But she couldn’t be kind, either.
Is this what it felt like, that contamination her grandmother had always warned her about? “When you lie down with dogs, you get fleas,” Grammie Lowe had said once before. Maybe the club had poisoned her against regular, normal, decent people. Her fleas were cruel, secretive, and unforgiving.
She turned, not sure what she’d say to Ronnie, only that it would be idiotic…
And saw someone bolting toward them, a ghostly white figure flailing against the darkness, a banner of shimmering pale hair trailing over slender shoulders. It was a woman in a denim miniskirt and knee-high boots running toward them, her strides uneven, lurching, panicked. Her bright orange tank top was like a warning flag in the shadows.
“What the hell?” Ronnie asked as the woman rushed closer.
Ava stepped into the pool of light afforded by the security lamppost. “Hey,” she called. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
The woman emitted a high, thin scream and stumbled against Ava, catching at her shoulders with shaking hands. Ava staggered and then grabbed hold of the woman’s arms.
“Andre!” she gasped. Tears tracked down her face, her mascara in black rivulets down her cheeks. “Oh God, Andre!”
“What about him?” Ava felt her pulse kick up a notch but kept her voice even, trying to hold the woman back and keep her from collapsing completely.
“He – he – he–” A sob contorted her face, bent her almost in half. “I think he’s dead!”
“Dead? He overdosed?”
“He got stabbed!” Then she sank to her knees and dissolved into ugly tears, hiccupping and snuffling.
“Hey, wait.” Ava tugged at her arms. “Where is he? Hey, listen a sec. Where’s Andre?”
She mumbled something through the sobbing.
“Shit,” Ronnie said. “What kind of party is this?”
“It has nothing to do with the party,” Ava said. She gave the woman another shake. “Where’s Andre now?”
“D-d-down by the water.”
There were two kinds of suspicion: the vague kind, and the certain kind. Growing up within the MC, Ava had grown accustomed to the certain kind, the kind where she just knew that something truly awful was happening.
She released the woman’s arms and turned to Ronnie. “Take her inside, and tell my mom that Andre’s hurt. Tell her to send the boys.”
Ronnie gaped at her, horrified. “Why me?”
“Because I’m going to find Andre.”
She didn’t wait for him to protest. Instinct kicked in, adrenaline flooded her, and gone was the college grad, back was the biker girl in full force. She took off at a jog, her sandals slapping the pavement. Two hangarounds were lugging fresh cases of beer toward the clubhouse and she put thumb and forefinger in her mouth and whistled. Both snapped around to look at her. “I need you to come with me,” she said. “A member’s hurt.”
They glanced at each other.
“Come on!” she snapped. “If you wanna patch this club someday, learn to take orders from the boss’s daughter!”
She heard their footfalls behind her as she took off, navigating the wedge heels of her shoes like a pro, the river-scented air funneling down into her lungs.
If Andre was stabbed, then that meant there was someone on the property who shouldn’t have been. And while it was always a possibility that someone had slipped in the main gate and mingled amongst the revelers, Ava had a feeling it was the back gate that had been accessed. The back gate: a place where a high, horny Andre might have taken his groupie for a moment’s peace.
Ava ran along the bike shop, across its back parking lot full of parts and half-bikes, and headed for the gate that penetrated the nine-foot, barbed-wire-topped fence at the back of the Dartmoor property. The river loomed shapeless, a wide alley of shadow, a terrifying void in the night. The security lamps painted half-moons of shine across the black water. The gate, Ava saw as she neared it, was ajar, its Master lock hanging disengaged from the chain.
Only then did she slow down and evaluate the utter stupidity of her plan. She was in sandals and a frilly skirt, without so much as a ballpoint pen to defend herself, with two hangarounds she didn’t know from Adam as backup. She should have gone to the clubhouse herself, sought out her father or brother, any of the guys, and allowed them to handle this dangerous situation.
But she was Maggie’s daughter, and she pushed through the open gate without slowing, heading down the short grass slope to the shore…and the dark figure sprawled with his face in the water.
