But now here she was again, alone, with no one around to disapprove. And the question was a solid, certain weight in his mind now. It was something he felt he had to ask someone. And he didn’t know anyone besides Ava to ask.
“Ava,” he said, as he walked toward her, and she froze, spun to face him, her dark eyes large with surprise.
He’d never said her name before. The sound of it leaving his mouth was more of a shock to him, he thought, than it obviously was to her.
He hung back a few steps, not wanting to crowd her. The way she clutched the halves of her jacket together told him she was nervous and uncertain. Maybe even frightened. How she could marry the likes of Mercy and be afraid of anyone, he didn’t know.
The irony: Holly wasn’t afraid of Michael, even if other women were. They had that in common at least, Holly and Ava – a total lack of fear when it came the men they let into their beds.
“Michael,” she said, her voice polite but careful. “Hi.”
“I…” He held up a hand in a helpless gesture. He didn’t want to scare her worse, and wasn’t sure how to proceed from here. Hell. Nothing to do but ask, he guessed. “Can I ask you something? A favor. It would be a favor to me. You can say no,” he rushed to assure her. “I just…was wondering.”
Her eyes narrowed, expression shifting, growing curious. She edged a half-step back, though. “What sort of favor?”
Shit. She was thinking… “It’s not…” Oh, hell, this wasn’t going the way he’d wanted it to. He took a breath and forced on. “There’s this girl.”
Ava blinked, and he watched her face relax, the wariness giving way to something gentler. He didn’t know her well enough to read her properly, and she was a strange girl, which made it even more difficult.
“Holly,” she said. “From Bell Bar.”
His turn to blink. “Yeah. Holly.”
Ava nodded and offered him a small smile. “She’s your girlfriend?”
“She’s lonely.” God, he was being awkward, and he couldn’t seem to stop. “She doesn’t have any friends and she’s been spending time with me, but I’m…” He gestured to himself, at a loss as to how to explain how ineffectual he was as anyone’s friend.
Ava nodded like she understood.
“I think she ought to have a girl friend. A friend who’s a girl,” he amended.
Ava smiled and then pressed her lips together, erasing the curve in them. “Are you trying to ask me if I’ll be her friend?”
Michael sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am. I don’t have anyone else to ask–”
She held up a hand, stopping him. No female had ever done such a thing to him. He was shocked into compliance. “I think it’s really sweet that you care so much about her.”
“Well girls need to talk to other girls, don’t they?” he grumbled. “About girl shit?”
She nodded gravely, and he had the impression she was mocking him a little. “Yes, I think so.”
“So…”
“So I’m not really in the habit of making friends on command.” Shrug, apologetic look. “I don’t know anything about her.”
He frowned at her; little princess brat. “She’s sweet. She can get along with anybody.”
She smiled again, that I’ve-got-a-secret smile. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, Michael, I’m just pushing your buttons a little.”
It was a full-on scowl he gave her this time.
“I think she’s sweet, too,” Ava continued. “I can reach out to her. If she’s going to be an old lady, she’s got to meet the gang at some point, right?”
“I never said ‘old lady.’ ”
“You didn’t have to.” She turned, the wind catching her hair, streaming it out behind her like a dark banner. “I’ll talk to her,” she promised. “God knows I don’t have many tally marks in the Friend column.”
“Did you get some rest?” Ghost asked him when he joined his president at one of the round tables in the common room.
Carter had brought them coffee and fresh glazed doughnuts, and was now behind the bar, cleaning the beer taps, his movements industrious. He was a worker, Ava’s old friend from high school. There was no keg too heavy nor bathroom floor too grungy for the kid, and he threw himself into his prospecting with a fervor that would have been comical if not so necessary.
Michael sipped his coffee and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Feeling better?” Ghost was looking over a sheaf of papers in a file folder and spared him a questioning sideways look.
Michael understood the question for what it really was: Are you ready to put your fucking head in the game again? Or can I expect more insubordination?
