Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Get back from the bars,” he told her. When he let go of her hand, the cold air closed over his own. “We don’t want to look weak to them.”

  She nodded and scooted toward the center of her cell.

  When their captors arrived, they were both quiet and composed, cross-legged on the floor.

  Bill the Faceless wasn’t with the two goons this time. That wasn’t a relief.

  The two thugs bypassed Tango’s cell at a lazy stroll. Their eyes were on Whitney, and in an instant, the dread in his belly boiled up to become anger, burning back the haze of physical pain. The dogs had been let off the leash…and they’d decided they wanted to play.

  One of them whistled, and the other laughed in an unmistakable way as they peered through the bars at Whitney.

  “Baby, baby, baby,” one said to the other. “How old you think she is?”

  “Betcha she can’t even drink yet,” Number Two responded, voice dark with intent. “Can ya, sweetheart? You even eighteen?”

  Tango glanced over at Whitney, saw her wrap her arms around her knees and lift her chin, rebelliously silent.

  “Don’t feel like talking?” One said. “Maybe I oughta come in there and see if your tongue’s working.”

  Oh shit… Tango’s hands curled into fists.

  “Twenty,” Whitney said. “I’m twenty.”

  The thugs laughed.

  “Just a little piece of veal,” One said.

  The sound of the key grating into the lock of her cell door lifted the hair on the back of Tango’s neck. Whitney shot a frantic look toward him, eyes huge – pale blue eyes liquid with fright. It was a look that communicated everything: her terror, her innocence, her panic. Twenty, life only just beginning, and she was about to be violated unspeakably by her captors. It happened every day, all over the country, abuses carried out by sociopathic animals.

  But it wasn’t happening on Tango’s watch.

  He surged to his feet. “Do you not know who I am?”

  “Shut up,” Two said, not interested.

  Tango went to the front of his cell, wrapped his fingers around the bars. “No, I don’t think you get it. Do you know who I am?”

  They looked over at him, irritated, but distracted from Whitney for a moment. “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “Those earrings were hooked to his brain,” One suggested. They laughed again.

  “You ever heard of The Cuckoo’s Nest?”

  You’d either heard of the Nest, or you hadn’t; there was no mistaking it for anyplace else. And clearly, these two had heard. They both stilled, the smiles dropping off their faces.

  “I used to work there,” Tango said, and there was nothing true about the word work. His heart pounded as the memories crashed across him. He couldn’t talk about that place without thinking about Miss Carla, about the boys, about Ian, about all of it. “I was one of the features.”

  The two guards moved toward him, slowly, a little hesitant, but fascinated.

  “You never went in there, did you?” Tango asked. “But you were curious. You thought it was disgusting…but there was that little bit of fascination, wasn’t there?” He was aware of Whitney staring at him, and hated himself as he continued. “You wanna find out?” he asked. “You wanna see one of Miss Carla’s Dancing Boys? Take a good look.”

  Thug One walked up to him, glaring down at Tango with utter contempt. He hawked and spat on the concrete. “Shut up, faggot.”

  “How many little crying virgin girls have you terrorized?” he taunted them. “Doesn’t that get boring? More of the same, and same, and same. How’s that a challenge? How’s that sport?”

  Whitney made a small distressed sound.

  Tango delivered his challenge: “You wanna torture somebody? You wanna see who can take it? You start with me.”

  Twenty-Nine

  It wouldn’t be fair to Erin to deny her riding lessons because of Tonya. So Sam put on her bravest face and drove her sister out to Briar Hall one afternoon after school.

  “I swear,” Emmie said, afterward, as Erin was walking Sherman around the arena to cool him down and Em stood beside Sam at the rail. “I had no earthly idea Tonya was pregnant. I would never have put you in that position.”

  Sam shrugged, feeling hollow; it was becoming her constant companion, this empty spot in her stomach. “I know you didn’t. It’s nobody’s fault. Except for mine…and Aidan’s.”

