Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8)

by Lauren Gilley

“They need a little character, then,” Maggie said, sharply. “No self-respecting Dog oughta be walking around here in squeaky new boots.”

  The tiniest smile flickered at the corners of Reese’s mouth.

  “You two go do – whatever it is you do on a Wednesday. Shoo.” She waved, and they both left.

  “She doesn’t like you,” Leah heard Reese say, as they slipped out the door.

  “The tragedy. How will I survive?” Tenny shot back.

  Maggie stared at the door a minute after it was closed, hands on her hips, shaking her head. “If Fox doesn’t get hold of that one, I’m going to.” It sounded like a threat, and knowing the queen, it wasn’t an idle one.

  Then she turned to Carter. “Well. Let’s take a look.”

  He lifted the ice pack away and Maggie tutted and fussed over his face, touching the already-swelling, already-bruising line of his nose with careful fingertips. “It might be broken.”

  He swallowed again – swallowing blood down the back of his throat, probably, based on the thickness of his voice. “Feels like it.”

  Maggie bustled around behind her desk, and rummaged through one of the drawers. “Did you really sleep with Chanel?”

  A beat passed. “Kinda.”

  Maggie snorted and produced a package of wet wipes. “Jazz not getting the job done anymore?”

  “It was Jazz’s idea.”

  “Ah.”

  Leah felt like an interloper in the worst way. She was struck again, like yesterday, by the thought that Carter was a very different person from the kid she went to school with. Getting his nose broken because he slept with someone’s girlfriend? His own girlfriend suggesting he sleep around?

  She knew things with the Dogs were – different – sometimes, but she’d never pegged Carter as that type. Had always assumed that, even as a one-percenter, he was the sort who’d settle down with a wholesome girl, dedicated and monogamous.

  She wanted to get up and leave; this wasn’t her business and, frankly, it was awkward listening in on it.

  But she also wanted to hear more. Sue her: sometimes, gossip was juicy.

  Maggie set to cleaning the blood off Carter’s face with a wipe, her touch motherly, efficient, and practiced. God knew how many bloodied noses she’d wiped in her tenure as club first lady. “In case you were wondering, Leah,” she said, “nothing at all has changed around here. Men are still dumb, and they do dumb shit on the regular.”

  Carter made a face – and then winced for real.

  “Hold still,” Maggie told him, and went back to wiping.

  He kept his face upturned, his eyes closed. Leah saw a glimmer of wetness on his lashes, at the corners of his eyes. Having your nose broken had to hurt like a bitch; his eyes would definitely have teared up, an automatic reaction to the sinus damage.

  But that bit of shine looked like tears to her. Like sadness.

  Poor dummy, she thought.

  Six

  When Ghost found out what happened, because he found out about everything, there was some yelling. Some strong gesturing. Carter endured it with a bowed head, and plenty of nodding and yes, sirs. Boomer went red-faced, and shrank down in on himself, his big shoulders drooping low as he tried to wriggle back into the depths of his chair. Roman cuffed him upside the head, too. “What the hell’s wrong with you, idiot?”

  “This isn’t gonna go on,” Ghost said, to wrap it all up, a look encompassing everyone present – including Chanel, cowering back against the kitchen doorframe with her arms banded tight across her middle. “We got enough people wanting to knock us down out in the world” – a hand flung toward the window behind the bar – “without us knocking each other down. If anyone’s messing with an old lady, you bring it to me. If someone’s too much of a chump to ask a girl to go out with him for real, you get the fuck over it.” A dark, hard glare swept across all of them. “Understood?”

  He was met with a chorus of yes, sir.

  Tenny kicked Reese’s boot lightly with his own, his grin sharp and mean.

  Ghost sent him a look. “Don’t push me, Prince Peckerhead.”

  Tenny smoothed his face and held up both hands in surrender.

  As the impromptu meeting broke up, Evan appeared in front of Carter, his face eager in a way that Carter instantly distrusted. “Dude. Did you really bang Chanel and that new chick, Stephanie?”

