Technically, Tenny was doing what Reese was doing, head turning slowly as his gaze panned across the room, but he was doing it sitting down, and looking unbothered. Unprofessional, Reese thought.
But that was what Ten had been talking about before they left, wasn’t it? All the ways Reese couldn’t “play the game.” The ways he stuck out.
A girl started toward them, in high heels and a clinging red dress that glimmered all over, fringe dancing from the hem against her bare thighs. Her gaze touched Reese, briefly, but her smile, when it bloomed, was for Ten. She sidled up to him, leaning down to rest her palms on his knees, tipping forward at the waist so her breasts nearly came tumbling out of her dress.
The music was a low, steady thump, and Reese could hear her over it when she purred a hello and asked Ten if he’d like a dance.
“Sure, darlin’.” Ten pulled out a perfect Texas drawl like he’d been born to it, no trace of his proper accent detectable. One of those moments in which Reese was made aware that he had only the one voice, because that was all he’d ever needed – and that rarely, only to say “yes, sir,” and “no, sir.” He’d never felt the lack of that skill.
But…
The girl circled Ten’s chair, slow, stalking steps that worked her hips side-to-side more than necessary. Men liked that, the way it was exaggerated, the way it emphasized their anatomy. When he watched it, Reese felt a vague sort of warmth in his face, a flutter in his stomach. It wasn’t something he’d ever pursued. Girls like this were for his bosses; he was for holding up walls.
But here was Tenny, a girl swinging around into his lap, her hands going to play with the glossy hair at the back of his head. She moved her hips, lifting slowly up and back, rubbing against him, while Ten petted her sides and back with slow sweeps of his hands.
A burst of pain in his mouth told him he’d bitten his cheek; that he’d even drawn blood. His hands were balled up so tight his knuckles cracked. What was Ten doing? With his face buried in this woman’s cleavage. He wasn’t keeping watch; wasn’t following orders.
I hate him, I hate him, I hate him…
“Uh-oh,” Ten said, still in that fake accent. He’d twisted his head around, somehow – Reese had missed that, Reese hadn’t been paying attention, had been watching their surroundings like he was supposed to. Tenny watched him now with a sideways, threatening grin while the woman kept gyrating on his lap. “I think my buddy’s feeling kinda left out.”
The woman paused, peering at Reese over Ten’s shoulder. “He can come join us if he wants.” She bit her lip in a way Reese read as measuring. “He’s cute, too.”
“Nah, I don’t think he will. He’s shy.”
Her eyes and smile widened together. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Ten gave her a light smack on the backside. “Go on.”
Reese didn’t understand what he intended until the woman slid gracefully to her feet and then stalked toward him. He pressed back against the wall and thought wildly of escape – even though she wasn’t a threat, even though Tenny would have laughed at him, and that would have been shameful.
His belly tightened, and his breath grew irregular, and then she was right in his face, grinning at him, smelling of strong perfume. “Ooh, you are shy, aren’t you?” Her voice low, throaty. “What’s the matter, baby? You’re not scared of me, are you?”
A ridiculous question; a stupid one. But his belly squirmed like he’d swallowed something alive, and his face and neck felt flushed.
She chuckled, close enough now that her warm breath fanned across his throat. She lifted a hand, then, and reached for him.
It was instinct. He saw her long red nails, sharp as blades, and he moved, quick as a blink. He grabbed her wrist, grip lock-tight, and her touch never connected.
Her eyes widened; her mouth fell open in a shocked O.
Tenny was there behind her, suddenly, a hand on her shoulder. When he spoke, it was with that same unhurried drawl, but his gaze was dark and sharp on Reese.
“It’s alright, honey, you only startled him. Like I said: he’s shy. An honest to God virgin, this one.” To Reese, he mouthed, Let go.
Reese frowned, but he did let go; this woman wasn’t a threat; it had only been instinct, automatic and unthinking.
She took the wrist he’d gripped and massaged it with her other hand, chuckling weakly, her expression frantic. “That’s okay. Happens to everybody. A virgin, huh?” She aimed for that same low-lidded, secretive look she’d given him at first, but it didn’t land.
