Price of Angels (Dartmoor Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  Dimly, she became aware of Val and Jess’s conversation, the fast vicious snatches of it that she could overhear.

  “…don’t know why she wasn’t fired,” Jess was saying. “I mean, you get somebody murdered, you shouldn’t get to keep your job, you know?”

  “Ugh, I know,” Val said. “And it’s like she doesn’t even feel bad about it. She’s a fucking robot.”

  “And Carly…” A catch of real pain in Jess’s voice, as she remembered her friend. “I told Carly that she was weird, but she tried to be nice to her anyway. And look what happened!”

  Holly closed her eyes as the breath left her lungs. Yes, look at what had happened. Look at what her family had done to an innocent woman, whose loved ones would not be celebrating tonight, still clenched tight by grief.

  “Hey.”

  She hadn’t seen Michael come in, hadn’t even felt the cold draft of air rushing through the door, but he now stood beside her, brows drawn, mouth a harsh line. The sight of him was as comforting as it was devastating. I don’t deserve you, she thought. I don’t deserve for anyone to care, not after what I’ve caused.

  “You alright?” he asked, settling into the booth across from her. There was snow in his hair, fast melting, the white flecks becoming translucent. Flakes clung to his shoulders, collected in the leather seams of his cut.

  She managed a thin smile. “I’m fine.”

  He regarded her another second, not believing her, but finally glanced away, face harsh. “That goddamn store…the whole city of Knoxville was in there, buying cranberry sauce or whatever the fuck.”

  Her smile twitch, touched with true warmth. “So it was bad, huh?”

  “They were out of whole turkeys,” he grumbled. “I had to get a chicken instead.”

  “That works great.”

  He murmured an unhappy response.

  “Are you angry with me?” she asked. “Or just grumpy?”

  He gave her a long, flat stare. “What do you think?” And then, before she could answer, “When are they gonna let you leave tonight?”

  “Soon, I’m thinking.” She glanced around his shoulder, toward the window. The street was alive with the swirl of snow. “Very soon.”

  Ava’s first memory of her grandmother: warm yellow sweater, creamy rope of pearls, Denise’s hip against Ava’s small stomach as she was toted around the yard. Encompassing sweetness of perfume. The sun dancing in the pines, shivering shadows on the grass. Easter, and all its delicate pastels reflected in Denise’s garden, lying in the lee of the sprawling cream ranch house. Denise’s honey-colored hair, the same as Maggie’s, tickling Ava’s cheeks as their heads rested close together.

  “Lily,” Ava said with a delighted laugh, pointing at the purple flowers on the tall stalks beside the garden bench.

  “No, darling, those are irises,” Denise said, and her lips were wet with lipstick as she kissed Ava’s cheek.

  It was a tender, loving memory, a place in time in which Ava had been so sure of her grandmother’s love of her. That had been before Ava understood the tension between the two generations of her family. Before she’d been told that her father was less than human. Before Denise saw the biker blood coming to the surface in Ava, and gave voice to her bitter disappointment.

  Now, so many years after that foundation memory, Ava stood opposite her grandmother and laced her fingers through her husband’s, the dry cool skin of his palm a comfort against her own clammy hand.

  Denise, a beauty queen who’d never lost her commitment, had always been slender, and had thinned further as she aged, her well-proportioned frame almost bony at this point. Today she wore a long-sleeved red dress, dark tights, dark pumps, her ever-present pearls. Her face was a window to Maggie’s future, a prediction of what she’d look like twenty-six years from now. She’d allowed her hair to gray naturally, and wore it in a sophisticated bob. She was the picture of modern Southern elegance.

  And her hazel eyes were trained on Ava’s hand, where it clutched at Mercy’s.

  “Grammie,” Ava said with a deep breath, “you remember Mercy. You met him a long time ago.”

  Denise swallowed, the movement of her throat making the pearls around her neck leap. She already knew, and she already hated it. “I can’t possibly keep up with all the Dogs in your life, Ava.”