  “Men are idiots,” Emmie said, tugging at the brim of her baseball cap. She was dressed for her work day, in buff riding breeches, boots, and a sweatshirt beneath a down vest. “Even Walsh, who’s the most intelligent guy I’ve ever met – idiots, all of them.”

  “No arguments here.”

  Out in the arena, the sun glinted off Erin’s bright ponytail and the horse’s fluffy winter coat. It was a timeless, beautiful picture, girl and horse, loose sand of the arena kicking up beneath their feet. Erin was talking to Sherman, glancing over at him and smiling as she spoke. The big gelding rubbed his ear against her shoulder in answer.

  “Sam,” Emmie said, and her voice was different, no longer her officious, no-nonsense instructor tone, but something more personal and feminine.

  Sam glanced over at her.

  Emmie’s expression was one of deep sympathy. “You might not want to hear this, and that’s your prerogative. I get it. But not very long ago I was the outsider, coming into this crazy biker world, and all the other women had been attached to the club for so long they didn’t remember what it was like to be exposed to the Dogs for the first time.” Her smile was wry. “Walsh and I got off to a rough start, you could say. When I married him, I did it because…well, let’s just say it wasn’t true love propelling us to the altar.”

  Sam frowned, curiosity good and piqued. “But you guys are–”

  “A perfectly matched set of little blonde salt-and-pepper shakers? Yeah.” She snorted. “But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t rough, and I wasn’t scared, and there weren’t a boatload of miscommunications.” She smiled, and it was eloquent of so many things. “I had a heart-to-heart with myself. And I realized that no matter our issues, I was completely in love with him, and in my life, love was hard to come by.”

  Sam fidgeted with the flaking black paint on the fence rail beneath her hands. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me,” she said, mostly to herself.

  “Like I said. Idiots. Unfortunately, they can’t stop being idiots just because they love you. It’s part of the whole package, I’m afraid.”

  ~*~

  Walsh got home while she was finishing up with her lesson notes. Emmie heard the bike go past the barn and move up toward the house and frowned to herself, as she jotted in her student journal. Up ‘til now, she hadn’t unloaded on him about the whole Aidan/Sam situation. But after seeing Sam’s devastated face today, she was tired of biting her tongue.

  She finished up, closed the office door, shut out the lights – paused a moment to reflect that not so long ago she would have then headed up to the loft apartment to spend the night alone – and started toward the house.

  Walsh was in the foyer when she walked in, sorting through the day’s mail at the side table. Her greeting was: “I still can’t believe you didn’t warn me about Tonya and Aidan.”

  He glanced up slowly, gave her that mild eyebrow lift she sometimes found sexy…or infuriating. “Wasn’t my business.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” He started toward the kitchen, and she followed. “Tonya’s moving her horse to another barn because of it. That’s my business, which makes you obliged to share. And we won’t even mention how humiliated I was when I single-handedly broke the news to Samantha.”

  “Think you just mentioned it, love,” he said over his shoulder as they kept walking.

  “I told you she was bringing her sister out,” she continued, growing angrier. “You didn’t think a baby was worth mentioning?”

  “A baby!” Bea exclaimed as they entered the kitchen.

  Oh damn.

>   Bea pressed her hands to her face, eyes wide with shock and delight. “You’re having a baby?”

  “No, Mum,” Walsh said. “We’re not.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emmie added when she saw her mother-in-law’s crestfallen expression. “We’re talking about friends.”

  “Oh,” Bea said, a wealth of heartbreak in that one word. “I was hoping…” She heaved a deep breath and almost sounded tearful. “I want you two to have a baby…”

  Walsh put an arm around her trembling shoulders. “I know, Mum, but you want it to be because we want it, yeah? Not just have a baby to have it.”

  Across the island from them, Emmie felt like she’d been shoved. She hadn’t been coy about having children. She’d just turned thirty, and she knew all the medical statistics, knew that if you’d never had a child before, it was imperative that you not wait too long.

  She blinked. “Yes,” she said, voice dull, “we wouldn’t want to screw around and accidently get pregnant.”

  Walsh glanced toward her…

  But she was already leaving the room.

