What the hell just happened?

Riley wrapped his arms across his bare stomach. Logan was lying. Again. That muscle in his cheek had twitched in time to the frantic flutter of Riley’s heart as soon as Riley had pushed him about his grandfather. Just. Freaking. Swell. He’d found another of Logan’s buttons, but had no idea why pushing it had launched Logan back into flying douche bag mode.

But even though Logan had bolted—again—Riley didn’t have the slightest urge to curl up and whimper in a corner this time. For one thing, he had a job to do and a production-crazed best friend who wouldn’t stand for it.

But for another, Logan wasn’t as good at hiding his emotions as he thought. He still cared, dang it. Every stroke of his fingers on Riley’s skin last night, every kiss, every long slow thrust into Riley’s ass while he murmured endearments had said so, as clearly as if he’d shouted it in the middle of Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Besides, Logan may not have said the words, but his actions just now screamed, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

This might be the first time in the history of forever when that excuse made anyone feel triumphant rather than eviscerated. Oh yeah. His stubborn Galahad was back on his white horse, and in order to boot him out of the saddle and save him from his own stupid honor, Riley needed to figure out why.

He scrambled out of bed and into the shower, his brain abuzz with the thrill of intellectual pursuit. While he washed his hair and scrubbed the scent of sex off his body, he cataloged possible sources in his mind, each new idea spawning others like the hydra sprouted heads.

When Logan had originally told him the story of his grandfather’s experience, he’d kept it so generic that Riley had focused only on the ghost war legend in his research. Clearly that had been wrong, wrong, wrong.

There was more to this story than frontier tragedy, and Riley would find it. Because degree or no degree, he could be totally freaking relentless tracking down the connections, the answers, the reasons why.

This time, he had something to go on. This time, he had a name. This time, he knew there was something to find.

And this time, he had one hell of an incentive to get it right.

All the way home, Logan mentally kicked his own ass for being such a clueless loser. He’d dedicated himself to his purpose, and he should be strong enough to stick to it. He had no business indulging himself, especially at Riley’s expense.

As he climbed off his bike behind his apartment building, his cell phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Deke, one of his old trucker buddies.

“Yo.”

“Logan. I been trying to reach you all night.”

“Sorry. I was—”

“I saw that guy.”

Logan’s stomach plummeted. That guy. The ex-ghost in the picture. The one he’d been searching for for almost seven years. Fuck it to hell and back. What unbelievably shitty timing. “Where?”

“Truck stop in Chehalis.”

“You pick him up?”

“Nah. He was scavenging food in back of the Burger King, but he bolted when I got close, maybe heading for the train station. Might be riding the rails. No way any trucker I know would let that guy in his rig. Stinks like month-old fish dipped in piss.”

“Nice image, Deke.”

Deke’s deep chuckle rolled over the line. “Call ’em like I see ’em. Anyway, I spread the word. Everyone’ll be on the lookout for him. Hell, you’d be able to smell him coming from across the state line.”

“Thanks, man. I owe you.” Not that Logan would be around to make good on that debt. Maybe he’d leave Deke the Harley. The guy had always had lousy taste in bikes. “Later.”

He climbed the stairs, entered his craptastic furnished apartment, and tossed his helmet onto the threadbare recliner on his way to the bathroom. After splashing cold water on his face, he stared at his hollow-eyed reflection in the spotty mirror. What the hell had he been thinking last night? He was old enough now to tell the difference between a good idea and total fricking disaster.

Not like back then. In his first year of college, he’d been the typical stupid teenager masquerading as an adult, adjusting to the heady freedom of college after growing up with his father’s image-conscious rules. He’d scored a jackpot with his roommate—a seriously gorgeous gay guy who had his own family drama. He and Trent had bonded over contraband beer and controlling-asshole-dad stories, and transitioned to fuck-buddy status within the first week.

That night, the night that had changed the course of his life, he’d been studying in a half-assed way, waiting for Trent to return from the final auditions for the winter production of Blithe Spirit. Trent had been confident he’d land the lead, and Logan had plans for a suitable celebration. Who knew? Maybe they’d take their relationship up a notch. Boyfriends? He wasn’t sure he was ready to go that far, but hey, anything was possible.

A key rattled in the lock, but instead of bursting through the door and posing in his own virtual spotlight as usual, Trent stalked into the room with a script rolled in his fist and face-planted on his bed.

