Price of Angels (Dartmoor Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  One corner of his mouth twitched in what she’d finally realized, after months of observation, was a hint of a smile. “He’s not for everybody.”

  “You’re always reading somebody who’s not for everybody,” she teased.

  He shrugged.

  Thus far, it hadn’t worked, but she felt that she had to keep using the old tricks, the moves men didn’t ever seem able to resist. She leaned forward, propped her elbows up on the table, plumped her breasts together, inclined her head toward him, so a shiny sheet of hair slid over her shoulder.

  Michael continued to methodically cut and eat his steak.

  She dropped her voice a fraction, put a little purring sound in it. “So why can’t you stay as long tonight?”

  “I got something I gotta do,” he said, without looking up.

  “Hot date?”

  “No.”

  Undaunted, she said, “Well what are you doing after? Do you have plans for later?”

  He made a negative sound in the back of his throat. Tension had crept into his fingers, as they worked the knife. There was a little twitch in his face as he reached for a fry.

  “See, I was thinking,” she said, leaning in even closer, pressing her breasts into the edge of the table so they strained at her tank top. It was the most suggestive thing she’d ever done. “I live just down that way,” she said in a heavy whisper, pointing toward the room she rented down the block, even though he wasn’t looking, “and maybe, after you get done with, well, whatever it is you have to do, you could stop by. For a drink. Or for…whatever. I get off work at three-thirty. We close at three tonight, and we could meet here if you want, or you could come to my…”

  His head lifted, face incredibly harsh under the lamp, his jaw locked tight. “What are you doing?”

  Her pulse leapt to a choppy gallop. Her palms slicked with sweat in a sudden physical reaction, as fear flooded through her veins, the adrenaline spiking.

  She wet her lips. “I – I’m inviting you to my place.”

  “For sex.”

  “Well…well, yeah.” She felt her face go scarlet. Months she’d spent, trying to cozy up to this man, the one she’d judged The One, her chosen killer, and finally, when she worked up the courage, it was a cold, flat disinterest he presented to her.

  Holly kicked up her chin, so the lamplight could go sliding down her throat, giving him an exquisite look at the tops of her breasts. “Don’t you want to?” she asked, and heard the tremors in her voice.

  He stared at her a moment, expression unfathomable.

  Then he said, “No.” His head dropped again, as he speared fries with his fork and mopped up the extra gravy with them. “Bring me my check. Please.”

  Holly felt the sting of tears in her eyes as she got to her feet.

  Two

  Matches. Michael kept innumerable packets of the things in his gun safe at home, all lined up in rows in a shoebox. Matches from restaurants and liquor stores, saved up over the years. Matches were the trick to this whole operation. He collected them like rare stamps. Because without them, he’d just be putting a body in a hole, and that was too crude and negligent to serve his purpose.

  It always started with the digging. By-hand, with a steel-handled shovel, the earth set aside in an orderly pile. This one hadn’t needed to be as large as some of the others, so he’d kept it about five-and-a-half feet by two feet. Then, he’d laid a single layer of crackling brown packaging paper. That had then been soaked with lighter fluid. Next was a layer of wood kindling. Then a few logs, smoky-smelling hickory. If anyone caught a whiff somewhere, off fifty acres away, it would smell like a barbecue. Then, rolling it from its plastic, wrapped up like a tenderloin in more paper, the corpse was placed in the grave. More fluid. And then the match.

  Whoomp.

  Up in flames it went.

  Michael left his shovel propped against an old weathered fence board and walked back to the truck, before there was too much smoke. Safely inside, all the windows rolled up and crusted with frost where the now-settling dew was already beginning to freeze, he let the fatigue and the soreness finally take hold of him, and he slumped back against the headrest behind him, letting his body go limp against the tattered leather upholstery.

  Burying a person was hard work. And this had been a particularly unpleasant body disposal.

  Last night, after Dartmoor had rolled up its sidewalks, and a few of the boys had settled at the clubhouse bar to drink and shoot the shit, Michael had been summoned across the common room by his president, Ghost lifting an eyebrow in silent command from the mouth of the hallway.

