Fearless

by Lauren Gilley

  Mercy noticed them talking to Aidan out in front of the bike shop. Aidan sat sideways on the seat of a customer’s bike and was smoking, sunglasses hiding his eyes. Mercy could see the female cop giving him the up-down look and liking what she saw. Clearly, she hadn’t expected one of those greasy, broke, disorganized outlaws to look like Aidan Teague.

  Mercy half-smiled to himself and kept his head down, buried deep in the guts of the machine he was working on.

  He didn’t escape notice, though. A few moments later, he heard footfalls behind him and Fielding said, “Lécuyer. Let’s take a little walk.”

  Mercy passed Aidan on his way out, and they traded smirks. Fielding walked farther away than he had before; he and his lackeys led Mercy to the edge of the shop parking lot, where it turned into the wide drive that spanned the complex.

  “You must have some super-secret shit to tell me,” Mercy said as he drew to a halt and shoved his hands in his pockets. He stood with the sun at his back, so his shadow swallowed the sergeant up completely. It was a small satisfaction.

  The cop made a disgruntled, schoolmarm face. “I figured you’d appreciate some privacy given the…sensitive nature of our conversation.”

  “Sensitive?” Mercy grinned. “Sergeant Fielding, are you gonna ask me out?”

  The guy underling lifted his brows.

  The girl hid a tiny smile behind the clipboard she held.

  Fielding didn’t so much as twitch. “You haven’t been around for a while. I thought you’d moved on to some other chapter.”

  Mercy shrugged. “For a few years.” The grin again. “Did you miss me?”

  “No, but I’m betting Kenneth’s teenage daughter did.”

  Mercy felt his face freeze over. His expression didn’t change, but it hardened into a plastic mask. “Well, Ghost has got his girl Ava, but she’s not a teenager.” Another shrug, for effect.

  “Not anymore, but she was when you first became sexually involved with her. The age of consent in Tennessee is eighteen, Felix. She was seventeen when you skipped town; that’s statutory rape.”

  “Statute of limitations on that ran out three years ago. If it even happened. So don’t get hard yet, mon ami.”

  “I can’t prosecute, no, but I don’t think anyone in Knoxville would like to know that a rapist was back in town.”

  “Are you fucking serious?” Mercy grinned again, but there was nothing pleasant about it this time. “You came all the way down here to ask about some imaginary thing I did five years ago? In case you forgot, one of our guys was murdered last week. Maybe you should be asking about that.”

  “Just trying to establish a timeline,” Fielding said. “Five years ago, Ava Teague gets hospitalized, and you leave town. Last week, you come back into town, and five hours later, Andre’s dead.”

  Mercy laughed. “Oh, so I must have done it. Me, the teen-raper and brother-stabber. Is that it?”

  Both uniforms were getting uncomfortable. The girl had edged back a step.

  Fielding shrugged. “Fourteen years ago, you came into town, and an all-out gang war erupted. Trouble seems to follow you around, Lécuyer. If someone says ‘murder,’ I’d be stupid not to come sniffing after you.”

  “Or maybe I follow the trouble.” Mercy winked at him. “When you feel like arresting me and dragging me down to the precinct, I’ll be happy to cooperate. Until then, I’ve got shit to do.”

  He half-expected to feel Taser prongs at his back, but he made it back inside the garage, to the bike he’d been working on before. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that Fielding had Walsh in his crosshairs, the blank-faced Englishman staring at him with a total lack of interest. Served the asshole right; he’d have better luck questioning a fence post.

  “Prick,” Aidan said, from somewhere behind him.

  “Yeah,” Mercy agreed.

  A prick with more information than any of them had ever offered up.

  Ghost looked up at the knock at the central office door. Without Maggie around fulltime, the place was quickly going to shit. He’d be the first to admit that he sometimes took his wife’s business contributions for granted; he didn’t really learn that until she took a day or two off and his tidy world began to fray at the edges.

  He hated fraying.

  Jace stood in the threshold, still bloodshot and unkempt like he had been the morning after the party. Was the stupid little shit perpetually hungover?

  “What?”

