The first gunshot cracked through the night.

Nyra ducked on instinct.

Ghost moved before instinct had time to become thought.

One second he stood beside her, broad and black against the headlights.

The next, his arm locked around her waist and he hauled her behind the wrecked Mustang hard enough to steal the air from her lungs.

A bullet punched through the passenger-side window where her head had been half a second ago.

Glass exploded across the asphalt.

Nyra hit Ghost's chest plate with both hands.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Stay down."

"No, absolutely not. Razor knows something."

Another round slammed into the Mustang's hood.

Metal shrieked.

Ghost shoved her lower.

Nyra's knee hit gravel. Pain sparked up her thigh.

"I said stay down."

"And I said I don't take orders from emotionally constipated men in skull masks."

Ghost looked at her.

Even through the mask, she felt the weight of that stare.

"This is not a negotiation."

"Everything is a negotiation if you stop being dramatic long enough."

A black SUV fishtailed into the race lane ahead, doors flying open before the tires stopped moving. Four men poured out with rifles. Another vehicle cut off the far exit. The third rolled slow, headlights bright, engine growling like it had all night to be patient.

Not racers.

Not street thugs.

Hollow Sun.

Nyra saw the patch on one man's sleeve and forgot the bruises.

Her pulse went sharp.

"There," she snapped, pointing. "That's them. That's Hollow Sun."

Ghost's hand closed around her wrist before she could move.

"No."

The word was quiet.

Flat.

Final.

It hit something ugly inside her.

Nyra yanked against his grip. "Let go."

"No."

"Ghost."

His name came out like a warning.

His grip tightened by one controlled degree.

Not painful.

Worse.

Immovable.

"Razor is alive," Ghost said. "You are not running into crossfire for a man who baited you into a kill box."

"He has a name."

"He has a gunman behind him and three vehicles closing in."

"I almost had him."

"You almost died."

Nyra laughed once, sharp enough to cut.

"Welcome to the investigation."

A body dropped near the Challenger.

Kane moved through the smoke with brutal efficiency, rifle tucked tight, barking into comms. "Lucas, eyes."

Lucas's voice crackled back, fast now, no jokes. "Second vehicle has six. Third has two in front, maybe cargo in the back. Signal jammer just came online. I'm losing cameras."

Nik fired from the roof.

One Hollow Sun gunman spun backward, rifle clattering across the street.

Elias roared in from the opposite side in BLACK VEIL's damaged SUV, patched engine screaming like Nyra's repair was personally offended by war crimes. The front bumper clipped a Hollow Sun man and sent him rolling over the hood.

Nyra stared.

"My patch is holding."

Ghost gave her a look.

"What? That was good work."

Another bullet hit the Mustang.

Ghost dragged her with him as he moved.

Not asked.

Dragged.

Nyra stumbled, swore, and tried to twist free.

"Stop manhandling me."

"Stop making it necessary."

"Oh, I hate you."

"No."

She blinked despite herself. "Excuse me?"

Ghost pushed her behind a concrete barrier near the rail yard gate, then turned and fired twice.

Two shots.

Two men down.

No hesitation.

No flourish.

Just bodies hitting pavement as if he had removed mistakes from a page.

Then he looked back at her.

"You don't hate me."

Nyra stared at him.

Smoke curled around his shoulders. Police sirens wailed somewhere too far away to matter. Her Mustang sat crushed and bleeding fluids behind them. Razor was being hauled toward Elias's SUV by Kane, and every answer Nyra needed was slipping away under someone else's control.

And Ghost had the nerve to sound certain.

"You are unbelievable."

"Yes."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"I know."

She lunged past him.

He caught her again.

This time his arm hooked around her middle, lifting her clear off the ground for one furious second.

Nyra kicked.

"Put me down."

A bullet struck the barrier.

Ghost turned his body, shielding her with his back.

She felt the impact through him.

Not the bullet.

His reaction.

Nothing.

No flinch.

No sound.

Just a slight shift of weight as he absorbed the danger like it was weather.

That scared her more than the gunfire.

Because men were not supposed to be that still under attack.

Men were not supposed to treat their own bodies like equipment.

"Ghost," Kane shouted from the SUV. "We need to move."

Razor fought against the restraints, blood running from his nose. "She wants answers, right? Ask her what Milo carried."

Nyra went cold.

Ghost did too.

"What did you say?" she called.

Razor smiled through blood.

There it was again.

The hook.

The cruel little shine of a man who knew exactly which wound to press.

"Milo Quinn wasn't just a driver, sweetheart."

Nyra shoved at Ghost's arm.

"Move."

Ghost didn't.

Razor laughed. "Ask your masked friend why Hollow Sun kept him alive."

The world narrowed.

The gunfire blurred.

Nyra's throat closed around one name.

Milo.

Alive?

Kept alive?

Her fingers dug into Ghost's sleeve.

Ghost didn't look at her.

He looked at Razor.

And something in the air changed so violently even Razor stopped smiling.

Ghost walked toward him.

Slowly.

Kane's expression tightened. "G."

Ghost did not stop.

Razor's face paled.

Good.

Nyra should have been satisfied by that.

She wasn't.

Because fear made men stupid, and dead men gave no answers.

She stepped in front of Ghost.

Bad idea.

Maybe her worst yet.

Every BLACK VEIL weapon shifted away from her automatically. Kane cursed. Lucas said something over comms that sounded like "oh, absolutely not." Nik's rifle froze on a rooftop sightline.

Ghost stopped inches from her.

Nyra tipped her chin up.

"Don't kill him."

His grey eyes locked onto hers.

"He knows where your brother is."

"Exactly."

"He pulled you into a trap."

"And I need him breathing long enough to regret it."