Tenny’s hand slid down her arm, and he turned her away from Reese, into himself, head angling down and expression shifting remarkably: from the ugly glare he’d given Reese to the easy, charming smirk he’d given the woman before. “Come on, don’t worry about him. Some guys just can’t lighten up.”
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…
“You can dance for me, though, sugar,” Tenny said, arm going around her waist as he steered her back toward the chair.
Fox reappeared, then, and Reese knew a startling amount of relief. Albie and Candy were behind him, and none of them so much as glanced their way.
Fox snapped his fingers and said, “Let’s go, boys. T, get laid on your own time.”
Tenny fell into step beside Reese as they headed for the door. “Did you think she was pretty?” he asked in an undertone, back to his real accent.
Reese didn’t answer, the skin prickling unhappily down the back of his neck.
Ten snorted. “You really are a virgin, aren’t you?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
“You’re even more pathetic than I thought.”
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…
Twenty-Six
“I didn’t know you have a brother,” Michelle said. “A biological one, I mean.”
Jinx took another drag on his cigarette and exhaled in a hard stream. “I used to.”
“Oh.” There was a story there, and doubtless he was about to tell it to her. That’s what he’d meant when he said he wanted to talk to her, alone; when she’d suggested they go sit on one of the picnic tables over to one side of the parking lot. His face had been not just serious, as always, but grave, his expression weighted with something heavy. It was this: it was a biological brother he “used to” have. “Jinx. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
He shrugged, fast and jerky. Didn’t make eye contact. “Why would you? I don’t talk about it.”
The parking lot bustled with regular activity around them, customers coming and going, cars driving past constantly. A man in coveralls was unloading a Coke truck, running trip after trip with his trolley. A harried mother was trying to convince her kids to clean all the fast food trash out of their minivan and chuck in the BP’s trash cans.
Eden and Axelle had gone inside to grab sandwiches and gigantic sodas, spread out four tables over, out of earshot, scanning their surroundings and chatting. Eden checked her phone at regular intervals; Michelle wondered if she was texting Fox about this, and hoped she wasn’t. The moment had a strange quality: a sense of being wrong-footed, but wrong-footed together, like she and Jinx were conspiring.
“That club war I mentioned before.”
“The Vultures.” She remembered it vividly, Jinx’s undisguised contempt for RCs in general, and Pacer in particular.
“Yeah. Well, back then.” Another drag. He was making an effort to blow the smoke away from her, she’d noticed, but his fingers shook on the filter paper; he had to smoke right now, telling her this. “Cade – my brother – he wasn’t patched in, wasn’t even a prospect. But he helped us out sometimes. Friend of the club, you know? When we had to make a delivery, and there was too much heat on us. Played go-between sometimes.” He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out, and lit another.
“Pacer was already in deep shit with the Vultures, but Jack hadn’t moved on them yet. He said he’d help Pacer, but we’d not had anything to do with the Vultures. Hadn’t even reached out. It was business
as usual. We had a run to make, back east, to New Orleans. And a delivery to make to Nevada, too. The NOLA run was gonna be huge: all hands on deck, you know?”
She nodded. She could already see where this was headed, already vaguely sick about it for him, the way his brows were notched, the way frown lines marred his face; the way his lips trembled when he put the cigarette to them.
“Cade and a couple of his buddies offered to make the Nevada run. They took one of the club vans. It wasn’t marked or anything, but – the Vultures knew it was ours, somehow.
“I got the call at a rest stop in Mississippi. If Cade hadn’t had his wallet on him, they wouldn’t have been able to ID him.”
“Christ,” she breathed.
He set the half-smoked cig on the lip of his Coke can and braced his elbows on the tabletop; pressed his hands together. Not like a man praying, she thought, because he didn’t strike her as the type. But a man trying to hide how badly his hands were shaking; she understood that intimately – maybe more so, being a woman raised in a man’s world.