“Trent?” Logan set his book aside and got up to close the door. “You okay, man?”

“Understudy.” Trent’s voice, muffled by pillows, lacked its customary confidence. He tossed the script on the floor with a flick of his fingers.

“What?”

“I didn’t get the part.” He rolled over and flung one arm out and the other over his eyes. “Un-fucking-believable. Three callbacks. My chemistry with the rest of the cast was off the charts. The director told me it was the best audition he’d seen in years.”

“So why didn’t you—”

“Because I’m a freshman. I have to pay my duuuuues.” He smacked the side of the bed. “He made me the understudy, like it’s some kind of reward.”

Logan sat sideways in Trent’s desk chair, his knees against the bed. “Well, what is it you theater geeks say on opening night? Break a leg? You could always hope the lead guy actually does.”

Trent peered out from under his arm. “Dude. Do not mock the sacred traditions of theater.”

“Sorry. So who got the part?”

“Wayne fucking Peterson. Just because he’s a senior. Asshole.”

Logan frowned. “But isn’t he a friend of yours? Part of that club that spends all its time hanging out in cemeteries?”

“We don’t hang out in cemeteries.”

“You so do. Three times in September and once already this month.”

“We reenact. We don’t ‘hang out.’”

Logan chuckled and poked Trent in the ribs. “Right. You’re . . . what? Spirit stalkers? Ghost groupies?”

“Legend trippers, dickhead. As if you didn’t know.”

Yeah, some people liked bungee jumping or skydiving or extreme sports. The thing that turned Trent’s crank was hanging out in cemeteries, hoping to get goosed by a ghost. Go figure.

“Can’t say I see the appeal, but whatever.”

Trent toed off his trainers and turned on his side to face Logan. “It’s the adventure, dude, a total rush, like real-life theater. If we do it right, we could raise the legend.”

“Raise it?”

“Make it happen again.”

“Have you ever succeeded?”

“Not here. Not yet. But people legend trip all over the world. A group in France actually saw a werewolf.”

“You mean they saw someone shift from man to wolf?” Trent shook his head, but didn’t offer an explanation. Fine. Guess we’re pulling teeth then. “Vice versa, wolf to man?”

“No, but they saw the wolf.”

Logan raised his eyebrows. “And that means it’s a werewolf . . . how?”

“Dude. The last wolf in France was shot in 1947. It had to be a shifter.”

“Or else it was somebody’s German shepherd.”

Trent sat up and propped his back against the wall. “Fine. Be an asshole. But I’ve witnessed something myself. Back home, this one college had a ouija board door.”

“You mean a door with a ouija board on it?”

“No. You’d ask it questions, and it’d slam once for yes and twice for no.”

Logan snorted. “Seriously?”

“Hey, it was right for me, both times.”

“Yeah? Did you ask it if legend tripping was a bogus waste of time?”

Trent threw a pillow at him. “No, asshole.” He ducked his head, tracing a pattern on his blanket with a finger. “I asked it if my parents would be cool with me coming out.”

“That didn’t take a haunted door to figure out. From what you’ve told me about your folks—”

Trent’s face closed up shop, his usual sparkle completely snuffed. Just fucking great. As if Trent wasn’t already bummed enough about the play, Logan had made him feel worse. “Shit, man. Sorry.”

Trent shrugged. “You know the worst thing about losing the part to Peterson? Other than, you know, not having the part? That asshole will get major tripping points.”

“Points? Your club has points?”

“It’s not a club, dude. We’re serious about this.”

“And points are serious? How can he get points for a Noël Coward play? It’s not like the thing is based on an actual ghost story.”

“It still counts. He’ll be reenacting the story, re-creating it every night. He gets points.”

“Who made that stupid rule?”

“Peterson did.”

“Figures.”

Trent’s mouth drooped. “I know, right?”

Logan’s chest tightened with the need to do something, anything, to reignite Trent’s spark, but it wasn’t as if he could magically give him the part in the play. But maybe there was another way to cheer him up, even if it made the hair stand up on Logan’s own arms.

Yeah, he and Trent had shared some family history, but Logan had never told anyone about his grandfather, not after the lessons his father had pounded into him about the fragility of public opinion.

So don’t tell him the whole story. He’ll only care about the ghosts anyway. Leave Granddad out of it. He could give Trent a harmless thrill, let him score off Peterson, and then they’d come back here and banish the rest of his depression with some leisurely sex.

