Reese swallowed. It was a situation poised to tumble into disaster, and he knew if that happened, he would be the only one capable of stopping it.
“Jimmy,” Carter said, tone softening. “Tell me what’s really going on. If you’re in trouble of some kind, the Dogs can help.” He even managed to sound sincere.
To his credit, Jimmy held out a moment longer, breathing like a caught prey animal, gaze darting from one face to the next.
“Jimmy,” Carter prompted again.
And the boy dissolved into tears. Harsh, messy tears pouring down his face, sobs catching in his throat, nearly choking him. He closed his eyes against them, shuddering against the tug of Tenny’s fingers in his hair. “I can’t – I can’t – I can’t tell you.”
“Yes, you can. We aren’t the cops. We can’t charge you with anything. Whatever you’ve done – whatever you did to Allie–”
“I didn’t do anything to Allie!”
“Then why do you keep saying the Lean Dogs kidnapped her?”
“Because I have to! Because he said–” He bared his teeth, biting back the next words. Opened wide, wet, pleading eyes on Carter. “I can’t tell you, or they’ll kill me. Me and my parents.”
An alarm pinged in the back of Reese’s mind. Whoever they were, they frightened this boy more than the Lean Dogs did. Frightened him enough that he’d lied, committed vandalism, and snuck on their property tonight with the intent of committing more.
He was back in Texas, suddenly, watching a grown man snivel and get drunk and maudlin, terrified down to his bones, talking about a man in a robe with a knife and a wicked new drug.
“Who’ll kill you?” Carter asked, sounding breathless. “Jimmy, who? I swear we can protect you, you and your friends.” It was what the Texas Dogs had said, too, to Benny, and to the clerks, and that teenager from the body shop. We can protect you – but all of them had ended up dead, one way or another.
Jimmy sniffed, snot gleaming on his upper lip. “No. No, please, I just wanna go home. I can’t–”
Tenny yanked his head back again; the knife flashed, and bit into skin, a red line welling along the boy’s jugular. Tenny was breathing hard now, visibly rattling with each inhale. His voice was a growl. “Fucking tell us, you little–”
Several things happened at once.
Boomer yelled, “Shit!”
Evan said, “He’s gonna kill him.”
Carter said, “Ten, stand down, now!”
Reese said nothing; he moved. A few long strides took him across the garage bay. He laid a hand on Jimmy’s collarbone and pressed him back, away from the knife. With his other hand, he gripped Tenny’s wrist, pinching at the nerves there, trying to numb his hand.
But Tenny, though focused solely on his victim, noticed him at the last second; twisted out of his grip, bringing the knife up with a twirling flash.
Pain lanced across Reese’s arm, the soft inside of his forearm. A look showed a deep, clean slice, already welling and spilling blood.
The knife flashed again. Reese brought up both hands, and captured the blade flat between his palms, the knife’s point only a few inches from his face.
He tensed, waiting for the next move, ready to counter it, even as he felt the hot tickle of blood sliding down to his elbow; felt the sting and heat of it filling his palms.
But nothing happened; the knife quivered; Tenny was quivering, he saw, when he lifted his head and sought the other’s gaze.
Tenny’s eyes had blown very wide, his face blank and white with shock. As Reese watched, his blown-out pupils retracted; shrank down to pinpricks.
Below them, Jimmy sobbed quietly.
Reese said, “Stop.” And slowly pulled his hands away.
Tenny stared at him a moment, the knife trembling in the air between them, his body poised for violence – or flight. Reese could read it in his eyes, the horror of what had just happened. His gaze flicked down to Reese’s arm, bleeding freely now, and then his hands, slick with his own blood.
“It’s alright,” Reese said, softly.
The door banged open behind him, Mercy’s loud, big-cat roar echoing off the walls. “What the hell’s going on?”
Tenny spun and retreated into the shadows.
