Lightning strobed, occasional bursts on the other side of the office window blinds. Ghost sat behind the desk and wondered if this was strange for Roman, seeing as how he’d once had eyes on this very chair. He didn’t ask, though – he was an ass, but he wasn’t cruel…most of the time.
“Badger didn’t make Reese,” Roman started, sipping spiked coffee. “But he made him a little crazier, I think, maybe.”
“Why does he think my son-in-law is his new slave master or whatever the fuck?”
“That’s how it’s always worked with him. I think he respects force – shit, I know he does.
“I don’t know everything for sure, just what Kris has told me. She was eight and Reese was about six when their parents died. Were killed, I should say. Their dad got in deep debt with these people in New York.”
“Mob?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. Not one I’ve ever heard of. I talked to some Russians a while back and they didn’t want shit to do with Reese – they knew who he was, though.
“No,” he continued, “this was some new kinda freak. I think he used to be military. Kris always got the idea he deserted or something. Dunno. Anyway, people always owed him money, and they were always trying to skip town on him. He had thugs – kneebreakers – but he thought it’d be fun to come up with a new kinda hitman. Something nobody’d ever dealt with before. Someone who’d never question him, who’d do whatever he asked, who he could train…like a dog.”
“How much like a dog are we talking?”
“Pretty close.” Roman made a face. “They kept Kris apart from him. At first, when he was little and crying, and just – shit. They threatened him with her. Said they’d cut off her fingers and toes unless he did exactly what they told him. He was just a little thing, didn’t understand. Apparently, at one point, they did cut off somebody’s finger and show it to him. He’d wet himself, I think, and they beat him, told him he was bad.”
Ghost had seen– hell, had done – enough bad shit that he didn’t have physical reactions to these kinds of stories anymore, not unless they involved someone he cared about. Even so, he felt a tightening in his stomach.
“I guess eventually he got with the program, ‘cause the guy’s pretty much a robot. Unless you fuck with his sister where he can see it.”
“How’d Badger get him?”
“Bought him. And Kris, too, since you can’t take one without the other. He said he didn’t want, and I quote, ‘Another goddamn slut running around,’ but you can’t control Reese without his sister. Badger chained her up and…” Roman took a deep, unsteady breath, hands curling into fists in his lap. His energy faded, his gaze drawing inward. “He showed her to me, after they voted me in as a prospect. Sometimes he brought her out into the clubhouse, on his arm, you know? But he took me back to…to where he kept her. Bars on the windows. Chains.” He circled his own wrist with his hand, miming shackles. “That was a mistake.”
“You wanted to save the girl,” Ghost said. “And so you had to take the brother.”
“She wouldn’t leave without him. She knew they’d break him or kill him if they didn’t have her anymore. And he was already broken.”
Ghost sighed and rubbed both hands down his face. “Some of my guys have been through some rough shit. And I mean rough.” He thought of Tango: eyeliner, track marks, white porcelain bathtub full of blood. “But this is…a whole new level of fucked up. This kid needs to be in some kind of facility, or something.”
“Yeah, he does. Know any facilities that can handle highly-trained, antisocial killing machines?”
“Does he listen to you?”
“Not well. That’s why he killed the dog. That’s why he went overboard with Maggie’s office.” He winced. “Sorry about that. Again.”
“Fuck you,” Ghost said evenly. “He seems to like Mercy.”
“Well yeah, he’s huge. He’s like, the physical embodiment of authority. Reese is all about having a, like, I dunno. A master.” He made a face. “Ugh. Not in a sex way.”
“No, I didn’t figure,” Ghost said with a snort. “Seriously. What am I supposed to do with him?”
Roman shrugged. “Patch him in? He doesn’t know how to sit at a table and eat like a regular person, but he’s trained in hand-to-hand combat, weapons, does all that crazy parkour shit or whatever it’s called. Half-ninja, half-Navy SEAL, no personality.”
Ghost folded his hands over his stomach and eased his chair side-to-side. “Guess that means you’ll have to stay close for a while, then. Or at least the sister will.”
