at dusk. Same plan. Briar decoy. I want two tails behind the sedan if he shows. No kuttes. Clean cars. If he makes me, we break his legs. If he doesn’t, we follow him home.”

He hung up and turned, and whatever he’d hidden from his voice wasn’t hidden from his face. He looked like a man who’d made a promise to violence and intended to keep it.

“You good?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Better.”

“Good.”

We stood there, looking at each other and pretending we weren’t. The air shifted. The office hushed around us, like the building had learned to listen.

“Ghost,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I found the envelope because I went looking.” The confession surprised me. “I could’ve not opened the drawer. I did it anyway.”

He tilted his head. “Because you knew.”

“Because I knew,” I said, throat tight. “I think I always know. When something’s coming.”

“You’re not wrong often,” he said.

“I hate being right this time.”

“I hate it for you.”

Silence again. A better one.

From the main room, Reaper’s voice rose, not loud, not gentle, instructing, dividing, directing. Cross’s lighter laugh cut once through the bar noise. Bones banged something on purpose to make sure it still worked. The world outside the office moved like a machine tuned to my heartbeat.

I stepped closer to Ghost. He didn’t step away.

“This part,” I said, searching for the words, “where I’m safe because of you, it scares me.”

He held my gaze. “Why.”

“Because I want it,” I said. “And wanting it makes me feel like I’m losing something I worked hard to build.”

His jaw softened. “You’re not losing anything,” he said. “You’re delegating the part where I stab a man.”

A laugh jumped out of me, helpless and small. “Delegation. I’ll put that on my to-do list.”

“Put it at the top,” he said.

I did something reckless then. Not in the way Reaper would call reckless. In the way I would. I reached up and put my palm flat against Ghost’s chest. Over his T-shirt. Over the heartbeat that had kept rhythm with mine for two nights now.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t swallow me whole either. He just covered my hand with his.

“Okay,” I whispered, and I didn’t know if I meant the plan, or the day, or us.

A soft knock at the door broke whatever was about to come next. Briar poked her head in. “Hate to interrupt your sexy OSHA-compliant moment,” she said, “but the gallery across the street sent Cross a still frame of Mr. Romance. We got a face.”

Ghost’s hand squeezed mine once and let go. “Show us.”

Briar waggled her brows at me like later and disappeared. We followed.

Cross had the image on his tablet — a reflection in a window, sharpened and clarified until a jawline and a cap and a beard resolved into a face that wasn’t familiar. That was worse than if it had been.

“Run it?” Reaper asked.

“Already sent to two favors and one friend who owes me a kidney,” Cross said.

“Gross,” Briar said. “But also, hot.”

I stared at the face and felt nothing even as I felt everything: the drawer sliding, the photo burning, the handwriting like a sear. A stranger who had decided I was a story he got to write.

“No,” I murmured, surprising myself again. “I’m the one who writes it.”

Ghost glanced sideways at me, a quick flash of heat and approval.

Reaper laid a hand on my shoulder, heavy, grounding. “Dusk,” he said. “We walk.”

I nodded. Ghost nodded. Briar saluted. Cross rolled his eyes like a prayer.

And for the first time since the envelope, since the drawer, since the gray morning where the sun didn’t bother, I felt something like a future slide into place.

Not because the danger was gone.

Because we were finally moving toward it.