Page 151 of Reckless

Neither of us says a word.

Somewhere between Unsilenced and the clubhouse, with the city rolling quietly past outside and his hand warm beneath mine, I realize comfort doesn’t always sound like reassurance.

Sometimes, it sounds like the steady hum of an engine.

It feels like someone taking the keys because they know you’ve carried enough for one day.

And for the first time since I opened that box…

I let someone else carry me home.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

SAGE

Piper is waiting for us at the clubhouse, and this time we tell her everything, including the break-in, the package, and the photograph of her outside the studio. Ghost sits through the entire conversation without flinching, and when Piper turns her attention to him directly, signing instead of routing it through me, something in my chest loosens just slightly.

‘What’s the plan?’ she signs.

‘We’re building one,’ Ghost signs back, steady and unhurried. ‘You’re safe here. That part isn’t up for discussion.’

Piper studies him a moment longer. ‘You know you look like you’re about to give a briefing. Relax, soldier.’

‘I don’t know how to do that,’ he signs, completely serious, and Piper laughs, the sound of it loosening something in the room that’s been tight since I walked through the door with that package.

I expect Piper to head for bed, but she doesn’t.

Instead, she drags a chair up beside Ghost’s and drops into it like she’s done it a hundred times, arms crossed, watching the financial map scroll across his monitor. There’s nothing amused in her face now, none of the teasing from a minute ago.

‘Show me the committee websites,’ she signs. ‘The oversight ones. All of them.’

Ghost glances at me, one eyebrow lifting slightly, like he’s checking whether I want to intervene. I don’t. Something about the set of my sister’s jaw tells me this isn’t a whim.

I give him the smallest nod… let her.

He pulls up the sites, six of them, all bland, all professional in that specific way that means somebody paid real money to make them forgettable. Piper leans in, scrolling through each one fast, the way I’ve watched her scan a contract or a design brief a hundred times, reading it in a language that isn’t quite mine.

‘Same person built all of these,’ she signs, barely thirty seconds in.

‘How do you know that?’ Ghost asks.

‘Font pairing.’ She points at the screen without looking away. ‘Same two fonts, same weights, same spacing between the header and the nav bar, down to what’s probably the pixel. Nobody picks that combination twice by accident. That’s a template. A designer’s signature, whether they meant to leave one or not.’ She pulls two of the sites up side by side. ‘And look… same stock photo, cropped two different ways, on two ‘unrelated’ grant pages. Whoever built this either got lazy, or got rushed, or never thought anyone would put them next to each other.’

I watch Ghost go still, the way he does when something new has just dropped into place. It’s not proof. Not yet. But it’s a thread nobody had ten seconds ago, and I know exactly what that look on his face means for how much sleep he’s about to get tonight.

“That’s useful,” he says aloud, and something in his voice makes it clear he means it a lot more than two words can carry.

Piper sits back, and there’s something steadier in her whole posture than there was a minute ago, like being handed something real to do fixed a piece of her that a week of being protected hadn’t touched.

‘I’ve been sitting in that guest room feeling like a problem everyone’s managing,’ she signs. ‘I’d rather be someone who’s helping fix it.’

My throat goes tight. I press the back of my hand to my mouth and don’t trust myself to sign anything back right away, so I nod, hard, and slip out toward the hallway before either of them can see exactly how close that got me.

I look back to see Ghost sign, ‘Okay. Same time tomorrow. Bring your laptop.’

And Piper, grinning like she’s just been handed exactly what she wanted. ‘Try and stop me.’

***