American Hellhound

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American Hellhound Page 43

by Lauren Gilley


  Ratchet slid over a Post-It with the address scribbled on it before Ghost could ask.

  “We’ll check it out.” Or, rather, he’d send someone to. He felt like he needed to be at command central today.

  Roman walked toward them from the bar, a steaming mug in each hand. Holly had just filled the Keurig with water and Ghost had watched, amused, as she showed Roman how to use the thing.

  He sat down across from Ghost and slid one of the coffees toward him. “You still take it black, one sugar?”

  “Yeah.” Ghost peered suspiciously down into the dark liquid. “You spit in this?”

  Roman made a face that launched him back in time, back to their old rivalry days. “Would I do something like that?”

  In answer, Ghost pushed the coffee away.

  Roman shrugged and took a sip of his. “Who’ve you got in there with Kris? One of your groupies?”

  Ghost looked toward the bar, where Michael was waiting on his own coffee to brew, just to see the reaction: he stiffened, back drawing up tall and straight, hands curling into fists. He turned to glance toward their table, murder mask firmly in place.

  Ghost almost shivered at the sight of it. “Yeah, call Michael’s old lady a groupie again, I dare ya.”

  Roman sat up and slopped coffee into his lap. He hissed. “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Shit.” Lowering his voice: “Look, she’s sweet and she’s got some…experience with bad shit. I thought she’d be good for Kris to spend time with.”

  Roman’s face went through a strange sequence of frowns, like he couldn’t decide what to think. “Oh. Well…”

  “Thank you, Ghost. You’re a good guy, Ghost.”

  “Sure. That.”

  “Boss,” Ratchet said, bringing him back to the task at hand. “I’ve got the security footage pulled up.”

  “Show me.”

  The perimeter cameras had captured headlamps passing back and forth no less than five times in the wee hours. They never stopped. But on one pass, Ghost saw a flash of movement, something dark landing in the grass along the curb.

  “There,” he said, and Ratchet paused the video. “They dropped something.”

  Ratchet called to Harry, who took off to retrieve whatever it was.

  “You think this is gonna work?” Roman asked. “Your little gossip column routine?”

  “ ‘Work’ makes it sound like that’s the only part of my plan,” Ghost said. “Which it isn’t, by the way.”

  “It’s not?” He was just being a shit at this point.

  “Nope. In a little bit, we’re gonna take a ride and go see a guy about some cocaine.”

  Roman’s brows jumped. “We?”

  “Yep. You think I’m gonna leave you around here unsupervised?”

  Harry returned, out of breath from hurrying, a circle of black iron in his hand. “I found this,” he said, handing it off to Ghost. “No idea what it is.”

  It had a clasp that locked with a key, and a little loop. It looked like a…

  Roman set his coffee down, face pale.

  …like a collar. An iron dog collar. Except, Ghost knew it had never been around a dog’s throat.

  “Kris?” he guessed.

  Roman nodded. “He left that for me. He wants her back. Both of them.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s gotta get through me, first. Finish that.” He pushed his chair back. “And stop looking so freaked out. He’ll make fun of your ass.”

  “Who will?”

  Ghost smiled. “You’ll see.”

  ~*~

  The first time he’d come to the opulent funeral home/kingpin headquarters, Ghost had been in the position Roman was in now: staring, taking it all in with quiet shock. Ghost thought he’d probably been less obvious about it, though. Roman had never mastered the Duane Teague Art of Nonchalance. Not the way someone blood-related to the man could.

  “When Josephine said ‘Teague,’ I hoped she meant the other one,” Ian said as they settled into chairs across the desk from him. “Still. Good to see you, Kenneth.”

  “Yeah,” Ghost said with a snort. “Flatter me how ‘bout it.”

  Ian grinned, the expression a feral contrast to his immaculate blue suit and artfully rumpled white shirt.

  If Ghost was honest, he could tell a difference in the guy since Carla Burgess’s death. He would always be lean, his dancer’s physique natural, but his face seemed fuller, his skin brighter, the dark circles beneath his eyes gone. His teasing grin had lost some of its mocking cruelty; he looked truly pleased to see Ghost, hands linked on top of his desk.