~*~
Carter scrubbed a hand through his hair, which did nothing to alleviate his mounting headache. They were still in the bike shop, though Jimmy had been patched up, and he and his friends taken to the clubhouse to be kept under Michael’s careful, if terrifying watch while Carter faced the music. The whole cavalry had arrived, right in time to witness Tenny snapping, and now Carter stood in front of Mercy and Ghost.
It was hard to maintain eye contact, but he managed.
“I get what you were trying to do,” Mercy said.
“I don’t.” Ghost had his arms folded, and his shoulders jacked up. His anger was mostly for show tonight, Carter thought, rather than the brewing-storm-cloud rumble of true fury. He was worried. “You were the only patched member present, which means you were in charge, and you started a goddamn interrogation without us.” His frown flickered, and deepened; Carter thought it almost looked concerned. “You were the only patched member present, and you let Reese and Tenny be in the room while this little charade was happening.” He nodded toward the three chairs lined up in the middle of the first bay. “You didn’t see that situation going south ahead of time?”
Carter started to respond, and Mercy cut in.
“Nah, boss, don’t lump Reese in with that other one. Reese is dependable.”
“Reese is a trained assassin who didn’t know what the hell TV was until he got here. They’re both a liability.”
Mercy turned to shoot a dark look at his father-in-law. “And yet you sent them both out on a mission just a few weeks ago.”
Carter hedged a step backward in the face of the ensuing stare-down.
“You put cuts on them, boss. They’re part of the club, even if they’re not patched.”
Ghost snorted, expression going wry. His voice was firm, though, when he said, “They can’t go off half-cocked and cut teenager’s throats. I won’t have that, no matter who’s around.”
Mercy nodded.
Ghost turned to Carter. “The next time either of them are around, and shit turns south, you stop and wait for us. Mercy or Fox needs to be here to handle them.” He spoke about them like they were dogs in need of special handling. Which…wasn’t too far off the mark, unfortunately.
But Carter agreed with Mercy. Reese had been the one to step in, while the rest of them were freaking out. Carter had tried to lever some authority into his voice, to give Ten a true order, but he’d never been a respected superior. He didn’t have the reputation, or the experience to deal with that sort of situation. Reese, though, had leaped right into the fray. Had gotten cut up for his efforts. Carter had thought, for a moment, when Tenny bared his teeth, his eyes flashing, that he would stab Reese outright. That they might start dueling to the death right there in the middle of the shop. Reese had kept his head, better than anyone. Had diffused the situation.
He wasn’t going to argue with Ghost right now, though. “Yes, sir, understood.”
Ghost nodded, as if to say, good. “What did the little shit tell you?”
“Nothing.” Carter shrugged, frustration returning. “He had a camera and some flash drives, and according to my contact at the school, he’s been bragging about having photos of us abducting Allie. I think he was going to snap some pics of the buildings out here, up close, you know? And then try to edit them to make it look like Allie had been here.”
“That’s a lotta damn effort for a dumbass kid to go to.”
“I don’t think any of this is his idea, really,” Carter said. “He did something, I know. Something that’s gonna get him in deep trouble. But his fear didn’t seem fake. Tenny had a knife to his throat, and he wouldn’t talk. He said he couldn’t – that they would kill him and his family.”
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I was trying to find out when Tenny…” He gestured to the chairs. There were droplets of blood drying black on the floor: Reese’s blood.
“Hm. Come on, then,” Ghost said, and headed for the door.
As they walked across the parking lot, Mercy slung an arm across Carter’s shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. “I get it,” he said, quiet enough that Ghost, ahead of them, wouldn’t be able to hear. “You wanted to step up.” It wasn’t said with any censure, but Carter groaned.
“I was just trying to handle the situation.”
“I know, which is stepping up. You’ve not had a lot of practice flying solo, QB, and that’s on us, we shoulda been giving you more to handle here and there. Tonight was like jumping in the deep end first time out, and that’s not really fair.”
“You act like you guys told me to do this.” He made a useless flapping gesture toward the clubhouse. “Shit happened, I was here, so I handled it. Or, I tried to.” He sighed. “It would have been okay if Tenny wasn’t here.”
Mercy chuckled. “I feel like that’s what most people think about him. Poor shithead.”
