Before they could head over toward the fountain and front entrance, Bridget heard a voice calling out over the din of the lunch recess madness. She and Ghost both searched for the source, and saw Toby clinging to the schoolyard fence, fingers wrapped around the chain link.
“Ghost!” he said. “Hey, Ghost! Remember me? Toby?”
Ghost didn’t let go of her hand, but only pulled it to lead her over to the fence. “Shit yeah, I remember you! Were it not for your brave messenger skills, I wouldn’t be having lunch with this lovely lady today.” He put his fist up against the fence for Toby to bump with an awkward laugh. “You’re my wingman, bro.”
“Like a pilot?” asked Toby.
“Sure,” said Ghost. “Takes two pilots to fly a plane, right? Me and you.”
Toby beamed up at Ghost, a full tooth smile. Bridget stood there in shock, watching them interact. She’d never seen Toby so thoroughly jazzed to speak to an adult—let alone an adult male. She suddenly realized how cold and upset his interactions with the male authority figures in the school seemed compared to Ghost. Grown men of authority frightened him, and for obvious reasons.
But Ghost didn’t. According to Ghost—and Bridget believed him, if only because Ghost clearly loved trolling people with the truth—Toby had made the first move that day last week, coming up to start a conversation with him. Everything about his interaction with Ghost was unprecedented, and she couldn’t unsee it once she saw it. What was it about Ghost that Toby saw?
What was it that she saw?
Word of a big funny biker dude at the fence quickly spread throughout the schoolyard, and soon other kids were sprinting up, uniforms and hair mussed up, to meet this fascinating stranger.
“Have you ever crashed your bike?” asked some small voice.
“Oh, yeah, tons of times. You basically live the first year of owning a bike on the asphalt.”
“Why do you get to wear that leather jacket all the time?” said another.
“Guys, he’s a biker,” said Toby in a matter-of-fact voice to the other children. “Other bikers have to know what gang he’s in, so he wears his vest.”
“Boom, nicely done, Toby,” said Ghost. “And not that it’s important, but we are called a club, not a gang. Club makes us sound way nicer than we are. Really, we’re a bunch of jerks. A jerk club.”
The kids laughed, and Ghost laughed with them. Bridget could only stand there in a stunned silence and watch. Never in a million years did she think she’d see an interaction like this.
“Do you go to school?” asked a little girl in front.
“Not for a really long time, but I kind of liked it.”
“What did you like?”
“Science is pretty awesome. And history is like one giant epic saga, it’s great.”
“I hate history!” yelled someone from the back, and a bunch of kids joined him in a chorus of gross noises.
“Oh, that’s only because you haven’t heard the good stuff that teachers like Miss Dawson won’t tell you.” Ghost thumbed toward her with a mischievous smile and she glared at him playfully as the kids made taunting noises.
“What good stuff?” asked Toby with a little hop.
He leaned toward the fence like he was sharing a conspiracy with them. “Have you ever heard of the Mongols?”
Bridget’s eyebrows went up. “Ghost…”
“I have!” said one little voice. “They fought China!”
“They fought China and like, most of Europe, too. They were really, really mean and brutal warriors who rode around on horseback and tore down the cities of their enemies after they beat them,” said Ghost in a dramatic voice, waving his hands around like a bard. “They were the first army in history to invent biological warfare. Do you know what they’d do?”
“No, tell us!”
“They had an enormous army full of dudes, and it was easy for that many men to spread disease in the ranks. So when they would lose soldiers to the plague, they would take their bodies, and stuff them in a big siege catapult,” said Ghost. Bridget’s jaw fell open as he actually made the stuffing motion with his hands. “And then whoosh—“ he made like he was throwing a ball over the fence. “—they would send them flying over the city walls, and everyone inside would catch the plague and die. Battle over! Even dead Mongolians were useful.”
The kids erupted into a chaotic chorus of yucks and coooooool and general gross-out noises. Toby and a few of the boys up front just laughed and laughed, and Ghost laughed with them.
“I can’t believe I just let that story come out of your mouth,” said Bridget to him as she held a hand to her forehead. But she couldn’t stop smiling, either.
“What?” said Ghost with innocent eyes. “That’s history! That’s straight-up fact. I’m teaching, I’m just like you.”
“And I’m going to have a weekend full of strange parental phone calls to answer,” she said, giving his shoulder a playful shove.
Ghost came close and spoke near her ear. “You take your phone calls; I’ll just eat you out while you deal with them. It’s only fair.” He kissed the sensitive skin of her neck just behind her ear with wet, soft lips, and Bridget shivered.
Bridget pulled back and looked him in the eyes with a playful glare. The expression on his face said he was delighting in her half-baked anger.
In the schoolyard, the bell to end recess sounded, and the kids left at the fence all groaned like dramatic little zombies. Bridget grinned and turned away from Ghost to talk to them. “Go on, my little Golden Horde, go line yourselves up.”
The kids began to reluctantly drift away. Toby was the last to hang out, and Ghost kneeled at the fence to give him another fist bump. “Good to see you, T-Dog. Let’s do it again soon.”
