He hadn’t mourned losing her. Really, he’d known the split was coming long before it happened. He couldn’t even dredge up a proper amount of hatred for the plain-faced import-driver. Melanie had been attracted to the superficial aspects of the club early on: the leather, the bikes, the scars, the glint of too-many rings on busted knuckles. It was a thrill for a lot of women, he’d learned over the years. The cliché bad boy charm – and he was charming, more than most of his brothers, even. But she hadn’t liked the uncertainty of it. The waiting, the worrying; the dinners out called off because a truckload of guns needed running. The secrets she wasn’t privy to. She’d always been a digger, Mel. Digging at him for intel, wanting to be let in on the club secrets that, on paper, women weren’t supposed to know, but which all the old ladies learned during the hushed, pillow talk confessionals with their lovers.
“Don’t go confiding in that one,” Crockett had said once, early on, and Candy had nodded, and not protested, because he’d known. The way her gaze went narrow and probing, the little frown that tugged at her mouth when he talked about “the guys” – she didn’t accept the club. And then she’d gone and asked him to leave it; like shrugging out of his cut, blacking his tattoos, and selling his bike was a thing he could do, and not the wildest possibility ever suggested to him.
He’d let her go when it was time, and wished her well, because he wasn’t an idiot.
And because he wasn’t an idiot, he knew that her showing up tonight had bothered Michelle. His wife; his old lady; the woman with just as much club in her DNA as him, who had only been spared a cut by a chromosomal roll of the dice.
He watched her slip back out of the office with a professional assurance that it was nice to meet Melanie, but that she needed to get back to work, already wording a proper explanation in his head. She wasn’t the jealous type, but Mel had swept in like a typhoon tonight, louder and more emphatic than he remembered, and there was no mistaking Michelle’s expression. She wasn’t happy.
“Ah, shit,” Melanie said after a moment, and Candy tore his gaze from the closed office door – it wasn’t helping him, anyway. “I really stepped in it, didn’t I? First I act like the poor thing’s the help, then I open my big fat trap.” She held up her hands. “Still not a bit of grace.”
Back when they were together, even when she was at her most pressing, Candy had never found himself annoyed with Melanie. There were big guys who liked to reinforce their size, and big guys with patience in spades; he was of the latter. But he felt a quick surge of annoyance, now. “Poor thing?” he asked, brows lifting. That phrase paired with Michelle’s blank look of surprise from earlier rubbed him the wrong way.
“She’s married to you, isn’t she? And having to give birth to your giant baby?” Melanie smiled, familiar, and wide, and eager to share a joke. Just like always.
He let out a breath and smiled back. He was just feeling a little protective with her pregnant again, that was all. “Yeah. Don’t know why she puts up with me.”
“Well, when you cut out all the illegal biker shit, and the constant worry that you’ll wind up dead on the news, you’re kind of a catch. Wrinkles and all.”
He swept a hand back through his hair – which was still thick and sandy-gold, thank you very much. Why was everyone in his life – himself included – dead set on acting like forty-seven was over the fucking hill?
His retort died on his tongue, though, as he watched Melanie’s face fall.
Her eyes closed a moment, and she massaged the back of her neck, a habit he remembered from twenty years ago, suddenly, vividly. “I meant it,” she said, when she opened her eyes, voice soft now, serious. “This is as bad as I’ve ever seen Pacer. He’s so spooked. The news said something about – devil-worshipers, or something?” She frowned. “That’s not true, is it?”
“I sure as shit don’t think so. This was” – he debated, then sighed, and pressed on – “I’ll spare you the details, but this was rough, Mel. It wasn’t like a robbery gone bad, or bumping off a witness. This was ugly, and violent, and personal.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed, and her eyes went white-rimmed with panic. No tears, though; still wasn’t a crier. He’d always appreciated that about her.
“The feds are saying ‘cult’ because they haven’t found a way to accuse us of this yet. But this was personal. And it was organized. Whoever did it had help.”
She swallowed again, and nodded, visibly absorbing the information. “I thought y’all took care of that cartel, though.”
He felt his brows go up again. “How’d you know about that?”
“Pacer told me,” she said, without apology. “Not any details, obviously. But he knew y’all were warring with them. Said you knocked them down. And the boss dying in prison made the news. You’re not as secretive as you think you are, Derek.” A note of reproach in her voice, then. Still reprimanding him for keeping things from her back then? He didn’t know, and didn’t want to dwell on it.
“Yeah,” he said. “We took care of them. There’s not been any rumbling from that corner.”
“So who, then?”
Still pressing, still digging, after all this time. “Mel, if I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
Her gaze narrowed, in the particular way that he remembered, a sharpening, as the busty blonde good-time girl façade cracked and allowed a glimpse of something many-sided that lurked beneath. “And what good does sitting here do?”
The air in the room seemed to chill. This was why he hadn’t mourned letting her go: the way it had felt, at moments, like they weren’t on the same side at all. Like he’d done something wrong, and she was the cop on the other side of the interrogation table from him, never accusing, but slicing the kinds of innocent-seeming openings that he could stumble through and break his neck.
