Fearless

by Lauren Gilley

  Eat him literally, she understood, after last night.

  He stepped in close, leaning over her. “I promise you, fillette, that I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  She tipped her head back to look up at him. “It’s not me I’m worried about.” She lifted her hand and pressed it to his forehead. She didn’t have her mother’s years of experience feeling faces and gauging temperatures, but she didn’t need it. He had a fever, and not a subtle one. “Let me see your shoulder,” she said.

  He backed away from her. “No.”

  “It’s infected, Mercy, you know it is.” She took a step toward him. “You’ve got a fever. You feel like shit, don’t you?”

  “I feel fine.”

  “Don’t give me that tough guy shit. We need to get you to a doctor. You need antibiotics.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Mercy–”

  He lifted a finger in reprimand, and gave her a scowl that reminded her of her father, when he was at his most furious with her. It was a parental gesture, scolding the errant child. “Stop talking about it.”

  She folded her arms, and felt the stacked-up stress getting the best of her emotions. “You aren’t really going to act like this, are you?”

  “Ava.”

  She turned her back on him, fuming silently. Rot then, she thought. But the tears came up in her eyes and she blinked them away as the hot sun fell in through the windows.

  With minimal stops, it was about twelve hours from Knoxville to New Orleans. Looking for a runaway wannabe biker stretched the trek to almost sixteen hours. It was almost midnight when Aidan heaved his aching body off his bike and took three great steps away from the thing, not wanting his ass anywhere near the seat for at least a day.

  “Jesus,” Tango groaned beside him as he stretched his arms up over his head and was rewarded with a sequence of pops and cracks. “Do I even have an ass left? I can’t feel it anymore.”

  “Pussies,” Rottie admonished playfully, but he halted partway through his dismount, his face catching in a comical grimace.

  Aidan snorted. “Should I call Mina and tell her not to expect any more kids?”

  “She already knows not to expect them.” Rottie managed to get up on his feet. “I can’t afford another damn one.” He doted on them, though, his boys and Mina. Aidan wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone so glad about being tied down. Save maybe his own father.

  The New Orleans clubhouse – an unattractive corrugated steel beast – was aglow with life, a beacon in the dark, crowded little neighborhoods down Iberville Street. A tall, fair-haired man was walking out to meet them, backlit by the light spilling from the front door. Bob Boudreaux, the Louisiana president.

  “You boys look like you just got scraped off the front of a Peterbilt,” he said with a laugh as he reached them. “Feeling like roadkill, huh?”

  Aidan accepted the man’s strong handshake. “Or worse. Thanks for leaving the light on for us.”

  Bob shook Tango and Rottie’s hands in turn. He laughed again. “You think we go to bed around here?”

  Aidan didn’t know, but he’d heard all the stories about the New Orleans crew. Things were wilder down here, in the Big Easy, more raucous and debauched than in the cooler climes of Tennessee.

  “Come on in,” Bob invited. “We got plenty to eat. Decent mattresses. And Gabby’s girls can get you just about anything you need.”

  Aidan hung back a step when they reached the door. Through it, he glimpsed bright splashes of color, furnishings the bland exterior belied. He smelled smoke and hops and heard women’s laughter. “Actually,” he said, “I need to make a phone call first.”

  Bob nodded, and he and the others went inside, leaving him alone.

  Mercy dreamed in his sleep, and in those dreams, he talked. Ava lay beside him, unable to sleep, and listened to the restless, nonsensical murmurings of his fever dreams. He didn’t stir when she touched his face. His skin was warm and dry against her palm. When she eased the sheets down, she saw the angry red veins surrounding his gunshot wound. Looking at it made her want to cry and hit him both at once, so she pulled the sheet back up, and stared at the ceiling, listened to the crickets and frogs.

  When the phone rang, it startled her, but she was ready to answer it, springing out of bed and going to the landline in her underwear.

  “Hello?” she picked up on the second ring.

  Mercy rolled over in bed, but didn’t wake.

