Ghost turned to glance at him over his shoulder as he finished shrugging into his sweatshirt and pushed the hood back. The moment they’d just shared in the house had been shoved aside. That was family business. This was club business. Ghost was drawing a firm line between the two tonight.
“Get as much as you can out of him,” he instructed, voice calm, authoritative.
Mercy nodded. “Yeah.”
Ghost turned back to Rottie and Michael. “Cattle property afterward.”
That’s where they’d bury the body. If that tract of land ever fell out of Teague hands, and was developed, the backhoes would break ground on a cemetery’s-worth of unsanctioned graves. How many bones lay under that earth? Mercy wondered. Enough to bury them all four times over.
They were walking away, heading for the truck they’d left around the corner, when Mercy felt something catch at his sleeve.
Ghost’s hand, his face harsh in the shadows. “I’m tired of having the Ava conversation with you.”
On some level, Mercy wondered if this was a test. If he backed off at this point, he’d never have the man’s respect as a father. If he pushed, he could see himself banished back to New Orleans.
He took a gamble on test.
“Yeah,” he said, “I bet you can’t wait to have that little chickenshit Robbie sitting across from you every Thanksgiving.”
“It’s Rodney,” Ghost corrected.
“Is it?”
“I…yeah. I think. Richie, maybe?”
“Either way” – Mercy shook the hand off his arm – “I’m sure he’ll make you a great son-in-law.”
He was four steps away when Ghost called after him: “You’re a goddamn asshole.”
Mercy saluted him with a wave over his head.
**
“It just…it doesn’t piss me off. It’s just that, damn, how old do I gotta be before I’m not some stupid kid to him, you know?” Aidan put a spin on the next dart he tossed at the board; it spiraled in tight gyrations, feathers blurring, and sank into the bull’s eye.
When he turned, Tango was leaning back against the edge of the pool table, hands braced on the wood, face restive and thoughtful, as per usual.
“Ghost has really high expectations is all.”
Aidan sighed.
“Look at how he is with your sister; he’s a hardass. It’s not about anything you’re doing wrong; it’s just about him.”
Aidan picked up another dart and ran a fingertip through the feathers. “Yeah, maybe.” But even if that was true, how could he do anything right? His old man was such an unquestionable leader that he’d been content to sit back all these years, still feeling sixteen and like it was just a matter of time before he was taken into Ghost’s confidence and groomed for the throne. But suddenly, he was thirty, and he was still the dumb kid of the club, and Ghost didn’t rely on him for anything other than a warm body to fill a chair at church.
“Bro,” Tango said with a chuckle, “are you actually bitching about not having to go help torture a guy to death?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” He sent the dart flying, sinking it right beside the first. “But I thought it’d be different by now, you know?”
He turned again, and the look on Tango’s face instantly made him regret what he’d just said. His best friend had no family to speak of, no support system outside the club; he didn’t have a father to rebel against, and here he was offering advice, being the sympathetic one.
Aidan resolved to let it go. He picked up another dart. “Tournament?” he asked, spinning it between his fingers.
Tango lost some of his vacant sadness; he grinned. “Last tournament we had, I ended up owing you lunch for a month.”
“I’ll throw with my bad hand,” Aidan said, swapping the dart to his left.
The front door opened, the sound sending electricity under the floorboards; Aidan felt it go up through his boot soles, tightening his stomach. The kidnapping crew was back.
Rottie came in first, dragging his folded-up ski mask off his head, dark hair springing up in staticky clumps. He pulled a stack of file folders from his waistband. “Ratchet, I brought you a present.”
The secretary was out of his recliner and halfway to him already, hand outstretched for the files.
Mercy had his “toolkit” slung over one shoulder, the nondescript black bag that held his grisly assortment of knives, pliers, screwdrivers, nails, whatever household construction items he thought looked “fun” for the moment.
Michael looked…like Michael, only spookier, in all black with his mask doubled up on his forehead.
“How’d it go?” Aidan asked.
Rottie made a grim face. He fished a USB-equipped audio recorder from his sweatshirt pocket. “It was mostly just screaming, but he said some stuff. Who knows if it’s useful; I don’t think he knew much.”
“He’s worm food,” Mercy answered the unasked question. “And except for that one glitch, it went off well.”
“Glitch?” Tango asked.
“Sasquatch over here got shot.” Rottie hooked a thumb at Mercy. “While we were going over the fence at their clubhouse.”
“In the vest?” Aidan asked.
“The trap.” Mercy gestured to the base of his neck. “It nicked through; it’s fine.”
“Except who knows if the shooter got a good look at him,” Michael grumbled, heading for the bar.
“I was wearing a mask,” Mercy called to his back.
“Yeah? And how many six-five random B&E suspects do you think they see around there?” He pulled the Jack from under the bar, unscrewed the cap and took a slug straight off the bottle. It was probably as close to fuming mad as he was capable. “What did you tell me? I’d need your size? Your ‘size’ is gonna get you picked out of a police lineup.”
“It’s gonna get you pile-driven through this goddamn floor.”
