Ghost studied the wall a long moment, that old photograph of the London mother chapter at Baskerville Hall, and then seemed to return to himself, tension uncoiling in his arms. “Aidan, set Greg up in a room,” he said. Over the top of Greg’s head, his gaze was sharper than his voice, the suggestion unmistakable. For the moment, Greg was their prisoner, not their guest.
**
Ghost sat in the empty chapel once Aidan ushered Greg out. This room. The smell of it, the dark energy in its walls, the faces of the men in the photographs. This was his room, his inheritance. All his life, he’d been working toward this chair at the head of the table, the long view down to the end of it. In this sacred room, he’d asked Collier about what was wrong, and his vice president – and friend – had lied to him.
Maybe.
If Greg was telling the truth.
God knew.
Aidan wanted to be in charge of something, the prince taken into the king’s closest confidence. But it was moments like this that reminded Ghost how ill-prepared his son was. Some of that was his fault, if he was honest – always a father, never a teacher – but part of it was the disgusting entitlement of the younger generations.
Ava wasn’t like that. Ava was rational, gathered, self-possessed. Ava was responsible in ways he himself had never been at that age. Not meek – no, her cooperation could never be called that – but secure enough to not be so filled up with questions and rebellion.
Yeah, Ava should have been born a boy – the true prince.
And he shouldn’t have sent her knight away five years ago. He’d always wanted a king for her, someone she could rule beside. But it was the knight who was devoted, who was in her thrall and would die defending her.
He lived and he learned, and wasn’t that a shitty way for things to play out?
Finally, he pushed to his feet and went out into the clubhouse, chest heavy in anticipation of what he now had to do.
In the common room, Rottie and RJ were coming in, smeared with dirt, their hair and clothes chunky with the stuff.
“It’s done?” Ghost asked.
Visibly exhausted, Rottie fell onto a barstool and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Over where the old septic tank for the house used to be. Ground’s wet; faster decomp.”
Ghost nodded. “Good job. You guys seen Collier?”
They glanced at one another. “Nah,” RJ said. “People don’t generally offer to help with burials.”
Ghost sent him a reprimanding look. “If you see him, tell him I want to talk to him.”
When he was outside, he called Collier’s cell. He expected it to go to voicemail, and he was proven right.
“Damn.”
Maggie had learned, over the years, that in times of club crisis, when bombarded with external threats, it was imperative that they maintain as normal a routine as possible. They had to look untroubled to the outside world. Nothing tipped the cops off worse than erratic, frightened behavior. So even though she was in knots over Ava leaving, she sat at her desk in the central office and waded through the balance sheets from Green Hills, Harry keeping dutiful watch propped against the wall outside.
When Ghost walked in, she said, “You know, if that cute redheaded boy needs a recommendation letter when it comes time to vote him in, I’ll be happy to write it.” She smiled and gestured to Harry through the window with her pen.
Ghost didn’t return her smile. “You talked to Jackie today?”
“No. Why?”
He propped his hands on his hips and frowned to himself. “I’m looking for Collier.”
Like a fingertip passing down her spine, she caught the vibe of something off. Her smile dropped away, this new dread feeding off her existing anxiety. “What?”
He shook his head. “If you talk to Jackie, be real subtle. Don’t freak her out. But see if she’ll tell you where he is.”
“Ghost.”
But he was already walking out.
Cartersville was a small city, its charming aged center surrounded by cattle land and rural churches sprouting like white mushroom caps from the wide green flats of pasture. Their hosts lived on a quiet street of old, but well-maintained homes, all of them low and dark-roofed, tall pines casting shadows like fingers across the pavement. Evening was coming on, the first modest blush of it, rose and gold in the middle of the sky.
Mercy pulled into the driveway of a tidy brick ranch with freshly-painted green shutters and door. There was a black Dodge Challenger and a Harley FXR under the carport. Mercy parked alongside the other bike, under cover, where the Dyna wouldn’t be easily spotted.