  Carter stared at him. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I heard Stephanie telling Mary. Dude, did you?”

  Carter was reminded, unpleasantly, of high school. Dude, did she really let you finger her? Holy shit, she sucked your dick? You dog!

  He sighed. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Aw, come on, man, I need details!”

  “Leave me the hell alone.” Carter knocked their shoulders together as he walked past, harder than he should have, probably.

  “Hey! Ow!”

  He tried to keep his head down and lay low for a few days. Boomer didn’t make any more threatening gestures, and he didn’t speak, but Carter was aware of more than a few dark looks thrown his way. One evening, he heard him muttering over on a sofa with Deacon. Deacon said, “He’s not even that good looking, if you ask me.”

  He wasn’t now, no, with his nose purple and blue, still swollen, the skin split across the bridge. But it wasn’t the first time that sentiment had been hissed behind his back, not quite out of earshot. The angry guys at school, less pretty, full of jealousy because the girls they liked had winked at him. He’d heard it on the field, too, when the backup quarterback thought he should be the starter. He’s not that good.

  He thought about what Jazz had said, about not wanting him to get lost in his own head – to not get so far gone that the darkness closed over him. She hadn’t had a chance to repeat that, to pet and fuss over him, in a few days. He hadn’t been by to see her, and had responded to her texts in only yes and no. When he reflected back on their last time together, that night with the other girls, he couldn’t scrape up anything close to desire or fond remembrance.

  It was evening, and he was headed across the parking lot for the clubhouse, on his way to church, when his gaze flitted over a figure sitting in the shadow of the pavilion, long legs draped casually on the bench of a picnic table, smoking. It was Tenny.

  Carter looked away and started past him. He couldn’t think of anything in the way of polite chitchat to offer the guy, and knew it wasn’t wanted of him anyway.

  But Tenny said, “You need to put him in his place.”

  Carter froze, and turned to him. “Who?”

  “That wanker who popped you. Boomer.” He made a face like the name tasted bad. “He’s still simmering, and you need to put him in his place before he breaks your nose again.”

  Carter stared at him a moment, hating how casual and affected his posture was. He wondered, briefly, if the guy had been waiting here for him, to deliver his message, just because he hadn’t gotten to kill anyone lately and was bored. “Why do you care?”

  He lifted a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t. Only offering a suggestion.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks but no thanks.” He started to walk off again.

  “You won’t last like this.”

  Again, he paused, against his better judgement. “What?”

  Tenny took a long drag, his gaze hooded, unfathomable; he had the body of a strong twenty-something, but his eyes were hundreds of years old. “This club. As pathetic as it is, it’s going to chew you up and spit you out if you don’t get your head on straight.”

  “Gee, thanks, prospect,” Carter bit out. “Glad you’re an expert.”

  “I watched you the other day,” he pressed. “And you retreated.” Another sneer. “You’re the senior member here, and he has no claim on that woman, and you ran away and let him hit you.

  “This is a pack of wolves. If you act like a sheep, they’ll eat you alive.”

  Carter’s hands curled into fists. “Like I said: why do you care?”

/>   Tenny ignored the question. “What if it had gone the other way? What if it was your favorite woman who’d been taken out from under you? Used by someone else?”

  “I don’t own anybody,” Carter said, bristling. “Jazz isn’t mine.” Though he’d challenged Candyman of all people about her, once. That seemed decades ago now. “I guess I’m like you,” Carter said, offering a sneer of his own. “Sex is just sex. Nobody has to be my property for me to enjoy myself.”

  “No,” Tenny said, expression hardening, his voice on just that one syllable sending a shiver down Carter’s back. “I assure you that we are nothing alike, you and I. Sex can be just sex. But if anyone ever touches my property, I’ll rip him apart piece by piece, and stop his heart last of all.”

  He was, Carter could see, wholly serious.

  Carter wet his lips. “You don’t have an old lady either.”

  “No,” Tenny agreed, and Carter thought of a lighted doorway, and a hand on an arm, and Stephanie saying something.

