“Come on, Deacon, you know the Lean Dogs weren’t gonna come to you.”
The kid snorted, gaze tracking across all of them. Half-spooked, half-pissed. Ghost was surprised to find a vice president patch stitched above his breast pocket.
“This ain’t exactly neutral territory.”
“No such thing,” Ghost assured him as he stepped up onto the boat’s deck. It was a party barge, and stayed stable beneath his boots. No doubt Rob had picked it for its roominess, and its visibility – there was nowhere to hide on this thing.
The kid – Deacon – was Aidan’s age, maybe a little younger. He worried his lower lip between his teeth as the Dogs crowded the deck in front of him.
“Ghost,” Roman said, fully-in character now, at ease, good-natured. “Meet Deacon. VP of the Dark Saints. Deacon, this is Ghost Teague.”
Deacon nodded; a muscle jumped in his throat as he swallowed. “Figured.”
“Where’s Boomer? There he is.” Roman walked toward the huddle of three men waiting under the party deck, hands in their pockets, heads on the swivel.
They were young too, Ghost noted with a start. Even the man Roman approached and shook hands with. Thick and wide-shouldered, he lacked Mercy’s height, but was the solid, muscular sort of man you wouldn’t want to start a fight with. He wore his dark hair buzzed close on all sides, long and bristly on top. His jaw was square and firm, nose sporting a bump from a badly-healed break. But his eyes were young, and blue, and vulnerable. He was scared – scared shitless. Hiding it well, but still. His bare, beefy arms clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. His president patch was new, black with clean white stitching, its edges sharp.
One of the brothers flanking him was the sergeant at arms. The other averted his gaze, glancing out across the shimmering, flickering water.
“Boomer, good to see you, man.” Roman clapped palms with the president and leaned in close for a brief hug, and a whispered exchange of words.
Ghost was dumbfounded. Where had these kids come from? Clubs were by nature eclectic; the younger generation was recruited as the older generation aged and grew arthritic, but both sides of the spectrum were well-represented.
This crew, though, at least the four present, looked like they’d all just come from the same frat house. He’d never seen anything like it.
Roman turned, a friendly arm slung across Boomer’s impressive shoulders. “This is Ghost. I’m assuming there’s no introduction necessary.”
Boomer stuck his hand out, gamely; Ghost could see a fine sheen of nervous sweat on the back of it. “It’s an honor, sir,” he said, and damn if that didn’t just take a wrecking ball to all of Ghost’s defenses.
Well, some of them. He hadn’t lived this long by being an idiot.
He shook the kid’s hand, a fast hard squeeze. As he turned loose, he said, “I’m not sure why we’re here, Boomer,” just to be an asshole.
Boomer blew out a breath and sent a quick, questioning look toward Roman before he shrugged off the guy’s arm and met Ghost’s gaze. “My club’s setting up shop in Spring City. Your crew is based in Knoxville, so I don’t see it being a problem. Sir.” He swallowed.
“Just to the south of us. And you didn’t see it as a problem?”
Ghost had no idea what his guys were doing behind him, but he figured they had their game faces on.
“Ah, don’t treat the boy like that,” Roman complained.
Ghost sent him a look.
Roman lifted both hands and stepped back, pacing toward the edge of the deck.
“Tell me about your club,” Ghost said, and folded his arms, relaxing his back and settling in.
Behind him, Mercy snorted, and Ghost bit back a smile.
“We’re small,” Boomer said, wetting his lips. “But growing.”
“You got your start in Denver?”
“Yeah. We’ve got chapters in Tulsa, Kansas City, and now here.”
“Why here?”
“The East coast is where the big money is. Here and out west. And the Dogs and the Knights are neck-deep in a turf war out there.” The kid’s voice wavered with nerves, but his gaze held steady, and he didn’t stumble over his story.
“You didn’t think setting up shop here might start a whole new turf war?” Ghost asked.