“Thank God,” Ava murmured as she stood and stretched her legs, grateful for the chance to be on her feet again. She unbuckled her helmet and turned lifting it off her head into a long, skyward stretch that popped the kink in her lower back.
“You haven’t ridden in a while,” Mercy said knowingly, his smile sympathetic as he set his helmet on the handlebars.
“Not that I don’t like it,” she rushed to say.
“But it’ll kill ya,” he finished. “We’ll stay here a while.” He winked. “Get you all loosened up.”
She smiled back…and then felt it fade. She’d only just now realized: this was their wedding night, and they were guests in someone’s home. Someone’s small home. Crap, she couldn’t have sex feet away from kind strangers who’d offered to put them up for the night. Because Mercy had put his beloved grandmother’s ring on her finger, and the consummation of that would be no quiet, dark of night, secret thing. She didn’t think she could allow herself to do even that much on someone else’s sheets; that just felt wrong.
She didn’t get a chance to explain, because a side door opened at the top of a short flight of steps and a man came out of the house to greet them.
He was about six feet tall, like her father, lean and narrow-hipped and walked with an effortless, contained energy that looked unconscious. He was blonde, that blonde that starts as tow-headed on children and becomes a burnished, platinum-gold on adults, his skin tan, lined heavily around the eyes and mouth, his eyes a very clear, bright blue. He was in jeans and a long-sleeved white tee with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Classic, she thought. Straight out of an old movie, nondescript rather than handsome, his expression very composed and quiet.
Mercy grinned and stepped ahead of her to shake the man’s hand. “My non-Dog brother,” Mercy greeted with a laugh. The veins stood out in his hand and wrist as he shook hands, but the blonde man didn’t appear concerned that his fingers had just been crushed. “Sly, man, when you gonna come be a real outlaw?”
Sly’s smirk was small. “Soon as the missus comes to her senses and leaves me. And soon as Ray quits paying me so well.”
Mercy laughed. “You keep saying that, but I ain’t seen evidence of this money.” He moved to the side and his hand came back for her.
Ava stepped into the circle of his arm and he pulled her up tight against his side; not protective, just affectionate. He wanted to touch her. He was feeling the magnetism of that ring, too.
“Baby, this is Sly Hammond. Sly, my wife: Ava.”
“Hi.” She reached to accept his shake – hard, deep, old calluses like Mercy: a mechanic too – and saw the tiny flicker of surprise in his face. He hadn’t known the president’s daughter that Mercy was bringing would be Mrs. Lécuyer. He reminded her, a little, of Walsh, and the comparison put her at ease “I really appreciate you letting us stay for a while,” she said.
He nodded in response. “Come on in. Lay made enough food for fifteen people.” Tiny eye roll, little half-smile. A man who loved his wife.
They followed Sly up the three wooden stairs into a laundry room that fed into a kitchen. The smell hit Ava first: warm, homey, chicken and bread smells. Her stomach growled, reminding her that her last meal had been a Slim Jim and a Coke.
They entered a kitchen that was in the process of being remodeled: original but repainted white cabinets an
d dated appliances over new beige tile, topped with shiny new light fixtures. A blonde little boy sat in the center of the room, stacking wooden blocks with fierce concentration. A baby slept in a battery powered swing. And at the stove, a petite brunette was denuding stalks of rosemary over a steaming cookie sheet. Ava spotted two chicken potpies before the woman turned to them, her smile sweet, her eyes large and green.
Her gaze cut over to her husband first, like a fast reflex. Not an MC old lady, no, but Ava recognized the signs of a woman who lived with an outlaw, that need of confirmation, one last check that these were guests and not threats. Then she smiled at them.
“Mercy, you take up way too much space in my kitchen,” she said, eyes sparkling with good humor. She looked at Ava. “Hi, I’m Layla.”
“Ava.” She accepted the other woman’s handshake; Layla had little hands.
“Mercy’s wife,” Sly said, and Layla’s eyes went wide, moving between Ava and Mercy.