  ~*~

  “What do you want for dinner?” Sam asked as she put the Caprice in park at the curb in front of Leroy’s. “The equestrian gets to pick.”

  Erin had helmet hair, and for once in her life didn’t seem to care that she didn’t look her best. She fiddled with her seatbelt. “I want…bacon pasta,” she decreed, chin held at a lofty angle. “With extra parm.”

  “But of course, your highness.”

  They climbed out of the car rolling their eyes at one another, but feeling sisterly. Sam was still a little shocked by Erin’s visit the other night, the way her little sister, Queen of Bad Decisions, had been so clear-headed about Aidan and the situation with Tonya.

  Seeing Emmie today had been good, too. Sam didn’t want to hide and hope it all went away. She had to live her life; she had to push Aidan aside and carry on.

  “Go find some crescent rolls,” Sam told Erin when they got inside the store. “I’ll find the pasta and cheese.” And wine, she added silently.

  She ought to call Aidan, she decided. They ought to sit down, eat, drink, lay everything out. Because even if she hated what had happened…she could never hate him. She wouldn’t allow herself to fall back into bed with him. No. That would only feed his irresponsibility. But they could be friends. They could…

  “Hi, Sam.”

  She started, turning around with a jolt as she heard her name. This time she didn’t have to grope for the name of the man standing beside her in the alcohol aisle – she’d seen him recently, after all.

  “Greg. Hi.”

  He was dressed in jeans and a dark sweatshirt, and held a bottle of whiskey in one hand. His smile was wide, but didn’t touch his eyes. “How are you?” he asked.

  A crawling sense of unease tickled up the back of her neck. “Fine. We’re only stopping in for a minute,” she said, hoping to get rid of him. “Just picking up a few things for dinner.”

  “Oh, right.” He nodded. “Hey, have you seen Aidan lately?”

  That question again. She didn’t like it. A spasm of fear shot through her, and she couldn’t say why, only that it seemed strange.

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t. Look, Greg, it’s great to see you, but–”

  “Oh, you’re busy. I get it. That’s fine.” Fast, tight grin. “Good to see you again.” And he was gone, walking to the register.

  ~*~

  One phone call and a bacon pasta dinner later, Sam was waiting on the back patio with a glass of white wine, sweater folded tight across her front against the November cold when she heard the bike pull up in her drive. She tensed, braced herself, and Aidan appeared seconds later, chilled and windblown.

  He hesitated a moment, like he wanted to kiss her, but sat down hard in a patio chair instead. He pulled out a smoke and lit up, eyes dark and heavy in the light of the overhead security bulb. “Greg?” he asked.

  “Twice now,” she said, nodding. “A few weeks ago, and then this afternoon. I didn’t think much of it the first time, but twice now he’s asked me if I’ve been in touch with you. You said to call you if anything seemed strange. So yeah. This strikes me as very strange.”

  He took a hard drag, smoke mingling with his words. “You don’t even know, sweetheart,” he said, mostly to himself, shaking his head. He seemed deeply troubled. “He say anything else?”

  “Not this time, no. The time before it was just pleasantries.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Aidan.” Her voice was firm, a surprise to herself and a magnet for his attention; his eyes snapped to her face. “I’m not one of those women who’s going to demand to know what’s going on behind the doors of your meeting room–”

  “Chapel.”

  “–chapel,” she amended. “But the last time I saw Greg, someone was shaking him down for his lunch money at Knoxville High. But you’re sitting here now worried that he talked to me. So I’m going to need to know what’s going on.”

  He stared at her, a long, level look, obviously weighing things in his mind. Without blinking, he said, “The club’s made an enemy of someone more powerful than we thought. Greg’s working for them. And they took Tango.”

  She felt the blood drain out of her face. “They took him?”

  “They’re holding him hostage until we get the money put together.” He glanced away, swallowing hard. “God knows what they’ll do to him.”

  “God,” she breathed. “Kev.” Kevin Estes had always been a sweetheart, even in high school, when Aidan had been the biggest douche alive and hadn’t known she’d existed. Kev had always been polite, kind, almost apologetic on behalf of his best friend.

