by Isabel Wroth
Considering the recent upheaval and her complete break from reality, Dillon admitted she should probably make an appointment.
Damon drove the big white truck; Raid sat beside him in the passenger seat, and the two of them bickered over the health benefits of kale.
Nasa sat behind Raid with her in the back seat, Elka on the floor with her head resting on Dillon's foot, snoring loud enough to be heard over the engine of the truck.
Nasa had his tablet in one huge hand, his fingers moving over the surface with remarkable dexterity.
Ahead of them, a red Suburban carried four of the commandos. A hideous beige truck behind them—towing a white trailer that had six motorcycles, her Bronco, and an arsenal of weapons and equipment inside—carried the rest of the men.
With nothing to contribute to the conversation, and no desire to do so, Dillon stared out the window trying to reconcile herself with the unexpected twist her life had taken.
Her mind occupied with how she was going to keep herself safe in a situation she had no control over.
There hadn't been a single person in the last ten years she trusted completely. Not a single person she relied on to keep her safe—aside from Elka—and being surrounded by strange men who all claimed they'd lay down their lives to protect her was, in a word, uncomfortable.
Every instinct she had screamed at her to run and hide, but she'd done an excellent job of isolating herself. There was no place to go that wouldn't put someone else in danger, and without knowing what she'd done to piss of the Leviathans or how to identify them if they weren't wearing their gang colors, she couldn't be sure of her safety.
“Look, all I'm saying is one more handful of vitamins every day isn't a hardship considering what I'm already choking down,” Raid insisted fervently. “Then I wouldn't have to eat kale with every meal.”
Damon gave a good-natured scoff. “All I'm saying is since I've known you, the only thing you bitch about is your wife's insistence that you eat healthy. Far as I'm concerned, you've got it made.”
“He does have it made,” Nasa commented dryly. “The bitching about kale—which he's been eating since him and Athena got together with no negative side-effects—increases when Athena starts in on some new fad diet and the rest of us are about to suffer the consequences.”
“Aw hell, not again,” Damon groaned.
Nasa made a distracted, dismissive sound. “If it's tofu this time, I'll stage a mutiny and install a biometric lock on the game room and turn it into a second kitchen. Is it tofu, Raid?”
Raid scowled darkly, looking for a moment like a petulant little boy.
“Paleo.”
Dillon's lips twitched with amusement to hear him spit out the word like it was a dirty curse.
“It's actually not as bad as you think it might be.”
Raid turned his fierce scowl on her. “I have two terrible words for you: No. Beer.”
Damon nearly cracked a rib laughing, and Raid—a dark, curly-haired hottie with a voice to put Sam Elliot to shame—punched him in the shoulder.
“I didn't get blown up in Afghanistan and recover from paralysis so I could come home and be told by a woman half my size, I'm not allowed to have a few beers whenever the fuck I want!”
Dillon had learned from years of hyper-vigilance to read people, and despite his bitching, it was clear Raid was absolutely devoted to his wife.
It seemed every woman associated with the Perdition MC was cherished and adored by all the members. A good sign to say the bikers were not misogynists or abusive in any way.
“Orgasm denial,” Nasa commented, still only half listening. “Works wonders when you really want your way.”
“Communem gladio.” She didn't dare look at Nasa even though she could feel him watching her.
“Uh... what?” Raid shot her a furrowed look of confusion.
“It's Latin. It means ‘the sword cuts both ways’,” Nasa answered softly, raising the fine hairs on her body.
Dillon shivered uncontrollably at the intensity behind the response, clamping her teeth together to prevent herself from saying anything further.
Silence descended in the truck for a time before Raid gave a thoughtful, “Huh. You speak Latin?”
“Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, a few Arabic dialects, passable Japanese, a few words in Russian to work with Elka, but I started working on conversational Russian in earnest a month ago.”
“Is that all?” Damon drawled teasingly.
