Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Now, in a second, I’m gonna raise my voice, and I’m gonna stop being coy. When that happens, we can have our conversation out here, in front of everyone, or back in your office. Your choice.”

  Dave scowled. But finally jerked a nod, and lifted up the panel in the counter to let them through.

  In the office, the teenager sat hunched in the desk chair, nursing a Mountain Dew, legs drawn up to his chest. He shot to his feet when they came through the door, face white with terror. “Dad–”

  “Go mind the register, Jimmy. It’s alright,” Dave said.

  He bolted from the room.

  Ghost and Walsh settled into the two spare chairs, and Dave landed in the desk chair with a deep, worry-laced exhale. He rubbed his face a moment with both hands. When he dropped them to his lap, and opened his eyes, he said, “Look. Jimmy’s a good kid, but he does stupid shit sometimes. You’ve got a boy, you understand.”

  “I do. I also understand that, when he does stupid shit, there are consequences.”

  Dave’s expression hardened. “So that’s why your people attacked them? It was just spray paint. That doesn’t justify roughing them up!”

  “I already told you: it wasn’t my people.”

  His jaw clenched.

  “Did he say that? When he told you what happened, and he got to the part about a Good Samaritan stepping in, did he tell you who it was?”

  Dave hesitated.

  Ghost motioned to Walsh, who pulled out his phone, cued up the surveillance video Ratchet had sent him an hour ago, and set it down on the desk to play for Dave. There was no sound, but via the camera they’d hidden outside of Bell Bar, the action was unmistakable. Two men all in black, with painted faces, came out of nowhere, dropping down onto the two teenagers with backpacks. A scuffle ensued, with the boys clearly the losers. A crowd gathered. And then here came Carter, flying his colors, the patches on his back clearly visible as he engaged with one of the thugs – Tenny, by the look of him – and a fight ensued.

  Tenny was a damn good actor, and he’d coached Carter well beforehand. If he hadn’t known it was staged, Ghost would have thought it looked real.

  “That’s Carter Michaels,” Ghost said. “He took the city to state his senior year at Knoxville High. He’s a Dog now, and he spared your kid and his friend an ass-beating.”

  The video ended, and Dave looked up. “Who was in the black?” he asked, skeptically.

  Ghost shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Strange shit’s going on around here lately.” He allowed his gaze to sharpen, chin tucking fractionally for effect. “Why’s Jimmy vandalizing my property? We’ve never done a damn thing to him.”

  This time, Dave’s face colored with embarrassment, rather than anger. “I didn’t know he was doing that. But…”

  “But what?”

  “He said the kids have been talking at school. Lots of them think it’s time to force the Lean Dogs out of town. It’s kind of becoming a thing.”

  “What sort of thing?” Ghost asked, tone sharpening. He hadn’t expected this of teenagers. The anti-Dog crowd tended to be adults of the country club variety. Teens generally liked and romanticized the whole outlaw image.

  “A movement,” Walsh said. “And it’s spreading.”

  Dave nodded. “One of his classmates – a girl named Allie – disappeared. Vanished on her way home from a party. Her car turned up out on the old mill road, but the police haven’t found anything out yet.”

  Ghost hadn’t heard of this. “When was this?”

  “Two weeks ago, or so,” Walsh supplied. He fiddled with his phone, and then offered Ghost a glimpse of a headline, and a photo of a smiling, pretty teenage girl.

  He traded a look with his VP. The graffiti had been happening for longer than that, but if someone – like, say, the heavier-set adults that had appeared on the videos – had started the efforts, it would make sense that they wanted to expand it; bring the whole community into it. And what better place to start than with the young people? A nudge here, a bug in an ear there. Someone close to the kids, with some influence, talking shit about the Dogs. And then a girl disappeared, under nefarious circumstances…

  Walsh’s expression didn’t change, save the subtle flexing of his jaw as he clenched it.

  Ghost nodded and turned back to Dave. “Whatever happened to Allie, I can promise you the Lean Dogs had nothing to do with it.” He stood. “Make sure your son and his friends stop vandalizing private property, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  Dave nodded. “Yeah.”