  “You remember him,” Ava pressed. Quietly: “I know you do. And Grammie, I need you to not freak out when I tell you this.”

  Denise’s frown cut sharp lines at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t bother telling me. I can see your ring, for heaven’s sakes.” She gestured toward Ava’s left hand, where it hung at her side. “Good Lord, Ava, did you have to do exactly what your mother did? Is it some sort of sick game to the two of you? Seeing who can marry the absolute worst excuse for a husband.”

  Mercy gathered a breath to say something and Ava squeezed his hand hard. No.

  “I don’t want to argue on Christmas,” Ava said. “Mercy and I are married–”

  “Can you believe this?” Denise turned away from Ava, toward her husband, throwing up her hands in supplication. “I mean, really, can you believe this? I guess I should have known. Why would I ever think she’d do anything different from what Maggie did?” She threw an awful glare toward Maggie. “You encouraged this, didn’t you? You supported her in this.”

  “Denise, honey…” Ava’s grandfather, Arthur, tried to lay a hand on his wife’s arm. He was the gentlest, meekest of men, and Denise had spent a lifetime bulldozing over everything he said.

  Maggie drew herself up, chin lifting. “I did support her. Mercy loves her.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Denise said in a cold, high voice. Her anger was a controlled, wicked thing. “ ‘Mercy loves her.’ Mercy doesn’t even have a real name. And he obviously can’t find his way to a barbershop.”

  Maggie began to respond –

  And Mercy said, “Ah man, you don’t like my hair?” He was wearing it loose today, and pulled a hand through it, studying the jagged ends with comical interest. Then he looked at Denise and fed her a long string of lilting, eloquent French.

  Ava was too shocked to hide her sudden smile.

  Everyone in the room was staring at him.

  Mercy grinned hugely and stepped forward, hand extended toward Arthur. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced before. Felix Lécuyer, Mr. Lowe. Nice to meet you.” Turning from the handshake, he bowed to Denise. “And you, Mrs. Lowe. Ava’s been saying the best things about you.”

  Ava winced.

  Denise stared at Mercy with contemptuous surprise.

  Arthur grinned.

  Ghost said, “Can we all just start drinking already?”

  Fourteen

  “I want to stop somewhere first,” Holly said as she shut the passenger door with a metallic smack. The vast inside of the Chevelle retained the barest brush of warmth, leftover from the heat Michael had run during his errands. The windshield glass was a higher temperature than the air outside, and the snowflakes were dissolving around their fluffy edges as they landed.

  Michael got situated behind the wheel, fit the key into the ignition and shot her a look she knew was disbelieving, just those faint tuck lines around his eyes and mouth. “Where?”

  “It’s not far.”

  He started the engine – familiar old animal growl of the Big Block turning over – but continued to stare at her.

  Her throat tightened; light pressure of stress at her chest. Her eavesdropping had shattered the fragile happiness she’d clung to like so many tattered clouds. It was vapors, the brief joy of her time with Michael, because it wasn’t really hers. He was not her man. They were pretending, passing the time until he’d finished this favor for her, and she’d let this borrowed friendship of theirs distract her from the horrible truth that she’d gotten a girl killed.

  “Hol.”

  “There’s a house not far from yours. I’d like to stop there on the way, if we can.”

  When she wouldn
’t say anything else, he sighed and put the car in gear.

  The roads were still plagued by traffic, and as the snow collected, tires melted it, smeared it wetly across the pavement, and the cold was freezing it again. There was already a faint slippery feeling as the Chevelle progressed outside the heart of the city, a missing friction that tensed Holly’s stomach.

  Michael’s hand was relaxed on the wheel; he was confident and capable in these conditions, and Holly was glad he was the one driving.

  “Up here,” she told him, when they reached the proper street. “Take a right.”