Roman’s eyes flashed. “I’m not dumping her anywhere.”
“Hmm. Funny how you’ve set yourself up to stay, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer, examining his dirty fingernails.
“I feel like you’re expecting a lot of my generosity.”
“Backing out?” Roman’s gaze lifted to meet his, hard to read, but hinting at just a little hope.
“Not with the Saints. Those assholes have got to go. But.” He tilted his head toward the door. “I didn’t sign on for the Wonder Twins.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“After we deal with Badger, I’ll reevaluate.”
Roman studied him a moment. “You look good back there. Behind his desk.”
Ghost smoothed a hand across the weathered wood. “It’s not his desk anymore. He never deserved it in the first place.”
“No.” Roman’s smile was small and sad. “He didn’t.”
~*~
When Mercy called and said he couldn’t come home tonight, Ava started to worry. A nagging voice in the back of her head that grew louder and louder as the afternoon wore on, the storm giving way to a slow, steady rain, the kind of weather that made her want to curl up in bed next to Mercy’s steady warmth and let the day’s tension bleed slowly from her limbs.
Whitney stopped by after five with a painting – Ava had commissioned her to paint the kids – and immediately offered to babysit for a few hours. “Go, it’s fine.”
Ava picked up Chinese takeout and headed for Dartmoor…
Where she found the gates shut, two hangarounds posted on either side of them.
Frowning, heart rate kicking up a notch, she rolled down her window. “Everything alright?”
The one nearest her snapped to attention immediately, walking up to her window. The other went to open the gate. She didn’t recognize them – she felt a little bad for that, actually – but they clearly knew who she was.
“Yes, ma’am, just a precaution.”
The gates slid open and she ducked her head back against the blowing rain. “Thanks. Sorry you guys are getting wet.”
He gave her a little salute and went back to his post.
Her mom’s Caddy was parked in front of the clubhouse beside all the bikes, and she was glad she’d bought enough food for a crowd. She couldn’t even carry it all, in fact. She hefted one of the bags and jogged through the rain to get under the portico, grateful for the warm, butter-bright interior when she let herself in.
“Food’s here,” she called. “There’s a bunch more in the car.”
Carter and Tango jumped up to go get it; Tango almost looked relieved to get out of the room.
“Hi, baby,” Mercy called.
“Hi,” she called back, surprised he wasn’t already up and across the floor and taking the bag from her.
“Here, let me help,” Maggie said, appearing instead.
“Mom, I got it.”
She set her things down on the first table she came to and cast a glance toward Mercy, sitting at the end of the sofa. “Hey…” she started.
There was someone sitting cross-legged on the ground at Mercy’s feet.
Mercy sent her a pained smile. “I’d come give you a kiss, but I’ve kinda got a shadow.”
“I can see that,” she said, carefully, pulse accelerating a notch. It was just instinct – the clubhouse was her home away from home, and seeing strangers inside it, near her husband – made her naturally une
asy.
As for the stranger…
The writerly part of her brain took over, cataloguing details. He was young, average size, and his face had a starved quality about it: sharp cheekbones, hollow eyes, chapped lips. His hair hung limp and greasy, a strawberry-blonde color women spent thousands of dollars to acquire. He would have been pretty if he wasn’t so unsettling, so eerily still and withdrawn.
“This is Reese,” Mercy said. “Reese, this is my old lady, Ava.”
The boy nodded, once, eyes flicking over her with complete disinterest.
“Um,” Ava said, elegantly.
Mercy stood up, and Reese stood up too, a seamless, graceful movement that reminded her of Tango, back in the early days, when he was hungry, and fearful, and the ballet training was fresh. Upright, she could see that he was almost six feet, painfully skinny, and dressed head-to-toe in ratty black, a hoodie and jeans with blown knees.
“Stay right here,” Mercy told him, and came to Ava.
Reese twitched, but nodded, and stayed put, gaze fixed forward until Mercy stepped in front of her and blocked him from view.
“What is going on?” she whispered as he leaned down to kiss her.
