Chapter 24: A Ghost Inside The Wall
Chapter 24
The compound gates were already open when they roared through, prospects scrambling across the lot with weapons drawn, the kind of controlled chaos that told Rowe everything before anyone said a word.
Reaper was off his bike before it fully stopped, the strongbox shoved into Ghost’s hands, his gun already drawn as he sprinted for the east hallway.
Rowe followed a half-step behind, her heart hammering against her ribs.
They found the guard first — a young patch named Reese, sprawled unconscious in the hallway outside Piper’s door, a dark bruise already swelling along his jaw. Doc arrived moments later, already dropping to check his pulse.
"Alive," Doc confirmed. "Knocked out. Whoever did this knew exactly how much force to use."
Reaper didn’t wait to hear more. He shoved through the door to Piper’s room, gun raised, Rowe right behind him.
The room was empty.
The cot was overturned. A single lantern lay shattered on the floor, its oil pooling dark across the concrete. And on the far wall, scrawled in what looked unsettlingly like blood — though Rowe prayed it wasn’t Piper’s — three words stopped her cold.
SHE KNOWS TOO MUCH.
"No," Reaper breathed, already moving, scanning the room for any other sign, any clue to which direction she might have been taken. "No, no, no—"
"Jax." Rowe caught his arm, forcing him to look at her even as every instinct screamed to keep moving. "Panicking doesn’t find her faster. Think. Who had access to this hallway tonight?"
Reaper’s jaw worked, fury and fear warring visibly behind his eyes, but he forced himself still, forced himself to breathe.
"Rotation," he said. "Reese was posted at eight. Relief wasn’t due till midnight. Whoever did this either overpowered him directly, or—"
"Or they were someone he wouldn’t have thought twice about letting close," Rowe finished grimly.
Ghost appeared in the doorway, his face carved from stone. "Prez. Reese is coming around. He’s asking for you."
They found him sitting up in the hallway, Doc pressing a cold pack to his jaw, still groggy but lucid enough to talk.
"Who hit you?" Reaper demanded, crouching low, his voice tightly controlled despite the fury radiating off him.
"Didn’t see it coming," Reese admitted, wincing. "Someone called out from behind me, saying Doc needed help in medical, urgent. I turned to head that way and took a hit to the jaw before I even registered who’d spoken." He shook his head slowly. "Voice was familiar, Prez. I just can’t place it. Everything happened too fast."
"Man or woman?"
Reese hesitated. "Woman, I think. Low. Steady. Like she does this kind of thing for a living."
Rowe’s stomach dropped. "Lila."
Every head in the hallway turned toward her.
"Think about it," Rowe pressed, the pieces assembling with sickening speed now that she’d said it aloud. "She’s been here since before I arrived. She has access to every corner of this compound; nobody questions her presence anywhere. She’s been watching me with open hostility since the day I walked in, and she’s been suspiciously absent from every single confrontation we’ve had with the Disciples."
"Lila’s a sweet-butt," Viper said, though his tone had gone thoughtful rather than dismissive. "She’s not patched. Doesn’t have that kind of clearance normally."
"Doesn’t need clearance to knock out a distracted guard and drag a woman out a back door," Ghost said grimly. "And nobody looks twice at her moving through these halls at any hour. She’s practically furniture to half this club."
Reaper was already moving, radio in hand. "All units, compound-wide search, now. I want Lila found, and I want her found immediately. If anyone’s seen her in the last hour, I want to know exactly where and when."
The search mobilized fast, prospects and patches fanning out across every building, every vehicle, every inch of fence line. Rowe paced the hallway outside Piper’s ransacked room, her mind racing through every interaction she’d had with Lila since arriving — the venomous first greeting at the bar, the jealousy simmering beneath every glance, the casual cruelty of her comment about Rowe getting Reaper’s dick wet before running again.
Had all of it been genuine spite? Or had some of it been performance, deflection, a woman playing a role that kept anyone from looking too closely at what she was really doing inside these walls?
"Prez!" A prospect’s voice echoed from the front lot, urgent. "Her car’s gone. And Coyote’s cell—" He stopped, breathless. "Coyote’s gone too. Restraints cut clean through."
Reaper’s expression went lethal. "Someone helped him out."
"Same someone who just took Piper," Rowe said. "They’re working together. They have been the whole time."
Reaper’s radio crackled again, a different voice this time, tight with barely controlled panic. "Prez, you need to see this. Found it taped to the front gate."
They gathered at the gate minutes later, where a folded piece of paper had been pinned beneath the compound’s outer light, clearly meant to be found the moment anyone came looking.
Reaper unfolded it with visibly shaking hands.
Rowe read over his shoulder, her blood running cold at the words scrawled in familiar, mocking handwriting.
You found the cellar. Congratulations. Now you get to choose. The ledgers and the deed, or your cousin’s life. Bring both to the old mining depot by sunrise. Come alone this time, Jaxson. No club. No Rowan. Or Piper dies exactly the way your uncle did — forgotten, buried, and blamed on someone else.
You have six hours.
Reaper’s hand crushed the paper in his fist before he forced himself to smooth it out again, rereading it as the words might soften on a second pass.
"Six hours," he said hollowly.
"You’re not going alone," Rowe said immediately.
"Rowan—"
"Don’t." Her voice cracked with a fierceness that surprised even her. "I have watched you tell me to stay behind, to stay safe, to let you handle things alone, over and over, since the moment I rode back into this town. I am done staying behind. If Lila and Coyote want you alone, that only means one thing — they’re afraid of what happens when we’re together."
Reaper stared at her for a long moment, something fracturing and rebuilding behind his eyes all at once — fear, love, fury, and finally, reluctant resolve.
"Then we go in smart," he said finally. "Not alone. Not reckless. We use the six hours to plan, not panic." He turned to Ghost and Viper, voice hardening back into command. "I want everything we know about that old mining depot — entrances, blind spots, escape routes. I want a team positioned before sunrise, invisible until the exact moment we need them."
"And the ledgers?" Ghost asked. "The deed? You really willing to hand those over for her?"
Reaper’s jaw tightened, his eyes finding Rowe’s across the tense circle of firelight from the gate lantern.
"She’s the only family I have left who never lied to me about who I really am," he said quietly. "I’m not losing her the same way I lost everyone else."
Rowe reached for his hand, lacing her fingers through his, feeling the tremor running beneath his calm.
"Then let’s make sure," she said, "that when sunrise comes, it’s Lila and Coyote who lose everything. Not us."
The desert stretched dark and silent beyond the compound gates, six hours ticking down toward a reckoning neither of them could afford to lose — and somewhere out there, in the ruins of an old mining depot, the last traitors wearing the Iron Reapers’ colors waited to find out exactly how far Rowe Callahan was willing to ride for the family she’d only just begun to understand.
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