“Really now?” She laughed, her sideways grin knowing. “Champagne with dinner?”
Mercy actually looked sheepish. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
Layla, Ava learned as they sat down to dinner, was twenty-seven, loved to cook, was the daughter of one of Sly’s dearest friends, and ran the desk at the family garage she half-owned, King Customs in Alpharetta, Georgia. Their boys were toddler, Mick, and one-month-old, Wesson, named after Smith & Wesson, whom they called Wes. Their early dinner was chicken potpie, salad, potatoes, and homemade gravy, along with the promised champagne. Ava picked at her food, and noticed Layla doing the same, most of her energy consumed by helping Mick. The circumstances of their flight from Knoxville weren’t mentioned at all.
“Ava,” Layla said, tearing a dinner roll into bites for Mick, “Sly says you’re in grad school?”
Ava nodded and sipped at her champagne to push the potpie down her throat. It was delicious, but she was a little nervous, and the flaky crust was sticking on its way down. “At Tennessee,” she said. “Creative writing.”
Layla’s brows went up, expression sharpening with real interest. “You’re a writer?”
Ava nodded.
“I love to read.”
“She uses my good work bench as a bookshelf,” Sly said.
Layla made a halfhearted swat at his arm and continued, undeterred. “What do you write? Novels? Short stories? What genre?”
Ava wanted to squirm in her chair, self-conscious with her writing in front of others. “Short stories mostly, right now,” she said. “But I’d love to write a novel, someday…” She hadn’t thought about her future much in the last few days. Mercy’s leg brushed up against hers under the table; whatever direction the weeks, months, years ahead took, she had him now. She had a husband. She…
The sudden rush of happy thoughts sent an excited shiver through her, and her voice strengthened as Layla drew her out of her shell with more and more questions about school, her writing, her plans.
“Let me help,” she said when they were finished, stacking Mercy’s plate on top of hers.
“That’d be great.”
“You want a beer?” Sly asked Mercy.
“Yeah.”
“Here, hold my baby.”
Ava watched from the counter, biting on her smile, as tiny Wes was put in Mercy’s arms and he accepted the bundle as if it were priceless and breakable – which it was. She watched them leave the room, Sly calling Mick along, her heart gooey at the sight of her man with a baby in his arms. He would have been a good father. Would be, still, in the future.
“You’ve got that look,” Layla said.
Ava tore her eyes from the now-empty doorway and began loading the dishwasher as Layla filled the sink with hot water and suds to wash the pots and pans. “What look?” she asked, playing innocent, feeling her ears warm. She’d been busted.
Layla had let some of her hostess politeness slip, her smile wry and knowing. “My cousin’s been trying to get pregnant for over a year now. I know that face.”
“Oh, we’re not trying,” Ava said. She shook her head as she slotted the spoons in the appropriate rack. “Hell, we got married this morning. And we’ve got so much else to worry about…”
Layla was laughing, low, under her breath. “Doesn’t matter though, does it? When you want one, you want one, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop wanting it.”
Ava paused, bundle of knives in her hands.
Layla shrugged. “Mick wasn’t planned,” she admitted. “Neither was getting married, at first. It all just slammed into us. But then, in the middle of” – she made a broad gesture – “well I don’t have to tell you about crazy outlaw family drama–”
Ava grinned.
“ – but I wanted another baby and Sly didn’t take one second of convincing. He was all, ‘Sure. Right now? Let me get my pants off.’ ” She chuckled. “I can guarantee, no matter what else is going on, all you’d have to do is drop one hint, and Mercy would be all over that.” She made a face. “No pun intended.”
Ava laughed. “Oh no, he’d intend the pun.”
Layla pulled a pot from the suds and rinsed it under the tap. “How long have you guys been together?”
Not long, Ava started to say, because it had only been a matter of days since he’d told her he loved her, and threatened to put Ronnie’s head through a windshield. She shuddered; she didn’t want to think about Ronnie. And she hated the taste of not long on her tongue, the way it made her feel cheap and disposable. It wasn’t the truth, anyway. Because the two of them here in this house, married, running away to the swamp together, that “together” had been building since before either of them knew to watch out for it.
