Page 1 of Ghost (Cerberus Personal Security #1)

ONE

Willow

The truck fishtails across the icy road, tires shrieking as they lose traction. A white-out swallows the headlights, transforming the world into a spinning tunnel of snow and black asphalt.

I clutch the wheel with bloodless fingers, heart slamming against my ribs, eyes straining to find something—anything—to orient myself. The guardrail looms too fast. I yank the wheel, but it’s too late. Metal screams against metal, a shrill, gut-twisting wail that cuts through the storm.

Not like this. Not when I’m so close.

Impact. Everything tilts. My body slams sideways. Silence falls in the aftermath, broken only by the hiss of steam from the radiator and the tick-tick-tick of a dying engine. The world settles at a sick angle, and the truck crumples against the guardrail like a broken toy.

Pain arrives in waves—sharp, splintering agony radiating from my ribs, a wet warmth seeping down my chin.

Blood drips from my split lip onto the steering wheel. The metallic taste floods my mouth, a familiar tang I’ve grown used to. Not from this crash. No, this is older. Deeper.

The blood mixes with the copper pennies I’ve been swallowing since Steffan’s boot caught me under the ribs. Every breath feels like a razor, sending lightning-hot shards stabbing through my chest.

I reach under the passenger seat with hands that won’t stop trembling, my fingertips scrabbling for the hidden drive I planted months ago. There—cold and solid. I find the small backup drive I taped there three months ago.

It’s identical to the one Steffan ripped from my hands in his study, the one he crushed under his heel while Drake held me down.

He thinks he destroyed everything. He’s wrong.

Three years of marriage. Three years of brutality hidden behind charm and tailored suits.

Steffan Reynolds.

Federal judge, rising political star, master manipulator, he treated me to three years of his fists, his belt, and his careful cruelty disguised as discipline and command. Behind closed doors, he’s a monster. His cruelty is surgical, meticulous, the kind that leaves no trace unless he wants it to.

And Drake—his shadow, his enforcer—was always watching, always smiling.

The engine ticks as it cools. The cab fills with steam. I cough, wince, force myself to move.

Move or die.

The truck sits at a sickening angle, front end crumpled against the twisted guardrail, steam hissing from the punctured radiator. The driver’s side is wedged into the guardrail, but the passenger door opens toward the forest.

Hope flickers. I crawl across the bench seat, every shift igniting white-hot pain in my chest.

The door handle fights me, warped from the impact. When it finally gives way, the door screams against its hinges, metal grinding against bent metal, the sound lost in the howling wind.

I tumble out into knee-deep snow. The cold hits like a slap, shocking my system awake. Wind slaps against my face, driving snow into the cuts on my cheek where Steffan’s ring caught and ripped skin.

My breath catches, ragged in the frozen air. I stagger, turn back toward the road, and see headlights.

No! No. No!

Headlights, low and fast, slice through the storm. Still distant, but unmistakable. I know that truck. I know who’s driving it.

Drake.

Steffan’s enforcer. His shadow. The man who held me down while my husband’s belt found its mark, who smiled when I screamed, who took his turn when Steffan was finished breaking me.

Panic ignites like a fuse in my bloodstream. He’ll see the wreck. He’ll know where I went off the road. There’s no time. No time for plans, no time to think.

Terror floods my system, hot and electric despite the killing cold. Snow sucks at my feet with every step, dragging me down. My canvas sneakers are soaked instantly, offering neither warmth nor protection.

I didn’t plan this escape well, not really. I had a window and I took it. I ran for the truck and didn’t look back.

I should have grabbed a coat. Should have planned better. Should have?—

I should have never married Steffan Reynolds.

The blizzard howls around me as I push into the forest. Pine branches tear at my hair and whip across my face. My lungs burn, ribs screaming with each ragged breath. The cold sears my throat, each inhalation like swallowing broken glass .

Run. Willow. For God’s sake, run!

Behind me, somewhere beyond the white curtain, an engine dies. Doors slam. Voices carry on the wind. Harsh, clipped commands. Fragments of words, tactical coordination. They’re following on foot now.

I push harder, stumbling over roots and rocks hidden beneath the snow. My foot catches a root. The world tilts, gravity claims me. I hit the ground hard, pain detonating through my shoulder where Drake dislocated it last spring—a memory that lives in bone and sinew, awakening with fresh agony.

The flash drive flies from my grip, a small dark speck disappearing into the endless white.

No, no, no ? —

Panic claws at my throat. I scramble through the snow, blind and frantic, my fingers already numb, searching. My chest heaves. The wind picks up, driving powder into my eyes, my nose, my mouth. I taste blood and snow and desperation.

The cold finds every weakness, burrowing under my sweater, freezing the sweat on my back. The blood from my lip has frozen to my chin. My hands ache with numbness, my fingers turning stiff.

I can’t breathe. I can’t see.