He sat back in his chair, careful to keep his voice even and unbothered. “Last I checked, you didn’t like the sorts of things I did. What’d you call it? ‘Pretending to be badass?’”
She smiled tightly. “It’s not the sort of thing a girl wants to hitch her wagon to, but if you’re going to be violent for a living, you might as well keep my brother safe doing it.”
Nine
There was no reason not to head home the moment she finished dealing with the hostess station computer fiasco, but Michelle lingered afterward, leaning heavily on one elbow, queasy and tired, until she watched Melanie pick her way down the catwalk and head for the door.
Melanie tossed a wave and a broad smile in Michelle’s direction. “It was so great meeting you! Good luck with all the baby business, hon!”
Michelle waved, but fell short on the smile.
Beside her, Janet murmured, “That’s a man-stealer right there.”
“Jan,” Michelle reprimanded – weakly.
Candy showed up a few minutes later, shrugging into his jacket, gaze concerned before it found hers and held there, assessing. “You about ready to go, baby?” His knitted brows said what his tongue had been too graceful to: you look tired.
“Yes. Let me grab my coat.”
He put his arm around her waist as they stepped through the front doors and were hit with a blast of cold, dry night air. Their breath plumed, and Michelle snuggled into his side with a shiver.
She didn’t intend to say anything, had told herself sternly that she wouldn’t, but as she tipped her head back to seek out the bright specks of stars through a cloud of curling vapor, she said, calmly, “So that was your ex.”
He groaned. “Babe, I swear to God, I wasn’t hiding it–”
“I know, I know.” She had to chuckle at his tone, that of a scolded child who’d been caught hiding sweets under his bed. “I’m not upset.”
“But you don’t like her,” he guessed. When she didn’t respond right away, he said, “I saw your face.”
She had her own designated parking spot, at the corner of the building’s front walk, out of reach of stumbling, overindulging patrons, but close
enough that she didn’t have to walk across the dark parking lot after dark – not that their cameras and security guards didn’t keep a close eye on the whole property. It was more the principle of the thing, a gesture that she’d felt a bit ashamed of, and had tried to resist. Every staff member, and Candy especially, had insisted she ought to have a marked spot, as general manager.
They reached her car, and stopped in front of it. When Michelle turned to face her husband, he had one brow lifted, his face faintly pink in the glow of the Tastes Like Candy neon up above.
“I don’t dislike her,” she said, careful to keep her own expression neutral. “I don’t even know her.”
“But you didn’t get a good first impression.”
“Do you really think I’m so petty?” she asked.
“No, but you’re skeptical. And you were very skeptical about her.” He looked entirely too satisfied with himself.
“I will admit–”
“Ha.”
“I will admit that her energy is very…different from mine,” she said, lifting her chin to a lofty angle. He always said she looked “super British” when she did that. “And I don’t think we’d suit well as friends.” She grew serious. “What do you want me to say, Candy? That I’m feeling insecure about your old girlfriend? That I’m ready to get into a bloody catfight? She’s your ex. And your friend’s sister. That doesn’t bother me.”
He stared at her.
She gestured to her stomach. “I’m flooded with hormones, but it doesn’t bother me.”
“Alright, fair enough.” His expression softened, then. “But I will say, even though you’re not bothered, that it wasn’t some bad, painful breakup. We were never good together, her and me. She never liked the club, and I was never invested enough to try and ease her mind about it.”
He reached up to hook a knuckle beneath her chin, callused thumb sliding along her jaw, eliciting a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. His gaze went low-lidded, smoky with promise. “She was nothing like you. I’d sell this whole club out to the feds tomorrow for you.”
The words shocked her – maybe more than anything ever had. If he hadn’t been touching her, she thought she would have staggered back a step. “I would never ask that.”
“I know. That’s one of the hundreds of reasons I love you. And that I’m married to you, and not her.”
She wasn’t embarrassed to admit that she melted a little.
“Let’s go home.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ten
Jenny wasn’t sure what woke her, but being awake wasn’t a surprise. She turned her head on the pillow, already alert at a moment’s notice, and saw Colin beside her, sleeping with innocent abandon, mouth open and one forearm over his eyes. Moonlight caught the faint glimmer of drool at the corner of his mouth, and she smiled to herself in the dark. He could sleep anywhere, anytime, not a worrier by nature, and confident he was big enough to handle anything stupid enough to wake him.
Jenny was a light sleeper, though. The house creaking in the wind, a dog barking down the street, the thump of a neighbor’s car door – all of it had the power to draw her out of sleep. Since meeting Colin, she’d at least stopped waking in a low-grade panic. Years spent feeling unsafe in your own home could make a light sleeper out of anyone.
She wasn’t panicked tonight, at least. She rolled the other way and checked the clock: just after three. She lay still and listened a moment. Theirs was a quiet neighborhood, with no dogs save the small indoor kind that didn’t normally cause a ruckus after dark. Their neighbors were either retirees, or young families with small children, so no wild, late night teenage antics to disturb the peace.
The house lay dark and hushed around her; she thought she could hear the stillness of the air in all the rooms; the barely-perceptible snuffling of the house settling down deeper on its slab like a contented, sleeping animal.