“Know what, man? Fuck your parents and fuck the director and fuck Noël Coward.”

A smile wavered on Trent’s mouth. “Might have gone for it with Coward, if he, you know, wasn’t dead, but I’ll pass on the others, thanks.”

“Noël Coward ghosts aren’t real ghosts, dude. Too mannered and polite. Real ghost stories are raw. Messy.” He dropped his voice into Cryptkeeper range. “Daaaangerous.”

“Oh, and you’re an expert, I suppose?”

“Hey. I’m a Portland native.”

Trent hugged his knees. “Non sequitur much?”

“So sadly ignorant.” Logan shook his head, pasting a pitying look on his face. “I’ll cut you some slack, since you come from one of those little bitty New England states—some island or other, wasn’t it?”

Trent shoved Logan’s knee with his foot. “Fuck you.”

“You can’t be expected to know the really big stories from really big places like Oregon.” Logan grinned. “Ever hear the story of Danford Balch?”

“What do you think?” Trent scowled at him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Get on with it.”

“Well then. Just warning you, I plan to be an architect, not a singer.” Logan cleared his throat. “‘Coooooome and listen to a story ’bout a man named Dan. A poor pioneer and a tortured fam’ly man.’”

Trent barked out a laugh. “Dude. Is that the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies?”

“If you don’t recognize it, my singing’s worse than I thought. God knows the stupid tune’s been stuck in my head after you made me watch that marathon with you last week.”

“It was for your own good. You young people today have no appreciation for the classics.”

“I’m only two months younger than you. And excuse me—classics? The Beverly Hillbillies?”

Trent flipped off his script. “Beats Noël Coward.”

“Then get a load of this.” Logan grabbed a pen off the desk and held it like a microphone. “On this very day in 1859, Danford Balch was hanged for murdering his son-in-law. But did he stay dead? You be the judge.”

He told the whole story—leaving out references to his family, of course. “And they say the two families still battle it out on the banks of the creek that bears Balch’s name—ghosts locked in a bloody feud—forever.” He bowed his head. “The end.”

Trent nudged his knee again. “Anybody you know actually witness this?”

“Let’s say . . .” Logan swallowed, his stomach clenching. Don’t mention Granddad. “. . . a friend of a friend.”

“Dude, that’s a quintessential hallmark of a true urban legend.” Trent’s blue eyes sparkled. “Come on. Tonight. Let’s do it.”

Logan peered out the window. It was raining, the businesslike showers of October in Portland. Had he really thought this would be a good idea? “Maybe we could wait until it’s not raining?”

Trent scrunched up his face and tossed his discarded shoe at Logan. “A native Oregonian, afraid of a little sprinkle? You said it yourself: he died this very day. What better time to catch sight of his ghost?”

“Daylight, blue skies, and about twenty additional degrees in temperature,” Logan grumbled, unease creeping up his spine like a palm-sized spider. His grandfather’s debacle had occurred on this date too. Not that he was superstitious—much—but maybe it wasn’t the best night to mention this story.

“You’re missing the point of a good legend trip. It’s not supposed to be cushy. It’s supposed to be authentic.”

“Then why does your group end up at the Heathman Hotel or Old Town Pizza half the time?”

“Hey, those places are haunted. It’s documented.”

Logan snorted. “You read it on Wikipedia, so it’s gotta be true.”

“Don’t mock—”

“The sacred traditions of legend tripping. Got it.”

Trent stood and pulled Logan to his feet with a come-hither smile, hooking his fingers in Logan’s belt loops and snugging their groins together. “Wouldn’t it be hot to blow each other out there?”

“Is that what you do in your cemeteries? Blow each other?”

Trent grinned, grinding against him. “Jealous?”

“No.” Yes. Maybe?

“Come on. Nobody will see us but the ghosts.” Trent leaned forward and licked Logan’s earlobe. “If we’re lucky.”

“The park’s not open this late.”

“So we’ll sneak in. Even better.” He slanted a look from under his lashes. “Please?”

Logan ignored the dread creeping up on him. His grandfather’s ghosts were probably as real as that ridiculous fortune-telling door. For Trent, surely he could man up for a couple of uncomfortable hours in a dark soggy park. That is, as long as nobody caught them—his dad would freak if his son got caught violating a city ordinance.