Dillon shrugged again and pulled one foot out from under Elka's face, hugging her knee to her chest.
“I spoke French and Spanish before I got a job working as a translator, and I learned Arabic while I was employed by Virginia PD.
“After, I kept learning more languages. I figured if I ever needed to disappear overseas, it would benefit me to not be limited to countries that only spoke English.”
After leaving the hospital, Dillon wanted nothing to do with anything remotely related to working alongside law enforcement, but she couldn't exactly turn off her ability to speak other languages.
It was against the rules of taking on a new identity to do anything related to her past, but Dillon hadn't felt safe enough to go anywhere other than one of the women's shelters she knew of.
The manager there was the one to connect Dillon with her therapist, and it had taken nearly six months of discussion before Dillon was ready to talk about her past.
In doing so, Dr. White suggested Dillon find normalcy in things she'd once loved. Architecture came to mind, but Dillon wasn't interested in going back to school or finding a job where she had to work in public.
Dr. White posed that perhaps something more destructive might help soothe some of the rage festering inside Dillon and offered her a book on DIY home repair.
The first time Dillon dipped into the huge sum of money that came with her new identity was to buy a house barely fit to be lived in by termites.
It was trashed, inside and out, mold grew in the walls, the foundation was rotting, there were holes in the roof, animals nesting in the crawlspaces, and the septic system was a pit of disgusting nightmares.
Every contractor and inspector she'd asked to come look at it all told her the same thing: bulldoze this piece of shit.
The house had been as run down and hideous as Dillon felt, and she'd been determined to fix it. That first one took her nearly a year to complete, mostly because she insisted on doing the majority of the work herself. It became clear to her pretty early on, Dr. White had been right on the money.
The sense of accomplishment Dillon felt, the happiness that came from taking something broken and ugly, transforming into a beautiful home, had in turn, made Dillon feel like she could be fixed.
So, she'd bought another broken-down house in complete disrepair, one no one else wanted because it was so bad off, and started again.
During her sessions with Dr. White, Dillon decided she wanted to make houses safe for women like her, and the psychiatrist put her in touch with a lawyer who helped Dillon set up the Monumentally Foundation.
With every house Dillon renovated, a piece of her shattered soul felt like it was put back in place.
Seventy-three houses had helped Dillon put herself back together, but one faceless monster spilled in through the cracks and fucked it all up.
A ghost who invaded her home and took away her sanctuary. A ghost who gave her warnings of brutal death, and sent her running straight to his enemies for shelter.
It made no sense.
“What doesn't?” Dillon flinched at Nasa's question, not having realized she'd voiced her thoughts.
Her heart skipped a beat as she glanced at Damon and Raid, neither of them giving her weird looks to say she'd been talking out loud for an extended period.
Nasa's face was lit by the glow of his tablet, casting shadows and highlights across his jaw and cheeks, giving his eyes an eerie shine.
“Nothing” she murmured evasively, but Nasa didn't go back to stari
ng at his tablet. He waited patiently for her to explain, giving her his undivided attention.
He looked prepared to sit there and stare at her the whole ride back if she didn't say something to assuage his curiosity.
“I was thinking about why Ghost would care one way or the other if I lived.”
“Psychopaths rarely make sense to anyone but themselves,” Damon commented reasonably.
Dillon shook her head, setting her chin in her hand as she looked back out the window at the lights passing them by.
“I was paralyzed, vulnerable, he had a knife and plenty of time to hurt me to make me comply. All he did was scare the shit out of me.”
Raid gave a dark sound of humorless mirth. “That wasn't enough?”
Dillon lifted her shoulder as her brain started to process the facts. To analyze and categorize. “Considering everything you've all told me about him? No. He did what he did for a very specific reason, and I want to know what it is.”
“You don't have to worry about it, Dillon. I will find out the truth,” Nasa promised, his voice tight and vibrating with anger.
She snorted softly, wondering how he could possibly expect someone like her to not worry about having a target on her back.