“Pacer got my little brother killed,” Jinx said, tone flat, eyes gleaming. “I hate his fucking guts. And now he’s gonna get my club brothers killed. I’m real tempted to ride out to his place and put a bullet in him.”
He was completely serious, she saw, and she wasn’t going to try to dissuade him from doing any such thing.
“Eric and Jesse at the Citgo say our murderer’s linked to the Chupacabras,” she told him.
It took a moment for the news to hit, smoke from the abandoned cigarette curling up between them. Then: “Jesus fuck.”
“We know it’s them,” she ticked off on a finger, “and that this killer’s calling himself the Holy Father.” Another finger. “My guess would be that he’s not the boss, just a super dramatic attack dog putting the fear of God into everybody.” The stupid nickname made unfortunate sense, in that light.
“And probably,” she added, voice tripping, “there was someone watching that gas station, so not only are Jesse and Eric in trouble, but us too for talking to them.”
“You’re in the crosshairs now,” he said, but not with censure. He tipped his head. “’Course, you already were, I guess. Now you’re just sticking your nose in.” Again, he didn’t sound reprimanding.
“I was tired of sitting at home while everything’s going to shit.”
“I figured. Candy should have figured that, too.”
She gave him a sharp look. “He’s your president.”
“And my best friend. I can call his ass out when he’s being a dipshit.”
A bit of wild hope fluttered behind her breastbone, an echo of the old, hard-pounding excitement she’d known when she worked for her dad.
“Why did you follow us?” she asked.
“Not to sound like a jackass, but I don’t know anything about those two.” He nodded toward Eden and Axelle; Michelle thought, based on the little tic in Axelle’s jaw, he’d been heard. “And somebody needs to watch your back.”
She waited for him to say something about her being a woman, or being pregnant, or being out of bounds – but he didn’t.
Instead, to her shock, he said, “So what’s the plan?”
She blew out a breath; pushed aside the emotion that lapped around her like hungry waves lately and just thought. Put aside all the ingrained prejudices about the club, and her gender, and the way of things. She’d never realized, before coming to the States, how adaptable the London chapter was – or perhaps it was just her father. She’d always been struck by the heaviness of it; by the roots, the sense of history, the tradition. But Phillip was open to nearly anything, ready to accept contributions from whomever. In London, the club couldn’t get away with the massive rides down main streets, the big, dick-swinging displays of authority. The club didn’t own London; didn’t have a hand in every police pie. No guns worn boldly on hips; no shoot-outs in broad daylight. Subterfuge and subtlety were the ways they thrived.
The way she’d thrived.
She’d spent the last few years trying to become a proper Texan. Her Texan husband would want to bash heads and lay down proclamations. Her first instinct, now, was to go bold.
But that was a new instinct. A Texas one.
The London girl in her bones said, “I think we need to be smart about this.”
He nodded.
“How’d you like to play a rat?”
One corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Twenty-Seven
Benny was pushed down into a chair at a round common room table with Jesse and Eric from the gas station, and all three of them were given one drink – one stiff enough to loosen their tongues, but not so strong that they’d get sloppy.
Candy paced, sipping coffee. He’d sent Darla back to the sanctuary to tell Michelle and Jenny that they were back, and that it would be best if they stayed in the back for the next few minutes while they ran an interrogation.
“When did they approach you?” he asked. “And how?” He paused, and pointed at Benny.
A few sips of whiskey had put some color back in his cheeks, but he was still shaking, the chains dancing against his chest and glittering with caught light. “It was, like, two weeks ago? Maybe?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I had a lotta stuff going on, okay? There was that party at – nevermind,” he said, hurriedly, when Candy lifted his brows. “It was two weeks ago. I remember, ‘cause I was at the Oasis. Lunch buffet, you know?”
“Salmonella buffet,” Blue muttered.
“And I was having some chicken, and a drink, and when Sheila got off stage, I was gonna see if I could have a private dance, you know? And this guy comes up to me. Sits down at my table, like we were friends or something. And he takes out this little vial.” He held up his thumb and forefinger a few inches apart to indicate size. “And he looks at the stage, not at me, you know, like you do when you’re trying to play it cool, and he says, ‘Heard you like to move stuff.’
