“You haven’t seen Ash when he’s having a tantrum. Oh my Lord, can that kid scream.”
Leah still found it hilarious that Ava had a little brother younger than her own three kids. It was a reminder that, though so much of Knoxville was just as she’d left it, a lot had changed, too. Babies were born, bars were bought…and former star quarterbacks spiraled into depressive episodes.
“Hey,” she said, during a natural lull in the conversation. She heard small voices in the background, and Mercy’s deep, bass rumble, and knew she would need to say goodnight soon. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about Carter.”
“Carter?” Ava sounded surprised. “Oh, about the whole getting-punched-in-the-face thing?”
“No, he told me that story.”
“Yikes.”
“No, I…he’s been coming by the shop a lot in the last few days. I think we’re kinda building a have-dinner-together habit or something.”
“A what now?”
“Tonight,” Leah pressed on, feeling a surprising surge of annoyance, “was the first time I’ve seen him smile – really, genuinely look happy – since I got home.”
“Oh.”
“Please tell me someone besides me has noticed that he is very not okay.”
A pause. And then Ava let out a deep breath. “Yeah,” she said, softly. “He’s…he’s good at hiding it. Covering it, I guess. Usually. I don’t know if he’s been unhappy all along, and just stopped trying to keep us from noticing, or if maybe it’s been a long, slow slide into it.” Another pause, and shame touched her voice. “I’ve been busy with the kids, and work, and helping Mom, and…listen to me making excuses. There is no excuse. I should be checking up on him better.”
“He was better tonight,” Leah said, her annoyance evaporating; replaced by a gentle sort of sadness. “He said he was helping coach the high school quarterback.”
“He is?”
“Yeah. He said he’s really enjoying it. Being back into football like that again. You should have seen the way he was smiling.”
“Kinda dazzling, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t seen that smile in a long time.” She gave a low, considering hum. “I don’t think he ever wanted to be a Dog. I nudged him that direction.”
“It’s not your fault. Nobody sticks out their prospect year if they want to leave, right?”
“Right.” But Ava didn’t sound convinced. “Tell you what: I’ll have a dinner. Aidan and Sam, Tango and Whitney. Carter. Oh, and you should come, too.”
“To your couples party?”
“Not a party, a dinner, and not just couples. You said he was happier with you, so, you can come and make him happy.” She laughed. “God, I just heard how that sounds, and it’s bad. But. Just come. It’s not a couples thing. It’s family, and you’re family.”
Leah smiled to herself. “Okay. What can I bring?”
Eighteen
Doves burst from the rafters overhead, the sudden working of their wings loud as clapping hands in the dank stillness of the old mill. Dust and feathers and old tatters of cobwebs showered down from above.
Ghost side-stepped the falling debris, moving in closer to the triangle spray-painted on the wall. “There was nothing else?” He touched the paint with his fingertips; dry, soaked deep into the wood. It could have been weeks or months old, though the color retained its brightness. “Nothing else out of place?”
“Not that I could find,” Eden said behind him. Ghost liked her. She reminded him of his own girls; the way she was practical, and smart, and didn’t fuck around with important stuff. “But I didn’t go wading out through the tall grass.”
“The kids’ll find it, if it’s there.” He’d sent Reese and Tenny out into the unkempt fields behind the building, told them to search for anything relevant to the crime at hand.
He nodded toward the tag. “What’s your take?”
Her boots – sensible, but rebellious Docs – scuffed over the dirt floor as she came to stand beside him. “It’s a triangle,” she said. “Generic in that sense. An easy shape to try for someone unused to using spray paint.”
“Fox said he thought it was meant to be the yield sign.” That’s the way it read to him; that was what had jumped out the moment he’d laid eyes on it. Yield. Maggie called him paranoid, but he’d been in the club long enough to know that sometimes the wildest option was the truest.
He glanced over to get a read on Eden’s expression.
She was frowning, arms crossed, one thumb tap-tap-tapping in the crook of her leather-clad elbow. “Part of me thinks that’s exactly what it is. But another part of me thinks disappearing Allie Henderson is really convoluted as far as sending a message to the club goes.” She turned toward him, brows lifting. “It’s an obscure message, at best.”