  “Hey.” Aidan’s voice filled her ear, and she wanted to cry all over again. “Did I wake you up?”

  “No. I can’t sleep.” She leaned back against the wall, propping a foot behind her. The steamy night air was cooler than the bed covers had been, and she enjoyed its soft brush against her skin.

  Aidan sounded fuzzy and tired. “We just got into town. Rottie and Tango and me,” he said, anticipating her question about his company. “I gotta grab a few hours’ sleep. I wanted to make sure you guys are okay out there in the fucking Land of the Lost by yourselves first.”

  She smiled. “We’re fine…” She closed her eyes. “No, that’s not true, actually. Mercy’s gunshot wound is infected. He needs to go see a doctor, but he won’t listen to me.”

  Aidan snorted. “You know how he is. He thinks he’s invincible.”

  “Yeah, but a lot of good he’ll do me when he’s too sick to walk and I can’t find my way out of this damn swamp.”

  She could almost hear him frowning. “I’ll talk to Bob about it. Tango and I can ride out there tomorrow.”

  He’d never be able to find the place without a guide, but she appreciated his gesture.

  “Yeah, that’d be good. Call first, okay? So we know to expect you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Aidan? I’m really glad you’re here.”

  He made a sound that was half-embarrassed, half-sympathetic. “Night.”

  She hung up and tiptoed back to bed. When she slid beneath the sheets, Mercy turned toward her in his sleep, banded a heavy arm across her waist and pulled her into his chest.

  Ava rested her face against his fevered skin and closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she thought. Just hold on until tomorrow.

  Forty-Eight

  A thin fog hugged the turf, early sunlight catching in all the tiny dew droplets clinging to the grass. Voices echoed off the stadium seating as sellers set up their tents and unpacked boxes of sale items. Maggie worked side by side with Jackie, arranging their smaller offerings on black-draped folding tables. The larger items – furniture and old bicycles, Mina’s baby gear – were set up at the back of their tent, where they’d be out of the way of the foot traffic.

  Maggie didn’t know what to think about Jackie, so she’d decided, for the moment, not to think about her at all. She was here, she was helping, she was acting more like her normal self, so Maggie was shelving the tension until it was a better time to deal with it.

  “Where do you want these to go, Mrs. T?” Leah asked, popping up on the other side of the table with a baggie full of hand-labeled price tags.

  “It should say on each tag,” Maggie said. “Here’s the ribbons that you can use to tie them on.” She handed over a second baggie. “If there’s no label on one, come get me.”

  Leah took the baggie and whisked away. “Sure thing.”

  “Her family’s not operating a booth today?” Jackie asked when she was gone.

  “Her mother’s a bit of a pack rat. I don’t guess they had anything to donate.”

  “Do they know she’s here with us?”

  “My guess?” Maggie made a face. “No. The Cooks were always good to Ava, but I don’t think their MC tolerance would stretch this far. No way would they want Leah here with us after what happened two days ago.”

  “I figured as much.”

  Harry and Carter returned from the truck with the Lean Dogs MC banner held between them.

  Harry wrinkled his nose, a move that scrunched up his freckles and made the resemblance to his nam
esake even stronger. “You sure you want us to hang this?”

  Maggie glanced across the tent-packed football field, the milling Knoxville residents unloading boxes and handcarts. “Yeah. Put it up. That’s kind of the point of this whole thing.”

  Her hands stilled on the collection of holiday cheese knives she was laying out, attention fully on the black and white banner as the two boys climbed up on folding chairs and tacked each end to the front of their tent. The running black dog seemed to be leaping off the canvas as the breeze caught the banner and rippled it.

  Two women at the tent across from them glanced up, first casually, and then doing double-takes as they processed the banner. One, a plump, gray-haired grandmotherly thing, let her eyes fall to Maggie’s face, her mouth slightly open with shock. She wondered the same thing that everyone on this field was going to wonder: How could any of them show themselves at a public function after two people had died on their doorstep?

