American Hellhound

by Lauren Gilley

  And then they reached the rendezvous point, and Ghost realized how awful things really were.

  It was a small, tumbledown, once-white house with a sagging porch and an overgrown cluster of hollies screening the front windows. Set well back off the road, cypress trees blocked the view of the street. Ghost and Roman stood in a small clearing, bathed in the faint glow of the moon, encircled by darkness and shadows. There were no lights on in the house. Anyone could be watching them. The furtive rustle of leaves could have been a fox…or a person.

  “Where the fuck are we?” Ghost paced a tight circle, unsuccessfully scanning their surroundings. “Where’s the buyer?”

  Roman, casual and unconcerned, stood with his arms folded, shoulder braced against a leafless crepe myrtle in bad need of reshaping. “What? You got somewhere else to be?” In the moonlight, Ghost could just make his small, infuriating smile.

  He thought of Aidan at home, who was supposed to take his antibiotics with dinner, so they didn’t upset his stomach. Thought of Maggie, with her rich-girl clothes and her kind smile. Envisioned the two of them together at his dinky kitchen table, heads bent close as they worked on some project together.

  He said, “I got a desire to not get shot out here in the middle of nowhere. And right now, I don’t have a lot of confidence about the situation.”

  Roman clucked his tongue. “Gettin’ to be a real asshole in your old age.”

  A twig snapped.

  “Shut up,” Ghost hissed. Louder, toward the tree line: “If you want your shit, you gotta come out and give us the cash.”

  It was silent a beat. A heavy pause in which all the fine hair stood up on the back of Ghost’s neck. There was a deep, instinctive quivering in his belly: away, away, away. Self-preservation.

  He threw himself to the ground as another twig snapped…and just before the sound of a gunshot cracked the quiet of the clearing.

  “Shit, get down,” Ghost said, as he rolled and grabbed for his gun. Roman, stupidly, was still on his feet, arms held out to either side like the next shot was going to be something large and visible that he could catch. “Get down!” Ghost told him again. He had his Colt in his hands and rolled again, behind his bike, gun held in both hands as he scanned the darkness for a target.

  Another shot rang out, and Roman hit the dirt suddenly beside him with a curse and a grunt. Idiot.

  Ghost squinted hard, searching, searching…and there it was, a glimmer of moonlight on metal, just under the tree canopy. He took aim and fired off four quick shots.

  Silence, afterward.

  Ghost eased slowly up, first to his knees behind the bike, and then to his feet; he kept the gun trained on the place where he’d fired. “You alright?” he asked Roman without looking.

  There was another grunt. “Yeah.”

  Ghost shot once more, just to be sure, took a deep breath, and walked over to see what he could.

  What had seemed like a black wall from fifty paces away was actually a shifting gradient of dark-to-light shadows once he stood inside it. Dappled moonlight fell through the mostly-bare branches and illuminated the face of a dead man. He’d been hit with three of Ghost’s rounds and lay face-up, legs crumpled beneath him, eyes wide and sightless.

  Ghost catalogued his face away in his memory, and walked back toward the bikes.

  Roman sat in the dark, hand clapped over his opposite arm, right in the meaty part of his bicep.

  “You got hit?” Ghost asked, and for a moment, just one dark second, entertained the idea of leaving his ass out here alone to bleed and feel sorry for himself.

  “Yeah. Through-and-through I think.” Roman hissed as he pulled his hand away and revealed a dark stain against the pale gray of his sweatshirt. There was a lot of blood.

  Ghost walked over to his bike and pulled a (mostly) clean bandana from his saddlebags. “Here.” He shoved Roman’s hand out of the way as he knelt beside him and knotted the black fabric over the wound. He’d like to say he was gentle, but he wasn’t, Roman hissing again as it tightened. “Can you ride like this?”

  In an unsteady voice: “Yeah.”

  “No, I meant it. Can you? ‘Cause I’m gonna be mad as hell if you pass out and smear yourself all over the road. Duane would never believe I didn’t make you crash on purpose.”

  Roman huffed a pained laugh. “I can manage.”