He nodded and glanced back toward the triangle. Yield. It would be a rare, strong individual to challenge the club this way. And someone more devious and insidious than the enemies they’d faced in the past.
Like Luis Cantrell, an unhelpful voice chimed in the back of his head. He’d never met him, hadn’t seen him for himself, but he trusted Candy. Trusted that if Candy was properly spooked, and insistent that an enemy would strike again, then it would happen.
“Ghost,” Fox said, behind them, in the threshold. They turned. “You’ll want to see this.”
~*~
Reese had found it. Snagged on a serrated stalk of seed-heavy grass, blowing in the wind like a pennant. A shirt. A girl’s shirt. Size small. An airy, embroidered bit of white cotton and silk. A three-quarter sleeve and a belled hem. Like something a girl would wear to a party, under a light jacket.
Ghost stood just beyond its reach, as it rippled and pulled at the stalk to which it was affixed. He couldn’t see any blood, but that didn’t mean anything. Looking at the sheer fabric, he would have guessed she wore another shirt under it.
And there was a chance she hadn’t had her skin broken at all. At least here.
Eden stepped forward, and snapped a picture with the camera slung around her neck. “Good find,” she said. “Axe and I didn’t range this far.” She took several photos, then snapped on a glove, and took the shirt between careful fingers. Tucked it away in a plastic bag.
Ghost had already told her Ratchet had a backdoor lab contact. No sense calling out the boys in blue and complicating things.
He looked toward Reese. “Anything else?”
He gave a single shake of his head, pale hair flaring around his ears before he tucked it back. “No, sir.”
Behind him, Tenny stood with hands on his hips, surveying the area from behind the lenses of his shades. Seemingly unbothered.
Ghost hated his indifferent act, but, like with Mercy, he knew that idiosyncrasies that hid true talent were best tolerated.
Beside him, Fox said, “CSIs could come through here and comb for every fiber. Tell us the exact brand of the paint.”
Ghost looked at him. “Do we need them to do that?”
Fox grinned without humor. “Nope.”
Eden said, “I want to talk to Jimmy Connors.”
Ghost nodded. “Get the parents to sign off on you taking the case. Officially, and then we can make that happen.”
~*~
“Does her dad owe you money or something?” Vince couldn’t have sounded less interested; he didn’t lift his head from the report he was scanning when Ghost dropped into the chair opposite and asked him about Allie Henderson.
“That’s a cynical thing to wonder.”
He finally glanced up. “I’m a cynical guy these days. Allie Henderson is none of your business, Ghost, and I’ve got shit to do.”
“So do I. Only, unlike you, I’m planning on actually finding this girl. You can share what you know, and make my job easier, or you can keep wasting my time being bitchy. Your choice.”
Vince stilled, and the edge of the report slipped off his finger and fluttered shut. “Did I miss something? Are the Lea
n Dogs in law enforcement now?”
Ghost offered a tight smile. “Did I say anything about enforcing the law?”
“Ah, Jesus, what are you–”
Ghost held up a hand, and Vince went silent. He looked like he wished he hadn’t, brows lowering in outward frustration. But there was no denying the balance of power between them at this point.
“The family’s hired a PI. A friend of ours.”
“Shit.”
“She’s good. Better than this local bunch. No offense.”
Vince blew out a breath. “And you expect me to, what, help her?”
“I expect you, as a concerned citizen of Knoxville, to want Allie Henderson found – no matter who does the finding.”
How could anyone argue with that? Many would, simply because Ghost had been the one to say it. But Vince hadn’t had that luxury for years.
He sighed again, and seemed to cave in on himself in what was now a familiar pose of defeat. “We pulled a whole bunch of prints off her car – mostly hers, her parents’, and her friends. She gave lots of people rides, apparently. But no fluids or anything like that. No body, no ransom note – no ransom phone call. Every day we don’t find her, it becomes less likely that, when we do, we’ll find her alive. You know that.”
