Claimed By The Inferno Riders

Chapter Three

The Sportster was done, the Road King was reassembled, and the afternoon had bled into early evening without Kayne offering another syllable about who exactly had called ahead.

Nadia had decided, somewhere around the third hour, to treat the lingering threat exactly like an engine knock she couldn't immediately diagnose: file it, keep working, and wait for more data.

She was running an oily rag over the workbench when she froze.

The far door was cracked open. The distribution of shadows cast across the concrete was wrong—too flat, the way light broke when a solid mass blocked the source. She didn't look up. She kept the rag moving in slow, deliberate circles.

Then, she heard the breath.

It wasn't loud. It was the specific, controlled exhale of someone who had been perfectly still for a very long time and had just decided to stop hiding it.

She turned.

He stood leaning against the interior cinderblock, three feet from the far door, his arms hanging loose at his sides. He had the unnerving quality of a man who could occupy a space without altering its gravity, making the question not how he got there, but how long he had been watching.

"How long?" she asked.

"Couple hours," he replied, tilting his chin toward the lifts. "You're good."

"You could have said something," she shot back, tossing the rag onto the bench.

"Didn't need to," he said, not moving from the wall. "You didn't need the help."

"That's not the point."

"I know." A beat of silence. "That's what I was watching."

She grabbed her bag and began dropping tools back into their designated slots by feel alone. She worked by weight and shape, ending with a wrench she had bought herself—its grip worn completely smooth on one side from years of her hand resting in the exact same spot. She slipped it into its pocket and pulled the zipper.

The man pushed off the wall and closed the distance, stopping on the opposite side of the workbench. He was around her age, built lean where Kayne and River were massive. His leather cut looked newer than theirs, the rigid material not yet molded to the shape of his shoulders. Ghost, the rocker patch on his chest read.

Ghost dropped his gaze to her hands.

Exactly the way River had.

She filed it.

"Marcus Cole's niece," Ghost stated.

"Yes."

"He talked about you."

Nadia stiffened. "I didn't know that," she said.

"Mm." Ghost picked up a heavy socket from the table, rolled it over his knuckles once, and set it back exactly where he found it. "Said you had his hands. Same callus pattern, same grip." He looked up, his eyes locking onto hers. "He was right."

The memory hit her with physical force. She had last seen her uncle fourteen months ago at a greasy diner off the highway outside Raleigh. They had drank terrible coffee and talked around everything except the one thing she had driven three hours to ask. He had looked so much older than she was prepared for, carrying a heavy, silent weight that he refused to share.

She hadn't pushed him. She had just driven home.

Now, she was going to have to live with that.

"Is that a question," Nadia asked, her voice cracking like dry ice, "or are you just talking?"

Ghost's mouth twitched, almost a smile.

"Your uncle was here six months ago," he said smoothly. "Not about the debt. Before the debt. He came to talk to River."

Her hand froze on the bag's strap.

"About what?" she asked.

"About you."

The air in the bay suddenly felt suffocatingly hot. She kept both hands planted flat on the workbench. There was no tool left to adjust, nothing to put away, so she forced herself to stand completely still as the weight settled over her ribs.

It wasn't the sharp panic from the front office; it was a slow, crushing pressure. It was grief. She had carried it for eleven months, and she knew exactly how it felt when a new, jagged piece was added to the load.

"Ghost," she managed to say. "Is that information or a question?"

"Both," he answered.

She reached for the heavy strap of her bag.

"Hey," Ghost’s voice dropped. It wasn't gentle. It was just lower, calibrated for impact. "Colt."

The oxygen evaporated from Nadia's lungs.

Her fingers clamped down on the canvas strap. She knew that name. She hadn't heard it spoken out loud in seven years. Ghost delivered it casually, as if the word had always belonged in the room, holding no theatrical weight. He said it like a man who had been rolling it around in his head all day and finally decided to drop it.

"River wants you in the main building," Ghost said, stepping back into the shadows. "Tonight. When you're done."

She forced her hand to pull the zipper all the way closed.

"Tell him I'll be there," she said.

Ghost gave a single nod and walked out the back door without looking back.

Nadia stood alone at the empty workbench and took three deep, violent breaths.

Her uncle had sat in this compound six months ago, talking to River about her, while she was sitting in Raleigh, completely blind. She had kept to the map she’d drawn, never once calling to check if the roads had washed out.

And she hadn't heard the name Colt in seven years. She hadn't missed it.

One of those things was still true.

She hoisted the bag onto her shoulder and walked out into the night.