  The house was white, a small grandmother cottage wedged closely between its neighbors, with a brick stoop and a small round window in the black door. Snow was blanketing its small yard, building in narrow ridges along the branches of the crepe myrtles. Holly had driven past it once before, but only once. Carly had invited her to come over one night, when her boyfriend was out of town. A girl’s night, she’d described it, and Holly had been sick with nerves, and chickened out at the last second.

  “That’s the one,” she said, and Michael pulled to a halt along the curb.

  “You wanna tell me what we’re doing here?”

  She opened her door, gasping at the sharp punch of the wind as it cut through her thin jacket. She’d changed into jeans, back at the bar, but still, her clothes were no match for winter’s bite.

  She ducked her head as the whipping snowflakes bit at her face, and headed around the nose of the Chevelle, toward the house.

  Michael reached her when she hit the sidewalk, his hands latching onto her biceps, spinning her to face him. Her hair streamed across her eyes, getting caught in her lashes, and she swiped it away, trying to pull out of his grip.

  “I need to–”

  “What the hell are you doing?” He gave her a gentle shake, clearing the last of the hair from her face.

  He looked pale, hard-edged, and aggressive, in the whitewashed afternoon eddying with snow. The sight of his face, with white flakes grabbing at his hair and his eyelashes, left her feeling hopeless to gain his sympathy. He wouldn’t understand this, no matter how she phrased it.

  But considering how hard his fingers were digging into her, she guessed she had to try.

  “Carly lived here,” she said, speaking over the wind. “This is her boyfriend’s house.”

  He stared at her.

  “She’s dead because of me,” Holly said, her voice beginning to crack at the edges. “And her boyfriend has to have Christmas without her, and I thought, the least I could do–”

  Michael scowled at her. A legit, actual scowl. “You’re gonna, what? Apologize to the guy?”

  She met his stare with an unflinching one of her own. “Yes.”

  “Damn.” He glanced toward the house, back at her face. “All the windows are dark. Did you see that? No one’s home.”

  She twisted around to look, fighting the pressure of his hands, hoping he was wrong. But of course he wasn’t.

  The windows were all dark, the blinds shut tight. There wasn’t a car in the drive, and the snow was fast covering its cold asphalt.

  “He’s not here.” Michael gave her another shake. “Get back in the car before you catch cold.”

  She refused to move, resisting his pull. “Maybe he’s in there sitting all alone in the dark. I should at least knock. If he’s home–”

  “What would you say to him? Your fucking psycho rapist husband thought she was you? And strangled her when she wasn’t? Holly, get back in the car. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “But I–”

  “Get in the car!”

  He’d never shouted at her before, and it brought an instant hot rush of tears to her eyes. The tension bled out of her in a fast wave, leaving her weak and trembling, more sensitive to the cold than she should have been.

  He looped an arm around her waist and she went along with him as he towed her back to the Chevelle, walked around to the passenger side and bundled her in.

  Her teeth were chattering as he walked around to the driver’s side. Her fingers fumbled with the seatbelt fastening.

  A sharp blast of snow followed Michael in before he could slam the door, and he reached to crank the heat. He didn’t speak to her, didn’t look at her.

  Holly pulled her hands inside her sleeves and shivered, leaning against the window.

  **

  His silence had never bothered her before, but it did now. Michael didn’t utter a word until they were standing in his toasty warm kitchen and he was taking her jacket from her. By that time, the house, the yard, and the street lay beneath an inch of snow, with more falling in opaque profusion.

  “Did you get it out of your system?” he asked, and left the room with her jacket over his arm.

  Holly bit down hard on her cheek and waited for him to return. When he did, he was carrying a thick zippered sweatshirt that he draped over her shoulders. It was such an automatic, casual display of concern, wanting her to be warm enough, that she almost retracted her words.

  Almost.

  “Get it out of my system?”

  He took a step back, and looked down at her with unreadable blankness. “Do we have to have one of those woman conversations about it?”

