“You started filling his head with all these big ideas, and now nothing’s good enough for him: not the club, not me. He’s got no respect for his elders. For the way things are done.”
He bent at the waist, leaning down to shove his face into hers. “You don’t got anything to say for yourself?”
So much for being quiet… “Ghost always had dreams,” she said, careful to keep her tone neutral. “He finally got brave enough to insist on them.”
He slapped her. So hard and so quick she didn’t see his hand pull back, was suddenly staring at the opposite wall, head kicked to the side, cheek stinging where his palm had smacked her. She made a ragged, unconscious sound of distress.
“I hate your fucking guts,” Duane said, without any special feeling. Just stating a fact. “You’ve ruined my boy.”
She darted her tongue across her lips and tasted blood in the corner of her mouth, on the side where he’d slapped her. Jesus. She turned, slowly, back to face him, making cautious eye contact.
Still crouched in front of her, he pulled a pair of leatherwork gloves from his back pocket and tugged them on. “He thinks he can work something out with all the idiot thugs of Knoxville,” he said, mostly to himself. “But what’s he gonna do when he realizes one of those rednecks killed his old lady, huh?”
And that was when the real fear took hold. He was going to kill her, and blame it on the Ryders, or someone else. Use her death to bring Ghost back into the fold.
He grinned at her, an echo of Ghost’s grin, sharp and white. “The shame of it is, I coulda really liked you. Too bad you had to fuck with my club like this. Things coulda been different.”
~*~
“Duane’s out of his damn mind,” Neil Ryder said.
Ghost snorted. “No shit.”
James said, “We understand that Duane has made some regrettable business deals lately. That’s what we aim to fix.”
“If we can all come to an agreement,” Ghost said, gesturing to the room at large, “then we can promise that Duane won’t interfere in any of the arrangements.”
“He stepping down?” Molly asked, doubtful.
“Something like that.”
~*~
He unlocked the cuffs and took a firm grip on her hair, dragging her into the center of the room.
Maggie gasped at the pain, reaching with one hand to claw at him in helpless reaction – it felt like he was pulling her hair out by the roots. With the other hand, she flailed for her boot, and the knife inside it.
He grunted as he wrenched her forward, putting his back into it. The concrete rubbed her jeans raw, and her hip on one side, where her waistband was pulled down and her bare skin touched the floor.
She scrabbled at the leg of her jeans, trying to get beneath it, fingers dancing for the hilt of the knife.
This wasn’t going to be some long, drawn-out, villain monologue moment like in the movies, she realized. He wasn’t going to tell her his master plan and taunt her like a cat with a mouse – there was no need. She knew why he was doing it. And she didn’t doubt for a second that he really would kill her.
“Quit it, bitch,” he hissed, as she clawed at the back of his hand. He threw her down to the floor and moved around her, straddled her hips, his knees on the floor, pinning her down. He took hold of her hair again, and with his free hand, he produced a knife as if by magic, pressed it to her throat.
He considered her a moment, their noses almost touching. He smelled like whiskey and sweat. Maggie could smell her own fear, acrid and sickly.
“Don’t take it too personal,” he said.
He’d made the fatal mistake of leaving one of her hands free, and in it she now clutched the knife Ghost had given her, a slender boning knife with a wicked length of blade.
She drove it into the side of his neck.
~*~
“What do you mean she’s not here?”
Bonita wrung her hands together, rings glinting in the porch light. “We looked all over, but she’s gone. She went to get the cookies in the kitchen, and she never came back.”
“Now, Ghost…” James started.
Ghost knocked his placating hand away. “What the hell?” And then, louder: “What the hell?”
“Maybe she got scared and ran away,” Bonita suggested.
Ghost shot her a glare that had her shrinking down into the collar of her sweater. “She wouldn’t do that. Not ever.”
