Chapter 8 - The Ghost in the Wire
1513 Words
Morning arrived on tiptoe.
The house yawned. The smell of toast and graphite pencil drifted through the hall.
“Poster board?” Zoe asked, rummaging through a drawer that never had any.
“Pantry,” I said, sipping coffee that had gone cold. “Behind the cereal you pretend to hate.”
She grinned. “You know everything.”
“Only the important stuff.”
Luca wandered in next, already in his hoodie, taller again, his voice lower. He checked the lock without looking at me. “Good?”
“Good.”
He nodded once, quiet pride in the motion.
Mateo dragged his blanket cape, solemn as a knight. “Mama, the house wagged last night.”
“Did it?”
He nodded. “And then it growled.”
“Excellent,” Sandro said from the hall, bare-foot, shirt half-buttoned, tie around his neck like a necklace he hadn’t decided to wear. “Always wag before growl. It’s polite.”
Ren passed through with mechanical grace, setting three lunches on the counter, labels lined up. “Bus in seven.”
Zoe grabbed a granola bar. “If you can’t pick me up, Ashlyn’s mom—”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“You always say that.”
“I always mean it.”
She hesitated. “You look… different.”
“I’m awake.”
“Uh-huh.” She eyed Ren and Sandro, the corner of her mouth twitching. “I like them here.”
Luca smirked. “Me too.”
Mateo tugged Sandro’s sleeve. “Can you make pancakes tomorrow?”
Sandro bent to whisper, “If you eat three vegetables tonight.”
Mateo gasped. “That’s too many.”
“Then small ones,” Sandro said solemnly.
Ren’s mouth almost smiled. “Shoes. Backpacks.”
Three bodies, three bags, three quick hugs, and the door shut. The quiet that followed wasn’t hollow. It was charged, like a held breath before thunder.
Ren looked at the window. “They’ll circle back.”
“Maeve?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Just tilted his head toward the curb. “Something’s there.”
A black flash drive.
White ribbon tied in a bow neat enough to mock us.
“Cute,” Sandro said. “I hate cute.”
Ren’s jaw moved once. “Inside.”
He handled it like evidence, nitrile gloves, old laptop that never touched the net. The screen hissed to life. Static. Then clarity.
A woman.
Dark hair cut to the jaw. White walls, glass behind her, movement in the reflection. Eyes too still.
“Hello, Ren,” she said. “Ghosts remember you.”
Ren didn’t breathe. I did. Loud in the silence.
The image shifted. Blueprints. Schools marked in red entry points. Vendor access in gray. Then a house diagram—ours.
My stomach dropped.
Label at the bottom: MAE Systems: Atlas Residential — Cincinnati 07A.
The woman reappeared. “Chicago. The Caldera. Three days. You know the room.”
Then a single word across the screen: SpecterNet.
Black.
The drive blinked twice, then died.
The refrigerator hummed.
Sandro exhaled. “She staged the shot. Expensive nothingness. The glass is a mirror. Hallway behind it. She likes watching herself watch you.”
“Maeve Ellison,” Ren said, removing the gloves carefully. “Handler. Once.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now she sells ghosts.”
“SpecterNet?”
“Not software,” he said. “System. Predictive control. Fear turned into math.”
My phone buzzed.
A map pin. The Caldera, Chicago.
Sandro tilted his head. “She’s inviting us to the dance.”
I turned the screen over. “Then we show up.”
Ren’s eyes cut to mine. “You’re not going.”
“I am.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
They stared at me like I was a cliff they’d both step off.
“I’m not staying while she plays my life on a projector,” I said.
Ren’s jaw flexed. “You don’t go as bait.”
“Then I go as the weapon.”
He paused. “Good.”
We trained.
Ren taught angles. The hinge side of a door. The blind arc of a mirror.
Sandro added the rhythm—how to look harmless while counting exits.
I moved until the routes became muscle, until breath replaced fear. Sweat slicked my skin; my pulse learned a new language.
When I stumbled, Ren steadied me. “Breathe.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know. Again.”