“Andre,” she called, then realized it was useless.
Andre – and she recognized him by the neon blue shirt she’d seen him wearing beneath his cut earlier – was unconscious, at the mercy of the lapping water. The grass gave way to gravelly sand…and then Andre’s boots, his jeans, his torso shifting with the tiny waves that nibbled at the shore.
“Andre.” Ava waded in; the water was cold against her ankles, her calves. She felt the suede footbeds of her sandals grow slick. She stepped through squishy muck and kept going, until the water almost reached her knees, and she grabbed at the back of Andre’s cut. “Andre. Andre!”
She glanced up at the hangarounds, the two of them staring slack-jawed from the shore.
“Pull him on shore,” she ordered. “Hurry! Before he drowns.”
They rushed to comply, slogging through the water, taking Andre under the arms and dragging him face-up onto dry loud.
His face was waxen; the skin was pale, fleshy, and corpse-like already, the lips blue, the eyes closed and mouth gaping. A black blossom of blood stained his belly where he’d been stabbed.
Ava felt for a pulse and felt only a flutter in his throat. “Shit, Andre,” she muttered.
One of the hangarounds handed her his flannel overshirt and she pressed it to the wound. The bleeding had slowed, which wasn’t a good thing, in her mind. It meant he’d already lost so much, there was no strength left to feed the flow.
Then the shouting reached her ears, and her head lifted.
Barreling toward them were at least two chapters’ worth of bikers. She realized the tableau she made: hovering in her skirt and ruined sandals over a stabbed Dog, vulnerable, unarmed, at risk.
Her dad reached her first, and Ghost hauled her up without ceremony, shoving her toward Aidan. Her brother caught her around the waist and began to tow her away as the Dogs converged on their fallen member, shouting orders to one another, asking Andre if he could hear them, swearing.
“Come on,” Aidan said in her ear. “You don’t need to be down here.”
As she was hustled away, Ava’s gaze roved wildly over the crowd, and landed on Mercy. His expression was dark and tight, his eyes black as they touched hers and then moved away. She felt the rage in him, even from this distance. That rage that lived under the surface and plagued him like a curse. It was the fury that had earned him such notoriety in the club. The anger that had saved her life more than once.
She’d never loved him because of the rage, but it was a part of him she’d never pretended didn’t exist. Her first childhood impression of him had been that of a Doberman: dangerous, intractable, loyal to a fault to those he loved. It had been a correct impression.
Sometimes, she thought she’d understood him better when she was still just a girl. Sex had changed – had ruined – everything.
“Ava,” her brother said, and she realized she’d ground to a halt.
She fell into step beneath Aidan’s arm, and let herself be taken back to the clubhouse.
The revolving red lights of the ambulance cast a hellish pallor across the faces of all those gathered in the parking lot, reflecting in mad circles across the corrugated sides of the Dartmoor buildings.
Bonita crossed herself and muttered a prayer in Spanish as the gurney was loaded into the back.
Ava didn’t care that she was twenty-two and a college grad, she was grateful for her mother’s arm across her shoulders. On her other
side, Leah shivered visibly, her arms banded across her middle.
“That’s it,” Leah said. “This is the last of these damn parties I come to.”
“Is he still alive?” Ronnie asked.
The back doors of the ambulance closed and the paramedic not attending Andre rushed around to climb behind the wheel. The sirens cut on as the engine started.
“Yes,” Maggie answered him. “Barely.”
“Inside,” Ghost said in a low growl that carried across the crowd. “Now.”
“I’ll go to the hospital,” a suckup hangaround offered. “I’ll call when I know something.”
“I should go too,” Collier said, and Ava felt her throat constrict. Andre had been Collier’s prospect, back before he’d been patched.
Ghost sighed, but nodded. He still wore his VP patch; they hadn’t had a chance to vote him in as president yet.
“Welcome home, Ava,” Maggie said, squeezing her shoulders.