  “Fielding’s talked to everyone. He wants to see you now, and he’s being a pain in the ass about it.”

  Ghost sighed. “Send him in.”

  Jace ducked out and was replaced by Fielding’s woefully bland, professionally-frowning countenance. He stepped over the threshold like he was stepping over a dirty puddle in a bad part of town, nose wrinkled for effect.

  Ghost sat back in his chair and folded his arms. It didn’t matter how many pins the guy added to his uniform, how many titles he acquired within the department, to Ghost, he’d always be the awkward, plain kid who’d been crushed to learn that Maggie Lowe was running off and getting married before he’d ever worked up the courage to make a play for her himself. “You’re a sick fuck,” he’d told Ghost once, when he was still just a rookie beat cop. “She was just a kid, and you ruined her.” “I guess you never heard that ‘kid’ swear,” Ghost had returned.

  Not one of their better conversations.

  “Sergeant,” Ghost said. “I can give you five minutes, then I’ve got to get back to this balance sheet.”

  Fielding nodded, hooked one thumb in his pocket, let the other arm hang limp. Awkward. He would never look at home in his own skin. He’d gotten more comfortable with being a pain in the ass, though.

  “Jasper Larsen says you and your boys rode out to threaten them yesterday.”

  “And my old man said he had tea with Winston Churchill during his last round of chemo. Did you come here so we could swap tall tales, or is this actually about the murder victim?”

  A faint smile tugged at the man’s lips. “Your son’s got a chip on his shoulder; nice to be reminded it’s hereditary.”

  “I’d imagine he hates bullshit as much as me. We’re crazy like that.”

  The smile tugged again, then disappeared. “Did you threaten Larsen?”

  “I’m real confused here,” Ghost said. “One of my boys turns up dead, and you’re asking me about some dipshit I don’t know or care about.”

  “I’m asking because I smell a goddamn biker war on the horizon, and Knoxville, Tennessee isn’t about to become an MC battleground on my watch.”

  Ghost took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting his arms relax, folding his hands together over the flat of his stomach. “Vince, did you ever meet my uncle? Duane?”

  His face hardened. “Everyone at the department knows who Duane Teague was.”

  “Yeah, but did you meet him?”

  “No.”

  “No, ‘cause you were a baby when he died, right? ‘Cause I was only ten. Shit, you weren’t even born yet.”

  Fielding crossed his arms, anger replacing some of the awkwardness. “Neither was your wife. What’s your point?”

  “Uncle Duane was the sweetest man I ever met; sweeter than my dad. My old man would smack me upside the head if I so much as breathed too hard. But Duane, he was good to me. He put me up on his bike in front of him when I was five, and let me twist the throttle. He got me into Harleys.”

  When the sergeant didn’t interrupt, he said, “Duane gave more money to charity than anyone else in this town, in his glory years. He took toys to the kids on the cancer ward every Christmas, and he gave out candy at Halloween, and he helped little old ladies across the street. And he was the president of this club for ten years.” He thumped the end of his forefinger onto the desk for emphasis. “This club – my club – has been a part of the fabric of Knoxville since 1960. And never during that time has the club hurt Knoxville.

  “You’ve got one problem and
one problem only, Vince. The Carpathians. The fucking Larsen family is going to burn this city to the ground if you let them. They killed my guy Andre, and here you are, asking if I hurt Jasper’s feelings. Now you tell me, what the hell kind of police work is that?”

  “Andre had two different narcotics in his system at the post-mortem,” Fielding said.

  “Never said he was a good guy, just said he got murdered.”

  “And how do you know it wasn’t one of your own? Where was Lécuyer when the murder happened? You think just ‘cause he escaped charges in Louisiana, no one remembers what happened down there?”

  “I think,” Ghost said, grinning, “that you’ve spent too much time looking through our personal business, trying to sprinkle on dirt when you can’t dig up any. I know the mayor’s putting the heat on you, telling you you’ve got to break down the Dogs, but you’re looking at the short-term win here. This mayor won’t last but the one term. This city – that’s forever. You scrape out the Dogs and let the Carpathians take our place – what does Knoxville look like after that? Are you willing to trade the devil you know? Just for a little instant gratification?”