“No, sir. We don’t sell what you guys sell. The Dark Saints aren’t interested in fighting with you. The way I figure it, we can both make use of the territory. Fill in each other’s gaps, so to speak.”
“An alliance.”
“Yeah.”
Ghost looked over at Walsh. His VP gave a tiny shrug with one corner of his mouth. They needed to talk it out, but he wasn’t opposed to the idea.
This whole scenario was unfolding quicker and easier than expected. The fact niggled at the back of Ghost’s mind, a low headache he couldn’t dismiss as good luck.
“Well,” he said. “God knows I’m tired of crushing rivals.”
Boomer’s blue eyes widened a fraction.
“I’m a businessman. So long as my business isn’t getting screwed in the deal, I’m reasonable. I don’t see why we can’t work something out.”
Boomer exhaled, shoulders slumping. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, kid.”
Roman braced his hands back behind him on the boat’s rail, smiling, pleased with himself, as the setting sun turned his hair to bronze.
~*~
Maggie intended to clock out and head home all day. But afternoon turned to evening, and before she knew it, night had fallen beyond the office windows. The kind of thick, inky night of autumn and winter that hid dark secrets in the shadows. Her car looked an awful long way away where it glittered beneath the security light, and she had piles of paperwork to catch up on. So she switched the phone off and stayed, clicking away on her keyboard until she heard the drone of the new boat pulling up to the slip.
Something loosened inside her, a hard fist of tension she hadn’t known was sitting in her stomach.
It was another half hour before a shadow fell across the glass door – a familiar one; she’d know the set of those shoulders anywhere – and Ghost entered, accompanied by the jangling of the bells above. He looked tired; she knew the red Solo cup in his hand contained whiskey.
“Hi, baby.”
He grunted a hello, but came around the desk, leaned down and braced his free hand against her waist so he could kiss her. His lips tasted like Jack Daniel’s. He lingered a moment, longer than she expected, slow to pull back.
“Hi,” she repeated, softer this time, a little dizzy now.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said with a sigh, and sat down on the edge of her desk.
“Celebratory drink? Or pissed-off drink?”
He made a considering face. “Thinking drink.”
“Ah.” She started the shut-down sequence on her computer and turned to him, elbow braced on the desk. She wasn’t going to ask outright – some traditions lingered in the MC culture, and one of them was that of keeping old ladies in the dark about club business. At least, that’s what happened on paper. In reality, Ghost told her almost everything. But that was the trick, she thought: he told her. She didn’t badger him. Their relationship had always been built on a foundation of disclosure. When it came to bouncing ideas off walls, Ghost trusted no one but her with the most tumultuous of his inner thoughts.
That’s the way it had always been.
“Roman’s up to something,” he finally said, swirling the contents of his cup and staring down into it. “I can feel it, I just can’t tell what it is yet.”
“When is Roman not up to something?”
“Fair point.”
“But why is he here now?” she asked, and Ghost nodded.
“If he’s gone all these years wanting back in the club – stewing on it – and he’s back asking in now? He’s got something planned. Something he thinks will work.”
“The club war.” She had to swallow the sudden lump of fear in her throat. She swore she could
feel her baby doing frightened somersaults whenever she thought that hated word: war.
“I don’t think it’s gonna come to that,” Ghost said. “I met with the president and VP of the Dark Saints today. It was…” He made a face. “They’re kids. Younger than Aidan. And scared shitless.”
Maggie felt her brows go up in surprise. “Really?”
“Greenbroke and way out of their depth,” he said with a nod, and sipped his whiskey. “I don’t get it. Little clubs like this pop up all the time, but not right in our backyard. Knowingly.”
“Maybe they’re hoping for a friendship. They might like the idea of having the biggest club watching their backs.”
“Sure. But why does Roman have a stake in any of it?”
She spun her chair from side to side. “Do you think these kids killed the dog?”
“No,” he said, immediately. “They were spooked just talking to us.”
“Did Roman do it?” She didn’t like the man, but she hadn’t thought it his style: that kind of cruel, obvious statement.
