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her ear, before her brain caught up with what had happened. She
frantically brought up the number and tried to call it back, tried to get Toby
or whoever it was to pick up and answer her. But she could only sob helplessly
and listen to the line as it rang and rang.  
     

 
    ~
FIVE ~
    Ghost
     
     
    Ghost whistled quietly as he switched off his bike and
gazed up at the façade of The Academy of Il Santo della Florentina. The private
school was at the end of a long, twisting road up one of the prettier green
hills in the section of LeBeau that Ghost rarely had reason to visit. It wasn’t
like white collar bankers were out hiring the MC for jobs, and Ghost wasn’t
sure he owned a pair of pants that weren’t jeans, let alone anything as fancy
as what some of the dudes in this part of town were wearing.
     
    He got more weird looks riding his bike
through these streets than he did walking through Shadyside. Even the fluffy
white cotton balls that rich people somehow mistook for dogs yapped wildly
anytime he came within view. LeBeau, as a whole, was a pretty little place to
live; this section of town took it to the extreme. Eyeing some of the
storefronts and residences, Ghost decided he wasn’t a fan of a lot of the
modern architecture the new money was bringing in.
     
    But this school, now this was
beauty. Someone with very old money had converted a Catholic mission from the
1800s into a private academy for students in the primary grades, and they were
smart enough to do as little renovation to the original structure as possible.
Looming at the end of a bright white walkway was the main entrance, once the
façade of the chapel itself. A great archway curved over the door, and cut out
of the blazing tan sandstone within it, a geometric shape that reminded Ghost
of the way the Star of Bethlehem always looked in Christmas nativity displays,
with its compass-like points and round, inner glow. The door was flanked by two
domed towers that still held rusty, ornate iron crosses at their peaks. A stone
fountain as old as the mission sat off to one side of the walkway, surrounded
by a horseshoe bed of colorful desert wildflowers.
     
    The rest of the academy fanned out
villa-style from the main chapel, terracotta-shingled roofs baking in the sun.
Around the perimeter, a sturdy, modern chain-link fence had been built. The
heavy wooden doors at the entrance looked original, and were still flanked by
statues of some old, bald saints in big, ugly robes. Stacked against the clear
blue sky, the building was pure old-world charm.
     
    When he had prodded Sid for
information about Bridget, Sid had told him that she was a teacher. It wasn’t
the usual occupation of his conquests, but that hadn’t worried Ghost a bit. He
was great with kids for some reason—because the universe was a giant joke, he
assumed. It took Sid a couple of minutes to remember the name of the school,
and that was only after Ghost pulled out his smart phone and started searching.
Once they found it, he couldn’t blame the old timer for forgetting it. It was a
damn mouthful. Even the tasteful, modern sign hanging above the front entrance
looked like it was struggling to keep the whole thing up there.
     
    “Fuck,” he said to himself. “This
place is the goddamn Ritz.”
     
    He was hesitating. Maybe Jase was
right. If Bridget was working here, maybe she was out of his league.
     
    He shook his head. Ghost had never
felt nervous about approaching a woman, and he wasn’t sure it was nerves he
felt now… it couldn’t be. Maybe he was just hungry. It had to be that. What had
he eaten today? He huffed his own breath for a clue and was revolted at the
smell that came wafting back at him. Quickly he dug into his saddlebags until
he found a container of months-old mints, and chewed five of them.
     
    “She’s just a woman,” he told
himself. “A beautiful Valkyrie next to which all women pale in comparison… oh,
fuck, get a hold of yourself, man.”
     
    With a