  ~*~

  The only person up and awake back at the clubhouse was the prospect whose name Ghost never could seem to remember. He sat at the bar, drinking a beer, turning slowly through a bike magazine. He looked tired, and very young, hollow-eyed.

  He startled when they entered, and nearly overturned his beer.

  Ghost felt bad for the kid. “Where’s Duane?”

  The prospect’s eyes went to the bloody bandana tied around Roman’s arm. “Um…”

  “Go get him. And then find someone who can patch him up.” He inclined his head toward Roman.

  “Yes, sir.” He scampered away toward the back.

  When they were alone again, Roman collapsed onto a bar stool with a groan. “Shit.”

  “Hurts?” Ghost asked, and couldn’t bother to sound like he cared about the answer.

  “What do you think?”

  Ghost went around behind the bar, found the Jack…and not a clean glass in sight. He took a swig straight from the bottle and then slid it across the bar toward Roman, who took three long swallows and nodded his thanks.

  The slow thump of footsteps announced someone coming down the hall – but not Duane. Duane was silent as a cat, and had a knack for walking in on his boys slacking or shit-talking or doing any number of things that displeased him.

  Hound appeared, scratching a hand through his sandy hair, eyes taking in the scene without any outward interest. A veteran Dog, their tracker, he had long ago learned not to let his thoughts show on his face. He would walk into a scene of mayhem the same way he’d walk into his own kitchen at home.

  “Y’all’ve been out late,” he commented as he joined them at the bar. He lit a smoke and reached for the whiskey. Roman took one last sip before he handed it over.

  “Business went a little south,” Ghost said. “We needed to check in with Duane.”

  Hound snorted. “Last I heard, he was enjoying that new blonde groupie.”

  Ghost couldn’t contain his sneer. “She’s young enough to be his kid.”

  “Big surprise,” Duane’s voice said from the mouth of the hallway, and Ghost forced himself not to jump. “Kenny doesn’t approve of something. You didn’t seem to give a shit about propriety when you had her in your bed.”

  On another night, Ghost would have averted his eyes and kept quiet. Challenging Duane never turned out well for anyone. But Ghost was tired, and he wanted to go home, and a part of him wished (evilly) that Roman’s GSW had been a little less benign. He also didn’t wish that at all, because it would have forced him to call 911.

  So he said, “Yeah, well, I’m not an old creeper.”

  It was silent a beat, and then Roman hissed a shaky laugh through his teeth that could be blamed on being in pain.

  Duane shrugged and stepped deeper into the room, face giving nothing away. His eyes, though, when they flicked up briefly to touch Ghost’s, were murderous. It was the most disconcerting thing about the man, the way he could wear two expressions at once.

  Hound cleared his throat, injecting himself into the tense moment as a buffer. “The boys ran into some trouble tonight, it looks like.”

  Ghost snorted.

  “Looks like,” Duane agreed, gaze going to Roman. “The bullet still in you?”

  “Nah. Don’t think so.”

  “Call the doc,” Duane told Ghost. “Where’s the stash?”

  Ghost patted his pocket. “Still got it. The buyer didn’t show. Or, if he did, he shot at us.”

  Duane lifted his brows expectantly.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Huh. Guess you owe me a customer, then.”

  Ten


  Then

  “The doc” was Dr. Fletcher, a local GP whose son had found himself in deep drug debt with the club. Duane had turned up on the good doctor’s doorstep one night to explain how much he was owed…and to suggest that, as payment, Fletcher would make himself available as the club’s medic whenever needed, free of charge. It had turned out to be a good bargain – for the Dogs, anyway. Ghost had a feeling Dr. Fletcher was slowly going insane.

  He arrived in sweats and the sort of elaborate, rubber-soled slippers older generations called “house shoes,” his bag clutched in one hand, a travel mug of coffee in the other. He looked like he’d rolled right out of bed, his hair a mess and his glasses perched on his nose – he normally wore contacts, Ghost knew.

  “Ah, Jesus,” he muttered when he saw Roman’s arm. He dropped his bag on top of the pool table and started unpacking things. “You need painkillers?”

  “Already got some,” Roman said with a grin, lifting the bottle of Jack.

