"I have a tour. I have commitments. I can't just disappear because?—"
"When's your next show?"
I blink at the interruption. "Two weeks. LA. But I have press, interviews?—"
"You can reschedule interviews. You can't reschedule being dead."
The bluntness of it hits me like cold water. No softening. No attempt to make it easier to hear. Just the truth, delivered without apology.
I look at Nate, expecting him to argue, to tell his brother he's being dramatic.
Nate doesn't argue.
"He's right," Nate says quietly. "I wouldn't have called him if there was another way. But this... India, this is beyond what normal security can handle. You need to disappear until we figure out how to stop him. Until Ghost figures out how to stop him."
"Disappear." I laugh, and it sounds brittle even to me. "I'm a pop star. I have a sold-out tour. I don'tdisappear."
"Tonight you do." Ghost is already moving toward the door. "Pack what you need. Leave your phone — we'll get you a new one. We leave in twenty minutes."
"I don't even know your real name."
He pauses with his hand on the doorframe. Looks back at me. The overhead light catches the hard angles of his face, the stubble along his jaw, the mouth that probably hasn't smiled in years.
He's gorgeous. Infuriatingly, inconveniently gorgeous — and completely oblivious to it, which somehow makes it worse.
"Ghost."
"No, yourrealname."
Something shifts in his expression. Not a smile — I don't think this man smiles — but something almost like amusement, buried deep.
"Ghost," he says again.
And walks out.
I look at Nate.
"Is he serious?"
"Always."
"He's infuriating."
"Yeah." Nate almost smiles. "He is. But he's also the only person I'd trust with this. If he says he'll keep you safe, he'll keep you safe. I wouldn't have called him otherwise."
I think about the necklace on the pillow. The careful, deliberate violation of my space. The knowledge that someone I trusted, someone who was supposed to protect me, has been watching me, waiting, getting closer.
And then I think about the man who just walked out — cold, abrupt, giving me nothing. Not a single reassurance. Not a single soft word.
But something about the way he moved. The certainty in his voice. The way he looked at me like he was already putting pieces together, already three steps ahead.
Twenty minutes later, I'm on the back of a motorcycle, my arms around a stranger, my face pressed against leather that smells like night air and engine heat. The Arizona desert stretches out around us, dark and endless.
My whole life in a bag.
My safety in the hands of a man who won't even tell me his name.
CHAPTER 2