“He…he just disappeared! I don’t know where he w-went. He just…just stabbed Andre, and then he was gone!”
Ghost sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How did you not see the guy?”
The blonde with the boots who’d been hand-jobbing Andre pre-stabbing was on a sofa in the common room, another groupie hovering over her, rubbing her back, murmuring soothing clichés and offering her sips of beer. “It was dark!” she protested. “And he was so fast.”
“And you were so drunk,” Ghost muttered. He turned to Hound, who stood beside his protégé. “See if there’s a trail. Take the dog.” He twitched a humorless smile and gestured toward Ares, who stood alert and curious. “The real one.”
Rottie whistled and the shepherd went to him, allowing his leather leash to be clipped into place.
“I’ll go,” Michael said. He slid his two favored guns – matte black Glocks – into his shoulder holster, under his cut, his face expressionless and somehow wicked.
Mercy waited, wondering…and then Ghost turned to him. “Want me to tag along?” he asked.
Ghost, already acting like a president, even if they hadn’t had the chance for the vote yet, nodded, as James stood to the side and let it happen. “Yeah. They may need some muscle.”
Mercy’s Colt M1911 was already at his hip, tucked inside his jeans. It had been on him in the dorm earlier when he’d had his hands on Ava. It was with him always, a fixture, like the Ruger 10/22 had been all those years ago in the swamp. “Right.” He nodded, and turned to Hound, swamped with a heavy sense of déjà vu. “Ready when you are.”
The four of them returned to the scene of the crime. At the water’s edge, in the place where Andre’s body had left drag marks in the silt, Rottie snapped his fingers as he squatted down, drawing Ares’s attention to the ground.
“Smell anything?” he encouraged. “Come on, buddy.”
Hound produced a flashlight and scanned the ground. “No tracks. Whoever it was stayed in the grass.”
Ares snuffled a long moment at Andre’s blood on the sand, then began to move, sniffing in wide arcs back and forth. He wasn’t a tracking dog, but he knew his people, and was fiercely territorial when it came to strangers.
Suddenly, the shepherd growled. He lifted his head, inhaled deeply, and strained at his leash, wanting to go down the riverbank.
Rottie followed, his grip on the leash bringing out the veins and tendons in his wrist, and they all followed the dog. Ares went a hundred yards downriver, then went rigid, staring off across the water; he let out a trio of sharp, angry barks, and Rottie patted him on the head. “Good boy.”
“A boat,” Hound said, passing the flashlight’s beam over the shoreline. “Something small.” They could all see where its narrow prow had been run aground. Two deep boot impressions marked the place where the assailant had leapt back in and shoved away from land.
Michael pulled out his cellphone. “Bring the boat down,” he said to whoever answered, and hung up again.
Mercy set off at a walk, paralleling the water, eyes trained on the opposite bank, for all that he could see of the vast stretch of black night and deep shadows, the soft glinting of the river.
“Hey, wait for the boat,” Michael called to his back.
Mercy put on his best, brightest grin, knowing how the moonlight struck his teeth, as he turned and regarded the man over his shoulder. “That’s just genius, Mike. We can troll the river all night, and our stabber friend can listen to the motor coming, echoing off all that water, and I’m sure he’ll just jump out and offer himself up to us.”
Michael stared at him with what could have been hatred…or total indifference. You could never tell with the guy.
“I grew up on the water. Trust me. The last thing you want is to get in it right now and make yourself a target. Cancel the boat. I’m going on foot.”
He’d taken a dozen strides when Rottie caught up with him, minus Ares.
“I sent the old man back,” Rottie explained. “He’d never admit it, but he doesn’t get around too good anymore.”
“Did he have to put the leash on Michael to get him to move?”
Rottie snorted a laugh. “You can’t afford to hate him if you’re patching back in. He might be dull as bathwater, but he’s useful.”
“Yeah,” Mercy said noncommittally. “Alright, let’s shut our traps. Can’t sneak up on anyone running your mouth.”