  She felt her brows go up. “I’m sorry, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh shit. We do.”

  “Michael.” She shoved her arms through the sweatshirt sleeves with agitated stabs. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say, based on observation, you don’t know a damn thing about women.”

  “I know women make you pay for everything you ever say to them,” he bit back, irritation coloring his voice. “I know I yelled at you, and now we’re gonna have to talk about it.”

  She hadn’t expected this out of him of all people, this defensive, hot-heated reaction. She lifted her chin, matching him stare-for-stare. “Well if that’s what you’re anticipating, I’d hate to disappoint you. Okay, big man, why’d you yell at me?”

  At a different time, she would have laughed to see so much expression in his face, all the lines his displeasure pressed into his skin. “Because you needed to be yelled at.”

  She opened her arms, inviting him to explain further.

  “You were actually going to apologize to that man, weren’t you?” He made it sound disgraceful.

  “It’s the least I can do!” she said, feeling the swell of desperation again.

  “Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Don’t you get it? If you go tell someone you got your friend killed, the cops will haul you in for questioning. That guy, all torn up as he is, isn’t gonna think you’ve just got a guilty conscience. He’s gonna hear you blame yourself, and he’ll blame you too.”

  He frowned at the microwave, jaw clenched tight. “She was your friend, and she died, and you feel bad–”

  “I feel terrible,” she corrected softly.

  His eyes came to her, unsympathetic. “Do you want to go to jail just because you feel terrible? Do you want to be questioned? Do you want to be treated like a suspect?”

  “Maybe I ought to be.”

  “No you don’t!”

  “You’re yelling again.”

  “I don’t care! You’re being an idiot. Why the hell would you do that to yourself?”

  “Because it’s my fault.”

  “Like hell it is.”

  “Do you not understand how unfair it is? One of them murdered her, so who cares if I got away. My escape isn’t worth a life.”

  “It’s worth your life,” Michael snarled, leaning into her face. “You got out, and you got to live. That’s worth something.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “It is to me!”

  Holly took a step back. Tears burned at the backs of her eyes, and her lungs closed tight against the strangulation of emotions she didn’t begin to understand. “But–”

  “Just shut up, I’m tired of hearing it.” There was disgust in his face. “You can’t control evil. Do you
get that? You can’t. That son of a bitch I fed to the hogs – evil. And you shouldn’t have to live under him, or any of them, just to keep bad things from happening to other people. It is not your…your fucking destiny to be abused just to keep the rest of the world safe. And I’m realizing that’s exactly what you think, and I want to smack the idea out of you, goddamn it.”

  She took a deep breath, and forced the tears down. “Go ahead then. I’m not afraid of anything you can do to me.”

  With an inward tightening, she braced herself for the slap. Her face tingled in anticipation of his rough hand.

  But what happened instead shocked her. Michael took one huge step back from her, drawing himself up tall and rigid, his expression smoothing as he fought for control of his temper. Only his eyes evidenced emotion, wide and hot with it.

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple punching in his throat.

  Holly waited, and nothing happened. After a long, tense moment of his staring, she realized nothing was going to happen.

  “What did you mean,” she said, “when you asked if I’d gotten it out of my system?”

  He swallowed again. “Gotten being stubborn about your friend out of your system. I thought maybe you’d come around from your guilty bullshit.”

  Holly let out a deep breath and sagged sideways against the counter, tucking her chin down into the borrowed sweatshirt, breathing in the smell of his skin from the fabric. “The girls were talking today, and I overhead them.”

  “Bitches,” he muttered.

  “They’re not wrong.”

  “They are,” he said. “I’d like to see one of them deal with…what you did.”

  Had she dealt with it? Was that the way to phrase it?

  She didn’t know. She was exhausted suddenly, completely worn out by this conversation, and the assuredness that Michael was seconds away from snapping and backhanding her.

  Holly massaged her scalp with both hands. The tears were building still, a sharp pressure at the backs of her eyes.