“Do you have a picture of him?” she asked, surprised her voice didn't wobble.
“Of Ghost?” Dillon nodded, and Nasa made a short sound of frustration. “A few, but none of them are his real face. Damon and Raid saw him without the disguises and sat down with a sketch artist for a composite. Why?”
Dillon had a moment of indecision, where she could say she simply wanted to put a face to the name, or tell him the truth. The whole, ugly truth, and not worry about his ability to deal with it.
“The nightmares will be easier to process if my subconscious has details to work through versus shadows and terror.”
“Word to that,” Damon grunted. “My woman wanted to know what he looked like too. Wanted to know what he sounded like, what he'd said to me when he had me and Raid strung up like meat.
“I told her no way, no how would I bring that bastard into our home or make her remember how scared she'd been when I went missing, but that fucker snuck in anyway and the nightmares she had?
"Obviously, not knowing was even worse, because her imagination went wild.
“It took all of one nightmare, one bad dream that woke her up screaming and crying, before we sat down and looked at the sketch together. You know what she said?”
Honestly intrigued, Dillon met Damon's gaze in the rearview mirror.
“What?”
His grin was broad and more than a little mean.
“She said, 'He's not a ghost. He's just a man, and men can die.' Picturing him dead someday made her feel better, which was alright with me.”
Dillon managed a faint smile, glad to hear Damon's woman had a strong head on her shoulders. She was right, too.
Dillon felt Ghost's very real, calloused hands on her body. She'd felt his hip settle against hers where he'd sat beside her, and felt the warmth of his body when he leaned in closer.
He's not a ghost. He's just a man, and men can die.
Dillon's psychologist would likely have an opinion on the choice of mantra, but Dillon hugged it close and repeated it over and over in her mind the whole drive back to Austin.
CHAPTER NINE
Being away from the safety of the compound and not being the one behind the wheel, in complete control of the vehicle, had Nasa riding the edge.
The muscles in his shoulders were torqued with tension, his jaw clenched tight to keep from telling Damon what to do if anyone pulled up behind them or beside them.
Damon knew how to drive all sorts of vehicles in combat situations, he could handle I-35 in his sleep, but even knowing these facts didn't keep Nasa from running through all the possible scenarios of danger.
Nasa had chosen to sit in the back with Dillon so he'd be able to give her his absolute attention should anything set her off, but she seemed perfectly calm.
Deep in thought even as she hugged her knee to her chest, which wasn't safe at all. If they crashed, she'd be pinned, her knee might get driven up into her jaw...
Nasa heard his own molars squeak with how hard he tried to keep quiet, but when Damon swerved slightly to avoid running over a sunk carcass, Nasa's heart rate spiked. Damon might as well have swerved into the other lane into oncoming traffic.
“Don't sit like that, Dillon,” Nasa snapped, his voice harsher than he'd intended. “It's not safe.”
Dillon turned to look at him with a narrow-eyed scowl, but whatever remark she'd been about to make died once she got a good look at his face.
She still gave him a dirty look, but there was a flicker of understanding to her expression. With a short nod, she put her foot down on the floorboard and wrapped her arms around her waist.
Realizing she needed something to hold onto—and Elka couldn't fit between her knees or up on the seat beside her—Nasa twisted around to grab one of the pillows he'd grabbedfrom her place.
“You owe me fifty,” Damon announced, holding a hand out to Raid as Nasa wordlessly offered Dillon the pillow.
It made him feel a little better when she accepted it without a word of protest, wanting to know what Damon and Raid had bet on.
“How long it would take for Nasa to regret his decision not to drive. You lasted nearly an hour, buddy.”
“Shut up and keep both hands on the wheel, fucker,” Nasa growled, reaching forward to snatch the fifty out of Raid's hand before he could pass it to Damon.
