Chapter 2 - The Tracker Beneath My Fenders and the Warning from the Ghost
The darkness in the kitchen was instant and suffocating.
I hit the switch by the refrigerator, my heart pounding so violently I could
feel the thud of it in my teeth. Outside the window, through the half-drawn
plastic blinds, a sleek black sedan with tinted windows and dead headlights was
idling directly across the street from my building.
It wasn't Kieran's car. Kieran's transport was a custom armored Suburban that
sat at the corner under the glow of the halogen streetlamp. This vehicle was
low, narrow, and deliberately hidden in the blind spot between two overgrown oak
trees.
Kieran’s phone was already pressed to his ear.
"North side of the street," he said into the receiver. His tone was chillingly
calm, the voice of a general directing pieces on a board. "Ohio plates. Two
occupants. Do not engage on the block. Follow them when they move and secure the
perimeter."
He tapped the screen, ending the call, and slid the phone back into his pocket.
In the dim amber glow filtering up from the streetlamps, his profile looked
carved out of granite.
"Who are they?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the hum of the
refrigerator. "Kieran, who is watching my apartment?"
He turned to face me. Even in the shadows, I could feel the weight of his
attention, heavy and suffocatingly intense. He didn't offer a platitude. He
didn't tell me I was imagining things.
"People who are trying to find leverage," Kieran said. "And because you saved
Garrett’s life in that trauma bay, they think you might be mine."
They think you might be mine.
The words hung in the cold air of the kitchen like smoke.
"I'm not anyone's," I whispered, though the tremor in my voice betrayed the
truth. "I'm an ER nurse. I keep my head down. I raise my son. I don't belong in
whatever war you're fighting."
Kieran stepped closer. He didn't touch me this time, but the sheer physical
gravity of him was enough to pin me in place. "You don't belong in it. But the
moment you stepped between my security team and Garrett’s gurney, the board
shifted. You made yourself visible, Mila."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sleek, matte-black key fob, setting
it on the counter with a quiet click.
"Starting tomorrow morning, you don't drive your Civic," he said.
"What?"
"There is an armored Lexus parked in the garage two blocks from here. Space
forty-two. The title and registration are in your name. A private driver will be
waiting outside your building for every shift at St. Clement’s."
A spike of hot, defensive anger flared through my chest, cutting through the
terror. "You can't just buy your way into managing my life, Kieran. I don't need
your car. I don't need your driver. I've taken care of Noah and myself for five
years without a bodyguard."
"And five years ago, you didn't have the Thorne syndicate tracking your license
plates," he replied, his voice dropping lower, vibrating with an authority that
brooked no argument. "This isn't a gift, Mila. It's a precaution. If you won't
do it for yourself, do it for the boy sleeping in the other room."
The mention of Noah drained the fight right out of me. He knew exactly where my
armor ended and where my heart began.
Kieran watched the surrender settle into my shoulders. He reached out, his
knuckles brushing against my jawline with impossible softness. "I will not let
anything happen to you. Either of you. Do you understand me?"
"Why?" I asked, looking up into his dark eyes. "Why do you care this much?"
His gaze searched mine for a long, breathless moment. "Because for the last ten
years, every person who entered my life did so with an open hand, waiting to see
what they could take from me. You're the only person who stood in front of me
with blood on your hands and told me to get out of your way so you could save a
dying man."
He didn't wait for a response. He leaned down, pressed a warm, lingering kiss to
the crown of my head, and walked toward the door.
"Lock both deadbolts," he said without looking back. "The street is clear. My
men will remain on the corner until sunrise."
The door clicked shut. The deadbolt turned under my shaking fingers.
The next morning was a blur of cold gray light, rushed oatmeal, and Noah
complaining that his throat still tickled. By the time I dropped him off at his
preschool classroom and drove my battered 2012 Civic toward St. Clement’s for my
afternoon shift, my nerves were frayed to a wire.
I had ignored the key fob on the counter. Taking his armored car felt like
crossing a line from which there was no returning. It felt like accepting his
world.
I pulled into the hospital’s multi-level employee parking garage, winding up to
the third floor where the nurse parking was designated. The concrete structure
was dim, smelling of damp exhaust and salt from the winter slush outside.
As I stepped out of my car, locking the door with a chirp of the alarm, a figure
stepped out from behind the heavy concrete pillar near the stairwell.
I gasped, dropping my keys onto the asphalt.
"Easy, Nurse Hartley," a voice said, raspy and dry. "I didn't mean to make you
jump."
Garrett Voss stepped into the yellow pool of overhead lighting.
He looked radically different from the bleeding, half-dead man who had been
wheeled into my trauma unit three weeks ago. He was wearing an expensive
camel-hair coat over a dark suit, his left arm still resting in a discreet black
sling beneath the fabric. He was thinner than Kieran, his features sharper, his
hazel eyes carrying a nervous, kinetic energy that Kieran’s icy composure never
permitted.
"Garrett?" I breathed, my hand pressed against the collar of my scrub top. "What
are you doing here? You're supposed to be in outpatient physical therapy."
"I had a follow-up with Farrell," he said, gesturing vaguely toward the hospital
elevators. Then his eyes flicked down to my car, and his expression hardened.
"Kieran told you to stop driving this piece of junk."
"It's my car."
"It's a target," Garrett said bluntly. He knelt down with a slight wince,
favoring his wounded shoulder, picked up my dropped keys, and handed them back
to me. His fingers were cold. "You shouldn't be here, Mila."
"I work here."
"I don't mean the hospital," Garrett murmured, stepping closer, his voice
dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that sent a cold shudder down my spine.
"I mean with my brother. You think Kieran is a protector. You think that because
he's quiet and he writes checks to charities and he speaks to you gently, he's
safe."
"I know who your family is," I said defensively.
Garrett let out a bitter, humorless laugh. "No, you don't. You know the
sanitized newspaper version. You know the real estate holding company. You don't
know what our father left behind, and you don't know what Kieran has had to do
to keep the wolves from tearing it apart."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Garrett looked around the empty, echoing parking garage, his jaw clenching.
"Because Kieran has a blind spot right now. Marcus—his head of logistics, the
man who runs the south docks—is moving against him. Marcus thinks Kieran has
gone soft because of his father's death. And now Kieran is spending his evenings
sitting outside a walk-up in Pilsen instead of securing the city."
Garrett reached inside his coat, pulled out a small, magnetic black box about
the size of a matchbook, and held it up between his fingers.
"I pulled this off your rear wheel well two minutes before you walked out of the
stairwell," Garrett whispered, holding the GPS tracker under the fluorescent
light. "It doesn't belong to Lorenzo Thorne. It belongs to Marcus."
May you like
My breath hitched. The air left my lungs in a cold rush.
"Marcus is tracking you," Garrett said, his eyes drilling into mine with frantic
urgency. "Not to hurt Kieran directly. But to find the moment when Kieran is
alone with you, away from the perimeter. If you don't walk away from my brother
right now, Mila, you're going to get yourself—and that little boy of
yours—killed in the crossfire."