“It was good to see you too,” said Toby in a careful mimicking of Ghost’s words. It made Bridget’s heart hurt to watch how quickly the little boy was bonding with him.
“Be good for Miss Dawson, okay? She cares a lot about you.”
Toby’s eyes wandered up to meet Bridget’s, and for a moment she could see all the sadness and fear behind them, like he momentarily opened a door to let her peek inside. But it was only a moment. Then he nodded and told Ghost he would before he ran off to join the other kids.
Ghost stood up from the fence and wrapped his arms around Bridget’s waist, pulling her in for a gentle kiss. “He’s going to be okay,” said Ghost, as if he could read her mind.
“He’s taken to you so quickly,” said Bridget. “I can’t get him to open up to me no matter what I do. He called me for help but he wouldn’t let me help him, and he won’t let me help him now.”
“He’s just a kid,” said Ghost. “And if he’s going through what you think he’s going through, he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. He’s probably just trying to get through every day on its own. He called you because he trusts you, baby. That’s huge.”
“Why won’t he talk to me now?” asked Bridget helplessly.
Ghost shrugged and brushed her hair aside. “I don’t know. He’s scared. And maybe school is the only place he still gets to have some happiness and fun. Maybe he thinks if he talks about what’s happening at home, he’ll ruin the last safe place he has.”
His words made Bridget feel sick, like she got punched in the gut. She audibly groaned and her face twisted up so bad that Ghost gripped the side of her face and said, “Hey, hey… we’re going to make it okay. Not today, but we will.”
“It’s like I can feel his fear,” admitted Bridget. “I can imagine sitting there in that dark closet with him, afraid and alone. I don’t want him to feel that way, Ghost. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Fuck no, he doesn’t. And we’re going to get him out of it, we’ll find a way.” He leaned down and kissed her deeply. The final bell to end recess sounded over the din of chattering kids.
“I have to go,” said Bridget against his lips.
“Go make this country smarter for once, baby.”
Ghost
straddled his bike as Bridget headed back down the white walkway toward the wooden doors of the school. She looked back when she heard the engine rev up and saw Ghost staring at her with a smile, helmet in his hands. He made a kissy face at her. She smiled and waved before she headed into the school.
~ TWELVE ~
Ghost
“How is this not a punishment?” Ghost huffed as he fell into one of the chairs in the clubhouse den. “Haven’t even been convicted yet, and already I’m sentenced.”
“Christ, Ghost, you’re not even the one on trial in the first place,” said Jase with a tired sigh. He sat across from Ghost at the table and rubbed his face with his hands. “Lucero and Eagleton are on trial.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one who has to help prove it, and has to put up with being around him in my goddamn clubhouse while it happens.”
“If that’s a punishment, then you’re a pussy.”
“Fuck off.”
“Just keep away from him,” said Jase. “This is already a minefield. Don’t need you lobbing more grenades into it.”
“You know me so well.”
Before Jase could retort, the clubhouse door swung open down the hall, and a crowd of voices came barging in. Ghost hadn’t heard any bikes pull up, so they must have been hanging out on the side of the building. It was the four Eagleton Dogs they were familiar with, plus two more that hadn’t been around during the run.
Ghost and Jase stared at them quietly, and the men came to a silent halt. Lucero stood in the middle of his MC brothers, and he narrowed his eyes at Ghost from across the room.
Once the first responders had shown up to the scene of the accident, there had been no time for butting heads. EMT buses carted away Tommy and Lucero, who was still passed out, and a third had to be called for Will. Both Ghost and Jase had to taste the bitter bile of leaving their friends alone and hurt as they stood on the edge of the highway and watched the buses pull away without them. Lucero was the first one out of the hospital; he escaped the crash with minimal cuts and scrapes. Happened all the time when drunk drivers passed out, Ghost knew. Their relaxed muscles acted like a shield against broken bones and punctured organs. It only fueled the fire he held inside that blamed Lucero for all of this.
While they had waited for tow trucks to clean up Tommy’s bike and figured out the vehicle situation, Ghost finally lost his shit and raged at Shaun about Lucero’s heroin addiction. Shaun had only stared at Ghost in quiet surprise as Jase pulled him back and ordered him to clean up Tommy’s saddle bag gear with angry tears in his eyes. Ghost hadn’t spoken another word to the Eagleton Dogs after that, and he didn’t want to speak to them now. Truth be told, he wished he could take a break from speaking to Jase, too. The memory of their conversation at the Eagleton clubhouse before the run stung furiously now.
Jase had literally just told him to keep his shit together, but already it was taking every ounce of self-control Ghost had to do it. He stared at Lucero with a hard face and soothingly felt for the handle of one of his hidden blades. It made him feel better.
“Jase,” said Shaun with a nod. “Ghost.”
“Gents,” said Jase in return. “Does Henry know you’re here yet?”
Shaun nodded and thumbed behind him. “He’s still finishing his smoke.”
Jase cleared his throat uncomfortably and gestured toward the unmanned bar. “Well, help yourselves to whatever.”