“Forever,” she said. “Keeping us apart was always the problem, never getting us together.”
Dishwasher loaded, Ava closed the door and moved to dry the pots as Layla passed them over.
Layla said, “I know enough about the MC world to know that there’s things you guys can’t, and won’t talk about with outsiders.” Her face told Ava that she wasn’t offended by this. She was a part of an underground network, too. She knew the drill. “So I don’t really expect an answer when I ask, Why are you guys on the run?”
Ava framed her answer carefully. “Sometimes personal business and club business get tangled up. My dad thought it’d be safest for me to leave town for a while. Mercy’s always been the one to look out for me.”
Layla’s expression was soft and thoughtful as she scrubbed. “How much older is he?”
Ava could sense no judgment. “Thirteen years.”
Layla nodded. “Sly and I are fifteen apart. It works, you know? He’s not trying to prove anything. He isn’t searching for anything – or anyone – else. Life’s awful enough as it is; it’s nice not to fall in bed next to a minefield every night.”
“My mom says older men appreciate you more.”
“Your mom’s a smart woman, then.”
Ava snorted. “She’d love you for that.”
After they’d finished cleaning up, before they left the kitchen, Layla caught Ava gently by the sleeve. “Just so you know,” she said, quietly, “they found some mold when we moved in, and Sly had to replace the sheetrock and insulation in the guest room.”
“Okay…”
“The walls are thick.” Layla winked. “And I know you got married this morning. Just try not to wake up the babies.”
Ava felt her face turn red. “I wouldn’t…”
“Don’t we all think that?” Layla said with a little laugh. “I don’t mind, I promise. That’s why God made washing machines.”
But still, Ava felt like a bad guest. The spare room, as Layla showed her after a couple hours of dozing on the sofa while the TV murmured in the background, would be turned into Wes’s room when the time was right, but for now, held a double bed, writing desk and a tall dresser. The coverlet was pale blue, the pillows done in shades of ice and chocolate. The clean, creaseless sheets smelled like rain; Ava felt immediate g
uilt when she turned them back.
She dressed Mercy’s shoulder, showered, and climbed between the covers while Mercy showered. She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but her eyes opened on darkness, body stirring against the feel of Mercy sliding into bed beside her, pressing the length of his frame against her back. He smelled like soap, and the warmth of the water clung to him.
“You feel nice,” she murmured, still groggy, snuggling back against him.
His face settled against the hollow of her neck; his arm slid around her waist, pushed up under her shirt so his hand could find her breasts. “Nice? Just nice? I gotta tell ya, as far as compliments go…weak, baby, just weak.”
“You’re a shithead,” she said, smiling. “How about that?”
“That’ll cost you.” His arm tightened, his hand closed over her breast, and as he shifted, pushing her down into the mattress, his hips came under her ass and she realized he was naked.
“Mercy,” she hissed. “You cannot be naked in these people’s sheets.”
He was in a mood, though, and he wasn’t going to take anything seriously. The overgrown kid in him had come out to play, and that was always the hardest of his personas to reason with. “Okay, college girl, maybe there’s some stuff they didn’t teach you at school. You’re supposed to consummate your marriage. On your actual wedding day. Which is today, in case you forgot.”
“And in case you forgot, we’re guests in someone’s home, and their tiny kids are asleep right down the hall.”
There was a low laugh threaded through his Cajun purring voice. “So try not to scream.”
“Good guests don’t get…bodily fluids…on people’s sheets.”
“You don’t know that. What if Sly and Layla rent this room out as a brothel on weekends?”
“Mercy.” She attempted to pull his hand away, and only succeeded in pushing it down her stomach, where he then reached into the waistband of her shorts, fingers going down between her legs. “Can’t you wait one night?” Until they could find some sleazy motel in Mississippi somewhere, where their neighbors wouldn’t give a damn.
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