  Michael had gone to him at once. “Yes?” He folded his hands behind his back, awaited instruction. None of his brothers, least of all Ghost, ever wanted to talk to him just to be social.

  Ghost leaned sideways against the wall, eyes going across the common room, to the pool table where his son was lining up his next shot. Aidan and Tango were ribbing each other, laughing like they’d already had too much to drink, this soon after five.

  “There’s one more loose end,” Ghost said, “out there dangling in the breeze.” His eyes came to Michael. Very sharp, dark eyes, that missed nothing. “That girl Jace and Andre knew. The one the boys tried to talk to,” he said, quietly, inclining his head toward Aidan and Tango.

  Michael nodded. “I know the one.”

  “She bolted after the boys paid their visit. Couldn’t find her anywhere. But she’s back, now. Jasmine said she ran into her. Said she was renting an apartment outside of town.” He extended a hand, a scrap of paper held in his palm. “This is the address.”

  Michael had nodded again, accepting the paper, understanding completely what his president was asking him to do. In so many ways, that implicit trust, the way Ghost didn’t micromanage him, was a compliment unlike any he’d ever received. Ghost trusted him, with the most critical, highest risk tasks. And Ghost wasn’t the sort of man who put much stock in people, as a general rule. A compliment from the man was like ten compliments from some other schmuck.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Michael had said, and Ghost had touched him lightly on the arm in thanks as he walked past.

  “Good.”

  And so Michael had gone for his usual dinner beforehand, to give the girl, Serena, time to wake up and get ready to leave for her night shift job at the twenty-four hour CVS. On a full belly, he’d driven out to her apartment, parked in a shadowed section of the lot not monitored by cameras. He’d waited for her to appear in the dim flickering security lights: flash of bleached hair, store-issue polo shirt, khakis. She’d walked with her head down and her bare arms clenched tight across her middle to ward off the sharp winter chill.

  She’d never seen him leave the truck, never heard his swift, cat-footed approach. Slender, and petite, she’d been like a breakable thing made of twigs in his arms. A panicking toy, as his hand clamped so tight over her mouth that she couldn’t open her jaw wide enough to bite him. A very fragile, underfed, damageable little woman, as he’d crushed her in the total cover of shadows.

  It made him sick. The Salisbury steak made a gallant leap up toward the top of his stomach. He didn’t want to do this to a woman. Not right, not right at all.

  But Ghost had ordered him, so he strangled her, right there, in the parking lot, so as not to make a mess. Her struggle was laughable. Not one whimper slipped beyond the unrelenting pressure of his hand at her mouth. And after, she sagged limp in his arms. A broken doll, with badly dyed hair falling across her slack face, making her look like a Barbie, sightless eyes and vacant stare.

  People watched too many crime shows, Michael decided, now, as he watched the flames flicker at the edges of the grave, as the fire really began to catch; thick smoke doubled over on itself, and rose, colorless by the time it dissipated through the tall pines; if he inhaled deeply, he could smell the hickory; yum, like dinner. People watched all sorts of primetime dramas in which crack forensics teams solved the most enigmatic of murders, bringing
swift, irrefutable justice to killers just like him.

  But it didn’t work like that in the real world. Away from all the dramatic close-ups and the inspiring musical scores, killers like him slipped beneath everyone’s notice. A penniless girl with no family and friends disappears one night as she leaves for work? Who’s going to report that? Her boss, maybe. But by the next morning, he would have taken her car to the chop shop Ghost’s friend ran, and Michael would have left behind not one shred of evidence. No leads, no directions, no hunches. Girls like Serena disappeared all the time. No one would think to look for her charred bones on this idyllic hill among fifty rolling acres of field and forest, without a human witness for miles.

  The fire was getting restless, the flames licking up in great impatient tongues. Michael closed his eyes and tried not to think about how much the smell reminded him of food.

  His thoughts wandered. Food…

  He ate dinner almost every night at Bell Bar. Sometimes, a public place afforded him more privacy than any of the private Dog lairs around Dartmoor. And sometimes…well, sometimes he allowed himself to enjoy, just a little, the undaunted company of Holly the waitress, who never seemed phased by this silence.