“I think whoever’s got the Dark Saints scared did it. And that person may or may not be Roman.”
Twelve
Early autumn. Early enough for the chirruping of crickets and tree frogs, the rustle of leaves. Late enough for a chill that was almost a frost hanging in the night air. Dark night, black sky, no moon.
Perfect conditions.
He closed his eyes. For one heartbeat. Breathed in the scent of dew-damp foliage and river water. Opened his eyes to the concrete-and-steel landscape that lay before him, just on the other side of the chain length fence.
Dartmoor: headquarters and money-laundering legit operations base for the Lean Dogs MC. Run by: President Ghost Teague and his wife, Maggie. Maggie was the weak spot. The target.
He gathered a deep breath and hooked his fingers in the chain link. Climbed up, up, hands and toes finding purchase. Flex of his shoulders, his abdominals. Over – bite of barbed wire against his forearms, through his jacket. And then down. Free fall. Land. Absorb the shock through his muscles and spare his ankles and knees.
Standard OP.
It was late, after midnight. No one was here. A few customer cars and bikes were locked up outside the garage bays of the various shops. He avoided them, sticking to the shadows, and made his way to the small central office on cat’s feet.
“Make it obvious,” his boss – his new boss – had said. “Make it a statement.”
He kicked in the door. As predicted, the alarm went off.
He had only a few minutes.
That’s all it would take.
Thirteen
Then
Ghost had forgotten about the car. Damn it.
The night he dropped Maggie off at home and learned she was sixteen, he spent four sleepless hours tossing around in the dark and glaring up at the water stains on his bedroom ceiling. During that time, he went from feeling stupid and duped…to feeling like a shitheel and a creep. Had he really thought she was legal? At best, he’d figured she was eighteen. Did those two years make such a difference?
Well, they did legally. He didn’t want to go to jail over a piece of ass.
Not that she was a piece of ass. He didn’t think of her like that, even though it was dangerous not to, even though he should have. She could wear oversized leather jackets and as much lipstick as she wanted, she couldn’t hide what she was – a nice girl. The kind of girl that never hung around one-percenter clubhouses; the kind who only liked bad boys in an abstract, hypothetical way. The kind who did well in school, who respected her elders (even when they didn’t deserve it), and who thought missing curfew was the most heinous thing she could get up to. Innocent.
Maybe it was just one of the dark aspects of being a man: the way innocent sounded so good.
But he suspected it might be more than that. As his disastrous marriage to Olivia proved, he had a weak spot for the kinds of women who held him in contempt.
The only fix for it was to push her out of his mind and never speak to her again. But then he showed up at the clubhouse and there was the car. The car he’d washed and waxed and been planning to give to her.
All the Dogs were, if not talented, at least competent mechanics. Before the divorce, Ghost had been trying to wear Duane down on the idea of opening a garage. Oil changes, light body work, bike repair. Other clubs ran legitimate businesses, as a means to provide legal income for their families, and, if they were honest, to launder the money they made selling drugs. But of course, implementing that plan would have taken time and capital, neither of which Duane was interested in spending on, as he put it, “a goddamn money pit.”
Some of the guys took on small side projects, though, and the weedy backyard of the clubhouse had slowly been overtaken by clunkers. One of which wasn’t so much a clunker as a hidden gem that just needed a little TLC. Ghost didn’t want to keep it for himself, and he hadn’t invested much in it, so he’d decided to surprise Maggie with it. A girl that pretty shouldn’t be at the mercy of friends and predators when she needed a ride.
But then he’d found out she was sixteen…
Just damn it.
A shadow joined his across the pavement. “It looks good,” Collier said of the Monte Carlo. “I like the black.”
“Thanks.” It did look good, at least to Ghost. A shiny onyx black with two white racing stripes up the hood, across the roof, and down the trunk. It had come to him with the original mag wheels and they’d just needed polishing. He’d gotten a set of tires for cheap and bleached the white letters until they stood out like neon. Wiped down the whole interior and Armor-All’d the dash.