There. The small metal rectangle, cold as death against my palm.

It documents three years of Steffan’s crimes.

Three years of evidence, every wire transfer and illicit deal.

Every bribe. Every threat. Every backroom meeting with arms dealers and human traffickers.

Every time he bent justice to his will while bending me over his desk.

I risked my life to record threats and copy financial records. Three years of surviving hell to reach this moment.

I clutch it tight, pushing upright on trembling legs. The forest spins around me, white and dark bleeding together. The blizzard turns relentless—snow driving horizontally, stinging like hornets. Numbness creeps up my arms and legs, death claiming me inch by inch.

Just like Steffan promised. “One day you’ll push me too far, sweetheart. And when that day comes...”

Voices rise behind me. Close. Too close.

I keep moving. Because if I stop, I die. If I stop, they win.

Time stretches and compresses in the white-out. The forest becomes a fever dream of white and shadow, pain and cold. My legs move without feeling, stumbling over obstacles I can’t see. The taste of copper mingles with the metallic bite of snow.

Behind me, shouts carry on the wind. Coordinates being called out. The systematic closing of a net.

I angle toward a denser section of trees, but a light sweeps across my path. They’re everywhere—shadows moving through the white hell of the blizzard.

A root catches my foot. I go down hard, face-first into the snow. The impact drives the air from my lungs and sends fresh agony through my broken ribs. For a moment, I can’t move, can’t breathe, can only lie there as the storm tries to bury me alive.

Get up. Get up or they win.

I push myself to hands and knees, spitting snow and blood. The flash drive has somehow stayed clutched in my death grip; a small mercy in a night of disasters. Around me, the lights converge, voices growing louder.

The cold is winning. I feel it in my bones, in the growing numbness that starts at my extremities and creeps inward like death itself. My coordination fails—I trip over logs I can’t see, walk into branches that appear from nowhere in the white void.

The blizzard has become my enemy and my salvation. It hides me from Drake’s men, but it’s also killing me degree by degree, heartbeat by heartbeat.

Each inch forward feels like a mile, a war waged with my own broken body. My breath comes in shallow, panicked gasps, misting in the cold air, but I keep going. Because I have to. Because the only thing behind me is pain and the promise of death.

I don’t know how long I wander through the white maze. The forest closes around me like a frozen cathedral, pine boughs heavy with snow creating a canopy that muffles sound and dims what little light filters through the storm.

The cold has moved beyond pain into something deeper—a bone-deep ache that speaks of systems shutting down, of a body preparing to surrender.

Keep moving. Movement means warmth. Stillness means death.

And just when the last shred of hope starts to unravel, when the darkness feels endless and the cold has worked its way through my bones, a branch cracks somewhere in the white void ahead.

I freeze, heart hammering weakly against my ribs. Through the driving snow, a shape emerges—tall, broad-shouldered.

He stands still—too still for a man who doesn’t know what’s coming. He has no flashlight, no radio. He doesn’t speak right away. Doesn’t rush to help me. He just watches, calm, grounded, real.

Dogs flank him.

Drake doesn’t use dogs.

This man isn’t part of the hunt.

He moves like he belongs here, like the storm is simply weather instead of a weapon.

A massive dog bounds toward me through the snow, tail moving—not aggressive, but curious. Protective. The other dog holds its position, alert but not threatening.

“Who’s there?” His voice cuts through the wind like a blade, deep and authoritative, low and steady, as if we’re the only two people left in the world.

“Please,” I whisper, the word torn from my frozen throat. “They’re hunting me.”

Steam rises from his breath in the frigid air. Snow clings to broad shoulders covered in winter camouflage. A scar bisects one eyebrow, and his eyes are pale gray—winter sky after the storm passes.

“Who’s hunting you?”

The honest concern in his voice breaks something inside me. I sway on my feet, the last of my adrenaline finally failing. Blood loss, hypothermia, exhaustion—all of it crashes over me at once.

He moves toward me, like he’s seen this before. Like nothing about me—bloody, half-broken, filthy—makes him hesitate. When his arms wrap around me, it’s not the rough grab I brace for. It’s strength wrapped in control. Hands that lift without hurting, that ground without caging.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and something in his voice—calm certainty, unshakeable protection—breaks the last of my resistance.

I collapse into him, this stranger who smells like pine and gunpowder and safety. The flash drive cuts into my palm where I still clutch it desperately.

Three years of evidence. Three years of documenting a federal judge’s corruption while he destroyed me piece by piece. It has to matter.

“They’ll kill me,” I manage against his chest, my voice barely a whisper in the storm. “If they find me.”

His arms tighten around me, and when he speaks again, his voice has gone deadly quiet—not a threat, but a promise carved from winter steel.

“Then we’d better make sure they don’t find you.”

Something shifts inside me. The fear doesn’t vanish, but it’s no longer everything. I still feel the cold, still hear the men behind me. But now, I’m not alone.