He nodded.
“Good, ‘cause we’ve got to go see the Jessup brothers.”
There was a sudden, involuntary tightening in his stomach. “What for?”
“They’re stirring up trouble with Fisher, and I’m about done with the assholes.”
Michael held a swallow of coffee in his mouth a long moment, letting it burn his tongue, thinking of the most careful way to phrase his question. “Aren’t they your only link to this Shaman guy Collier warned you about?”
Ghost sighed. “Yeah, they are.” He shoved the paperwork into a military-precise pile and closed the folder. “Be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fisher’s place looked its usual worst, only slimy with melting snow. The dirt yard, the scrap metal art sculptures, the ruined wrecks of cars that would never run again. The falling-down trailer with its exposed rusted axles was a sad sight. There was a rusted-out Buick parked behind Fisher’s truck. Steam curled from the trailer’s roof vents, dissipating in the strong currents of breeze.
Michael paused as they passed the Buick, memorized the plate. Then stretched his legs to catch up to his president and vice president.
Walsh had come with them. This was about as official as any visit from the MC could get. All they needed was Ratchet taking manic notes alongside them.
The porch of the trailer groaned in an ominous way under their combined weight. It wouldn’t have been surprising if the thing collapsed and dumped them all into the mud.
Ghost knocked hard, an insistent pounding against the door. “Fish, it’s us. Open up.”
There was a scurrying sound, and the locks disengaged, and then their skinny redneck dealer ushered them in with a blanched look. He was in a wifebeater and jeans, gooseflesh raised in obvious pebbles down his thin arms.
“What’s the matter?” Ghost asked him, when they were all inside, but the question wasn’t necessary.
The living room was a scabby ruin of mildewed carpet, accumulated trash, dry rot, and TVs stacked one on top of the other. Two mean stood in the doorway between this room and the kitchen, both in jeans and canvas jackets, both with the same square face and harshly-lined mouths.
The Jessup brothers, Abraham and Jacob, they had to be.
Holly’s father and uncle.
Her rapists and captors.
Monsters.
Michael’s hand was on the butt of the gun at his waistband before he registered the movement. Every cell in his brain screamed for action. Shoot them. Kill them. Chop up the bodies like shark bait and burn the wet remains in a deep hole on the cattle property. Everything in him wanted to destroy everything about them. Call Mercy, that’s what he ought to do; unleash that Cajun torture machine on the brothers, and listen to them scream and beg and cry. Make the prospects mop up the blood. Make a trophy of the teeth that survived the burning and take it back to Holly, to lay at her feet, proof that they would never touch her again.
His thoughts shocked him. They frightened him, if he was honest. That’s not who he was: he didn’t step out of line; he didn’t enjoy what he did for the club; death was a responsibility, and not a gift.
What had the girl done to him?
Or why, he questioned himself, had it taken her of all people to wake the wrath inside him, after so many years of numbness?
He waged this war in his mind, and outwardly did nothing, rooted and blank-faced, as Ghost did the talking.
“Gentlemen,” Ghost said, squaring off from the Jessups. “Why is it we keep meeting when something’s wrong?”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong,” one of them said. “Abe and I” – so this was Jacob speaking – “was tellin’ Fisher that we need some of his territory. We told him he didn’t need to get you stirred up about it. We coulda sorted it out.”
“Ah.” Ghost nodded. “Actually, no you couldn’t have. I draw up the territories. My guys stick to them” – fast snatch of a cold smile – “or they’re not my guys for very long.”
“I told them that,” Fisher said, staring at Ghost with a deferential tilt to his head, hands clasped together in front of him. “They wouldn’t listen. I told ‘em you wouldn’t be happy.”
“I’m not,” Ghost said. “So what’s the problem with the territory?”