~*~
“Go clean up,” Walsh told him the second he entered the clubhouse, and Reese didn’t argue; went back to his dorm, and got out his med kit, frowning at the way he smeared blood all over the clasps and lid. His hands were slippery with it, the cuts on his palms trailing crimson trickles down each finger; they dripped onto the bedspread, and into the tidy interior of the kit. He pressed squares of gauze into each palm, the blood gluing it to his skin immediately.
The laceration on his arm was still weeping, though the flow had slowed, and, under the lamplight, he could see that it was deeper than he’d initial thought. When he wiped the blood away with a bit of cotton batting, he glimpsed the yellow shine of fat beneath the top layers of skin; pressed the batting tight when fresh blood welled, applying hard pressure with one bloody palm that had already soaked through the gauze. Laceration to laceration, both stinging sharply.
When his door opened, he lifted his head expecting to find Mercy.
Tenny filled the threshold, hesitating a moment, his expression, before he dragged his mask into place, one of quiet horror as his gaze went to Reese’s bloodied hands and arm.
Reese felt blood slide between his fingers; it was dripping down onto the carpet, now.
Tenny took a short, sharp breath, and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “Here.” He crouched down in front of Reese and reached out with both hands.
Even though he’d just attached Reese a few minutes before, had been the one to cause this damage, wild-eyed and vicious, Reese immediately submitted his injuries to him; lad the backs of his hands in Tenny’s open palms.
They both seemed to realize it at once. He sucked in a breath, and heard Tenny do the same.
Reese stared down at his own hands, the red-soaked gauze, the pearls of blood sliding out from the edges, rolling off his palms – and down into Tenny’s palms. Tenny’s thumb stroked over the pads of his fingers, smearing the blood there, a slow, back-and-forth sweep. His breath shivered on the exhale, cool across Tenny’s wet skin.
Then Tenny reached for the kit and set to work. He taped wadded cotton batting over the lacerations to stop the bleeding, then used alcohol wipes to clean off the rest of Reese’s skin. By the time he peeled the tape back, the cuts were ready to be flushed; he did so with saline, catching the drip in the little dish Reese kept for just such a purpose.
Tenny worked in silence, and Reese glanced up once, searchingly, to find him intent on his task, brows drawn together, his frown deep.
When the wounds were clean, Tenny paused a moment. Traced the very edge of the one on Reese’s arm with a careful fingertip. He exhaled long and slow through his nostrils, shoulders slumping; but still, he didn’t speak.
Ointment was applied, and then bandages.
Reese flexed his hands afterward, the tape tight and binding against the movement. “Thank you.”
Tenny met his gaze, then, finally. His eyes were very wide, and very blue, and full of an emotion that Tenny couldn’t name, but whose enormity hit him like a shove in the chest, regardless. It stunned him – and by the time he’d scraped together a question, Tenny was standing, and tidying the kit.
Reese sat upright, bandaged hands resting on his thighs. He studied Tenny’s profile as he ordered everything with military efficiency, and snapped the lid shut. The mask was firmly in place again, an expressionless front that revealed nothing, and invited nothing.
“Tenny.”
He gathered up the dirty gauze, wipes, and batting and went to throw them in the bathroom wastebasket.
“Tenny,” Reese tried again.
Tenny paused on his way to the door, hands by his sides – curling into fists as he took a deep breath and released it, his jaw set.
“I’m not angry.”
Tenny didn’t respond, though Reese saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. Then he left, closing the door softly behind him.
Reese stared at the panel a long moment, willing it to open again. When it didn’t, he flopped backward onto the bed, folding his injured hands over his stomach. He stared up at the ceiling, and replayed Tenny’s face in the garage – and his face a few minutes ago, when he’d traced Reese’s wound, and then sought his gaze. He lingered over the contrast; shaping and recreating that emotion he’d seen, trying to place it – failing.
Then he thought about what Kris had said at dinner. About new friends, about dating. He felt hollow and lost when he contemplated those things, unable to envision them.