  But when they were at the door, he said, “Ghost.”

  Ghost glanced back over his shoulder and met Dave’s troubled expression.

  “I appreciate your guy stepping in last night. That was good of him. But…can you honestly tell me your club makes this city a safer place? That it doesn’t make it more dangerous?”

  Ghost offered him a wide, toothy grin. “Come on, man. Who loves Knoxville more than the Dogs?”

  Fox and Mercy were waiting for them at the bikes, having a cigarette. Mercy dropped his to the pavement and ground it out beneath his boot. “Anything?”

  “It was the son – Jimmy Connors – and a friend last night that our guys spooked. Not a big surprise. But Dave Connors said the high school kids are starting to feel distinctly unfriendly toward us.”

  “A girl disappeared two weeks ago.” Walsh had the article pulled up still, and passed his phone to Mercy.

  At least, he tried to. Fox snatched it away, earning a glare from his brother.

  Ghost didn’t smile, because he tried not to encourage sibling rivalry. But. It was hilarious to see the always unflappable Walsh make faces at people.

  “No leads?” Fox asked, lifting his head. He had that look on his face: the faint crimp that meant his mind was already racing, spinning a half-dozen possibilities.

  Walsh held out his hand for the phone. Fox looked at it, then looked at his face, and continued to hold the phone.

  “They found her car,” Ghost said. “A hunter called it in, off the old mill road. But no hide nor hair of her since the night of the party.”

  “She was snatched,” Mercy said, frowning. “By who?”

  “Not to jump to conclusions…” Fox said.

  “Give me the bloody phone,” Walsh hissed.

  Fox held Ghost’s gaze, a sideways smile breaking across his face, and set the phone in his brother’s palm, pinched delicately between two fingers. A delicate grip that he maintained, though. “What’s the word?”

  “Piss off.”

  Fox released the phone, and his expression grew serious again. “This is exactly the sort of thing Eden wants shuttled her way: missing girl, no signs. That’s what was happening out west. American girls being snatched and sold into the sex slave trade. Three of those are still missing.”

  “This girl disappeared two weeks ago,” Ghost said. “It’s not connected to what happened in Texas.”

  “Luis got away,” Fox reminded, and the wind picked that exact moment to come funneling in hard off the water, still chilled by the last fingers of winter, despite the spring sunshine beating down on their heads. “And then he called Candy to gloat. We’d be hearing from him again, he said.”

  “What are the odds it’s him? Already? Snatching one high school girl here in Knoxville?” Ghost asked. But he’d been alive, and in the life, too long to dismiss ideas just because they seemed too far-fetched. According to Fox, in the debriefing they’d held in the chapel after his return from Amarillo, the FBI – if they could be trusted, which was doubtful – believed Luis might have been reaching out to a crime syndicate that was rapidly forming in New York.

  Which wouldn’t have been their problem if not for their New York chapter. And Luis’s avowal that they would be seeing him again.

  “It’s probably just your garden variety kidnapping,” Mercy said.

  And what kinda world was it when a kidnapping was “garden-variety”?

  Walsh
and Fox looked two varying shades of unconvinced.

  “Mind if I throw it Eden’s way?” Fox asked. “This is right up her alley, and she can approach it as a PI, and not as the club.”

  Ghost nodded. “Tell her to have at it.”

  “Our graffiti problem, though. It was kids last night, but I don’t think it was at first.”

  “We’ll keep digging,” Walsh said.

  Ghost nodded, and swung a leg over his bike. Internally, he felt an uncurling of disquiet in the pit of his stomach. Why, oh why, could things never stay calm?

  ~*~

  “He’s damn lucky Dad didn’t demand they buy us new plywood,” Aidan said from the next garage bay. “Make the little shits hammer it up themselves.”

  “So they could hate us even more?” Tango countered. “No. I think he’s handling it the right way.”

  “Psh.”