  Tenny grinned nastily. “Have I shocked you?”

  “Nothing shocks me anymore,” Carter said, and went inside.

  ~*~

  Ghost had an honest to goodness slide projector set up in the center of the chapel table, projecting an image of the currently-under-construction Bell Bar up onto the wall. All the lights were off, and curls of cigarette smoke lifted up into the beam of projected light, distorting the image.

  “General updates, first,” Ghost said.

  At his side, Walsh opened up the thick file folder in front of him. “The contractor says it’ll be another six weeks or so on the bar.”

  “Six weeks?” Dublin asked, brows raised. “Why so long? It’s already been, what, two months?”

  “The plumbing, the mold, the permits,” Walsh said, ticking off on his fingers. “And the window glass we wanted was on backorder, so that’s another delay.”

  Aidan took a long drag on his cigarette. “It’s so much easier selling hash.”

  “Agreed,” Ghost said, mildly. “But I can’t put hash on my tax return, so.”

  “The café and the empty place are totally demo’d,” Walsh continued. “Stripped down to the studs, and all the wiring and plumbing checks out on both. We can’t move forward until we know what’s going in.”

  “Maggie will get to make the big café decisions,” Ghost said, and there were nods all around.

  “Albie, you were gonna draw up a list of things you’d need for Maude’s?”

  He nodded and produced a paper list from his cut pocket that he passed down the length of the table toward his brother. When Carter handed it down, he caught a glimpse of tidy, precise writing in pencil, a thorough, front-and-back list organized by categories and brands. Albie had put a lot of thought into it, obviously; spent time debating and researching different options.

  Carter couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, he thought with a little pang.

  Walsh scanned the list, nodded, and tucked it into his folder. “I’ll make up a list for the contractors. You’ll need to do another walk-through and come up with a layout,” he told Albie.

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  Ghost clicked a button on the projector, and the image changed: a close-up of the boarded windows of Bell Bar, and the unimaginative graffiti painted across the plywood.

  “We’ve replaced the wood twice this week,” Ghost said. “And twice last week, and the week before. And this keeps happening.”

  “You need cameras,” Hound said.

  “We’re putting them in,” Ghost assured. “But then the question is: if we find out who’s doing this, what do we do with the footage?”

  “Shake some cages,” Mercy said with a grin. He cracked his knuckles. “Time for some little dipshits to get scared.”

  “Wrong,” Ghost said, frowning. “I mean, yeah, that’s what I want to do. But we have to play this smart. There’s a spotlight on those shops, on the bar. If the public knows we’re setting up businesses on Main Street, then they’ll know that any retaliation against these punks came from us.”

  Mercy sighed.

  Rottie said, “Have you talked to Fielding about it?”

  “Yeah, and he pointed out that the Dogs just got done being in the national news about that whole business in Texas. He thinks that’s what the graffiti’s about: dirty FBI and Dogs all tangled in an international cartel bust – he says people are more afraid of us than ever, and it’s, quote, ‘bound to draw a little payback.’”

  “I feel like he musta been grinning when he said that,” RJ muttered.

  “Kinda,” Ghost muttered. “And, the bad part is: he’s not wrong, really.”

  “We gonna hire a PR guy?” Mercy asked, and sounded like he was only half-joking, his smile slipping away.

  Ghost didn’t answer a moment, and Carter felt a jolt of tension move through his stomach. Felt it echoing in the frisson that moved around the table. Chairs creaked as Lean Dogs shifted forward in them.

  “We’ve always had an optics problem,” Ghost said. “It comes with the territory. The club has a reputation, and it’s not like we didn’t earn it.

  “But we’re not small anymore. It’s okay if everyone hates a little club without any reach. But at this point? We’re very visible. We have power, and people know it. People in this city see us as the enemy.” He gestured to the projected image on the wall. “If someone puts a brick through Bell Bar’s window one night, you know how it’s gonna get spun. The club attracted gang violence to the heart of the downtown shopping district,” he said, scowling. “We can’t let that happen. We need to be in charge of the narrative here.”