“Who’s it for?” Collier asked.
Ghost stiffened; on the pavement, his shadow drew up into a straight line. “Why’s it gotta be for someone? Maybe it’s for me.”
Collier snorted – and not unkindly. “That truck you drive around in hasn’t been washed since it was manufactured. This.” He gestured to the car. “This is for someone else. A paying someone…” he speculated. “Or.” And here he turned to give Ghost a mildly interested look, brows lifted in question.
“You don’t know me,” Ghost lied, grumbling.
“What’s her name?”
Ghost wiped his hand down his face, hoping he could somehow, miraculously, wipe away the shame that heated his cheeks. No such luck. “Who says it’s a girl?”
“Hey, I’m not judging you for it. I’m just glad you found one that makes you want to do something.”
“It’s not like that. It’s complicated.”
“Uh-huh.” Collier clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll buy you a beer later and you can tell me all about it.”
Ghost nodded and left the car behind, still not sure what the hell to do with it.
~*~
“Maggie! Hey, Maggie!”
Her step faltered and she closed her eyes tight, exhaling a frustrated breath as she listened to the sound of footfalls catch up to her, the scuff of sneakers bouncing off the locker fronts. She frowned for as long as she could, then smoothed her expression and turned to face him, polite smile pinned in place.
“Hi, Vince.”
“Hey,” he repeated, beaming at her, face flushed from exertion. His eyes sparkled, and Maggie really wished they didn’t, or that he’d at least direct that sparkle toward some other girl.
There was nothing wrong with Vince Fielding. He was polite, and pleasant-looking in a normal, sixteen-year-old boy kind of way. He liked Maggie – liked her, and not with an ounce of teenage coolness. Liked her so much, in fact, that he didn’t seem to care what she thought of him, and instead steered his charming efforts toward Maggie’s parents. He was fond of agreeing with her mother; agreed that Maggie ought to stand up straight, sleep in curlers, and speak charmingly of her cotillion classes which were, after all, “preparing her for a bright future.”
She hated him a little bit.
“So. Um.” Vince hiked his backpack up higher on one shoulder and fid
dled with the strap, eyes cutting down to his toes, shy now that he had her undivided attention. “The winter formal’s coming up.”
Oh no.
“Yes,” she said, careful to keep her voice even. “In two months.”
“Right. But.” He took a huge breath and let it out in a rush that ruffled her hair. He’d had peanut butter for lunch, she could tell. “It’s never too early to start thinking about it, right?”
“Vince–”
He must have heard the rejection in her voice. His head snapped up, gaze pleading. “Okay, just hear me out. Real quick. Please.”
“I–”
“I already asked your folks if you could go and–”
“Whoa,” she said, louder than she’d intended. “You already asked my parents?”
“Well yeah. I know that they–”
“Stop.” She held up her hand to stave off his forming protest. “This is why I don’t want to go with you: you asked my parents first.”
He released a shaky breath; more peanut butter. “It’s respectful. I want them to respect me.”
His face broke her heart a little. Cracked it. But she didn’t feel bad enough to stop. Because Vince? He didn’t have to live under Denise Lowe’s thumb. His entire existence wasn’t reduced to pleasing a woman it wasn’t possible to please.
“Yeah, well, maybe that would be something you ought to worry about if you and I were together. This isn’t Victorian England – if you want to ask me out, then do it, and we can ask my parents afterward.”
He stared at her, breathing through his mouth. “So…”
“No, Vince. No. My whole life is tied up in cotillion, and teas, and dress-shopping. If I’m gonna go to the winter formal, I want to go as me. Not as my mother’s daughter.” She shook her head. “Going with you would be like having a parent-approved chaperone taking me. No offense.”
God, she was a bitch.
Vince was crestfallen. “I…Okay. Okay, I’m sorry, Maggie.”
American Hellhound Page 13