Page 18 of Monster Mania

“So how are we going to handle this?” Hammer asked.

Ghost checked the magazine in his pistol and slammed it home. “We'll apologize later.”

Hammer grinned. “That works for me.” Ghost headed for the door, and he'd spent years believing that everyone he loved eventually got taken from him. Levi had, and everyone before Levi had. Maybe that was why Ghost had stopped letting himself give a damn. But Angel had somehow slipped past defenses that had held for years.

She might be a liar, she might be trouble—hell, she might have killed Saint herself. Ghost didn't know, but right now, he didn't care. He only knew one thing—someone was hunting their Angel. And if the Nomad Knights wanted her, they'd have to go through the Toxic Monsters to get her. More specifically, they'd have to go through him and Hammer. Ghost almost felt sorry for the motherfuckers—almost.

ANGEL

Angel knew someone had been inside her apartment the second she opened the door; she froze with one hand still wrapped around the knob. Nothing looked wrong, and that was the problem, because everything looked exactly right—too right.

Angel had spent seven years looking over her shoulder. Seven years checking windows, memorizing license plates, and making sure she always had more than one way out of wherever she lived. Paranoia kept people alive—her father had taught her that, and Gabriel had proven it.

She slowly slipped her hand into her purse and wrapped her fingers around the grip of the small handgun she carried. The living room was empty, and so was the kitchen. Angel stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind her. Her eyes moved over everything—the couch, television, coffee table, and bookshelf. She found nothing.

Then, she saw it. The framed photograph on the bookshelf was crooked—just barely. Maybe an inch or so, but Angel never left it that way. Her heart started pounding. “Fuck.” She pulled the gun from her purse and the apartment suddenly felt too small and too quiet.

She checked the kitchen first and found it empty. She walked down the narrow hallway to the bathroom and nudged the door open to find it empty also. She carefully shut the door and walked back to her bedroom. Her heart felt as though it was going to beat out of her damn chest. Angel pressed herself against the wall beside the door and listened, but heard nothing. She pushed it open and found the room empty. Relief hit so hard her knees almost buckled, but it was short-lived because she knew that someone had been there.

Angel walked to the dresser and found that the top drawer was open half an inch. She always closed her drawers—always. “Son of a bitch.” She yanked it open to find her stuff—underwear, socks, and a few shirts. She shoved them aside and panicked when she found that the envelope was gone.

Angel stopped breathing. “No.” She ripped everything out. Clothes hit the floor as she searched for it, but found nothing. “No, no, no.” She dropped to her knees and searched beneath the dresser even though she knew it wouldn't be there. Someone had taken the envelope with the photograph, letter, and the flash drive. It was everything she had left from the night Gabriel died.

Angel sat back on her heels and looked around the room. They'd found her after seven years. Seven fucking years of running, and they'd finally found her. Her phone rang, and Angel screamed. “Jesus!” She pressed a hand against her chest and stared at the phone on the bed and the unknown number. She let it ring until it finally stopped. Then started again, and the same number appeared on the screen.

“Nope.” She declined the call, and a text appeared seconds later.

You shouldn't have come back.

Angel's stomach dropped as she stared at the words, and another message appeared.

Your father should've taught you better.

Her hands started shaking as she deleted both messages. Whoever was texting her was right. She was stupid, and she knew better. Angel realized that she should have saved them or at least have taken screenshots as evidence, but fear wasn't logical. Fear turned a thirty-four-year-old woman back into the twenty-seven-year-old girl who had stood behind a gas station, staring down at the man she'd once planned to marry. There was blood everywhere, and Gabriel's eyes were open. There were three bullet holes in his body, and her father's ring clutched in his hand.

Angel squeezed her eyes shut. “No.” Not now. She couldn't do this now. She stood and shoved the gun back into her purse. She needed to leave and knew that she couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She needed to go now.

Angel grabbed the duffel bag she kept beneath her bed and started throwing clothes into it—jeans, shirts, and underwear. She ran to the bathroom and grabbed her toothbrush, and headed to the kitchen to grab the cash she had stashed in the flour canister. She didn't need much, and she never kept much because things made running harder.

Her phone rang again, and Angel stared at it. It was from an unknown number again. “Fuck you.” She declined it, and a voicemail notification appeared. She didn't listen to it because there was nothing anyone from her old life could say that she wanted to hear.

She zipped the bag, and her eyes landed on the black dress hanging from the closet door. She bought it two weeks ago for no reason. She had no event to attend. She had simply seen it, liked it, and for the first time in years, she bought something she didn't need. Angel reached for it and then stopped when she thought about Halloween and Jackhammer's invitation to his club’s party.

Come to the party. She could still see the hope he'd tried to hide. God, that man was dangerous. Not because of his size, and not because of his patch. Not even because she'd watched him walk back into Monster's Madhouse with bloody knuckles. Jackhammer was dangerous because he wanted things from her—real things like breakfast, another night, and her to come to a Halloween party. Some stupid part of Angel wanted to give them to him—all of them.

Ghost was worse because he didn't ask for much. He watched her as though studying her and waiting to make his next move. Last night, she'd felt him seeing pieces of her she had spent years hiding, and that scared her more than anything, because if Ghost kept looking, eventually he would see everything, and when he did, he'd hate her. They both would.

Angel shoved the dress aside. She wouldn't be here by Halloween. That was the whole point. Her life fit inside a duffel bag for a reason. She tossed it over her shoulder and headed for the front door. Three hard knocks stopped her, and she froze in the hallway. Nobody knew where she lived—nobody who mattered, anyway.

There was another knock. “Angel.” Her heart nearly stopped when she heard Jackhammer’s voice through the door. She recognized it immediately, and relief hit first, followed by anger.

“How the hell did you find me?”

There was a pause before he yelled back, “Open the door.”

“No,” she said.

“Angel,” he said her name like a warning.