  “Who’s your handsome friend?” he asked, cutting a glance toward Roman.

  Roman’s eyebrows jumped and Ghost bit back a grin.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘friend,’ exactly. He’s here so he doesn’t get into trouble on his own.”

  “Ah.”

  “I wanted to ask what you know about this.” Ghost reached into his cut and produced a small envelope of powder he’d taken from the brick Badger’s crew had left in the hotline caller’s barn. He slid it across the desk and Ian looked at it a moment before touching it.

  Slowly, like it might burn him, he opened the flap and then dumped the contents onto his blotter. A few grams of white powder. He frowned at it, consolidated it into a tiny pile with a fingertip. “Hmm.” He licked the end of his pinky, dabbed up a bit of the stuff, and rubbed it across his gums. Made a face. “Cut with baking powder. And quite a lot of it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I got.”

  “What sort of degenerate gave you this?”

  Ghost gave him a quick run-down on the Saints.

  “My. It’s always like the Old West with your bikers. Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp.”

  “You don’t know jack about the Old West,” Ghost countered. “Or Doc Holliday.”

  “Considering my education on the topics came from American film, I expect I’m as up to speed as you, dear man. Now. What is it that you want from me. An opinion?”

  “For starters.”

  Ian pulled his hands into his lap and rotated his chair back and forth. “I got word a few weeks ago from my man in Los Angeles about shit coke coming out of Texas.” He lifted his brows in question.

  “Not us. We cut ties with the cartel, you know that.” Because they were now selling Ian’s product.

  Ian frowned, pensive. “I’ll look into it.”

  “I was hoping you would.”

  The grin came back. “What are you up to, Teague?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get it all worked out. I can count on your help?”

  “Always.”

  When they were in the parking lot, Roman cast a glance back toward the building and said, “Who the hell is that super villain motherfucker?”

  The simplest answer, in this case, was also the honest one. “A friend.”

  ~*~

  Aidan decided it would be a bad idea to smoke at the moment, given the almost knee-deep dead leaf drifts around them. One stray spark and the forest floor would go up in a blink. And a fire would definitely be noticed by the targets of their surveillance.

  The abandoned house the hotline caller had mentioned was, as it turned out, crawling with Dark Saints. Jackpot.

  It was a sprawling, but badly put-together ranch house with a three-car garage and a porch with narrow, steel-beam columns out front. It couldn’t decide which architectural style it preferred. It had no doubt never been pretty – with its terra cotta-colored brick and dark red shutters, but time and weather and overgrown vegetation had aged it into the range of truly hideous. It was large, though, and set well back off the road, with no one but the nosy next door neighbor around for miles to see. Someone was running the power off a generator – Aidan could hear it humming somewhere beyond the backyard fence – and the driveway was full of bikes.

  The neighboring house wasn’t close, but the woman, Mrs. Feldman, had been throwing a ball for her Border Collie and when he’d disappeared, she’d come looking for him. She f
ound the dog, the ball, and a crowd of strangers at the house whose mailbox still boasted a For Sale sign.

  “I know the listing agent,” she informed them, “and she hasn’t sold this place yet. Those are squatters.”

  They were. Dangerous squatters.

  Aidan and Tango were camped out in the trees, binoculars around their necks, hunkered down behind a cluster of overgrown azaleas.

  So far they’d watched two customers come and go, rich college-age kids in polo shirts and expensive cars, scanning their surroundings nervously.

  Aidan fired off a text to his dad: Found them.

  A moment later, his phone buzzed with a response: Clear out. Calling Fielding.

  Aidan glanced at Tango and tipped his head back the way they’d come. Tango nodded, looking relieved.

  Slowly, carefully, making as little noise as possible – no easy feat given the amount of dead leaves – they picked their way back to the neighbor’s house.

  She was waiting, wringing her hands, the exciting prospect of gossip outweighing her fear. “Is that them?”

  Aidan gave her a forced smile. “Ma’am, would you do us a favor when the cops get here? Don’t mention us.”