Sandro leaned against the counter, pretending not to stare, eyes dark and soft at once. “She’s learning fast.”
“She already knew,” Ren said.
“Now she remembers.”
I did. Every motion I’d swallowed for someone else’s comfort. Every apology I’d used as armor. Gone.
Evening dropped like a curtain. The kids asleep upstairs.
Zoe’s poster board half-finished, Luca’s sneakers lined like sentinels, Mateo’s dragon on the fridge. The house breathing slow.
We sat in the living room, low light, half-finished wine.
“She wants you angry,” Ren said.
“She got her wish,” I said.
“Good,” Sandro murmured. “Angry women build empires.”
I turned to them both. “What if she already knows we’ll come?”
“Then we surprise her,” Ren said.
“How?”
“By being unpredictable.”
Sandro leaned forward, voice dropping. “Or by being us.”
I laughed, low and real. “That’s the same thing.”
Silence spread like heat.
Ren’s gaze held mine—steady, unreadable.
Sandro’s fingers brushed my wrist.
The air thickened.
“You’re still shaking,” Ren said quietly.
“Not from fear,” I said.
“Show me,” Sandro murmured.
I did.
I moved first this time. My hand at Sandro’s collar, my mouth on his. The kiss was heat and challenge, the kind that tasted like control taken back. Ren’s hand caught my chin, turned my face, his lips finding mine slower, deeper, measured.
I didn’t choose between them. I didn’t need to. I leaned back against Ren’s chest, Sandro’s palms sliding up my thighs. My breath caught, the room narrowing to pulse and touch.
“Tell us,” Sandro said, his voice wrecked.
I told them. Words spilling like commands. What I wanted. How. Now.
Ren obeyed without hesitation, fingers tracing down my stomach, firm, knowing. Sandro kissed the inside of my knee, then higher, his breath shaking.
“Good,” Ren whispered when my body arched. “Stay there.”
“f**k—Rori—” Sandro gasped as I reached for him, pulling him in.
It was quick and raw, need sharpened by fury. I rode both of them, the sound of it breaking the quiet like thunder far off. Skin against skin, breath tangled with curse words and my name.
When I came, it was all pulse and light, heat rolling through me like fire breaking a frozen lake. They followed—Sandro with a groan against my throat, Ren with a quiet exhale and a kiss to my shoulder that felt like reverence, not possession.
The world steadied.
Ren rested his forehead against mine. “You led.”
Sandro smiled against my collarbone. “We followed. Happily.”
I laughed, breathless. “Good.”
Warmth replaced shaking. I pulled on the sweater draped over the chair. It still smelled like coffee and cinnamon and safety pretending to be casual.
The tablet blinked on the table. A single new message.
SOON.
“She’s impatient,” I said.
“She’s confident,” Ren said.
Sandro cracked his knuckles. “Confidence is fragile when hit with surprise.”
I looked toward the stairs. Zoe’s soft snore. Luca’s steady breathing. Mateo mumbling in dreams. My chest ached with something sharp and protective.
“I’m not raising them to hide from people who think they can scare us,” I said. “I’m showing them how we stand up.”
Ren’s gaze softened. “Then we plan.”
“Chicago?” I asked.
He nodded. “We drive. Late flight. Cover identities. You check in after us. You wear the ugly ring.”
Sandro grinned. “I will find a ring so hideous it becomes legend.”
“Please don’t,” Ren said.
“I will try not to,” Sandro lied.
I pocketed the fob. It didn’t feel like a leash anymore. It felt like a weapon.
“What are we listening for?” I asked.
“When we see Maeve?” Ren said. “We listen for what she’s afraid of.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“She is,” he said quietly. “Everyone that controlled learns to fear losing it.”
The house settled. The maple outside whispered against the glass. Upstairs, tape ripped—Zoe finishing her sign.
I kissed both men once, soft and short, and whispered, “Tomorrow.”
The house wagged again. Then growled.
And I slept knowing the next time I saw Maeve, she’d learn what a ghost looks like when it fights back.
- Writer