“Okay. But we’ll have to be careful.”

They left Trent’s car on Upshur, down the street from the Lower Macleay trailhead. The parking lot was deserted, thank God, but there was enough light from cars passing on the Thurman Street overpass that they didn’t have to risk turning on their flashlights until they got into the trees. Logan’s belly fluttered like a captive bird. Nerves? Excitement? Fear? He wasn’t sure, but he began to see the attraction legend tripping had for a thrill-seeker like Trent.

They reached the Witch’s Castle sooner than Logan expected. It sat back from the bank of Balch Creek, at the Y intersection with the Wildwood trail.

“Hunh.” Trent played the beam of his flashlight over the building. “I thought it would be bigger.”

It wasn’t a particularly impressive sight, for sure. Roofless, with empty windows staring out at the woods, its rough stone walls defaced with graffiti. A flight of shallow stone steps on either end led to the upper story. On the ground floor, a couple of empty doorways gaped at the creek.

Trent poked his flashlight through the smaller door, illuminating a small windowless room, its walls tagged with a pentagram and one or two Fuck Yous. “This must be where the ghosts come to take a piss.” Next to the narrow room was a wider alcove with a concrete slab floor. “And this must be where they park their bikes.”

Logan ducked under the overhang and beckoned for Trent to join him. “It’s got a roof and a floor. It works for me.”

After they sat with their backs to the wall, Trent opened his backpack and pulled out two artisan microbrews. Although Logan’s nerves still skittered at every noise in the woods—afraid more of discovery by very real cops than of ghostly pioneers—he chuckled.

Trent paused while opening his beer. “What?”

“You. Trust-fund Trent and your old-money silver-spoon sensibilities. Even when you want to get wasted, it’s an upscale wasted.”

“Fuck off, politico spawn. We all have our issues.” He clinked the necks of their bottles together. “Cheers.”

The edge of excitement that had fueled their arrival dissipated from the cold and damp, despite the slight alcohol buzz from the beer. No wonder Trent’s legend trippers stuck to hotels and bars when they could tear themselves away from cemeteries. Had to be more interesting—not to mention warmer—than this.

Logan slung an arm across Trent’s shoulders and pulled him close—to stave off hypothermia rather than as a prelude to anything else, but Trent immediately snuggled close and nuzzled his neck. Logan’s dick made a valiant effort to respond, but the concrete slab under his ass was fucking cold. Not exactly a mood-enhancer.

“So.” Logan shifted on his tailbone, trying to get comfortable. “Your haunted ouija door warned you about you parents’ reaction to you being gay. What else was it right about?”

Trent took a swig of his beer and rested the bottle on his knee. “I asked if I’d meet the love of my life if I stayed in Rhode Island.” He cuddled closer, placing a hand on Logan’s thigh. “It said no.”

Logan’s heart lurched. Did Trent just say—? Did he mean he thought Logan was—? Sweat broke out on his forehead. Not ready to go that far. Not yet. He slid his arm from around Trent’s neck. “Look, man. I—”

Trent scooted away, hurt clearly visible even in the funky shadows cast by the flashlight. “Yeah, sorry. Guess it was too much to hope you’d feel—”

“It’s not that.” Hadn’t Logan been toying with the idea of more himself? “But we’ve known each other a month and a half. You’re my best friend. Maybe if we give it some time—”

“Fuck time. Time sucks. You never know what’ll happen in the next year, the next month—hell, the next minute. Everything could change, and shit you counted on, shit you believed in—” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “One fucking conversation, one wrong word, and poof. Gone.”

“If you mean your parents—”

“Fuck my parents.” He dropped his hands and stood, looming over Logan. “I thought I could count on you.”

“You can.” Logan scrambled up. Tonight, in the uncertain light, Trent’s eyes shone almost green, with the manic gleam that always heralded the worst of his reckless behavior. “I’m here for you, I swear. But this isn’t the best place to have this convo. Maybe—”

Trent’s empty beer bottle slipped from his fingers and shattered against the alcove’s concrete floor. “Oh my fucking God. Logan. Look at that!”

Logan whirled, and all the hair lifted on his arms and the back of his neck under his damp hoodie. A line of mist snaked across the clearing. Not the usual Portland gray fog—this mist was tinged a bilious green and it sparked like a downed power line.