  “Yeah.” He finished his smoke, ground it out on the concrete, and got to his feet.

  Sam stood too. “Aidan.”

  This time when his eyes came to her, she saw the repressed emotion in them, the brimming regret and longing. “Don’t say my name like that if you don’t mean anything by it,” he said quietly. “Shit is spinning out of control and I need–” He bit down hard on the rest of his sentence.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and felt emotion rising in her throat, dampening her eyes. “I hate this. I…”

  He stepped in close to her, took her by the arms and pulled her up flush against his tall, hard body. “It’s a girl,” he said, almost whispering. “The baby.” The smile that streaked across his face was more pain than joy. “I’m gonna have a girl, Sam.”

  She put both hands on his chest, felt the thunder of his pulse. Felt something unfurling inside her, something she couldn’t describe, even with her writer’s vocabulary.

  “Wait for me,” he urged fervently. “I’m gonna get Kev back, and I’m gonna make things right for us. Just please, baby, wait. Because I love you and I can’t do it without you.”

  He kissed her, fast, hard, his mouth damp against hers, and then pulled back, released her. “Stay safe,” he said, and then was gone.

  Sam groped behind her, found a chair, and sank into it.

  Thirty

  “Where are we with the money?”

  Four sets of bloodshot eyes lifted toward him, one of which was full of fatherly disapproval.

  It was six-twenty-six in the morning and Aidan was running off coffee and the Waffle House hash browns and sausage he’d choked down on the way over. Waffle House made him think of Sam – changing her tire in the parking lot – and thoughts of Sam made him feel tall, capable, and in need of a major life readjustment. Whatever was coming at him, bring it. Including his dad. Including this stupid fucking problem with the money.

  Ghost, Ratchet, Jinx, and Candy were at a table in the clubhouse common room, reams of paper spread out before them, ash trays full of butts.

  Candy took a long swallow out of a glass of Scotch and said, “We’re up to a hundred kay.”

  “What?” Aidan demanded.

  Ghost made a face he wouldn’t normally. The exhaustion was getting to him. “Nobody�
��s liquid. After buying the horse farm, all the chapters are strapped.” He picked his cig off the edge of the ashtray, took a drag fraught with unhappiness.

  Fortified by coffee, and the sonogram picture in his wallet, Aidan huffed an annoyed breath and said, “So we don’t have the money. Okay. We find another way.”

  Candy rolled his eyes and downed more Scotch.

  Ratchet and Jinx studied their hands.

  “Another way?” Ghost asked, sneering. “And what would that be, Einstein? We take one step toward Ellison or any of his properties, and they’ll put the screws to Tango.”

  “Haven’t they already?” Aidan shot back. “If they know his history, they’ll know how to use it against him.”

  Ghost’s eyes flared, like he was afraid Aidan would say too much.

  How fucking insulting. “We need to get him out now,” Aidan said. He thought he might be snarling, and didn’t care. “And if you won’t think about other options, then I will.”

  “Yeah?” Ghost said. “You gonna take some initiative for once in your damn life?”

  “I–”

  Aidan didn’t get to finish. The front door banged open and a lean shadow preceded the lean shape of Ian Byron as he marched into the common room, backlit by the dawn, tailed by his usual bodyguard, Bruce.

  Aidan took one look at the Englishman’s harsh face and stepped back. Let Ghost face this a moment.

  “Guys,” Ghost said. “Give us a minute.”

  Ratchet, Candy and Jinx seemed glad of the chance to get up and stretch their legs. They left down the back hall, heading no doubt toward dorms and bathrooms, and maybe even pillows if they weren’t called to return.

  A door closed with a soft thump, and then they were alone. Bruce dragged out a chair and sat.

  Ian hauled in a deep breath and said, “Where is he?” His crisp English voice was venomous, furious, impressive in its darkness. This was the reason, Aidan reflected dimly, as the man’s eyes flashed, they always cast Brits as villains in movies.

  Ghost folded his hands together on the table. “I don’t discuss the whereabouts of my members with outsiders.”