Home - COD Simon Ghost Riley X Female OC

Chapter 21

Emptiness consumed Ghost as he left Price behind with Rossi. It was a familiar quiet. The woman's wounds weren't superficial, but they weren't deep, either. It was messy and careless. They had just needed her out of the way so they could get to Mariana. Anger gripped him. Simon, whom he had carefully locked away for the time being, cradled his heart and kept it untouched. His mind was free to dwell on the injustice of it.

He needed more facts.

He walked to his room, letting the others clean up the mess in the base. He carefully removed and hung up his things. The bodies outside were a twisted relief, she wasn't one of them. If they took her, it meant she was still alive. It shouldn't have been so easy to get in. That was a different conversation, and for later. There was still a possibility that the queen, the sister, would be caught and that would give them some of the leverage they'd been seeking in the first place.

He stopped and looked up, realizing he had wandered out of his room and down the adjacent hall. He stood looking at MJ's open door. She was once again an unfortunate piece of collateral damage in all this. She would suffer, be forced to play some part in the scheme, and to what end?

He walked up to the doorway. There was no way to justify the time and resources it would take to go after her. To make her the focus. He knew that. He could only hope that they would find her along the way again.

That feeling, that hope, choked him as he turned on the light and stepped in. It was slippery and dangerous to feel it, to think on it, especially with nothing to go off of. No leads. They might get what they want if the men they had left behind were successful, but the cartel had what they wanted, too and that left their leverage lacking.

He ran his hand over the back of her chair. It held some discarded clothing. On top of that was a book. He picked it up. Little Women. She had it in her hand the night she invited him in. Here. To her room. She had so gently and so confidently led him straight to this room and told him she wanted him. He hadn't deserved that. She had trusted him blindly since he found her and he hadn't understood why, hadn't bothered asking. Now he might never know.

He kept the book in his hand while he shuffled through a few other things on the shelf in the corner. Other books and magazines. Some he recognized with a sharp pain through his chest. He ignored it. He contemplated his ability to leave and find her on his own. It would be easier to get around, but harder to get her out and bring her back safely. Besides, he didn't have any way to know where she was.

He walked to her bed, the one he had laid in to hold her, and pushed the blankets around. He didn't know what he was looking for. She would have been caught off guard. His nails dug into his hand where he gripped her sheets. She would have been startled, confused. Afraid. He moved her pillow over. It smelled like her. Beneath it was her notebook, the one she had ripped pages out of for him before. He almost left it. He knew he should. It was private, she hadn't offered it to him this time. But what if there was something inside that could help them?

What if it was the last piece of her that he got to hold?

He took it and walked out.

--

Mariana was jostled about for so long that she wasn't sure which way was up. And she was freezing, her bare feet numb and her hands attempting to protect her face and bloodied head. She probably had a concussion, the suspicion worse when they finally stopped and she had to hang herself over the side of the truck to puke. Or it could be motion and shock.

She was pulled out of the truck by two men who pushed her to her knees and blindfolded her. The force seemed unnecessary. She was still weakened from last time they held her, and her feet would be a bloody mess if she tried to run. It had been impossible to determine which direction they were going, and she had lost track of time, unsure when she was conscious and when she wasn't.