His lips tasted like coffee. “Roman’s stolen hitman,” he explained. “And he’s…not all there. Or something.”
“Or something,” she echoed. Anxiety twisted in her stomach. “You can’t leave him here and come home?”
Mercy looked pained. “He tried to follow me when I went to the bathroom. He’s like a baby duck that imprinted.”
“Seriously?”
“Not all there,” he repeated. “Somebody did some messed up shit to this kid.”
Again, she thought of Tango, of sending Mercy off with covered plates of cookies and brownies for their therapy sessions. She sighed; if anyone could help someone who’d been “messed up,” it was Mercy.
“Well, is he hungry?” she asked.
He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “That’s my girl.”
She had a soft spot for strays and lost causes, too – Mercy was one himself, after all.
~*~
Whitney was sitting at Ava and Mercy’s kitchen table when Ava let them in; she jumped, hand going toward her purse – good girl, Maggie thought – and then relaxed with a deep breath when she saw who it was.
She picked up her coffee cup and stood. “Hi.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Ava said as Maggie followed her inside. “Mercy’s not going to be able to come home.” Maggie could hear the frown in her voice.
“Is everything okay?” Whitney asked, expression worried.
“Fine,” Ava sighed. “Just…” She shrugged. “Club stuff.”
Whitney nodded, mouth pressing into a line. She hadn’t been around as long as the rest of them, but she knew exactly what “club stuff” meant – anything and everything.
“That bulb on the corner’s getting dim,” Ghost said as he trooped in.
“Yeah, Mercy’s gonna replace it,” Ava said.
“Where are the bulbs? I’ll do it now.” Ghost was still in his boots, shrugging back into the jacket he’d started to take off.
“It can wait,” Ava said, sounding tired. She pulled down mugs and a box of tea bags from the cabinets.
“Nah, it needs doing. Ladder still in the garage?”
“Baby,” Maggie said, the same moment Ava said, “Dad.”
“You want it to be all dark back there?” he asked with a scowl, waving toward the yard. The door was still open, wind carrying raindrops in to splatter against the mud room tiles.
“What I want,” Ava said, tired eyes flashing with annoyance, “is for the kids to stay asleep. And if you open the garage door, drag that rattly-ass ladder out, and cuss at a light bulb for fifteen minutes, they’ll all wake up. So no, Dad, I don’t want you to change it. Mercy can deal with it tomorrow.”
Ghost’s scowl was rapidly going from dad-angry to president-angry. He opened his mouth to respond – no doubt to say that they had no idea when Mercy would be home to take care of the bulb because there was a spooky hitman kid grafted to his hip at the moment.
Maggie slid between them. “Whitney,” she said with false brightness, “Tango followed us over. He’s out waiting to follow you home now.”
“Okay.” She sent Maggie a relieved look. “Night, everyone. Ava, call if you need my help tomorrow.”
“Yeah, thank you,” Ava said, the fight going out of her as she slumped back against the counter.
Ghost walked Whitney out to her car and Maggie pushed her daughter away from the sink with a hip check, started filling the mugs with water. “He’s trying to be a good dad and take care of you,” she said for what was probably the ten-thousandth time in her life as a mother. “Don’t fuss at him.”
Ava gave her a look. “Do you want him waking up the kids?”
“I love them to bits, but no. Just…cool it a little. And he should too,” she added before Ava could protest. “You react the same way to stress – like father, like daughter.”
Ava wrinkled her nose.
Maggie wondered, as she made tea – as she was doing more and more often lately – if the new baby would be more like Aidan or Ava. Or maybe neither. A little hellraiser? A sweetheart? Both? At times she imagined a rowdy boy with motorcycle dreams, at others a girl who wanted to go to school in California and run a fashion magazine. Or maybe a sweet boy with her blonde hair and non-club aspirations. A softhearted young woman who fell in love young with a Lean Dog. The thrill of it was: she didn’t care. She loved every possibility.
But at times, moments like these when the wolves were at the door, she wished for this baby to go live its own life, away from the club, and all the dangers it presented.