  Olivia came around with her clipboard, signing tent-runners in, at seven-fifteen. Maggie was convinced the woman had burned every pair of jeans she owned the day the ink dried on the divorce papers. Casual was not a word in her repertoire.

  This morning, she wore white twill pants and a salmon-colored turtleneck sweater that could only have been real cashmere. Her gold brooch, some sort of long-necked bird, a swan maybe, was studded with rubies mirrored in her earrings. Her severe haircut was, as usual, softened with the entire Estée Lauder collection, carefully applied. Her black flats left wet scuff marks on the grass.

  She pulled up in front of the table without taking her eyes from her clipboard, an obvious snub.

  “No, you’re not dreaming,” Maggie said with false brightness. “We showed up.”

  Olivia glanced up slowly, lips pursed. “I can see that.”

  “And who knows,” Maggie said, “maybe the lucky bastard who buys that old cabinet will find the brick of cocaine I forgot was taped to the bottom.”

  For a second, Olivia looked like she almost smiled. Then she clicked out her pen and scribbled on her board. “You have to be broken down and cleared out by four,” she instructed. “Leave your tent abandoned at any point, and it will be taken down for you, and you will be unable to continue selling.”

  Maggie gave her a mock salute as she moved on to the next table.

  Beside her, Jackie said, “It’d take a talented surgeon to retrieve the stick up her ass. It must have worked its way up to her throat by now.”

  Maggie snorted and bumped her shoulder into Jackie’s in silent thanks.

  “I’ve decided Ava owes me,” Leah announced. She sat in a folding chair, clinking two of the holiday cheese knives together absently, tiny chin propped on one tiny upraised fist. “She’s off on a New Orleans honeymoon while I sell her old kid shoes to people who won’t even look at us.”

  She sat up straight and clapped her hand over her mouth, turning to give Maggie a wide-eyed look over her shoulder.

  “It’s okay.” Maggie laughed. “She told me they got married.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Leah sagged back into her slump. “I didn’t want to be the bean-spiller.”

  Maggie didn’t miss the way Carter looked over at them sharply from his place propped against a tent pole.

  “They got married?”

  She nodded.

  His expression wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown either. “Good,” he said. “He should have stepped up a long time ago.”

  Maggie smiled. “You think so?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Well yes, but it’s established that I’m a bad mother.”

  Leah and Carter rolled their eyes as a unit, with identical “ugh” sounds.

  “Excuse me,” an unfamiliar voice said.

  Maggie almost fell off her chair when she saw a potential customer standing at their front table, examining Mina’s collection of old baby clothes. She jumped up to her feet with too much enthusiasm and said, “Yes, can I help you?”

  The woman was young, probably Ava’s age, dressed in a faded blue sweater and jeans, very thin save the small baby bump filling out the sweater in front. She was pale, dark-haired, and had frightened eyes, when she lifted them to Maggie’s face. “How much are these outfits?” she asked in a timid voice.

  Maggie had the feeling her meekness was natural, and not a reaction to the banner overhead. She felt a softening for this young mother-to-be, reminded of her own daughter, wondering if Ava would come back from the swamp with a tiny burden of her own.

  “Tell you what,” she said, “how ‘bout five bucks for the whole lot of them.”

  The girl’s pale eyes widened in shock. “But…”

  There had to be at least twenty little outfits laid out, complete with matching shoes.

  “Five bucks,” Maggie said, smiling, “and I’ll know they went to a good home.”

  The girl nodded, reaching into her purse for a crumpled five as Maggie and Leah bagged the clothes.

  “My name’s Maggie,” she said, as she handed the bags over to the girl. “Maggie Teague. My husband’s the president of the Lean Dogs MC. If you ever need any help, you feel free to give me a call.” And in one slick move, passed a business card into the girl’s hand.

  The girl nodded, a faint smile touching the corners of her mouth. “Thank you so much.”

  When she was gone, Maggie sank back down onto her chair. “It’s not much, but it’s a start in the goodwill department.”