“I’ve got a b-b-bad feeling about this. Let’s get out of here.” He shoved his empty in the backpack and searched for the pieces of Trent’s broken bottle in the shimmer of arcane light.

“Are you kidding? This is bigger than anything I’ve ever heard of. Bigger than that French werewolf sighting. Bigger than the ouija board door. And it trumps Blithe Spirit all to fucking hell. Peterson will shit his pants when he hears about this.” Trent smacked Logan’s biceps. “Dude, you are the king of legend trippers.”

From the three paths that converged at Witch’s Castle, amorphous balls of light pushed out of the mist, and Logan’s heart tried to bound out of his chest. “Seriously. We need to leave. Now.” He reached for the last piece of glass near Trent’s foot.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” Trent whispered. “Orbs. Actual orbs. Dozens of them.” He punched Logan’s shoulder, and Logan stumbled, slicing his left palm on the jagged shard.

Pain shot up Logan’s arm as blood dripped onto the muddy ground. “Shit.” He pulled the hem of his T-shirt from under his hoodie and bunched it in his fist to stem the flow.

Trent gasped and let it out on a slow, “Ooooooohhhh.”

“It’s not that bad.” Logan peeked under the shirt, wincing at the length of the gash. “I can—”

“Look, man. Just look at that.”

Logan looked, and his breath stalled in his chest. The formerly featureless blobs had resolved into distinct figures, and more were joining them by the second, stepping out of the mist as if it was a curtain over a doorway to hell. Men and women in old-fashioned clothes. Wagons. Horses. Mules. All the trappings of the legend, exactly as his grandfather had described.

Trent clutched Logan’s arm, his eyes as wide as a kid’s on Christmas morning who’d just opened the gift he’d been begging for his whole life. “We did it. We raised a legend.”

The ghosts advanced; some were brighter than others, like the stars of the show. Logan had no idea what the Balches or Stumps looked like, but the young couple spotlighted by the wagon had to be Anna Balch and Mortimer Stump. Danford appeared on cue to confront them and the story unfolded, playing out in the muddy clearing next to the rushing creek like a time-lapse tragedy.

Trent watched it with an incredulous smile, edging forward despite Logan’s attempts to pull him back into the dubious shelter of the alcove. When the ghost of Danford stormed off and vanished, Trent turned to Logan, disappointment clouding his face.

“Is that it? There’s no more?”

Christ, wasn’t that enough? Logan shook with more than the damp and chill of the air. “N-n-no. He’ll be back. With his gun. Let’s go, Trent. Please.” He knew what happened next. His grandfather had repeated it to anyone who would listen whenever he had the chance. “You’ve seen enough to score off Peterson.”

“No fucking way. Nobody I know has ever gotten this close. Come on.” Trent let go of Logan’s arm and dashed out of the alcove. When he reached the outermost figures, he posed next to one of them with a cheeky grin. “Check it out. Trent Pielmeyer, ghost pioneer.”

Logan groaned. “Christ, Trent, don’t push it.”

Trent flipped him off and turned to watch the tableau again.

At the far side of the clearing near Anna and Mortimer, Logan spotted a man in a flat-brimmed hat and jawline beard loading a bag of flour into the back of a phantom wagon. The terror on his face as he gaped at the other ghosts probably matched Logan’s own.

Logan’s stomach jolted in shock. That must be the guy. Joseph Geddes, the man who disappeared into the war. His grandfather hadn’t been crazy. He’d been telling the truth. About all of it.

He needed to warn Trent, but when he tried to force himself to get closer to the ghosts, panic cramped his belly.

“Hssst. Logan.” Trent pointed to the left, where the phantom Danford Balch had returned with his shotgun.

“Trent, wait. There’s some stuff I didn’t tell you. Stuff you should know.”

“Later.”

Logan expected Balch to storm down to the spot where his daughter stood with her bridegroom, but instead he slowed, head turning to focus on Trent. Surprise registered on his semitransparent face, and he glanced down at the gun.

Trent stared at Logan, goggle-eyed, and mouthed, What the fuck?

This isn’t what happened, and the last time something deviated from the story—

Balch beckoned to Trent, offering him the gun.

And Trent reached for it.

“No! Trent, you idiot. Don’t.” Logan lurched forward and grabbed the sleeve of Trent’s jacket.