“I do.” Ghost nodded. Stood. “I’ll be in touch. Eden’s going to do some digging.” He paused at the door and glanced back. “Let me know if you hear anything useful.”
Vince refused to make eye contact; stared sullenly at his desk. Finally, he nodded, though.
~*~
“It’ll take time to run the DNA,” Ratchet said a half hour later, back at the clubhouse. “But my lab guy pulled a long, blonde hair off the shirt you found out by the mill. Just based on a look under the microscope, he’s saying it matches samples pulled off Allie Henderson’s hairbrush. DNA should confirm in a few days.”
Ghost nodded. “Eden took a photo of it. She’ll show it to the parents.”
“You know,” Fox mused, “when I decided to move to Tennessee, I wasn’t anticipating ‘getting framed by a high school kid’ to be the sort of problem I’d tackle.”
“You’re not tackling it,” Walsh said. “Your old lady is.”
Fox licked a fingertip and held it up to an imaginary stove, grinning. “See? Give him long enough, and he’ll eventually come up with a good line.”
“Guys,” Ghost said. “Don’t make me ship you off to different chapters.”
He got near-identical unimpressed looks – though they did stop bickering.
“Good,” he told Ratchet. “Keep me posted. Fox: given Eden the greenlight to sit down with Jimmy Connors. You gonna go with her?”
“Yeah, probably.” He stood, and stretched, lazy as a cheetah after a nap, not at all worried about catching his prey: people tended not to get away once Fox put them in the crosshairs. “Might even take the asshole along. Get him some practice handling things like a civilian.”
Walsh snorted. “And just like that, I’m not the least favorite brother anymore. Kind of a relief.”
“The hate’s all one-sided, baby,” Fox said, and leaned in to give his brother an exaggerated, loud kiss on the cheek as he passed.
“Ugh,” Walsh muttered, but his heart didn’t sound in it.
“What’s your read on this?” Ghost asked, seriously, as the front door closed behind Fox. “Do you think Jimmy Connors killed her?”
“And is trying to pin it on us?” Walsh shrugged. “Could be. We make good scapegoats. You blame it on another civilian, and it’s easily proven false. Someone would bother to find out that it’s false in the first place.”
“No one cares if we’re guilty of a particular crime or not,” Ghost said.
“Already guilty in the eyes of the public.”
Ghost sat down on the edge of a table, the soft click of Ratchet’s fingers over his laptop keys almost soothing. “At first, I wanted the graffiti to stop. And then finding the Henderson girl seemed like a good way to build a little public good will. Now I think we have to find her.”
“To keep from looking guilty,” Walsh said, nodding. “Story of our lives.”
~*~
Eden’s favorite part about freelancing was the distinct lack of red tape. Sure, nothing she learned would have been admissible in any kind of court, but she got answers; the pursuit of knowledge was what had drawn her to the force when she was young, and it was the thing that persisted to this day.
“That car up there, the blue one,” she said, lowering her binoculars, and Axelle put the GTO in gear and pulled away from the curb, settling a few car lengths behind their quarry.
Traffic was slow out in front of the school, the lanes clogged with students and parents exiting, a crossing guard in an orange vest directing at the intersection. But Eden wasn’t worried about losing Connors; once Axelle caught sight of someone, there was no outrunning her on four wheels.
Eden sat back, content to wait for the moment.
“What’s our angle here?” Axelle asked, braking for the crossing guard. “Do you want my help questioning him? Or am I just your wheels?”
Eden smiled to herself. “Oh, I’ll want your help. Boys like Jimmy – if I’m correct in assessing someone who was shamed in front of his own party – might shake in their boots when MC presidents roll up, but he’ll be dismissive and condescending with us. I don’t have an interrogation plan yet. We’ll just get hold of him, and see how things play out.”
“You trust me to read the situation?” Axelle asked, sounding more than a little surprised.
Eden knew a moment’s swift guilt; if Axelle still had doubts about her own abilities, then it was because Eden hadn’t been firm enough in praising her. She’d have to do better about that. “Of course. You’re smart, and I trust your instincts.”