  “What I don’t get is the whole angle with the high school hating us,” Mercy said. “What would make those little shits so bold they’d start vandalizing stuff? If they really think we kidnapped that girl, why provoke us?”

  Carter stood and grabbed the rag he’d left on the seat of the bike he was working on; wiped his hands as his pulse gave a quick thump-thump. “What girl?”

  Mercy turned toward him, leaned back against a tool chest, big arms folded. “High school kid. Seventeen. Cheerleader, prom queen, Beta Club type. She disappeared two weeks ago. Went to a party at a friend’s house, and never came home. Cops found her car on the old mill road a few days later, no obvious signs of a struggle. If our pal Connors at Flash was telling the truth” – Aidan scrunched up his nose in a skeptical face – “then the kids at the high school are blaming it on the Dogs. We’re a convenient scapegoat, apparently.”

  He thought of his interaction with the football team the other night: the taunts and what he’d thought were joking accusations. Pedophile. But they were young guys, and young guys were always full of bullshit and bluster. No one had really thought that he…that the Dogs…had they?

  He thought of Elijah, his head tipped back, his gaze hooded, watchful – careful.

  “What?” Tango asked, a notch forming between his pale brows.

  “Nothing. Just. I was waiting on Jazz to come out of the school the other night and the football team was practicing. They were a little less than friendly with me.”

  “What’d they say?” Aidan asked, already bristling.

  “Nothing,” Carter said, firmly, because the last thing any of them needed was Aidan lying in wait in dark parking lots scaring teenagers and proving everyone’s suspicions correct. “But they didn’t exactly seem happy to see me there.”

  Tango glanced at each of them in turn. “Is someone messing with us? I mean…is it more than just graffiti? Is someone trying to get the city stirred up?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Mercy said, grimly; though a smile touched his mouth when he cracked his knuckles. “Won’t be the last.”

  “That Luis guy,” Tango said, hand tightening on the wrench he held.

  “Hey, he may have messed with Texas,” Aidan said, and then snorted at his own, unintended joke. “But it’s a whole different story up here. He can’t mess with us.”

  “He can try,” Carter said, anxiety stirring in his gut.

  Mercy lifted a hand in a placating gesture. “Fox said he’d put Eden on the missing girl, and see if she can find anything out. Maybe she could do some snooping at the school, too. Her or Axelle. The administration over there won’t have a hard-on for getting her in trouble like with all you Teagues.” He gave an up-nod in Aidan’s direction, grinning.

  Aidan shrugged. “You’re the dumbass who married into us.”

  “What about Jazz?” Tango asked.

  Hearing him mention her, remembering that Tango had once been her chosen favorite, was always jarring. “What about her?” Carter asked. He sounded more defensive than he should have, he knew.

  “She’s going into the high school for her GED classes, right?” Tango’s expression had gone soft and kind, like it had the other day. Like he could see right inside Carter and read the conflict, tension, and unhappiness in him.

  He hated it. “Yeah. But she’s not in with the kids.”

  Tango nodded. “Just thought it might be a way in.”

  Carter frowned…and then realized something. “Um. Actually. I might have an in of my own.”

  Fourteen

  Carter promised to ask Elijah about the schoolwide Lean Dog sentiments if the opportunity presented itself – but his main focus wasn’t about club business at all, but about his genuine offer to help with his throwing.

  They’d traded texts the other night, and made tentative plans to meet this evening. When Carter texted a possible location – a park with a big soccer field at one end, Elijah texted back a simple ok. Not exactly enthusiastic, and Carter began to doubt. But when he parked his bike in the lot beside the field, and glanced down the gentle slope toward the flat expanse of grass, he saw the Elijah was already there, wearing workout gear, spinning a ball up into the air and catching it again and again. He glanced over his shoulder, once, at the sound of Carter’s Harley, then turned back and resumed his spinning and catching.

  Still not comfortable with the idea, Carter decided; still doubtful and distrustful. He didn’t blame the kid.