  No one looked surprised. Carter certainly wasn’t. Anyone who knew Ghost Teague at all knew that he wanted to be in charge of everything – narrative included.

  “We’re going to have to be more visible in a positive way.”

  “We’ve got that charity run next month,” Rottie said.

  “Right. And there’s the thing the Texas girls put together.” Ghost nodded toward Walsh, who produced a new set of paperwork that he passed down the table. Ghost clicked the projector, and the next image was one of three girls, all smiling at the camera; three separate photos laid out alongside one another. “They busted a massive sex-trafficking ring down there,” Ghost continued. “The Chupacabras cartel was snatching American women off the streets and selling them into slavery. All the missing girls from the southwest were accounted for at the rescue, save these three.” He gestured down the table, and Fox stubbed out his cigarette and cleared his throat.

  “Right, so. Chelle had the idea, and Eden’s in full support. Old ladies wanting the club to be a place where people can come when something bad’s happened to someone.”

  “No warrants necessary,” Albie said. “In Texas…” He made a face. “It was ugly. It was Chelle’s idea, but I agree: we can go where the law can’t; we can rattle cages and get answers. No rules to get in our way.”

  “There are people who already know to come to us,” Ghost said. “How are we gonna expand that? Advertise?” Said more than a little mockingly.

  “Same way we do everything else,” Fox said, touch of a challenge in his voice. “Word of mouth. We make an example of somebody, and we let word spread.”

  There were some thoughtful faces around the table; some nods. Hound looked skeptical – then, he usually did.

  Ghost leaned back in his chair, and scratched absently as his bristly chin. “I won’t say it’s a bad idea. I just know we’ve got to be seen doing some good in this city – some public good. Not just bashing heads, but more normal stuff.”

  “Look out, boys,” Mercy said in an undertone. “The boss wants us to go legit.”

  Ghost gave him a rueful smirk. “Not yet.”

  Seven

  Walking through the doors of Cook’s Coffee filled Leah with nostalgia. She’d spent her childhood coloring, then reading, and then studying at these small, round tables, now filled with UT students, and
mothers with their young children, and businesspeople in suits talking quietly on their cells while they lunched on lattes and fresh pastries.

  Her mom was working the register, and Leah paused on her way there, in the moment before she was noticed, to do some noticing of her own. Mom had always been slender bordering on skinny, a lifelong runner and athlete, everything from tennis to mountain biking to water skiing. She seemed too-thin now, though, her clothes hanging off her narrow frame. Light fell in warm panels through the windows, highlighting the bags beneath her eyes, the way her face looked drawn, and sleepless, and tired.

  Leah was startled. She talked to her mom on the phone daily, for the most part, and she’d never said anything about being worried. About, God forbid, marital strife, or personal worry. As far as Leah knew, no one in the extended family was sick; nothing terrible had befallen anyone. So why did she look like something was weighing on her?

  When Leah stepped up to the counter, Marie lifted her head, spotted her, and she smiled. All gladness and welcome. All signs of stress vanished. “Hi, sweetie! How’d it go?”

  Leah slid onto a stool at the counter and tried not to make a face.

  Failed, apparently. Marie cocked her head and winced. “That bad, huh?”

  “It wasn’t bad. The interview itself was good, actually. She liked my shoes.” She stuck one leg out to reveal the ridiculous platforms she’d worn, the tops and rubberized soles printed with pink hibiscus flowers. The rest of her outfit was black and white and muted, but she’d had to spice it up at least a little.

  “Those are the cutest,” Marie said.

  “Yeah, she thought so, too.” Leah felt her momentary smile dim. “And she said my resume was great. But they won’t have a position available until next month. I got the feeling they’ve had a ton of applicants.”

  “Well, you’re bound to be the best one.”

  “Mom.”

  “And a month isn’t that far.”

  But it was when you needed to make rent, and Leah could see that her mother knew it, based on her slight wince. She was trying to look on the bright side, though, the way she had Leah’s whole life.