“Testy,” Damon tsked,. “Is your blood sugar low again? You didn't bring those jelly beans you're always munching on. I can stop and get you a snack—”
The fifty made a crunching noise as Nasa balled his fist to shake it at Damon.
“Which I will promptly shove up your ass! We've got a thirty-minute lead on the next satellite, and we're not stopping to let the damn thing catch up and start tracking our movements unless someone is dying.”
Raid shot Damon a smirk, the two of them clearly in cahoots with the intent to make Nasa blow a gasket. Bastards.
“What if I have to take a leak?” Raid chortled.
“Put your dick out the window. Aim for the himbo driving that ugly-ass truck behind us.”
“Am I supposed to do the same thing if I have to pee?” Dillon asked.
Nasa looked sideways at her, somewhat surprised to find the little smile curving the corners of her lips took the edge off his rising, paranoia-fueled rage.
“There's a bucket in the back for girls. We can toss it out the window.”
Dillon gave a strangled snort. “I prefer a toilet, thanks. There's a rest stop not far from here.”
Horror suffused every cell of his body as he imagined Dillon walking into a rest stop bathroom.
“Fuck that! Every hour, 500,000 bacterial cells per square inch are left behind on a public toilet seat. No way in hell, are you putting your bare ass on that filth.”
Her eyes danced with amusement now, her smile wide and silly.
“Girls squat, Nasa. Strong thighs. My ass would never touch the plastic.”
“No, but you'll track it back into my car on your shoes. Elka will be completely contaminated. I wouldn't be caught dead going into a public bathroom without a full hazmat suit—”
“Did you bring one?” Damon asked calmly- “Cause now I gotta piss like a mother fucker, but I'm remembering that time I waded through a river of shit. Surely, a public bathroom can't be worse.”
Nasa let his head fall back against the seat, ready to be home, safe behind the walls of his compound, beneath the layers of steel and concrete.
“I did not bring one. I was in a hurry. But pull over, piss in a disgusting urinal that's been hosed down with thousands of gallons of urine, see if I care. Enjoy that new flesh-eating bacteria crawling all over you from the splash back.”
“Isn't urine sterile?” Raid pointed out, just to fuck with him.
Helpfully, Dillon set him straight. “Technically, it's only sterile if it's still in your bladder. As soon as you start to go, skin cells are sloughed off and whatever sweat, yeast, and bacteria is living on your junk gets introduced to the stream.”
Damon grumbled under his breath while he reached forward to the phone hooked into the dash, hooked into the Bluetooth. They could all hear Veracruz answer with a gruff, “What?”
“I gotta take a leak, Sarge, but big brother back here has me convinced my dick will fall off if I hit a public bathroom. Find us a spot to pull over.”
The phone spewed out the raucous sound of four commandoes laughing their balls off.
“Alright, princess. I'll see what I can do.”
Ten minutes later, their three-car caravan pulled off onto a shoulder specifically made for truckers, and to Nasa's disgust, every man got out to take the opportunity to pee.
He was absolutely shocked when Dillon hopped out with a bottle of water, a little green case in her hands, and bold as brass found a spot beside Duke.
“What the hell?” Duke squealed, acting like Dillon was about to drop her pants right next to him.
Nasa had the same thought and was rushing to get a towel from the back to shield her when she drawled,
“Eyes front, soldier. Nothing to see here.”
But there most certainly was something to see. Dillon had a hand and some... thing between her legs, her pants still firmly situated around her hips, nothing on display but the top of her belly, and was pissing like a guy.
Standing up.
Right there on the side of the road with Elka squatting to do her own business right beside her, and Duke was still staring.
Nasa was impressed. Shocked, but impressed. Dillon finished up, wiggled to settle her pants, and used the bottle of water to rinse off her gadget. But he had to know.
“What the fuck is that?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “A Tinkle Bell.”
“A what?”
“You act like you've never seen a woman pee standing up.” Dillon chortled, her tiger eyes dancing with amusement as she showed him the spout-like device.