“And I said, ‘Hey, no offense, but you heard wrong, buddy. I do a little business here and there, but I don’t fence.’ And the guy, all calm like, just pushed the vial closer, and said, ‘Try it.’”
Candy asked, “What was in it?”
“Coke. Good shit, too. But that’s how they do it.”
“Quality sample, then a shitty brick for you to move,” Candy said, motioning for him to move it along. “I’m familiar. What then?”
“I told him ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ and he said, ‘Okay,’ and he got up and left.”
Candy waited. Not so patiently.
“I think it’s over, right?” Benny shrugged and drained the rest of his whiskey. “That sorta thing happens all the time. Anybody who wants to sell anything can find a hookup at the Oasis.”
“Benny.”
“I’m getting there. You got anything else to drink?”
“No,” more than just Candy said, the word ringing off the walls.
Jesse and Eric seemed to lean in toward one another, trying to duck down into the collars of their Citgo polo shirts.
“Alright, alright.” Benny swiped a hand through his hair, and let out an unsteady breath. “When I left the club later – that night. I stayed around for a dance or two, a few drinks. I walk out to my car, and first I notice that the street light over it is out, right? And I thought, ‘Damn, that’s kinda spooky.’ So I get there, in the dark, and I can’t see to put the key in the damn lock, and I’m trying to use my phone as a flashlight, and suddenly there’s somebody behind me. Like this.” He clapped a hand over his nose and mouth, briefly, in demonstration. “And there was a needle in my neck, and then it was lights out.”
A quick glance toward Jesse and Eric proved they’d lost all the color in their faces, gazes skittering across the tabletop, both of them not just nervous, but traumatized – whatever had happened to Benny had happened to them, too, and they were reliving it.
“When I came to,” Benny
said, and his voice was different, now. The accent softened – Candy had always suspected it was fake anyway, a way to try to sound exotic down here in Texas. His tone had shifted, too: the faint, oddly placid rasp of someone who couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “I was in this room. I don’t know what kind. I think it was a garage. A warehouse, maybe. Someplace with metal walls, and the water pipes were exposed. The light was really bright. Up high, beating down on me, and I could tell there were people all around me, but I couldn’t get a good look at any of them. I was on a table,” he said, hushed, gaze withdrawn and glassy.
“I was strapped down. My arms and legs were out like…” He started to demonstrate, but his arms seemed limp and uncooperative.
“Like the victims,” Candy said.
Benny’s gaze shifted to his face, still unseeing, too wide, too dark. “Yeah. Just like that.”
Colin was at the bar, and he stepped forward now, without prompt, bottle of Jack in his hand, and refilled Benny’s glass.
“Thank you,” he said, with real gratitude, hand shaking so badly he spilled a few droplets on the table when he took his next sip.
“What then?” Candy said, gentler, prompting now. I’m your friend, see? You can tell me; I’ll protect you. Times like these he thought he might have been a detective in another life.
Benny drank down the rest of the whiskey in a few long swallows. “This guy stepped up where I could see him,” he said on the hot-throated exhale afterward. “And he was wearing some kinda robe. It had this hood. And a big old silver cross around his neck. Fucker looked like a priest or something.”
Holy Father, Eden had said. The boys sitting here had said.
“All I could see were his hands, like this.” He crossed his own over his chest. “And his voice was all deep and weird. He said, ‘Hello, my son.’
“I said, ‘I ain’t your fucking son.’ And somebody else hit me. Smacked the hell out of me, here.” He touched his face, and what Candy had thought might be smudges of dirt or makeup from one of the strippers did in fact, in the daylight, look like a faded bruise. “When I could open my eyes, he was still there, and he said it again. Hello, my son. And so I said, ‘What am I supposed to call you?’ And he said, ‘I’m the Holy Father.’ Like that. Like it meant something, you know?”
Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7) Page 19