“We need more,” Abraham said. “We’ve got more product than we can move in our district. There’s not enough buyers where you put us. What we’re selling is better than what Fisher’s got, so I didn’t figure it’d be a problem.”
“Better? Where’s it come from then? Who’s your supplier?”
The Jessup brothers traded a look, some silent communication of shrugs and eyebrow lifts.
When they faced Ghost again, Abraham said, “Shaman.”
Jacob grinned and said, “But you already knew that, I’m guessing.”
Ghost frowned, his poker frown, unreadable beyond a general discontent.
Walsh was totally dead-faced – of all his Knoxville brethren, Walsh was the one Michael most respected, on account of his calm, cool façade, the way he gave away nothing, and kept a level head in any crisis – but his narrow blues eyes were riveted to the men, sliding to touch Ghost, then Michael, then riveting again. Silent questions, wonders, drawing of his own conclusions.
He didn’t like this, Michael could tell. But he probably wasn’t ready to rip throats out with his bare hands the way Michael was.
“Fisher,” Ghost said, tone polite, “why don’t you step out and have a smoke while we talk to these gentlemen.”
Fisher nodded and flitted out the front door, the wind catching it with a slam behind him.
The brothers stiffened, visibly distressed. They probably thought they were about to get pistol-whipped.
That would have been too kind for them.
Ghost sent a stack of greasy pizza boxes tumbling out of a chair with a flick of one hand, and then sat, managing to look regal in a tattered recliner spotted with dried-on pepperoni.
“Alright, boys,” he said with a deep sigh. “Let’s be straight here. What does your boss want? Why did he send you here to sell coke for me?”
Relaxing some, Abraham shrugged. “Shaman doesn’t tell us his business. He has an interest in you – your club – is all we know. He told us to come work for you. He said he ‘wanted to see what happened.’ ”
Ghost looked troubled.
Walsh said, “He’s some kinda big shot, huh? He wants to take over an MC, make it his own. He’s gotten tired of dealers and thugs – he wants to own a piece of one of the biggest motorcycle clubs in the western hemisphere.”
Michael felt the jolt of shock, saw it reflected in Ghost’s sharp glance. None of them had ever considered such a thing.
Walsh’s expression was grim. “He wants to acquire us, boss,” he said to Ghost. “Another prize in his collection.” The statement felt dire delivered in Walsh’s London accent. Sharper and more sinister.
Ghost pinned the brothers with a look. “Is that true?”
They shrugged.
“We know what you know,” Abraham said. “I just want to sell what I was given to sell.”
“You want to push your luck,” Ghost said, getting to his feet. “Take heed, boys: So long as you sell in one of my districts, you will follow all of my rules. You’ll leave Fisher alone and stick to your territory, and you won’t cause me any grief. Otherwise, this guy” – he gestured to Michael – “is gonna come give you a kiss in the middle of the night, and trust me, you won’t like it.”
Both men looked at Michael. He felt the touch of their eyes and was repulsed by it. Seeing them in the flesh like this made it too real for him: he could envision their hands on his Holly; could imagine them forcing her down, climbing above her. Could see the way their faces would torque with passion and fury, as she lay helpless beneath them.
Slowly, holding their gazes, he drew his finger across his throat.
Both of them glanced away.
Ghost made a gesture that meant they were leaving, and Michael headed toward the door alongside Walsh.
“Oh,” Ghost said, hanging back a step. “Did you ever find your son-in-law?”
Abraham frowned. “No.”
Michael remembered the feeling of the knife punching through the boy’s flesh, sliding between his ribs, finding the tough muscle of the heart. Inwardly he smiled. Outwardly, he caught the fleeting brush of Abraham’s gaze…and he swore he’d make it tortuous when he brought the man death.
All the long ride back to the clubhouse, Michael ran Walsh’s words through his head. By the time they’d parked their bikes in front of the clubhouse, his fingers were curling and uncurling in involuntary twitches. The agitation was so strong, it was taking physical form.