  Fielding turned his head and stared through the gapped blinds, out at the sunshine beaming on the asphalt, the busy foot traffic of Ghost’s corrugated steel empire. “You know,” he mused, “I’ve accused you of things over the years, but I was wrong on one count.” His eyes came back to Ghost. “You’re not stupid.”

  Ghost tipped his head. “Guess I gotta take what compliments I can get.” He made a shooing gesture. “Your time’s up. Come back if you get a warrant.”

  Fielding turned.

  “Oh, and Vince?”

  He paused, looking irritated that he’d obeyed. “What?”

  Ghost leveled a sharp look on him. “The next time you mention my wife, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  Thirty-Four

  Ava felt wicked. There was no other word for it. Thoroughly, whole-heartedly wicked. She’d spent an entire day introducing herself to professors and students, playing those little get-acquainted games, entrenched in an academic environment – and they’d been talking about writing. The serious study of writing as an art form, and as a legitimate career. It felt like getting away with something. It felt like majoring in recess, that was how fun her subject matter was to her. To blend study with passion like that – wicked. She felt as if she’d been truly delinquent.

  And she’d more or less broken things off with Ronnie.

  And here she stood in front of her closet, trying to decide what to wear, because the sun was slipping low over the trees and she’d agreed to spend the night with Mercy.

  She was convinced it was all some sort of dream, at this point.

  She fingered sleeves of blouses and the legs of slacks, the girlish hemlines of skirts. She frowned. None of this was right. None of this was her. Because the real her wrote like a madwoman, laughed at preppy boys, and wanted to look like herself for her man.

  Ava shoved the hanging clothes aside, going deeper into the closet, to her old stuff, to the jeans and thick socks and boots and there, right where she’d left it, her leather jacket.

  Welcome back, a small voice chimed inside her head.

  She went for simple: jeans, her black Durangos, black tank, jacket, a fast toss to her hair so it fell in messy curtains on either side of her face.

  Maggie glanced up from dinner preparations when her boot heels struck the kitchen tile. One corner of her mouth pulled up in a little enigmatic smile. “There she is.”

  Ava didn’t smile back. “For the record, I haven’t accepted the whole Stephens getting me into college situation yet.”

  Unperturbed, Maggie said, “I didn’t figure. You wouldn’t be my girl if you had.”

  Ava rolled her eyes and gathered up her purse and keys, ensured her snub-nosed .38 was secure in the inside pocket of her bag. Littlejohn was packing no doubt, but she didn’t believe in leaving things up to someone else.

  “Where are you off to?” Maggie asked, cheerfully.

  “Ronnie’s. I’m spending the night.” She glanced up, to check for a reaction, shaking her overnight bag for emphasis.

  Maggie nodded as she stirred her white cream sauce, taking it all in stride. “Take this.” She slid a brown paper lunch sack down the counter toward her with her elbow.

  Ava picked it up and unfolded the top, saw the gauze, tape, syringes and ointment inside.

  “You know,” Maggie said with another sideways grin. “In case Ronnie comes down with a bad case of gunshot wound.”

  Ava felt her mouth tug at the corners, a reluctant smile.

  “Tell him I said ‘hi.’ ”

  “I’m leaving.”

  Littlejohn was waiting for her in the driveway, having a smoke with Harry.

  “Prospect,” she said, and Littlejohn flicked his cigarette away. “Remember the conversation we had yesterday?”

  For a moment, it looked like he fought not to smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The gag order’s still in place. Let’s go.”

  She went in the back door, chickening out at the last second, unable to walk brazenly through the common room. Too many looks, too many questions. And God help her if her brother was there; he’d throw himself in her path. The one issue he took seriously as a brother was the one she didn’t want him to notice.

  She stood at the door, took a deep breath of evening air that smelled like exhaust fumes and heat fading off the pavement, watched the sun say its last farewell to the day. She saw Littlejohn, waiting on her to go in, so he could leave. She’d told him to take the night off, go lay low somewhere, lest Ghost notice he was off-duty and start asking why.