  Tonight, though. Bizarre.

  It had begun a few months ago as a strange sort of pseudo-childlike outreach of friendliness from her. She’d bring his drink, his food, and then ask about the book he was reading. Comment on the weather. He’d thought, at first, that there was something wrong with her, that she had some sort of mental deficiency. But then he’d glanced up into her wide green eyes and beneath the overture, he’d seen the unadulterated terror in her. Holly was a girl who was very afraid of something, and she was covering that fear with a soft, feminine sort of sociability, provocative in a way that was unconscious; it was innocent, the appeal, was there because of the way she was built and the way the sweetness just came pouring out of her.

  He’d grown used to her. Once, he’d even had sort of a conversation with her, about Oliver Twist, of all things, because she wanted to get a library card, but had no idea what to check out once she did, because she’d had “not much exposure to books” and wasn’t sure what she’d like to read. That had sent up a dozen red flags, but Michael had let it slide, had instead written out a list of books for her on a damp napkin.

  He knew she’d never gone to the library, because she hadn’t brought it up again. And that wasn’t like her to let something drop. If he had a tear in his shirt sleeve, she commented on it. If he ordered a different kind of drink, she commented. Holly seemed, desperately, to want to bridge some common ground between them, during her visits at his booth. If she’d read any of those books, she would have been talking about them, trying to use them as some sort of bond.

  Michael had decided that, though terrified, she must also be lonely, and wanting a friend. She was a poor judge of character, though, if she was picking him. Of all the men and women who came into that bar, it was him she wanted to spend her time with. He didn’t get it. Any man in the place would have offered to be her white knight. But she had no interest in sex. She never flirted, never said anything suggestive, never smiled that smile that girls used to get bigger tips.

  That had all begun to change, though. In the last few weeks, the way she leaned against his table had gone from unconsciously sexy, to intentionally seductive. She was flashing him the low-lidded eyes, the cleavage, reaching to touch his hand with fingertips that trembled as she traced the vein at the back of his thumb. Before, she’d merely relaxed in his presence, and that was what he’d found attractive about her: the way she was so pretty and soft and gentle when she began to let her guard down. But her blatant flirting? That was stiff and unnatural.

  And then tonight…

  “No,” he’d told her, because her eyes had been gleaming like a prey animal’s, and her breath had been short, and she’d been too petrified to keep her hands still on the table. Like hell did he want to force himself inside a frightened, dry, shaking girl who didn’t even want him. Women were complicated creatures he wouldn’t pretend to understand, but he knew enough to be sure that an unwilling partner would make the whole dynamic all the more one-sided and awkward.

  Holly had been crying, as she walked away. He’d hurt her feelings, and really, he hadn’t wanted to do that. “Come back,” he should have told her. “It’s not your fault. I’m just no good at this. And besides, you’re scared to fucking death.”

  He wanted to ask her what she was so afraid of. He was wildly curious, at this point. Whatever it was, it was more frightening to her than the idea of offering her body to someone.

  He felt a restless tightening of his skin, a prickling of awareness down his spine that put pressure in his pelvis. He couldn’t let himself dwell on her offer. It was very tempting.

  Through the windshield, he watched the fire rally one last time, and then begin to die down, the smoke turning dark and quenching. He’d let it clear a little, and then he’d cover what remained of the body, six feet of earth to keep the coyotes from digging it up. And then he’d strip off his smoke-smelling clothes, bag them, pull on fresh, and go fetch the girl’s car to the chop shop.

  No time to think about a green-eyed girl wanting to give it up to him.

  “Are you alright?”

  Ava wasn’t sure why the question had come blurting out of her. Maybe it had something to do with these new, fluffy mommy hormones coursing through her bloodstream. She wasn’t normally one for inquiring after strangers, but at this point, she’d said it, and she couldn’t take it back.

  Holly the waitress gave her an automatic, halfhearted smile as she collected Mercy’s empty glasses and dinner plate, but her tear-filled eyes widened in slight surprise. She hadn’t expected the question either.

