“What is this, a mob wife book club?” I laugh, my nerves creeping up the back of my neck. Asking Dante and Sparrow for an embarrassing favor is one thing, but including two more people might be more humiliation than I’m willing to bear.
The feeling of my intruder’s fingers tugging roughly at my hair, and the memory of his deep, rasping voice in my ear heat my skin and steel my resolve.
“We’re readingEat, Pray, Love,” Orion says flatly, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Murder, Sin, Fuck.” Anders giggles. He’s the newest addition to the Moretti Mafia Wife club, having fallen in love with Salvatore’s nephew, Luca, a few months ago. And spending his nights leaving bite marks all over the low-level soldier clearly agrees with him. There’s a light in his eyes that definitely wasn’t there the first time I met him.
My stomach does a little flip as I look around the room. I never thought twice about settling down until everyone aroundme started finding their own fucked-up happily ever afters one by one, but I have to admit, they make it look damn appealing.
“Drink?” Orion holds up the glass pitcher.
I shake my head. “No, thanks. I’ve gotta haul ass to the meeting, I just…” I clear my throat and glance over at Dante. “I had a question I needed to stop by and ask real quick.”
“You could have called,” he says.
“I didn’t exactly want Sal to know,” I confess with a tight smile.
“Oh shit, you’re not actually here to try and seduce him, right? Because Sal will legitimately kill you,” Sparrow says.
“Yeah, I swung by to ask him for a quick blowie, but now that you’re all here maybe we can organize a circle jerk instead,” I say sarcastically. Sparrow rolls his eyes and Orion chuckles.
“What, then?” Dante asks, picking up one of the martini glasses and taking a sip.
“You’re good at hacking and finding people and shit like that, right?”
Both of his well-shaped eyebrows inch up his forehead. “I guess. Why? Who are you trying to find?”
“That’s the thing… I don’t know his name.” I rub the back of my neck with a shrug.
“What do you have? Address? Names of people he associates with? Where he works? A picture of him? A reverse image search might work if you have a picture.” He rattles off some options, and it hits me just how hard I’m grasping at straws by being here.
I let out a tight laugh. “No, nothing. Shit.” I sigh.
Sparrow snorts. “You came over to ask Dante to help you find a ghost?” His eyes light up like a thought just occurred to him. “Oh, fuck, is this about that vigilante who’s been taking out the Reapers? Because if you’re dying to find him, I amsodown to help with that.”
My recent obsession with the man the newspapers have been calling The Ghost—a vigilante who’s been taking out members of the motorcycle club the Sleepless Reapers for weeks now—is a hell of a lot less embarrassing than admitting that some random guy broke into my apartment last night, and instead of shooting him, I sucked his dick and let him steal my gun, so I nod.
“Yeah, I thought maybe we could try to track him down. But hearing all of that out loud, it sounds about as likely as finding DB Cooper.” I make a show of looking at my watch. “I really should take off. Enjoy your book club.” I wink before showing myself out.
The elevator ride back down feels just as slow, and my heart sinks with every floor. I suppose I could take the glove he left to one of the cops we have on our payroll and see if he can get any fingerprints or DNA off of it, except it’s covered inmyDNA now, and I have a feeling that he wouldn’t have given it to me if he thought there was any way to use it to track him down. I’m willing to bet his fingerprints and DNA aren’t on file anywhere.
Sparrow was right, he really is a ghost. And he really is justgone.
GHOST
I bolt upright in my bed with sweat dripping down the back of my neck and my lungs burning for the air that I pull in with big, gulping breaths. The dreams are all bad enough on their own, but this one was the trifecta of fucked up. It started off with me shooting up, and fuck was it visceral. I swear I can still feel the bite of the needle slicing through my skin and the way my heart raced in anticipation. There’s nothing like that moment right before you push the plunger down. It’s like those few secondsriding the edge of an orgasm, knowing it’s inevitable, right before it hits. Fucking incredible.
My hands shake and I reach for one of the candies scattered on my nightstand, unwrapping it with unsteady fingers and popping the butterscotch into my mouth.
A drug dream is always enough to fuck me up, but this one didn’t end there. It faded seamlessly into a nightmarish memory; a twisted, gnarled version of that night with hands all over me and jeering laughs echoing in my ears while I gasped for breath. And then his face was there, hovering just outside the violent fray. That nameless face that haunts too many of my dreams. He didn’t bring me comfort tonight though. No, he looked disappointed, horrified, his eyes full of pity and disgust as he watched them tear me apart.
I roll the candy around on my tongue for a minute and then crunch it between my teeth, finding satisfaction in the way it shatters. And then I reach over and turn on the lamp next to my bed. My apartment isn’t anything to write home about. It’s an entire fucking universe away from the kinds of places I break into, like the Moretti place last night. The wallpaper is faded and peeling, everything but the bathroom is crammed into a single three-hundred-square-foot space, and I had to add two extra deadbolts myself because the crackhead who lives next door kept kicking the door in, convinced I stole his shit.
I grab the sketch pad and pencil from the drawer in my nightstand and start drawing the face with familiar, absent strokes. It’s not going to help me remember anything, I know that much by now. I must have drawn this face a hundred times in the last seven years, and it never changes anything. It doesn’t get it out of my head, and it doesn’t suddenly make me remember his name or who he is to me. I guess it’s more of a habit than anything, but at least it helps to calm my racing heart and distract me from the cravings until they start to fade.
He’s preppy, with a crew cut and clean, unblemished skin. Young too, at least the way I remember him. He would be older now, obviously. Whoever he is.Whereverhe is. I wonder if he ever thinks of me, if he knows what happened to me. Maybe he thinks I’m dead. I guess he would be right on that one.
I toss the paper back into the drawer and flap my sheets to find the cheap prepaid cell that’s somewhere in the bed with me. It falls loose, and I open up the only app I really use. It’s a chat app, and this one happens to be the favorite of the Sleepless Reapers Motorcycle Club. If the dumbasses thought their chat was private, they were wrong on that one. Honestly, the cops must be just as dumb as these bikers, because all it would take is one vice detective stumbling on this chat and the entire club would be locked up for life.