They made tea with lemon, Ghost resisted the instinctual urge to change the lightbulb, and the babies all stayed asleep. Ava peeked in on them, asked if they were okay – “The fold out sofa sucks, I’m sorry” – and headed off to bed.
The fold-out did suck, but Maggie had slept on worse.
She turned onto her side and snuggled into the space Ghost had left for her in the cradle of his arm, her head pillowed on his shoulder.
“How are you?” he asked, quietly, in the tone he only used when they were alone. His free hand lifted to trace aimless patterns down her arm where it rested across his chest.
It was the first time he’d asked that today, she realized. Asked it and truly meant it. During the day, all rush and worry, every “how are you?” had been a way of checking in. You alive? You sick? You holding up? But this, now, rain drumming on the roof, safe for the time being on a lumpy sofa mattress, he was asking.
She nodded, cheek sliding against the sleek warm skin of his shoulder, tender right at the crease. He hadn’t showered and he smelled like smoke and musk, a faint whiff of leather from his cut. “I wasn’t as sick today,” she said, because she hadn’t been. She wasn’t sure if that meant the morning sickness was passing, or if she’d been too busy to let her body’s urges take charge.
“No? That’s good.” He circled the bones of her wrist with his hand, a gentle squeeze.
She started to voice her concerns about the weeks to come, this war kicking off with the Saints, her efforts around town, her plans to bring the city down on the side of the Dogs. But then she decided not to. This moment, the bubble of darkness, and closeness, and rain sounds, wasn’t a place she wanted the club to intrude. He was all hers now, and she wanted to keep it that way as long as she could.
“The kids seem to be taking it pretty well,” she said, and he hummed in agreement. “I’m a little worried about Aidan, though.”
“What, you think he’s gonna be jealous of a baby?” A beat passed. “Yeah, well. He might.”
“It would be nice if you spent a little extra time with him. Some father/son bonding.”
He snorted. “When do I have time for that?”
“Fair point. But you could bring him in close on this Dark Saints thing.” When he
took a breath – to protest no doubt – she said, “You could think of it as officer training. You know he needs more one-on-one guidance if you ever want him to be president one day.”
She’d scored a hit if his quiet swear was anything to go by. “Not like I had any guidance,” he muttered.
“An example of what not to do,” she agreed, shuddering a little when she thought of Duane. Roman had brought the man back to the forefront of their minds and she didn’t appreciate that; she’d managed to go years without thinking about Duane, his dark laugh, the heat of his breath on the back of her neck. “Be better than he was,” she urged. “Show Aidan how it’s done.”
Ghost traced circles in her palm with his thumb. “I can do that.” His voice faraway, thoughts sliding back to the past.
In a quieter, shakier voice, he said, “You really think you can do it? Get the city on our side?”
She’d never thought of herself as confident. When problems came along, she tackled them, solved them, dragged herself through rough patches – sometimes by ragged fingernails alone. But when Ghost started to doubt himself, his leadership, the reach of the club, she felt something surge inside her, hidden reserves of assuredness that turned her reckless, wicked, and daring. Crazy enough to do what she had to, stupid enough to think she’d succeed.
“I know I can,” she said, kissing his chest. “You supply the troops, I’ll supply the public support.”
He snorted at her metaphor.
“I’m dead serious.”
“I know you are.” His arms curled tight around her. “Just be careful.”
“I always am.”
But that wasn’t true – it never had been – and they both knew it.
Twenty-Five
Then
Everyone around the table in the chapel looked half-asleep. Ghost couldn’t decide if that was a point in his favor, or if everyone was twice as likely to start throwing cigarette butts at him. His stomach was a mess of nerves; he felt sweat gathering under his arms and between his shoulder blades. Shit, here went nothing.
He cleared his throat and opened up the manila file folder he’d brought. He’d recopied his plan onto fresh, unfolded paper, and laid it out sheet-by-sheet, the new ink black beneath the lamp. “Okay. So. Um.” Damn it. Be confident.
American Hellhound Page 32