  “I’m fine,” she said, voice quivering at the end. “Let me get these dishes cleared away, and I can bring you a refill.”

  “Oh no, we don’t need anything else,” Ava said, with a quick glance toward Mercy’s three empties. “Just the check, if you would.”

  “Right.” Holly, tray loaded, executed a whirling turn, and disappeared between two tables, in more than a professional hurry.

  Ava frowned to herself. Unlike RJ and a handful of the other Dogs, she had no curiosity about Holly the waitress, aside from the dim wonder that the girl kept funneling her attention toward Michael, of all people. But tonight, she’d watched, as Mercy got up to, as he so eloquently put it, “take a leak,” Holly slip out of Michael’s booth, the bright shine of tears standing in her eyes. Hardly a mystery, given Michael’s blank-faced disinterest in everyone and everything, but Ava had felt a faint stirring of concern. Some maternal instinct sifting up to the surface, she guessed.

  She was still staring across the bar, watching Holly dash at her eyes before approaching her next table, when Mercy returned. “I thought the spacing out part came later on in the pregnancy,” he said, waving one long hand in front of her face.

  She swatted him away and faced their table again. “I was just thinking about something.”

  He looked extra beautiful to her tonight, with his hair unbound, the jagged ends brushing the tops of his shoulders, framing his narrow face in a way that made the sharp angles look even more masculine and unforgiving. His dark eyes were bright with blended mischief and happiness. He was so happy these days, so excited about the tiny life growing inside her and the secret-free future that lay ahead of them.

  He raised his brows as he looked down at her. “About…”

  “That girl Holly. The one with the boobs you always look at.”

  There was a wicked curve to his smile. “Is this you telling me you want a three-way?”

  “No.” She gave him a murderous look that made him laugh. “I just noticed, is all, that she’s been crying ever since Michael left.”

  Mercy sighed and shook his head. “She’s got it bad for that weirdo. No accounting for taste. Maybe he finally gave her the brush-off.” He drew up indignantly, one hand brac
ed on his hip. “And I don’t always look at her, you know.”

  “Really,” Ava said, dryly.

  “I don’t. What the hell do I want with some waitress?”

  The funny thing was, though he was still joking, she could see the gleam of seriousness in his eyes. He wasn’t the kind to play the field just for the fun of it. There were too many demons in his head for him to be satisfied by the thrill of strangeness. He needed his comfort, that trust, the relaxation that came from totally knowing a person.

  But Ava shrugged and said, “What everyone else wants, I suppose,” as she got to her feet.

  It was still early – twelve weeks – but she already felt ungainly and heavy in the middle. Psychosomatic, probably.

  Mercy picked up her laptop for her, closed it and slid it into the shoulder bag she used to carry it. “Sounds like someone hasn’t been getting enough attention,” he said, sending her a meaningful look that finally got the best of her composure and made her laugh.

  “You do nothing but pay attention to me. I can’t believe Dad hasn’t fired you yet.”

  “Fire me?” He pressed a hand to his heart, his dramatic taken-aback expression stage-worthy. “I’m his favorite son.”

  “Can’t argue with you on that one.” She made a face on behalf of her brother, Aidan. He was probably sitting in the clubhouse right now, feeling sorry for himself, about this exact issue.

  She reached for her bag and he slung it over his own shoulder with a little headshake. He’d be carrying it.

  “Ghost and me, we’ve come to an understanding,” he continued, pulling out his wallet and peeling off enough cash to cover his dinner, their drinks, plus a more than decent tip. “He was just telling me today that he understands, what with us newly married, that I need to be spending a lot of time at home with you right now.” He grinned. “In bed, mostly.”

  “The day my father says something like that is the day we check him into the mental health ward.”

  Mercy laid the money down on the table, not waiting for their check, and extended a hand for her, pulling her up lightly to her feet. “Okay, maybe he didn’t say it with words,” he conceded, drawing her up against his side as they headed for the door. “But I could see it in his eyes. We’re connected like that.”