“Hey, people get shot; it happens,” Tango said. “The important thing is everybody’s whole – you are, right?”
“Mags and Ava cleaned me up,” Mercy said, letting his bag slide off his shoulder onto one of the round bar tables. “I’m fine.”
“Jesus,” Aidan muttered. “Way to not traumatize my sister.”
Mercy’s eyes came over in a fast snap, narrowing. “She’s fine, too.”
“Kids,” Rottie said with a sigh. “If I wanted to deal with this kinda shit, I’d have stayed home tonight.”
That sobered all of them up; this wasn’t about any of them, not really. It was about keeping their families safe.
“Mina and the boys alright?” Tango asked.
Rottie nodded and eased down into a chair. “Yeah. They’ve been spending nights at Hound and Nell’s place, so he can keep an eye out while I’m…” He gestured vaguely.
“Yeah,” Tango said. “Collier’s been keeping Jackie close. James is king of his own castle these days.”
“And Littlejohn practically lives in Dad’s driveway,” Aidan put in.
That’s how the Carpathians had played things last time: going after the women and children.
Aidan held out a hand. “Here, let’s listen to it now. I wanna hear.”
Rottie lifted his brows. “Ghost will want to be here.”
“So he can listen when he shows up. I want it now.”
Rottie reached for the recorder, and Aidan’s phone rang.
Curious looks cast his way.
“Greg,” he said as he checked the screen. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he really wants to be a rat,” he told the others before he answered. “Yeah?”
There was a muffled shuffling from the other end, like a hand was being cupped around the base of the phone. Greg’s voice was low and frantic. “Dude, what the fuck?”
“I dunno, Greg. What the fuck’s up with you?”
More rustling. A strained whisper. “Man, Fred is gone. Fucking gone. Adam saw two guys going over the fence, popped a shot off, and now nobody’s seen Fred since.”
Inw
ardly, Aidan was delighted to have broken enough barriers down that Greg was telling him all this. He urged his brothers closer and they moved in silently. Aidan could smell the Jack on Michael’s breath.
Outwardly, he affected bored and said, “That’s a great story and all, but what’s it got to do with me?”
Frustration. “It was you guys, wasn’t it?”
Aidan gave a vocal shrug. “I’ve been kicking Tango’s ass at darts all night. It sucks your guy defected, but that shit happens.”
“He didn’t defect. He wouldn’t do that.”
“But you would, obviously, or you wouldn’t be on the phone with me right now.”
A beat. Then: “Just tell me if it was the Dogs.”
“So you can what? Run to Larsen? Run up the flags? Let’s say you knew who it was, Greg; what would you do about it?”
Silence.
“I’m guessing that, no matter what happened tonight, Larsen’s gonna blame it on us anyway. So why do you need to know so bad?”
The line disconnected.
“You guys hear any of that?”
“I say lay out some cheese,” Ratchet said. “ ‘Cause that dude’s sprouting whiskers.”
“I’m impressed,” Mercy said, grinning. “Look at you, gettin’ shit done.”
“Keep it up,” Rottie said. “If he’s not happy with that crew, we can exploit that.”
Aidan smiled to himself as he pocketed his phone. It wasn’t much – skinny Greg with his acne scars and his unfavorable memories of high school – but it was a start. And that was better than anything he’d ever handed his dad before.
Mercy had had a front row seat for the screaming confessions of Fred the Carpathian. He still had the stink of blood and piss in his nose. He checked the time on his phone – four-eighteen – and walked away from the laptop Ratchet had set up on a bar table, ambling down the back hall to the dorm he was using. He needed a shower in the worst way, but he couldn’t get his bandage wet. The pain was starting to set in good, now, its hooks buried deep in his wounded muscle, a stiffness taking hold of him that was in bad need of a good soak and a gentle massage, neither of which he was going to get tonight.
He shrugged out of his sweatshirt, toed off his boots, and sank down in the hard wooden chair beside the door, closing the latch with a touch of his socked heel.
Exhausted, hurting, if he was honest, still reeling from that afternoon, he had his phone in his hand and was dialing before he was conscious of it.
Ava answered after the first ring. “Hi.”
Just one word, but her voice was soft, afraid, hopeful. It was her voice, not the sharp, brittle tone of the college grad who tried to push him away, but the voice of his Ava, who he’d broken to pieces five years ago.
“Hi,” he echoed.
She took a shaky breath. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, baby. You’re a good nurse.”
Another breath. He envisioned her wide dark eyes slick with tears, her head pressed in the soft white pillows of her bed, the moonlight drifting through the blinds she always left gapped.
“I didn’t wake you,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“I couldn’t sleep.” He heard the rustling of her covers, imagined her sitting up against the headboard. “When I shut my eyes, I keep seeing the blood.”
“You’ve seen blood before,” he said, aware that he was purring to her, that low soothing voice he’d used on her when she was just a tiny girl of eight.
“But I…” Little sniffle. “I could touch you then, and reassure myself that you were okay.”
He almost laughed; there was a smile in his voice, to go along with the purr. “You could touch me now if you’d get your cute ass over here.”