  The boys showed up around nine-thirty. Maggie left the tent to meet Ghost. As she leaned in to kiss him, she whispered, “You look scary as hell, which, I’m guessing, isn’t the vibe you were going for.”

  He scowled as he pulled back, which only furthered the effect of his all-black and shades and perma-frown.

  “What’s wrong with the way I look?”

  “I just told you; you look scary.”

  He pushed his shades up into his hair and she bit back a laugh. His eyes were more intimidating than the glasses had been.

  “Hi, boys,” she greeted the rest of the crew.

  The responding hellos were tired and half-hearted.

  Maggie lowered her voice, the laughter bleeding out of her. “Have you heard from Aidan today?”

  He nodded. They’d talk about the particulars later.

  Ghost turned his attention to the tent. “Sold anything yet?”

  “A little, not a lot.” She nodded toward the surrounding tents, and the looks the people in them were shooting the knot of Dogs. “More stares than anything.”

  He made a disgruntled sound. “Yeah, well…we’re gonna stroll. See if we can’t be seen being…”

  “Less threatening than you are right now?” she supplied helpfully.

  “Something like that.”

  She kissed him again, before they walked off. “Watch out for Olivia. She’s circling through like a shark in cashmere.”

  He gave a dramatic shudder. As they moved off, Maggie surveyed their tent full of unsold items, poor bored Leah and Carter, playing catch with a rolled up ball of masking tape, Harry napping in a sunny patch. Jackie had gone to the concession stand for coffee, but wasn’t back yet.

  “I’m gonna stretch my legs. I’ll be right back in a few minutes,” she told Leah. “Then you guys can go walk around if you want. It’s gonna be a long day; we might as well not all be stuck here the whole time.”

  Leah nodded. “That’ll be good.”

  “Back in a few.” She tapped Harry on the knee as she passed. “Watch the kids, honey.”

  “Yes’m,” he murmured sleepily.

  “Don’t I just love the sight of a man in uniform.” That’s what Mercy would have said. The words popped into Ghost’s mind as he approached Vince Fielding, and he almost smiled. Mercy was his ice breaker, his Jolly Cajun Giant, who could get away with saying whatever he damned wanted because no one wanted to climb up on a stepladder and stop him.

  Damn it, he did love the monster, as one of his most-valued brothers.
Maggie was right. Wasn’t she always? He was going to have to get right with the idea of Mercy and Ava together. Both were necessary fixtures in his life. And, because Maggie was right yet again, it eliminated a whole slew of uncomfortable moments between himself and some yuppie son-in-law he despised. There would be nothing but Dogs at his table come Thanksgiving, and that was a good thing.

  He refocused.

  “I feel so safe, knowing the good sergeant’s here to keep a lid on things,” he said, as his brothers spread out, ranging beside him in the aisle between the tents, forming a loose half-circle around the sergeant. “Don’t you boys agree?”

  “Completely,” Walsh said in a bored voice.

  “I feel safe as shit,” Dublin said.

  Fielding turned to face them with an expression that reminded Ghost of his long-dead grandmother: sour enough to curdle milk. “What are you guys doing here? Trying to incite a riot?”

  “We’ve got a booth,” Ghost said, mildly, hands settling on his hips. “You’re not suggesting I be denied my right to contribute to the city’s charitable functions, are you?”

  “I’m suggesting someone might take a pop at you, given what’s been happening.”

  They were drawing curious glances from passersby and the sellers manning tents. Most of those looks were tinged with open hostility. Even hatred, in the flat features of a few soccer moms.

  Ghost lifted his brows. “Worried about us?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Since you brought up ‘what’s been happening,’ have you talked to the drive-by shooter yet?”

  Fielding’s face became guarded. Ah, so he’d realized all the Carpathians were MIA. “I don’t have an ID.”

  “Shame. Here’s hoping whoever it was just kept on driving. He’s probably not even in town anymore.”

  Fielding’s lips compressed, jaw clenching. “Probably not.”

  With a gesture, the Dogs moved on at a casual pace, eyeing the yard sale wares, trying to look as innocuous as possible.