But she finally detected a noise that was out of place. Jack wasn’t crying, but she heard the unmistakable sound of his bed springs creaking as he climbed out of it.
Little brat, she thought fondly, sitting up herself and sliding her feet into the Ugg slippers that waited on the floor below. She grabbed Colin’s robe off the back of the bedroom door, huge, and flannel, and cozily threadbare, and pulled it on as she headed down the hall.
A thread of blue moonlight spilled from the cracked-open guestroom door and across the floor, but she didn’t need it, deftly stepping over an abandoned toy truck; missing the Lego that Colin would doubtless step on later and curse to within an inch of its tiny plastic life.
She’d just put a hand against Jack’s door when she heard another sound, one she couldn’t at first place. A quiet chink-chink-chink. Like metal on metal, but muffled. As if from a distance…or through a wall.
She pushed the door open, and in the glow of his nightlight, saw Jack standing at the window, pulling the blinds open with his hands, staring out at the front yard.
“What are you doing, bud?” she asked, coming up behind him. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“Mama, there’s a man there.”
Her pulse leapt, and she reached for the cord of the blinds. “Here, let me see.” When he pulled his hands clear, she raised them up to the top, and peered through glass that quickly fogged when her breath hit it.
The metal-on-metal sound had ceased, and she saw two men in dark clothes jogging away down the street, avoiding the street lights. She couldn’t tell anything, only that they were man-shaped, and that they had been in their front yard.
Jack tapped a fingertip on the glass. “Mama, look. The man. He looks like a star.”
“What?” she asked, half-distracted. And then her gaze dropped to where Jack was pointing, to the winter-dormant grass of their yard.
A third man lay on his back. She could see the moon-silvered skin of his face; the pale light gleamed on open, wet eyes. He was spread-eagle, like someone caught in the act of making a snow angel.
Only there was no snow.
And he wasn’t moving.
And the metallic sounds she’d heard? Probably had to do with the metal stakes that gleamed at his wrists and ankles.
~*~
Michelle woke to find Candy on his feet, tugging on a pair of jeans, cellphone clamped awkwardly between his face and his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he was saying, expression grim. “Yeah. Be there soon.” He paused in the jean-tugging to grab the phone, disconnect the call, and set it on the dresser. When she sat up, his attention shifted to her, as he buttoned his jeans. “Shit, baby, did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet.”
She rubbed the grit from her eyes and tried to rally her wits. A glance at the bedside clock proved it was three-thirty. “What’s going on?”
“Two more bodies,” he said, grimly, and suddenly she was awake.
She glanced at him again. “Where?”
He buckled his belt and reached for a clean flannel off the top of the dresser, one among a stack she’d meant to fold and put away earlier. “Jen and Colin’s place.”
“What?”
“Jen woke up hearing some kinda noise.” His mouth pressed into a tight, angry line, brows knitted. “She found Jack outta bed, staring out the window, looking at the goddamn things. They were all staked out like Pacer’s boys were. She thought it was just one at first, but when Colin went out to look, there were two.”
“Holy shit.” She thought of her own TJ, standing at his bedroom window in his pajamas, seeing something like that, and she wanted somebody – whoever it was doing this – dead.
“I’m headed over there,” Candy said. “Jen’s freaked and Colin’s ready to beat heads.”
Michelle flipped the covers back. “Hold on and I’ll come with you.” She swung her feet over the side of the bed and told her stomach to behave, for once. “Maybe Darla won’t mind sitting back here with TJ.” She was already wincing at the idea of asking a favor at this time of morning.
“I already s
ent Jinx and the twins to pick Jenny up and bring her and Jack here. Blue and I are gonna meet Colin over there.”
“Oh. Well.” She stood. “I’ll go put tea on.”
He caught her gently by the shoulder when she moved toward the door, and when she tipped her head back to meet his gaze, she found him studying her worriedly – and found herself breathing too quickly.
She took a measured breath, and exhaled with slow purpose. “I’m fine,” she said, before he could ask. “It’s Jenny you should be worried about.”
“I am worried.” He released her shoulder to reach up and smooth her hair back from her face. “About both my girls.”
“Go,” she said, softly. “I’m fine, love.”
He offered a brief, tight smile.
She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was: thinking that it was one thing for someone to bother Pacer; for some heathen to challenge and spook a simple riding club. Bullies would be bullies, after all – even deranged, murderous bullies.
But it was quite another thing to throw a gauntlet down in front of the Lean Dogs MC. And that was what had happened tonight.
~*~
Candy and Blue passed the van that Jinx was driving on their way to the O’Donnell house. He caught the quick, two-fingered wave Jinx lifted off the wheel in the van’s dash lights, and returned it from behind the wheel of the club truck they’d taken to keep from waking the neighborhood with the ring of Harley tailpipes.
Knowing Jenny was on her way to safety eased his immediate panic – which left plenty of room for good old-fashioned anger.
Blue hitched himself into a more comfortable position in the passenger seat. “How are we gonna play this with the five-oh? Did Colin already call them?”
Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7) Page 5