  Then she turned the knob and went in.

  The hall was warm and smelled faintly of Lysol; her dad mandated a clean house, the prospects and hangarounds always jumping for mops and brooms and polishing rags when his eyes fell across them. That smell helped: it made her feel safe, protected, at-home. All the dorm room doors stood open a sliver, all but the last one, her favorite, and she figured that was where Mercy was living for the time being. She didn’t knock, but tested the knob, and let herself in without a sound.

  She could hear the shower running behind the closed bathroom door, and that gave her a minute. She set her bag down, wiped her suddenly-clammy palms down the thighs of her jeans. She was nervous; this wasn’t happenstance, not a crazy rush she couldn’t control, like yesterday in the office. This was premeditated delinquency. This was purposeful sin. There was a thin coil of fear in her belly because of that. There was a prickling up the back of her neck, and a little tremor in her breathing.

  The bed was made, and she sat on the foot of it, on top of the old worn, but clean blankets, the mattress dipping. The room smelled like him: his quiet cologne, his cigarettes, his leather, his skin. Ava crossed her legs, braced her hands on the mattress and bobbed her foot in time to her pulse; that was the picture she presented when Mercy stepped out of the bathroom.

  The steam rolled out ahead of him, theatrical enough she would have smiled if she hadn’t been choking on nervous butterflies. He wore a towel knotted around his hips. His hair was down, shiny and wet, slicked down the back of his neck. He’d taken his bandage off himself beforehand, and the bullet wound was red and angry-looking; her throat tightened at the sight of it.

  And then there was the rest of the picture: that lean, muscled-up stretch of him, his muscles solid, but unrefined. He didn’t spend hours sculpting himself in front of a gym mirror; his was a natural, powerful, incomprehensible strength, unselfconscious, not-braggadocios. It just was. He had long legs, wide feet, such pretty arms, if anyone besides her thought that kind of musculature “pretty.” The black hair on his arms and legs was coarse; such a contrast from Ronnie’s smooth, almost hairless limbs. She liked the rough; liked the masculinity of it, the way it made her feel small and feminine.

  Ava expected something cocky, some eyebrow twitch, a suggestive comment. What she
got was this truly delighted, boyish smile, like he couldn’t believe she was there, and was thrilled about it.

  That was her undoing, his honest excitement.

  “Ava Rose,” he said, scratching at his wet scalp, coming to stand in front of her. “When did you get into town?”

  She swallowed. “You know that old saying? That the clothes don’t make the man? It works for women, too.”

  “Hey, I don’t care about clothes.” He splayed a hand across his chest, fingers overlapping the tattoo of her teeth. “But you do. And you’re happier when you’re dressed like that.”

  She lifted her chin, tipping her head back so she could maintain eye contact as he stepped in even closer. She could feel the clinging heat of the shower coming off his skin. All his bare skin, right in front of her. “You’ve seen me for five seconds. You don’t know if I’m happy or not.”

  He grinned again, with the same exuberance. “Yeah, I do.”

  She stretched, reaching up to meet his kiss as he leaned over her. It was sweet. Slow. Like he hadn’t bent her back over a desk yesterday. She laid her hands on his wrists, felt the hard thump of his pulse against her palms.

  But then he pulled back, his hand suddenly under her chin, his thumb tracing the line of her lower lip. With their noses overlapping, he said, “You look real pretty, ma chérie.”

  She was blinking back tears as he sat down beside her, hooked a heavy arm around her waist and pulled her up into his lap. Her arms went around his neck on impulse, careful of the wound; she tucked her face in against his throat and his hand came up to cup the back of her head, holding her there, helping her burrow. She had missed the shape of him so dearly, the way her body fit against his.

  She could just see his chest tattoo from this angle, and she passed her fingers across it, tracing its lines with the slow precision she hadn’t been afforded last night. “You had a bandage, that morning I came and was going to tell you about…” The baby.

  “Artist in South Carolina did it for me.” His voice reverberated through his chest, through her, low, deep, Cajun-flavored.