“Maybe…” James started, and Ghost tuned him out. His heart was pounding like a kettle drum suddenly, all the anxiety from the warehouse coming back tenfold. Panic, he realized now, was something he’d only ever been teased with before. What he felt now, the horrific crash of adrenaline and emotion inside him, squeezing his lungs tight, that was real panic.
“Daddy,” Aidan said, wriggling past Bonita and coming to grab hold of his belt loop. His eyes were wet and red-rimmed, face flushed and tear-streaked. “Where did Maggie go? Did she run away?”
“No. She didn’t.” Because she couldn’t have. That wasn’t her.
“Ghost,” Jackie said, coming to the door with the cordless phone pressed to her shoulder. Her expression was strange as she held the phone out to him. “It’s her.”
~*~
The phone line at the garage had only been activated yesterday, and Ghost had almost told the guys not to go through with it, not wanting to get billed for an extra week when the place wasn’t open to the public yet. It seemed fortuitous, now, as he pulled in at the new gate, that he’d allowed it to be hooked up.
“Don’t wreck,” Maggie had said over the phone, her voice strange-sounding. He’d never heard her like that before, eerily calm, hushed, lifeless. “There’s no rush. I’m okay.”
“What…?”
“Just come.” And then, spiking his worry to new heights: “I love you.”
He hadn’t wrecked, but he’d rushed, running every stop sign, pushing the speed limit, praying there were no cops out. There weren’t, and now he was pulling down the new, flawless asphalt of the driveway, the pale chips of rock glinting in the moonlight.
The lights were on in the garage bays, visible through the high windows. Duane’s truck was parked in front of the office door.
“Shit,” Ghost muttered, flying off his bike the moment he killed the engine, barely getting the kickstand down. He tossed his helmet to the pavement, not caring if it cracked. “Shit, shit, shit.”
His heart was going to burst if it beat any harder. He might stroke out in the moments between the office door and the door that led into the bays. He prepared himself for any number of possibilities, a scream already building deep in his throat…
But he wasn’t ready for the sight that greeted him. It was something he’d never imagined.
He saw Duane first.
His uncle was slumped over onto his side, wide-open eyes staring right at Ghost. Sightless. The hilt of Ghost’s favorite boning knife protruded from the side of his throat, and there was blood everywhere. Arterial spray all over the floor, on his shirt and cut, great red arcs of it on the fresh concrete, spread around the body like the rings of Saturn.
And that’s what Duane was now: a body. He wasn’t a terrorizing paternal figure anymore, nor a lousy president, nor the man who left his own club to the wolves.
He was dead.
“Mags,” Ghost breathed, looking for her.
She stood over against the wall, her pale pink sweater slashed with blood. It was drying in sticky clumps in her hair, grimed under her nails and splashed on both hands and halfway up her sleeves. Dark flecks like freckles dotted her nose and cheeks.
Her eyes were vacant when she lifted them to Ghost’s, skillfully devoid of emotion. It was like the night she’d shot the Ryder in her bedroom. Only worse.
Ghost went to her with an exhale that sounded like a low, broken animal groan of pain. He grabbed her sticky hands and lifted them to his face, turned them over, searching. Patted down her chest and sides and stomach. “Are you hurt? What
did he do to you? Mags.”
“I…I’m fine.” Her voice was this detached, floaty thing, like it was coming to him down a faulty telephone line.
“Maggie.” He couldn’t stop touching her, her face and her throat, still looking for injuries, worrying that some of this blood might be hers.
“He…” she started, and then the words came easily. “He came to Bonita’s. I went into the kitchen, and he was there, he’d broken in, or he knew where the key was, I don’t know. But he was there, and he had a gun. I tried to get away, but he took me with him. He…” She touched the back of her head, wincing. “When I woke up, we were here. He…”
“Are you okay?”
Her eyes came to his face, and behind the shield of shock, he could see the riotous, bloody tumble of emotion snarling around in her head, fighting to get out, howling and clawing and trying to rectify what had happened – what she’d had to do. “He said he was going to make it look like the Ryders did it. To get you back on his side.”