  He hadn’t worn his cut; was dressed in shorts over compression leggings, Nikes, and an old A&M t-shirt. For a moment, he wished he’d thought to borrow a club truck, rather than bring his bike – that he looked more like a regular guy and not a Lean Dog, astride all this matte black and chrome – but it was too late for that. He adjusted his backpack, and headed down the tiered gravel path to the field.

  “Hey,” he called, when he was in range.

  Elijah turned around fully. “Hey.” His expression was smooth and neutral – save his eyes, and those were guarded. He’d tied his braids up in a bun at the back of his head, and a light sheen of sweat proved he’d already warmed up and was ready to jump right in.

  That wasn’t all that Carter noticed, though. He saw also that, save his Nike shoes and gym bag, nothing else he wore was outwardly name brand. No big, flashy logos on display anywhere. The bag was school-issue, the same one he’d carried, once upon a time, the cost of which was included in the football sign-up package. He remembered his own father bitching about writing that check: If you don’t win some games, boy, this is the last check I’ll write for you. He’d bought name brand shoes, because bad shoes without the right support were a killer. But his sweats and other gear he’d always picked up at Walmart, with his car-washing, table-waiting, odd-jobbing money.

  Modest means had made Carter hungrier for perfection. He wondered if Elijah was the same way.

  “Hey,” he finally responded, spinning the ball again. “Where’s your uniform?” He nodded toward Carter’s cut-less torso. Still testing; still searching for a trap.

  Carter would just have to prove that it wasn’t there. He plucked lightly at the front of his shirt and said, “I can’t throw it in the wash.” He dumped his backpack on the grass. “Alright, let’s try some drills.”

  ~*~

  It was nearly alarming how quickly he settled back into the routine of the game. How, though he’d been feeling so far removed from football, like his time on the field had been a thousand years ago, talking shop sucked him right back in, reminded him that it hadn’t been that long at all, and that he still knew what the hell he was talking about. An unexpected, but wholly thrilling rush.

  Elijah had a tendency to overthrow the deep ball, an observation from the other night that proved to be a pattern. After he’d done it the fourth time in a row, the ball skimming over Carter’s outstretched fingertips and landing back at the edge of the field, he shook his head and cursed when Carter came jogging up with the ball tucked under his arm.

  “I wasn’t shitting you the other night,” he said, “you have a hell of an arm.”

  “Hell of a
n inaccurate arm,” Elijah muttered, looking disgusted.

  “Hey, it takes forever to build up that kind of strength. Accuracy is about tiny little adjustments.”

  Elijah looked unimpressed.

  “Here, let’s try something.”

  They started out standing only a few paces apart, playing catch, to which Elijah rolled his eyes.

  “Don’t knock it,” Carter said. “Step back two paces.” A few minutes later, they both stepped back another two.

  Gradually, they expanded the distance between them until Carter was putting his whole body into each throw. Until they must have been forty yards apart, and Elijah threw a perfect deep ball that landed right in Carter’s waiting hands. He grinned, adjusted his stance, and sent the ball arcing back.

  It was only after that he realized he’d just thrown farther and harder and more accurately than he had since his surgery – the one that had spelled the end of his football career. His shoulder felt tight, but not bad. It would have given out on him in true game play; if he got sacked, if he had to throw on the run over and over, the repaired rotator cuff wouldn’t hold up.

  Still, he had the distance.

  And, more importantly, in this moment, Elijah had the accuracy.

  He jogged back toward him. “Did you see that? Right into my hands.” He held them up in demonstration.

  For the first time since he’d met him, Elijah looked something like excited. It was muted, kept carefully in check, but he’d realized that he could throw accurately; that sort of realization was always a thrill. “I was standing still,” he said, downplaying it. “It’ll be different on the run.”

  “We’ll work on that,” Carter assured. “But now you know you can be accurate. It’s a mental thing, the overthrowing. Once you figure out how to conceptualize an accurate pass on the field, you’ll be able to make one every time.”

  Elijah whistled. “Conceptualize. Look at biker boy with the big words.” But he grinned, afterward, wide and truly amused.

  “Hey,” Carter huffed, his own grin tugging at his mouth. “I went to college.”