She groaned. “Mercy…”
“You could give me a backrub. I need a backrub bad.”
Silence, the gentle rush of her breathing.
“You’ve got those nice skinny fingers,” he prodded. “You can get in all the tense spots.”
She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “I can’t. I start school in about…” Pause; checking her clock, no doubt. “Five hours.”
“I can wait till after. That’s cool.”
“Ugh. Mercy.”
“Mon amour.”
“Do you have any idea how much you’re testing my self-control?” she asked, without malice, just a laid-bare question, revealing more than she would have wanted to in the daylight.
“Hopefully a lot.”
Silence, again.
“Come spend the night with me, tomorrow. After school. Say you’re with your little douchebag, if you don’t want to come clean to your old man yet.”
“Oh, like it was me who wanted to lay low and keep quiet.”
“I’m not gonna argue with you. I miss you. Give me one night – one whole night – and tell me you don’t miss me, too, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe a little.”
A beat passed. She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no.
“Call me when you get out of class,” he said, pleading at this point. “I’ll still need that backrub.”
She sighed. And then… “Yeah. Okay.”
He grinned, so wide his face hurt, there in the dorm room by himself. God, he needed this. How had he gone five years without?
“Hey, fillette?”
“Yeah?”
“Kick ass tomorrow.”
There was a faint smile in her voice when she said, “Night.” And then the line disconnected.
When he was in the shower, with the nozzle angled low so the jets hit him in the stomach and his bandage stayed dry, he shoved the ache, the remembered screaming, the bullshit aside, and unfolded an image of her face inside his mind, until she filled up the dark corners.
He went to bed a mostly happy man.
Thirty-Three
Ronnie’s apartment was part of a new-construction block not a quarter mile from the school, the facades fresh brick, the balcony railings iron, the front gates manned by a surly security guard who made her wait while he buzzed Ronnie’s unit and confirmed that she was in fact his girlfriend.
Whatever that meant after she’d promised to spend the night with someone else.
There was an empty space beside his Lexus in the parking lot, and she walked up the brick-enclosed outdoor stairwell with a guilty, thumping pulse. This wasn’t her; she wasn’t the girl who played two men at the same time. But she couldn’t bring herself to see it that way: Mercy didn’t count; Mercy wasn’t cheating; Mercy was a given. Ronnie would never understand that.
Ronnie had to go.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly through her teeth as she knocked.
It took him a minute to answer, and when he did, he was dressed for the day: plaid oxford, Dockers, loafers, dark hair combed down and to the side. He had his phone in his hand – that damn phone again – and his brows went up, like he was surprised to see her.
“Ava. Don’t you start class this morning?”
“I’m on my way there now.” She had the impression he didn’t want to deal with her now; he seemed distracted, his gaze not quite landing on her. “I wanted to check in with you. You didn’t answer my calls yesterday afternoon.”
That brought his eyes to her. “I was busy. I was moving my stuff in.” An accusation there: you should have been here helping me.
“Right. Still…I left you several messages.”
“Ava,” he sighed, “I applied to UT’s grad program because that’s where you were going. I rented an apartment here, I’m interviewing for jobs here, because of you. I am here because of you. And it’s more than obvious you don’t want me here.”
“No, Ronnie–”
He pulled a disgusted face. “Stop denying it. You got back home with your biker people and you don’t want anything else to do with me.”
“My biker people?” she asked, bristling.
“I’m sorry – Biker Americans
. Is that the PC way to put it?”
“You’re being an ass.”
“Well, it’s about time, apparently.” He was really getting worked up now, his cellphone-free hand braced on the doorjamb, his breath picking up. “Maybe that would turn you on for once, huh? If I was some psycho asshole.”
She took a step back, arms folding across her chest. “Stop it.”
“No, you stop it,” he bit back. “I’m sick of this bullshit, you giving me the brush-off and getting embarrassingly tipsy in bars over someone so much older than you he ought to be in jail right now.”
Ava took another step back, hand curling tight around the strap of her purse.
“You need to tell me, before I spend four months here waiting around to start school, if you have any intention of turning back into the Ava I met at UGA. Because if this is what I’m stuck with” – he gestured to her – “then I’m out of here. I deserve better than this.”
She hadn’t expected it to sting so hard. She was in the wrong, yes, but she hadn’t thought he’d pull out all the old rich-boy tricks: she was some biker slut, she wasn’t good enough, there was something wrong with her, she ought to be ashamed.
“You’re right,” she said, voice brittle. “You deserve way better. You deserve a girl who’ll abandon everything she’s ever loved and be exactly the girl you want her to be.”
She whirled around and put her back to him, marching down the stairwell the way she’d come, her heels striking the concrete like hammer blows.
“Ava, wait–”
“Goodbye, Ronnie,” she called without turning. “Don’t let me waste one more second of your precious time.”
Her hands were shaking as she climbed into her truck and wrapped them around the steering wheel.
“Tell me I’m not stupid,” she whispered to herself.
But she thought about Mercy’s voice over the phone last night – “Come spend the night with me tomorrow” – and knew she was.
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