Trent frowned and jerked his arm away. “Are you crazy? It’s the role of a lifetime, and I’ll be the star, not the fucking understudy.” He bowed with a flourish of one hand. “You may applaud my many curtain calls.”

“You don’t understand. This isn’t a fucking play. You—”

Trent seized the gun.

As soon as it was in his grasp, Balch fell to the ground next to Logan, as solid as he was himself, as if Trent had pushed him aside. And Trent—Trent was suddenly as transparent as the rest of the spirits, the jagged stump at the edge of the creek clearly visible through his chest.

Then . . . God. Mortimer stepped out from behind the wagon, and he looked . . . so scared. How many times had he played this scene? He had to know what was coming next.

But Trent, who always buried himself in every part, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He raised the gun to his shoulder, a crazy grin visible in his ghostly face, and pulled the trigger.

The shotgun blast echoed in the clearing, bouncing impossibly among the trees, the sound all the more shocking because the rest of the action had been silent.

Mortimer toppled onto his back, his face and neck an open wound. His blood, obscenely red, steamed in the cold.

Horror banished Trent’s grin. He thrust out his arms, the cords on his neck distended as if he were fighting to throw the gun down. “I want it to stop now. Why can’t I—” He tried to back away, but the crowd swallowed him up.

Clutching his bleeding hand to his chest, Logan staggered toward Trent, but someone grabbed his shoulder and pushed him to his knees. He stared up into the haunted eyes of Danford Balch.

“Let me go, you bastard.” Logan struggled, but Balch’s hand tightened with bruising strength.

“You can do nothing now.”

“I didn’t mean— God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Trent’s voice was faint, echoing as if he were at the bottom of a well. “Help me, Logan, please.” Beyond the shifting backs of the townspeople, Logan glimpsed a sliver of Trent’s face, his eyes wide and terrified. “I—I want to go home.”

“Too late,” Balch said.

Logan writhed in Balch’s steely grip. “It’s not. It can’t be.”

The hangman stepped up with the noose, flinging it into the air where it dangled as if from an invisible tree, and the crowd raised Trent on their shoulders in lieu of gallows steps.

Trent strained against invisible bonds, shaking his head wildly, in a futile attempt to evade the rope. “I’m not the guy. I swear. I’m just the—the understudy.”

“Trent!” Logan wrenched himself out of Balch’s clutches and stumbled forward. “Hold on, man. I’ll get you out. I’ll save you, I promise.”

Trent shared one last agonized glance with Logan before the crowd dropped him and the rope took his weight, breaking his neck with a sickening crunch.

“No!” Logan fell to his knees, the pain in his hand nothing compared to the agony in his chest. He doubled over, arms wrapped across his belly. My fault, my fault, all my fucking fault.

“It worked.” Balch’s voice was rough, disbelieving. “Before, I thought it chance only.”

Logan caught his breath, fighting off sobs that threatened to choke him. “What did you do?”

“I did nothing. He . . . he did it of his own free will. Now my fate is his, and I . . .” He ran trembling hands over his clothing, his face, his neck. “I am granted another chance.”

“You can’t. It’s his life, not yours.”

“It was his. But he gave it to me.”

Logan glared at him. “You won’t get away with this. The police—”

Balch laughed, a hollow sound. “You think your lawmen will pursue a man so long dead?”

“They will if I prove you’re alive.” With his uninjured hand, Logan wrestled his cell phone out of his hoodie pocket and snapped a picture of Balch, who flinched from it, flinging up his hands to shield his eyes.

The light partially blinded Logan too, and by the time his vision cleared, Balch was gone. Along with the ghosts. Along with Trent.

All these years, he’d tried to find Balch. Get some answers. Why had he been able to do what he did? How had he trapped Trent? How had he himself escaped? But Balch had vanished. In the years Logan had spent on the road, wandering aimlessly between Octobers, he’d circulated that grainy cell phone picture in the trucker network, and to every biker he knew.

He’d heard a few rumors. Someone who might have been Balch in Montana once. South Dakota. Passing through Anchorage. But no confirmed sighting until now. Damn it. This was as close as Logan had ever been to the bastard since that night, and he had no time left to track him down. No chance to confront him before the end. No chance to try to force him to undo what he’d done.

Logan sat on the edge of the sagging bed, his head in his hands. It was his turn. Time to finally keep his promise to Trent, and nothing—not Riley’s job, not Riley’s feelings for him, not even his love for Riley—could stand in his way.