They lapsed into amiable silence, two hunters in the dark. The water gave off that almost imperceptible water sound, the way it breathed and shifted and worked to hide the secrets of its depths.
Mercy guessed them to be about a mile from Dartmoor when they found the boat. A small bass boat with a dinky outdated outboard had been run aground and abandoned. Rottie found a set of boot prints that disappeared into the long grass. Mercy searched the boat, but found nothing aside from water droplets and a caking of mud from the boot soles. Without the forensic magic of the less-than-Dog-sympathetic police force, there was no way to know who’d been in the craft, or where he’d gone after.
“Had to be the Carpathians,” Rottie said, hands at his waist, surveying his lost trail with a scowl. “Fuckers are back and getting bold.”
“Ghost filled me in,” Mercy said, nodding. “They’re my guess too.”
“If that’s who we’re dealing with, I’m glad you’re back in town,” Rottie said.
Mercy nodded again, gaze going out across the river. He didn’t say so, but he’d been thinking the exact opposite. If this was the Carpathians, his presence would prove more of a hindrance than a help.
He thought that all the long walk back to the clubhouse.
Eight
Skin retaining the heat of the shower, Ava sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed, combing out her hair; she usually washed it in the mornings, but tonight, she’d wanted the stink of smoke and beer out of it. She ran the comb through the long wet lengths of it again and again, staring mindlessly at her left foot where it peeked from beneath her right knee. The little alligator tattoo on the delicate top of it, right on the bone.
Across the hall, the shower jets pounded against the curtain as Ronnie got ready for bed.
The soft scuff of bare feet on the carpet heralded Maggie’s arrival before she stepped into the doorway and leaned a shoulder in the jamb, arms folded loosely across her middle. She smiled softly, her beautiful face sleepy, the lines around her eyes and mouth more visible. “I know it makes me a bad mama, but I do love that tat.”
Ava stuck her foot out in front of her on the folded-back comforter and stared at it in the full light. “Ziggy did a good job.” Though small, the gator was well-shaped: the squat legs, ridges down its back and tail, the raised head and open jaws.
“That he did.” Maggie glanced over her shoulder and toward the bathroom, then back, her smile becoming wry. “Does Ron-boy know what it means?”
“No. I don’t plan for him to find out.” She widened her eyes for emphasis, and Maggie mirrored her expression a moment, until Ava scrunched
her nose and grinned. She sighed. “Everybody’s got a past, right?”
“Yours is just a lot scarier than most girls’.” Maggie’s expression softened, her tone becoming both serious and sympathetic. She had this way, this magic gift of feeling, of comforting and cautioning at the same time. She’d never been a mother for lectures. Grammie Lowe said it was because she’d been a teenage mother with no idea what she was doing. Ava thought it was because Maggie had known from the start that the two of them would need to be friends and allies, women in this sea of outlaw men.
“I saw Ronnie standing by himself,” Maggie said. “And Leah said you went to get a drink, but I didn’t see you at the bar.” Her brows lifted.
Ava didn’t answer; she figured she didn’t have to. Her eyes went back to the inked gator, before she could stop them.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt again, baby,” Maggie said. “Ronnie seems like a nice, oblivious, decent guy.”
“He is.” Another sigh. “I’m not going to mess that up.”
“Good.” Maggie straightened. “I’ve got the sofa all made up for him.”
Ava glanced up sharply.
“What? Did you think your daddy would let you sleep together under his roof?” She snorted. “Aidan’s not the only one who thinks you’re still twelve.”
Ava flopped backward across the bed, the slats beneath the mattress creaking and groaning just as she remembered.
“Ha!” Maggie said. “And that’s the reason he can’t sneak down the hall in the middle of the night.”
“Remind me again why I decided to live at home while I went to grad school,” Ava muttered, smiling despite herself.
“Because you couldn’t live a moment longer without your wise mother’s daily advice.”
Maggie came and sat on the edge of the bed, at her hip, and the tiredness stole over her again, pushing down at her shoulders and drawing her gaze downward.
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