Nyra smiled.

It was not a friendly smile.

Something flickered in his eyes.

There. A crack in the mask that had nothing to do with the skull covering his face.

Ghost heard what she didn't say.

That made him dangerous in a way guns weren't.

Nyra turned back to the SUV and slammed the tool drawer shut harder than necessary.

"Your patch is done. The stitches are done. You can pay me and take your haunted little roadshow somewhere else."

"Nyra," Ghost said.

Her name in his voice did something stupid to the back of her neck.

She hated it.

Hated him a little for having that voice. Like gravel, smoke, and bad decisions.

She grabbed the invoice pad from beside the register and started writing numbers too aggressively.

Kane looked at the total when she tore the page off and handed it to him.

His eyebrows shot up. "This is robbery."

"No," Nyra said. "Robbery is cheaper. This is emergency labor, biohazard cleanup, transmission trauma, floor damage, emotional distress, and being called into whatever illegal nightmare this is without snacks."

Lucas leaned over Kane's shoulder. "She itemized emotional distress."

"Damn right I did."

Reed looked at Ghost. "Can we keep her?"

"No," Kane said.

Ghost didn't answer.

That silence was worse.

Nyra looked at him despite herself.

He had gone still again, but this time the stillness felt different. Less like threat. More like calculation. He was deciding something, and Nyra had the terrible feeling she had just become part of the math.

"You should forget the insignia," Ghost said.

The words landed soft.

Too soft.

Nyra's smile vanished.

Around them, the garage noise faded into the background until only the bass upstairs and the drip of fluid beneath the SUV remained.

"I don't forget things that matter."

Ghost's eyes sharpened.

"How that symbol matters to you?"

Nyra folded the invoice slowly.

"My brother vanished chasing people connected to that symbol."

The silence afterward was not empty.

It had teeth.

Kane looked sharply at Ghost.

Lucas's expression lost its humor.

Even Reed stopped pretending to be bored.

Ghost did not move.

But something in him changed.

Nyra saw it, or thought she did. A tightening through the shoulders. A small shift of his right hand. The kind of reaction a less observant person might miss.

Nyra was not less observant.

"Did you recall anything," she said.

Ghost's gaze locked on hers.

"No."

Too fast.

Not by much.

But enough.

Nyra laughed once, without humor.

"Oh, you're bad at lying."

Ghost took one step closer.

The garage reacted immediately. Reed straightened. Lucas shifted off the tool bench. Elias turned from the entrance. Nik watched from the stairs without blinking.

Nyra stayed where she was.

Ghost stopped in front of her, close enough that most people would have looked away.

She didn't.

"Stop looking," he said.

"What?"

"For him."

Nyra's breath caught before she could hide it.

There it was.

Confirmation, ugly and undeniable.

Ghost knew.

Maybe not everything. Maybe not enough. But he knew there was a him. A brother. A missing person buried somewhere beneath contracts and blood and acronyms men like him used to make murder sound professional.

Nyra's fingers curled around the invoice.

"Get out," she said.

Kane muttered, "That's probably a good idea."

Ghost didn't look away from her.

"People who chase BLACK VEIL don't survive."

Nyra stepped closer this time.

Not smart.

Not safe.

But the anger had gone hot enough to burn the fear clean out of her.

"My brother didn't survive doing nothing either."

Ghost's eyes darkened.

For one second, something almost human moved there.

Regret, maybe.

Nyra didn't want it.

Regret did not bring people home.

She shoved the invoice against his chest plate. Hard enough that Kane's hand twitched toward his weapon before he caught himself.

Ghost didn't react.

Didn't touch her.

Didn't look down.

"Pay your bill," Nyra said. "Then get the hell out of my garage."

Lucas whistled softly.

"Not the time," Kane snapped.

Elias moved first, probably because he had the best survival instincts in the room. He took the invoice from where it remained pressed against Ghost's chest and pulled a black card from a tactical wallet.

Nyra walked to the register with him, hands steady through sheer spite.

The card cleared.

Of course it did.

Men like this always had money.

Blood money bought silence in places like this, but Nyra had never been good at staying quiet.

Outside, the first thin edge of dawn bruised the alley blue.

Elias started the SUV.

The engine coughed, rattled, then turned over with a rough growl.

Nyra felt a small insulted pride despite herself.

Still got it.

Reed climbed in carefully with Lucas's help. Nik disappeared through the side door first to check the alley. Elias took the driver's seat. Kane lingered near Ghost, speaking too low for Nyra to hear.

Ghost remained in the center of the garage.

Looking at her.

Nyra hated that she looked back.

He should have seemed ridiculous in the growing morning light. A giant masked mercenary standing between oil stains and tool carts, blood on his gloves, skull face turned toward a girl with grease under her nails.

Instead he looked like the beginning of a problem she was already too tired to survive.

"Nyra Quinn," he said quietly.

Her jaw tightened. "What?"

"Stop looking."

She smiled then.

Small.

Mean.

Honest.

"Make me."

Kane actually whispered, "Fuck."

Ghost stared at her for a long moment.

Then he turned and walked toward the SUV.

Nyra watched him go because apparently she had no interest in making good decisions.

At the passenger door, he paused.

Not long.

Just enough.

Then his gloved hand reached inside the vehicle and pulled something from the damaged rear compartment. A small black device, cracked along one side, no bigger than her palm.

He looked at it.

Then at her.

Nyra's pulse thudded.

The tracker.

She knew what it was before she understood why.

Ghost closed his fist around it and got into the SUV.

The doors shut.

The armored vehicle rolled out of her garage into the thin blue morning, patched together by her hands and held upright by luck, money, and whatever terrible gravity surrounded the man in the mask.

Nyra stood beneath the open garage door until the taillights disappeared.

Then she turned back toward the workbench.

A smear of blood marked the concrete where Reed had been sitting.

A black thread from Ghost's glove had caught on the jagged metal beneath the SUV.

And beneath her ribs, the old ache that had lived there since her brother vanished woke up sharp and hungry.

Nyra picked up the thread.

Smiled without warmth.

"Yeah," she whispered to the empty garage. "I'm definitely looking."