Ghost let out an unsteady breath and had trouble taking another one. He framed her face with his hands to ground himself. “And you had your knife.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I…”
“No.” He crushed her to his chest, holding the back of her head, clinging to her. “No, I’m not…Jesus, I’m…thank God. Mags, thank God. Good girl.”
They held each other for a long time, dry-eyed, swaying with fatigue and shock.
Finally, Maggie pushed back, face paper-white beneath the splash of blood. “What are we gonna do?”
He wanted to sit down hard on the cold concrete, pull her into his arms, and just hold her for a few hours. His good, sweet, ferocious, uncle-killing, wonderful girl. He wanted to pull her so tight to his chest that he absorbed her, drew her into his own body, hold her tight inside his ribcage, and let every scrap of wonderful soak into his blood, so he could face the challenge that now lay before him. He wasn’t just the fuckup nephew anymore: he was a king. A king in waiting, but one all the same. James was his placeholder, but the club, and its future, lay in his hands.
But he couldn’t do that. He had to keep her at his side, because he’d need to lean on her the whole way, however long it took. He needed her to stick knives in the throats of the monsters he couldn’t handle himself.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. Jesus Christ, he’d almost lost her.
Against her skin, he said, “I’ve got an idea.”
~*~
The ground hadn’t been tilled, nor seen the tenderizing hooves of cattle, in over a decade. And so it was hard. Packed-down sand full of rocks. In the headlights of the truck, Ghost could see the shine of sweat on his arms, bare now; he’d peeled off first his jacket, and then his shirt, and finally his wifebeater as he dug, overheated and bare-chested, his skin steaming in the cool night air.
Maggie helped, her shovelfuls small and not efficient, but she toiled alongside him, stripped down to her tank top, her skin stark white in the wash of the headlights…save where it was dirty brown with blood.
Around them, the night was alive with the rustle of bare tree limbs and the crackle of underbrush as foxes and deer ventured to the edge of the woods to see what the humans were doing, digging a hole in the dead of night. A whippoorwill called, too-cheerful. Clouds scudded across the moon, distorting their shadows so they looked like strange, inhuman things mining rocks and earthworms.
Ghost finally straightened and swiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one dirty glove. “That’s deep enough,” he decided, and levered himself out of the hole, reached down to pull Maggie out by both hands. Her jeans were a ruin of mud up to the knees, her elbows dusky with earth, and the tip of her nose for some reason, a deeper shade than the blood spatter beneath her eyes. Eyes that looked luminous and blue in the headlights.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
They’d wrapped Duane in a roll of old burlap and it took both of them to send him down into the hole. He landed with a muffled thump that sounded alive. Ghost wondered, standing on the edge, wondered if –
But no. He’d checked his pulse himself. He knew. No one could survive that kind of blood loss…not even a hellhound.
“Bring me the can, baby.”
Maggie fetched the can of kerosene from the truck. The roll of paper towels they’d use for kindling, the matches.
The flames started with a soft whump, and a flash of bright orange.
Maggie moved to stand beside him, their shoulders touching, steamed skin gluing to steamed skin. He found her hand with his and linked their fingers together.
They watched the flames catch and spread, the edges of the burlap blackening and curling. Smoke belched up from the hole, a muddy black against the clear indigo backdrop of the night sky. Eyes flashed at the tree line: animals…watching other animals.
Ghost said, “I wanna get married.”
Maggie took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”
Thirty-Two
Now
“Aidan, you got a minute?”
Aidan glanced up from the FXR he was restoring on the lift and found his dad leaning into the garage, an uncharacteristic uncertainty to his expression. It was a look that had always made Aidan worry.
“Sure.” He set his tools down. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah. Just wanted to talk.” Ghost attempted to give him a reassuring smile, but the expression was so seldom used it fell flat.