“I think we’re good,” said Scott with black fire in his voice.
Jase exhaled heavily, as if he had been hoping no one would escalate the already brutally tense mood in the room. “Suit yourself,” he said as he yanked the chair across from Ghost out and sat down.
They didn’t speak to each other again until the clubhouse door opened and the rest of the gathered men made their way inside, led by Henry. The den began to fill up with voices as most of the LeBeau members arrived, staggered over the next ten minutes. All of Eagleton’s available men were already present, and they sat huddled at their own table near the stairs, uncomfortable and speaking quietly only to each other.
Once Henry was settled with the attendance, he and Douglas walked upstairs to overlook the den from the second floor banister. He reminded Ghost of a poorer, much less powerful Roman emperor.
“Thank you for being here today, men,” said Henry. “Gatherings like this are never convenient, and we all have other places we want to be, so thank you for stepping up to answer the call. This is a very serious matter. Shaun?” He gestured downstairs at the table full of Eagleton Dogs.
Shaun exchanged glances with his men and stood up. All eyes in the room followed him as he took the stairs up to stand next to Henry.
“This is Shaun Lee. He runs things in Eagleton. For those who don’t know me, I’m Henry Oliver, president of the LeBeau chapter. Our two charters have something very serious to work out here. I’m sure most of you have heard by now, but there was a problem on a run for the Eagleton charter which included some of my men. An accident happened and put two of my guys in the hospital, and there’s been some accusations as to why this occurred.”
“How are they?” called out Bones to Henry.
“Improving,” said Henry. “Will had a busted arm and a bump on the head. He’s already been released home to his wife and might return to some light duties in the next week, if the docs clear him to my satisfaction. Tommy…” He stopped and took a deep breath. It was as unsettling as watching your dad tear up. “Tommy’s in worse shape. The docs don’t think he’s going to die, but that boy has a lot of healing ahead of him. He’s woken up and talked a few times, and that’s a great thing. He’s going to need all of our support to get back on his feet.”
Douglas stepped forward. “We also need some Dogs to volunteer to fill in for Tommy around his home, for his abuela and sisters. Shifts will rotate, everyone should take a few.” The men downstairs all nodded to each other.
“Now,” said Henry, “we need to discuss what’s going to happen. This is a complicated situation, and Shaun and I know it’s already causing some grief between the charters.”
Ghost couldn’t help himself. He looked over to the table of Eagleton Dogs. Lucero was already staring back at him with hate in his eyes.
“Ghost?” said Henry. “Join us, please.”
Ghost tore his eyes away from Lucero, surprised. Suddenly everyone in the room was looking at him. He cleared his throat and got to his feet, shuffling around the tables. “I didn’t even prepare a speech,” he said with a phony laugh.
No one chuckled.
He tromped up the stairs and stood behind Henry, uncomfortable. He had no idea what he was doing, so he just waited and tried to keep his mouth shut.
“Ghost, I need you to tell the men here in your own words what accusations you’re bringing forward today,” said Henry. He gestured for Ghost to step up toward the railing, and he obeyed after only a moment’s hesitation. “Tell us what happened.”
Ghost had stared down the barrels of every make and model of firearm that existed on this godforsaken rock. He knew a Bowie knife felt different pressed up against his jugular than a kitchen cleaver. He knew exactly how many milliseconds it took a body to hit the floor after a bullet to the brain. But in that moment, the most awful, upsetting thing in his fucked-up mind was standing there under the gaze of all his MC brothers as they waited for him to throw one of them under the bus.
Fucking Lucero, thought Ghost. Shaun and the Eagleton Dogs told the first responders that the van had been run off the road, and Ghost suspected there may have also been some sort of payoff involved to keep anyone from testing Lucero for impaired driving. He didn’t blame them for that; this was club business and that was standard routine. But Lucero was too cowardly to admit the truth of his addiction. He was putting Ghost, and all the brothers, through this sideshow, while Tommy lay in the hospital rebuilding like a goddamn shattered egg.
His fear fell away into a hot volcano of anger. Suddenly the eyes on him didn’t matter one bit.
“This motherfucker,” he said, and pointed straight down at Lucero’s bitter face, “is a heroin addict. And he took his fix before we headed out on that goddamn run, blacked out, and then swerved right into Tommy and me.”
“Bullshit!” yelled Lucero as he jumped to his feet. “You’re a goddamn liar, you fucking clown!” Rick and Scott both stood and tried to calm him as rumbles broke out through the gathered men.
“Stand down!” said Shaun firmly at his men.
“Ghost, for the love of Christ,” said Henry in frustration.
“You asked for my own fucking words,” said Ghost. “So you’ll get them. I came into the bathroom after Lucero and I saw the balloons myself. He was volatile for no fucking reason. And I was right next to the van, looking at his ugly face in the side mirror when he passed out and swerved. I braked hard, and Tommy tried to accelerate, but it wasn’t enough. The van clipped his tire and they both swerved off the road.” He pointed at Lucero again. “This is all his fucking fault. He shouldn’t have been on that run.”
Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance Page 11