He slammed his helmet down on the handlebars and said, “So what do we do now?”
His president and VP were dismounting with none of his enraged clumsiness.
Ghost tugged at a glove and said, “I don’t know about you boys, but Mags put a Ziploc box of chicken in the fridge this morning” – he gestured over his shoulder at the clubhouse – “so I’m gonna have lunch.”
Walsh, standing up the collar of his chambray shirt against the wind, rings on his fingers catching the light, understood the question. His eyes were cautious. “You mean about those brothers.”
Michael nodded and swung off his Dyna, wanting to be on eye-level, not wanting to feel like the seated child in this exchange.
“Do you think you’re right?” he demanded of Walsh. “That this Shaman wants a takeover?”
Walsh shrugged. “I think I’m probably right, yeah.” Without a shred of self-congratulation, he said, “I usually am.”
And he was, which was the part that made his prediction so frightening.
Michael looked at Ghost. “You can’t keep them on. They’ve got to go.”
Ghost’s brows lifted. “I can’t?” Little snort of amusement.
Michael sighed and glanced out across the parking lot. Cars were milling about. Customers talked on cell phones beneath the beaming sun, oblivious to the buried politics of the MC. A normal day. And by that standard, a good day.
So then why was there this hot ball of anger clawing its way up Michael’s throat?
He was challenging his president; he’d never done that before.
He met Ghost’s gaze again. “I’m sorry. You’ll do whatever you think is best.”
Ghost nodded. “An enemy in the hand is worth two in the bush,” he said, sounding almost cheerful, and headed for the door, thinking about lunch and not at all about the two sick fucks they’d left standing in Fisher’s living room.
Walsh lingered, studying Michael in that unnerving way of his. “Something’s got under your skin.” Not a question.
“Yeah, well…”
It was a five-foot-two something, and damn if she wasn’t already grafted on.
“I need you to do something for me.”
Ratchet startled hard, sending a full can of Red Bull to the floor off the edge of his desk, sticky energy drink showering across the floorboards, spattering Ratchet’s boots and jeans. “Jesus!” He grabbed at the paperwork that had gone flying in his sudden scrambling panic, snatching the sheets that drifted like autumn leaves and managing to save them from the Red Bull catastrophe.
Michael stood on the other side of
his open laptop, watching the spaz attack. “Did I scare you?”
“No.” Ratchet shook his head, but his face was flushed. He slapped the gathered paper back onto the desk. “I just didn’t hear you coming is all. You need to wear a bell, man. Anybody ever tell you you’re quiet as a cat?”
“Loads,” Michael said. He repeated, “I need you to do something for me.”
“Yeah, you said that.” Ratchet sighed, glanced down at his splashed boots, made a face. “Man, these are pretty new, too…”
“Have a prospect polish them. Ratchet.” He levered some authority into his voice. “Can you run a license plate for me?”
The club secretary could do just about anything you asked him to, given the right time frame and the right snack inducement. He nodded. “Yeah, what for?”
“It’s just for me, personally. Ghost doesn’t need to know about it.” Meaningful eye contact, driving home the point.
Ratchet sat back in his chair. “Oh.”
Michael imagined none of them had ever heard him do anything that wasn’t an express command from the president.
First time for everything.
“Yeah, ‘oh.’ This needs to stay between us. Just get the vehicle info for me, and if anyone ever asks, I’ll say I looked it up myself. No one ever has to know you were involved.”
Ratchet frowned.
“I’m not asking this for the club. It’s personal.” From his cut pocket, Michael withdrew the plate number of the rusted Buick, a Snickers bar, and a crisp new twenty that he placed on the desk beside the laptop. “Please,” he said, swallowing and hating the way the word got stuck in his throat.
Ratchet thought about it another second, then nodded. “Done. I’ll call you when I know something.”
Michael nodded. “Thanks.”
Seventeen
Price of Angels (Dartmoor Book 2) Page 26