  “Great,” Fletcher said with a deep exhale.

  Ghost left them to it. It was after eleven, and he had no idea what sort of scene awaited him at home. He just prayed Aidan hadn’t relapsed, and that he’d behaved for Maggie.

  Hound caught him in the parking lot, just as he was swinging a leg over his bike. “James gets back from Texas tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that gonna do?”

  Hound stared at him a moment. In a quiet voice, he said, “James thinks like you do. A lot of the boys do, these days.”

  Ghost traced the ridges of a handlebar with his thumb. “What good does that do anybody?”

  He started his bike before Hound could answer.

  ~*~

  Maggie glanced over at Aidan again, the blue flickers of the TV highlighting his small face, the way it was soft and babyish in sleep. His bed time was, according to Ghost, “just whenever, but before ten.” He’d crashed out suddenly at nine-fifty, his illness and the excitement of playing with Matchbox cars hitting him all at once. She’d wondered if she should try to move him to his bed, but she didn’t think she could carry an eight-year-old boy, and she didn’t want to wake him. She’d leave that task for his father.

  Speaking of which…

  She heard the scrape of a key in the lock and the door eased open. There was no exterior light, and for a moment, the broad-shouldered silhouette in the threshold could have been anyone. Maggie felt her throat tighten on instinct. But then the figure stepped into the room and the TV’s glow hit his face. It was Ghost, looking exhausted. She didn’t think it was a trick of the light.

  “Hi,” she said, quietly, so she didn’t wake Aidan.

  “Hi.” He shrugged out of his jacket and cut and hung them both up by the door. “He asleep?”

  “Almost two hours now. I didn’t want to wake him up.”

  Ghost nodded as he moved toward her. “That’s fine. I’ll carry him to bed in a little while.” He paused when he stood beside the arm of the couch, swore softly and passed a hand down his face. “Shit, I forgot I gotta take you back.”

  Maggie hadn’t forgotten; she’d been wondering how they were going to manage it. But she said, “That’s fine, don’t worry about it. I can call a cab.”

  Even in the room’s dim light, she could make out his withering look. “I am not calling you a cab,” he said. It wasn’t a tone she felt like arguing with.

  “What, then?” Because she did need to get home.

  “I…just…” He sighed. “Hold on.” And walked into the kitchen, where the fluorescent tube over the kitchen sink slanted white and unforgiving down the back of his neck as he bowed his head over the ceramic basin.

  The rigid line of his spine looked vulnerable to her; cracked armor held in place by sheer dint of will. It was amazing, really, to think this was the same man who’d kissed her outside the liquor store. She didn’t really know him – and God knew he was making some bad decisions dealing weed for this uncle – but she ached for him, staring at the tense set of his shoulders.

  She went to him. As she drew alongside him, she saw a muscle in his jaw clench, but he didn’t turn toward her. Maggie braced her hands on the edge of the counter and said, “Bad night?”

  “Shitty,” he confirmed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He breathed out a low, humorless laugh.

  “What?”

  “That’s what a guy wants to hear – the hot girl telling him she’s sorry.”

  Being called “hot” stirred heat in her cheeks. “I am sorry, though,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “It’s pretty obvious that you and Aidan…” Crap, she couldn’t finish that sentence.

  But Ghost turned toward her, face hard to read. “What are we? Fucking pathetic?”

  “No.” Automatic. Emphatic. Just because she didn’t like to hear him talk about himself like that. “Because I’m just sorry,” she said, for lack of anything better.

  “Yeah, well…”

  They were at an impasse. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, and obviously neither could he.

  Finally, when the silence had stretched thin, Maggie said, “Do you think we can carry Aidan to the truck without waking him?”

  “Yeah,” Ghost said. “I can.”

  ~*~

  He thought it could be as simple as that – driving her home. But of course it couldn’t. Of course not.

  He saw the red and blue lights before they turned the corner onto her street. He braked to a sharp halt beneath the pear trees, hard enough Aidan slid forward; Maggie caught him around his waist, and he settled against her side with a muffled grunt, still asleep.

  Ghost felt his heart travel up his throat for the second time that night. “What is this?”