  She blinked a moment, then nodded, all seriousness. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  It was a long walk back to the street where they’d left their bikes.

  Tango said, “Okay, I’m gonna ask something. And you can tell me to fuck off if you want.”

  “Wow. I kinda already want to.”

  Tango snorted, but when Aidan glanced over he found his friend pensive, frowning down at his boots as he walked, white-blonde hair falling into his eyes. “What do you think about Roman and his guys? And I mean.” He shot an earnest look Aidan’s way. “If you were in charge. If you were the president.”

  Aidan tried to laugh, but it sounded like a cough, a sudden bark of sound.

  “Would you trust their story? Or…” Run them out of town. Execute them. Turn them over to the cops with planted drugs in their pockets. There were an assortment of possibilities.

  Aidan felt uncomfortable, suddenly, like a spotlight had been turned on him. “Why are you asking me that?”

  Tango shrugged, but his gaze was pointed. “I haven’t seen your dad like he is around Roman.”

  Aidan snorted. “Pissed off?”

  “Younger,” Tango countered. “Like…I dunno. More like you.”

  “Wow. Okay.”

  “I told you to just tell me to fuck off.”

  “No.” Aidan frowned and kicked a rock; it skittered off into the underbrush. Why was this driveway so fucking long? “I get it. I think. Or…what do you mean?”

  “Well,” Tango said, thoughtful. “Ghost is always, no matter who he’s dealing with, this superior, Godlike, who’s-your-daddy” – Aidan snorted again – “presidential person. You know? He’s always in charge, he’s always the bigger person. He pisses people off. Other guys lose their composure when they’re dealing with him, but he never does. He’s the boss, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But Roman came back into town and…I dunno. I think we’re seeing young Ghost. Pre-president Ghost. He reminds me of us. Less sure, maybe.”

  “Hmm.” He was right, but Aidan hadn’t put a lot of thought into it – aside from a guilty kind of gladness to see that his dad was capable of doubt, that he wasn’t always cruelly sure about everything.

  “He was like us once,” Tango said. “He was just a guy in a club who had no idea what he was doing.”

  “You sure about that?”

  But it was a nice thought. Comforting. And maybe even true.

  ~*~

  Once, when Maggie was pregnant with Ava, she overslept her alarm by almost an hour and was horribly late to school. (End of the year, final exams, morning sickness – you know, normal teenage stuff.) She’d left home without eating, and arrived five minutes late to her calc final…to promptly pass out on the floor. She’d awakened ten minutes later in the nurse’s office, Mrs. Monroe trying to force orange juice down her throat.

  So she knew pregnancy and skipping meals didn’t mix, which was why she headed for the kitchen the moment she and Ava arrived at the clubhouse. Even though the smell of frying bacon made her stomach flop unhappily. If she could hold her nose and choke down a few bites, there was less chance of passing out.

  Today was not a good day to pass out.

  She entered the room to find Holly and the new girl – Roman’s Kristin – standing at the island together, chopping vegetables. Beneath the bacon, she imagined she detected another smell, the metallic tang of fear. Kristin had spooked animal written in every tense line of her body. The frightened blonde looked up at Maggie through her lashes, without lifting her head, hand stilling on the knife.

  Maggie had seen new girls nervous around her, because she was the queen, and they wanted to make a good impression – Sam and Emmie – but this wasn’t that. This was a real, visceral fear of strangers. Like a stray dog.

  In her experience, strays always did better if you hung back and let them come to you.

  “Morning, girls,” she greeted. “What are we making?”

  “Good morning,” Holly said.

  Kristin slowly resumed slicing red bell pepper.

  “I thought we’d make a few breakfast casseroles, since we have a crowd,” Holly said. When Maggie walked toward the stove: “Oh, I didn’t mean to drag you into cooking. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s alright. I’d rather be busy.” She nicked a bacon slice off the plate by the stove and polished it off in three quick bites, swallowing a surge of nausea. “What can I do?”

