Page 5 of Angel's Promise
"She showed up at Hank's gas station an hour ago asking for me by name," I said. "Ryan told her to come here. Before his last deployment, he told her if she was ever in trouble, find me. It seems that trouble has found her."
"What kind?" Rook asked.
"She witnessed a murder. She works at a restaurant in Elk Ridge. Was taking the trash out to the dumpster, back alley, late at night. She saw a cop put a gun to a man's head and pull the trigger. Close range. Deliberate. The cop saw her.”
Hawk's jaw tightened. Doc leaned forward, arms uncrossed now.
"She called 911, gave a statement, described the cop. By the time anyone got to the alley, the body was gone. No blood, nothing. They never followed up."
"Buried it," Rook said under his breath.
"Two days later, two Iron Jackals riders showed up outside her restaurant. Sat there watching her leave. Two days after that, her apartment was trashed. Knife in her pillow."
"Jesus," Duke muttered.
"She doesn't know who the victim was. Doesn't know why the cop killed him. Doesn't know the connection between the cop and the Jackals. All she knows is she saw it, and the people who want her quiet aren't going to stop."
Razor hadn't moved, but his jaw was tight. Priest drummed his fingers quietly on the table.
"Callie stays here," I said. "Under our roof, under our protection. Anyone who comes looking for her comes through us first."
I heard the way I said her name. Heard what was in it, underneath, the thing I couldn't strip out no matter how hard I tried. Her name and her brother's ghost all tangled together, weighted with something that went deeper than club business.
The brothers heard it too. Ghost's eyes moved to mine and stayed there, reading me the way he'd been reading me for years. Hawk leaned forward, his big hands flat on the table. They knew what Ryan Mercer meant to me in particular. They knew what his sister walking through our gate meant.
Nobody said a word. Nobody needed to.
"Rook. The cop. I need a name, a precinct, and everything he's connected to. If the Jackals are his muscle, I want to know who's holding the leash."
Rook nodded once.
"Hawk. I want eyes on the road in. Anyone wearing a Jackals patch inside fifty miles of Forsaken, I want to know about it."
Hawk nodded. He didn't need more than that.
"Ghost."
Ghost looked at me. Waited.
"Stay close," I said.
He understood what I meant. Ghost always understood what I meant. Stay close to the compound. Stay close to the lodge. Stay close to the woman sleeping upstairs who didn't know yet that the quietest man in this room was the most dangerous thing standing between her and whatever was coming.
Church ended. The brothers moved. That was the thing about this club, the thing I'd built into it from the first day. Give them a mission and they moved.
I should have gone to my office. Started building the operational picture the way I'd been trained. Instead, I went to check on her.
The hallway on the second floor was quiet. Late afternoon light fell across the floorboards in long slats. The lodge was old, solidly built, and you could hear the bones of the place settling around you.
The door to her room was closed. I stood there, listening. Silence. She was asleep. I should have walked away. I'd done what needed doing, given the order, set the wheels turning. She was safe under my roof with the most capable men I'd ever known between her and anything that might come through the gate.
But I stood there. One hand on the doorframe, shoulder against the wall, and I let the thing I'd been holding back wash over me.
Ryan.
I'd given the order that put him in the field that day. My call. My mission. My man. I'd run every alternative a thousand times in the years since, replayed every decision, mapped every branch point where I could have called it differently. None of it changed anything. He went out because I sent him out, and he didn't come back, and I had to live inside that truth every single day.
And now his sister was asleep on the other side of this door. Scared, exhausted, hunted. She'd come because Ryan had told her to. Because he'd trusted me.