“Hmph. Learn something new every day, I guess.”
They followed Jimmy for only a few miles, into the shopping/dining district of downtown and into one of the public lots that charged by the hour. He’d never seen them before, so he made no move to hide, or dart, or even look over his shoulder. No furtive behavior as he stood behind his car, fired off a few texts, laughed to himself, and then headed, whistling, up the sidewalk where he turned in at Stella’s and walked down to slide into a booth across from another young man, this one pimply and unwashed-looking.
It wasn’t hard, looking at the pair of them fist-bumping over the table, to imagine one or both of them being creepily interested in a girl.
Or maybe that was just Eden’s usual cynicism.
“Hello, boys,” she announced, pulling up to the booth with intentional suddenness. Both of them jumped and whipped around to stare at her. She blocked Jimmy in, and aimed her coolest smile at the friend. “I need to speak with Jimmy for a moment, if I may.”
“Uh…” He stared at her, slack-jawed.
“That means get lost, dipshit,” Axelle said, stepping into view, motioning him out of the booth.
“Dude, I…uh…” His gaze pinged between the three of them, and, then, finally, he slipped out of the booth with a muttered, “I’ll call later.”
“Excellent,” Eden said, taking his place across from Jimmy.
Axelle slid in beside him, preventing a similar escape, and his face went red with immediate anger. “You can’t just–”
“It is Jimmy, yes?” Eden asked, voice professionally cool. There was always a certain thrill that came with sliding on this persona, one she’d learn to disguise beneath cool indifference over years of practice. “Jimmy Connors? I hope I haven’t gotten the wrong young man.” She tilted her head, and allowed her brows to draw together a fraction: subtle confusion, faint worry that she’d made a mistake.
Let him think her uncertain. A useful tactic.
“No, I–” It knocked him off his guard. He glanced over at Axelle; her lanky frame angled with an elbow on the table and one leg crossed over the other, totally blocking him in. Then to Eden, her manufactured worry. He let out a breat
h. “Nah, I’m Jimmy. What do you want?”
Eden nodded, played at relieved, and produced a business card that she slid across the table toward him. He craned his neck to look, but didn’t touch it. “I’m Eden Adkins.”
“You’re a detective?” His brows went up into his messy hair, and she saw the first tick of something like panic in the throb of the pulse in his throat and the flicker of his lashes.
“Private investigator. Allie Henderson’s family has hired me to look into her disappearance, since the police aren’t making any headway.”
His brows climbed a little higher.
“I asked them to make me a list of all her closest friends,” she continued, which wasn’t a lie. “I’m working my way down it, and you’re the next one on it.” Which was a lie, because Allie hadn’t ever given this kid the time of day. Her parents hadn’t known him, beyond knowing, as most boating families did, that the Connors owned a customs shop.
“Oh.” His brows came back down a fraction; he blew out a breath and raked a hand through his tangled hair. “Shit. Yeah. The cops have been coming around school asking everybody about it – about her. If we saw anything.”
Eden glanced toward Axelle, who’d produced a small, spiral notebook from her back pocket, and a pen.
“Well,” Eden said, levering a false bit of cheer into her voice. “Not to be redundant, but I’m afraid I’m going to be asking the same sort of things. Only – well. Since I’m very much not a police officer, I don’t have to worry about warrants or the admissible sorts of questions.” She gestured vaguely. Oh, those silly admissible questions. “I can get right to the heart of it without worrying so much about channels and permissions.”
He swallowed. “Right.”
“I think Allie’s still alive, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, there’s no body, right? Nobody found her, did they?” A bit too eager.
Axelle made a face that Eden didn’t think was an act, pen poised over the paper.
“No,” she agreed, shaking her head, trying to keep his gaze fixed on her. Axelle was proving invaluable help, but she hadn’t quite mastered the whole acting aspect of this business yet. “They haven’t. And I don’t think they will. I think she’s alive, as I said before. But it’s important to find her soon, wherever she is.”
Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8) Page 15