  The patrol cars – two of them – were parked in front of her house, lights spinning, sirens off. Ghost could make out the shapes of four officers on the lawn, talking to a couple: her parents.

  “Shit,” Maggie swore. She took a deep breath and let it out, leaning forward, fogging a patch of the windshield. “They must have called the neighbors.”

  “What?” There was a high whining in his ears, a sense of panic just beneath the skin of his palms, the soles of his feet.

  Maggie sighed and slumped back against the seat, pulling Aidan with her again, settling his small dark ahead against her shoulder without thought. “I told them I was babysitting for someone in the neighborhood. They must have called around looking for me. When no one said I was there, they called the cops. Shit.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’ll go tell them it’s okay.”

  When her hand was on the door handle, he said, “Wait.”

  She turned toward him, worried, but still composed.

  “What will they do when they find out you lied?”

  She shrugged. “Ground me, probably. Maybe I won’t have to go to the stupid tea party Mom has planned.” When he didn’t respond, because he had no idea how to – women in his life didn’t attend tea parties – she popped the door and slid out of the truck.

  She walked, shoulders squared, down the street and straight up to her parents and the cops. Ghost watched the woman – dressed in a long white bathrobe – hug and then shove Maggie, white hands flying around in the shadows as she gestured. He let it go on about two minutes before he realized that he had to step in.

  He left Aidan in the truck – laid down across the cab, snoring softly – and locked up. Walked down the street to the last place he wanted to be at the moment.

  Ten feet away he could hear the shouting. Five feet away, he could make out the words.

  “–how in the world are we supposed to ever trust you again?” the woman yelled. Her face was bedsheet white beneath the rotating red and blue lights of the patrol cars, eyes huge and crazed. Ghost could tell she was Maggie’s mother – they had the same bone structure – but nothing about her energy seemed related to her daughter. Thank God. “You lied to us, Margaret! You lied!”

  The cops watched with their thumbs ho
oked in their gun belts, shifting their feet and wanting to be anywhere else.

  “If everything’s alright now, ma’am…” one of them said, edging back a step. Ghost recognized his voice: Greaves.

  A man in a dark gray robe stood behind Maggie’s screaming mother, presumably the girl’s father. He was tall, but thin, his shoulders slumped, expression closed-off save a twitch of distress at the corner of his mouth. His glasses caught the police lights in alternating flashes.

  “You lied!” Maggie’s mother repeated, and that was when Ghost stepped up behind Maggie and laid a hand on her trembling shoulder.

  She turned her head, startled, golden hair flying, but he didn’t know what sort of expression she turned up to him. He had his gaze focused on her mother. Who, for just a moment, looked gratifyingly terrified. He’d startled her, he guessed, same as Maggie, but she recovered with a quick shake of her head, mouth opening to ask the sort of question he no doubt didn’t want to answer.

  “She didn’t lie, ma’am,” Ghost said. “She was babysitting. For me.”

  “Oh shit,” Maggie breathed.

  It was silent one beat. Two…

  Maggie’s mother drew herself up, thin arms crossed beneath her breasts, head thrown back at a challenging angle. “Who the hell are you?” Her eyes burned him – and not in a good way – as they raked all the way down to his scuffed boots and then back up, lingering on his face in a way that made him want to squirm. It was exactly the sort of way Olivia had looked at him at the end, and he hated it.

  “Kenny,” he said, because his club name was more likely to get him laid, but never worked on mothers. “Kenny Teague.” He shifted so his left hand was on Maggie’s shoulder, and reached with the right to offer a shake to the mother.

  She stared at his hand as if he was asking her to touch fresh roadkill. “You don’t live in this neighborhood,” she accused.

  “Jesus, Ghost,” Greaves said behind him with a groan. “Why do you always turn up like a bad penny?”

  Ghost ignored him. “No, ma’am, I don’t. I met Maggie in town a few days ago. I was telling her that I had trouble finding a babysitter for my son, and she offered to watch him on nights I had to…work.” He stumbled over the last word. He did get paid for it, but it wasn’t exactly work – save on the nights when he had to make sure Roman didn’t get killed.