  She wound up tearing a loaf of challah bread into chunks and distributing it between three casserole dishes while the girls put together the veggies, bacon, and egg mixture to pour into them.

  Emmie joined them, and then Sam, and then Whitney.

  When Ava came in to set Pillsbury cinnamon rolls on a baking sheet, she said, “Yeah, so I sort of wrangled Littlejohn into babysitting…all of the kids.”

  The kitchen became a too-hot vat of savory and sweet smells, body heat, and an oppressive amount of oven heat. Laughing, familiar voices kicked back and forth, sisterly banter.

  It was normally one of Maggie’s favorite scenes, all her girls together in one place, safe and sound, ribbing one another. But today, with all the heat, dizziness got the best of her. She was about to duck out for a breather when she saw Kristin beat her to the punch, slipping out of the room and around the corner.

  Well.

  Maggie grabbed a ginger ale from the fridge – Ava shot her a knowing, suddenly-sympathetic look; she wasn’t sure she was going to get used to that expression coming from her daughter – and followed the new girl.

  She found her standing halfway down the hall, back pressed to the wall, head bent, hands clasped together over the back of her neck. Maggie could hear her breathing from a few feet away, a ragged gasping through her mouth. The picture of simmering panic finally boiling over.

  Maggie popped the tab on her ginger ale, and the click-fizz alerted Kristin to her presence.

  Her head lifted, eyes wide and wild.

  “It’s alright,” Maggie said. “I won’t come over there. Just needed some air.”

  The girl stared at her a long, unblinking moment. A fox caught in a trap. A deer scenting for predators at the water’s edge.

  Maggie made a show of slumping sideways against the wall, sipping her drink. “I love my girls,” she said, conversationally, “but this whole being pregnant after forty thing is kicking my ass.”

  Kristin’s brows jumped, betraying a hint of interest. Her gaze shifted to Maggie’s stomach, looking for a bump that wasn’t yet there.

  Maggie put her hand there anyway, self-conscious suddenly. “Yeah, I’m an idiot,” she said, surprising herself.

  In the past weeks, she’d alternated between furious excitement, and something like dread when she thought about the baby. But she hadn�
�t had a chance to truly digest the idea. She and Ghost hadn’t had time alone in which they hadn’t been exhausted, or restless, or plotting what to do about this new threat. They hadn’t truly talked about becoming parents all over again. She hadn’t been intimate with him, the way she’d craved the first time around, when she was pregnant with Ava.

  She didn’t wish that she wasn’t pregnant – didn’t resent the baby – but right now, yes, she felt stupid. She hadn’t expected that.

  “You’re being careful?” she asked. “With Roman? Condoms? Pills?”

  Kristin visibly startled. “Oh. We’re. We’re not…”

  Another surprise.

  “You’re not?” Then: “Shit, I don’t mean to pry. I just assumed.”

  Kristin looked away, blinking hard. She whispered, “He’s nice to me.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. Nice had never been a word she’d associated with Roman Mayer. To think that he had rescued a pretty girl from a life of torture, and that he hadn’t taken advantage – it painted him in a new light. Made her less certain of his machinations. If any existed.

  Purposeful footfalls announced someone before Ghost came around the corner and found them.

  Kristin went stiff again.

  “Hi, baby.” Maggie pressed a fast kiss to her husband’s cheek and steered him back the way he’d come, down the opposite hall toward the back door: toward privacy, and away from scared girls who looked like cornered prey animals.

  “Hey…” He was thrown by the relocation, grabbing at her warm. “Hey. Wait.”

  “I’m trying to give the poor kid some space,” she explained. “She’s overwhelmed.”

  He frowned. “Roman’s girlfriend?”

  “Not his girlfriend, it turns out. They’re not together together.”

  “What?”

  “That was my reaction. Apparently, he’s been a perfect gentleman. Where Kristin’s concerned, anyway.”

  Ghost looked almost disturbed by the news, which amused her.

  “Surprise: Roman’s not as evil as you thought,” she teased.

  “I never said he was evil. He’s just a motherfucker.”

  She chuckled, some of her tension melting away, taking her nausea with it.

 

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