Crap. Aidan tugged his gloves off with a frown. This had all the earmarks of a Serious Discussion, and he could count the number of those they’d had in his lifetime on one hand. These weren’t lectures, or the forceful edicts Ghost handed down as president, but the kind of man-to-man talks that always happened between fathers and sons in sitcoms, and which Ghost had never figured out how to deliver properly.
The first one they’d ever had, he remembered, had been when Ghost told him that Maggie was pregnant, and that he was going to have a little brother or sister –
Aidan chuckled to himself as he realized. That was right: Maggie had gone to the doctor today to find out the gender. And Ghost, the dork, didn’t know how to be cool and just come out and say it.
He followed his dad into the office and eased the door shut, dulling the clang of garage work to low background noise. “What’s up?”
Ghost went around to the desk – no one ever sat there, so he had to move aside a stack of parts catalogues – and sat down with a sigh, rolling over to the mini fridge to grab two Cokes. One he slid across to Aidan, who had the good chair, the swivel number with the duct tape over the tear in the seat. “Mags went to the doc today.”
“Yeah, I know.” He sipped his Coke and hid a smile. “How’d it go?”
Ghost looked caught between joyous and scared to death, rolling the cold can between his hands and staring at it. “It’s, uh, she’s having a boy.” He glanced up then, trying to see how the news would hit Aidan.
Back in the day, when Maggie was expecting Ava, Aidan had wanted a little brother. He’d been, as shallow as it sounded, looking forward to having someone look up to him. But at this point, married and with a kid of his own, he didn’t need that validation.
He cared, though. He worried about Ghost being able to raise a son well.
It must have shown on his face, because Ghost said, “Yeah. Me too.”
“Things are different now, though,” Aidan said, shrugging, playing disinterested. “You’ve learned from your mistakes, and all that.” He offered a smile. “What does Mags think?”
“That she can’t use any of Ava’s old baby clothes,” Ghost said with a snort. “And that it might be overkill to use another A name.”
“Yeah?”
“Nah. He’s totally gotta have an A name.”
Aidan felt his grin get a little truer.
“Look,” Ghost said, setting his Coke aside on the desk. “With the baby coming, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about back then. That m
akes me a shithead because I haven’t done enough to rectify that until now, but I’m doing it now, so…” He sighed. “I always hated Duane for the way he treated me, and I know I’ve been doing the same thing to you. I haven’t prepared you for taking over this club one day.”
“Dad–” Aidan started.
“Maybe you don’t wanna run this thing. And that’s fine. But I ought to do my job and get you ready for it. In case.” He flicked a tired smile. “I won’t be around forever, and you’ll have to look after your little brother, yeah? Be the man in his life.”
Aidan wanted to groan – Ghost had to get off this “I’m old and gonna die soon” kick he’d been on. But he understood where he was coming from. When he looked at Lainie, he went weak-kneed with fear.
So he nodded. “Of course.”
~*~
Maggie looked up at her childhood home – unchanged save for the rust-red front door – and took a deep breath before she pressed the doorbell. At her own home, Ava let herself in with a distracted “hey” as she dragged in kids and diaper bags. But here at her own mother’s house, Maggie rang the bell like a stranger.
As she waited, listening to the clip of her mother’s heels across the foyer floor, she smiled to herself, hand going to her belly. Seventeen all over again, baby bump and all.
Denise’s face appeared in the window, checking the caller, though Maggie had let her know in advance she was coming. Maggie thought she saw a frown cross her mother’s face – but maybe that was just her imagination. Then the door opened and she was greeted by the old smells: furniture polish, fresh-cut florist flowers, and Chanel No. 5.
“Hello,” Denise greeted formally. She looked thinner, if it was possible, her wrists bony where her sweater sleeves slipped down and revealed them, the veins there blue and prominent. “Lovely weather for January, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Maggie agreed, stepping inside and shrugging out of her jacket.
It was always a dance with her mother, observing all the little social niceties with breath held, waiting for the knife-slice of insult to descend.
American Hellhound Page 47