But he’d felt like that a lot lately, in the wake of Tenny’s hate. So. He supposed he had nothing to lose.
~*~
Walsh poured a splash of whiskey into three glasses of Coke and set them down in front of their three captives, all unrestrained and seated at one of the round tables in the common room. Mercy stood leaning against the bar, arms folded, and they kept darting glances toward him and shrinking down even deeper into their shirt collars. They weren’t going anywhere under his dark gaze, schooled now into something unimpressed and vaguely threatening.
Carter sat alone at a neighboring table, nursing his own drink, and Walsh joined him and shook out a cigarette as Ghost dragged out a chair and sat down across from Jimmy and his friends. Ghost could almost look friendly, when he wanted to, in a gruff, paternal sort of way, and he put on that front, now, folding his arms on the tabletop, leaning in toward the boys, his voice even and pleasant – but still authoritative.
“Alright, boys. You got banged up a little.” The one Tenny had knocked unconscious was holding a bag of frozen peas to the back of his head. “You had the shit scared out of you. Now, to me, that seems like turnabout’s fair play.” He inclined his head to a very dad-like angle. “You know what you were doing was wrong. This wasn’t about a joyride, or stupid teenage shit. You came here for a reason. The camera, and spray paint. The rumors flying around – throw in the fact that we caught you defacing our storefront, and that all adds up to you trying to make the Dogs look real bad in this city.” He pointed at Jimmy on you, and Jimmy’s Adam’s apple jumped in his skinny throat.
“I don’t really care why you’re doing it. But I wanna know the truth. Once and for all. If it’s like Carter said, and someone’s pushing you into it, threatening you, then we can help. But if you’re just trying to make us look bad to cover your own ass…” He spread his hands, and let the sentence hang; let their imaginations run wild with the possible consequences.
Jimmy traded glances with both of his friends. The one with the peas dropped his gaze and sucked at his lip, miserable. The other one shrugged.
Jimmy took a deep breath. “They said I had to cooperate, do what they said, or they’d kill me and my family. All our families.” He tilted his head side to side to indicate his friends. “I had to make the Dogs look bad. They called it” – he frowned – “grass-roots. They wanted i
t to look organic. They said our parents all used to hate the Dogs, but things had started to shift. They said if the high school went anti-Dog, then our parents would jump all over the excuse.”
“Who is they?” Ghost asked, just as Carter had asked before, in the shop.
Jimmy swallowed again. “They’re – these guys. Friends, I guess. They’re young – not as young as us, but–”
“They’re dealers,” the one with the peas spoke up, grimacing. “These two friends who are in their twenties. They came into Flash to get their boat tricked out, and Jimmy thought they were cool ‘cause they paid attention to him.” The last was said with a sneer. “I told you not to fuck around with them.”
“They were fucking around with me!” Jimmy protested, turning to his friend.
“They said they bet you were really popular at school,” the friend retorted with a snort. “That didn’t sound like made-up bullshit to you?”
Jimmy’s face flushed. “They were cool.”
“They looked like they were on Miami Vice, dipshit. They played you up like you were hot shit – might as well have fucking blown you – and then out came the baggie, and you were like, ‘Yeah, please, let me sell it.’”
“You’re dealing?” Ghost asked.
“No,” Jimmy said, too-fast. “Well…I mean…I sold a little. But only a little! They had uppers. Designer stuff. I shared it with some kids at school, and had a few parties.”
“Lemme guess: the first few bags were on the house.”
“Dipshit,” the friend muttered.
“They said they were samples! That if I could get rid of them, then they’d let me sell for real.”
“Except then they asked for their money,” Walsh said.
Jimmy nodded, and wiped his hands down his face, miserable. “They said I had to come up with the money, which I didn’t have, and couldn’t get, or I could help them make the Dogs look like shit.”
Carter traded frowns with Walsh, and glanced over to find Mercy doing the same. If someone was wanting to make the Dogs look bad, manipulating idiot teenagers seemed like an ineffective and risky way to go about doing it.
Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8) Page 26
