Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  When the screen went black, she slipped the phone in her pocket with a sigh.

  ~*~

  The Road Runners RC had a compound nestled in a desert hollow, surrounded by boulders and mesquites, a place of scrub grass, and pink sunrises, and early-arriving nighttime shadows. Candy passed the crime scene along the way. The tent was done, the bodies removed, the cars and vans all gone, but a tattered bit of yellow tape remained on a stunted bit of shrub, flapping in the breeze.

  The compound wasn’t fenced – there was nothing of illicit value to steal, and you tended to make fewer enemies when you weren’t peddling vice – so Candy rode right up the long drive and parked in the shade of the main house: an unremarkable, low-slung stone ranch with a red tin roof. Beyond, a stone fire pit ringed by chairs marked the center of the property, and paths branched away from it, leading to cabins where members could overnight, or even live, in some cases.

  Pacer’s battered old Panhead sat parked in front of the main house alongside a late-model Honda Civic. Candy parked on the other side and went up onto the porch to knock.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow was, when Melanie answered the door.

  Her expression was heavy with fatigue and worry, but she offered a broad smile when she saw that it was him. “Hey.” She stepped back immediately, opening the door wide. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Candy stepped in, and realized why.

  Lifelong bachelor that he was, Pacer had never had a flair for interior design – the mounted antelope heads and deer statuary lamps gave proof to that – but he was tidy, and generally cheerful, and his home had always been a warmly welcoming place. Always with the blinds pulled up on their strings, light pouring in; always a fire crackling in cold weather, and lamps burning, and the scent of lunch sill heavy on the air. He liked to cook, and the place always smelled of grilling meat, and roasting veggies and potatoes.

  Today, though, the blinds were closed. No fire, no lamps. Daylight peeked in over the kitchen window, because it was unadorned, and fell in softly across the living room rug. It was nearly as cold inside as it was out, like no one had bothered to tweak the thermostat. If food had been eaten, it hadn’t been cooked on the stovetop. The air smelled still, and cool. The place wasn’t messy, but it felt distinctly stagnant. Haunted. It was a vibe more than anything, and it unsettled him more than he expected it to.

  “Where is he?” he asked, turning to Melanie as she closed the door, deepening the darkness around them.

  “Bedroom.”

  He felt his brows go up. Pacer was an early riser; up before first light, always; drinking coffee on the porch, tinkering with his bike, tackling some small project around the compound. He liked to walk; easy moseys down the driveway and out across the open plain east of the property; thought of that drove home just how exposed this place was, unprotected. Candy made a mental note to see about getting in touch with a fencing company.

  “I know,” Melanie said, sighing. “I haven’t had any luck. You wanna try?”

  “Yeah. Has he eaten yet today?”

  “Doubt it.” She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “I’m gonna see if there’s some soup or something I can heat up. See if you can get him up and around, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The blinds were shut tight in the bedroom, too. Pacer was like Candy had never seen him – never. Lying on his side, under the covers, facing away from the door. He looked terribly small like that, just a collection of thick lumps beneath the blankets, the back of his head covered patchily with iron-gray hair, bald spot gleaming faintly in what light fuzzed its way in from the hall, grainy and indistinct all the way from the kitchen window.

  Candy was flooded momentarily with the selfish, ugly thought that he was glad his father hadn’t lived to anything like true old age. That he hadn’t had to watch Jack Snow fold in on himself like an origami bird until the husk that was left looked nothing like the man who’d raised him.

  An uncharitable, bitter thought, and it struck an angry chord in his voice when he said, “Pacer, get up.”

  No reaction, which only stoked the anger.

  “Pacer.” Candy crossed to the bed and laid a heavy hand on Pacer’s shoulder. It didn’t even twitch beneath him. “You can’t do this. You gotta get up.”

  There was nothing like warmth in the shoulder under his hand; he couldn’t even feel the vibrations that suggested movement was to follow. The air tasted heavy on his tongue, and for one awful moment, he thought Pacer might be dead. His gaze flicked to the prescription bottles on the nightstand – when had Pacer become less than hale? Someone whose body didn’t function like it used to – and he wondered if this was a heart attack, or something purposeful? A fistful of pain killers chased with whiskey.

  But then Pacer took an audible breath and rolled toward him.

  Candy stepped back – farther than he needed to; he snatched his hand back like it had been burned, a reaction he wasn’t proud of.

  Pacer looked terrible: unshaven, face puffy and creased from the pillow. He squinted like the meager bit of filtered sunlight behind Candy was too bright to look at, whole face screwed up with the gesture. He moved sluggishly, like his body ached, and huffed and grunted until he was flat on his back, one trembling hand held up to shield his slitted eyes. “Derek?” he asked, unsteadily.

  Candy understood now why Melanie had driven all the way to the bar in search of him.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he said, tone softening. He believed in tough love, but this was…not the time for it. Not in its purest form. “What are you doing in here? Sleeping during the middle of the day?”

  “I…” Pacer blinked a few times, and turned his head slow, wincing like his neck hurt. He surveyed the room, eyes widening by only the barest fraction. “I’m in bed,” he said, his voice blurry, dreamy, laced with disbelief. “Am I…?”

  “Yeah, you’re in bed. You feeling alright? Are you sick?”

  With effort, Pacer sat up. He grimaced, and pushed himself up with both hands, arms quaking from the effort. Candy took his shoulder again and helped, startled by the nearly-dead weight of him, like his body was too heavy to move around – or his muscles were too weak. “Head hurts,” he gritted out, exhaling shakily. “I don’t…”

  Depression, Candy thought. It had the power to cripple people. When the brain chemistry got screwed up, flooded with too much bad stuff after too many bad occurrences, depression could drive you to drink; drive you to bed; drive every bit of actual drive right out of you, until something as simple as brushing your teeth took a monumental effort.

  Was this depression? Or something more sinister?

  He’d been an outlaw too long to go for the usual, mundane explanation for most things.

  “Pace,” Candy said, in a firm voice, hoping it might focus him. He earned a squinted, watery gaze. “Did you take something?”

  “Take…what?” A few more blinks. “Just my meds.” He reached to touch his chest. “Gotta keep healthy,” he murmured.

  Candy hadn’t known that, and felt a twinge of guilt. He rounded the bed and plucked the prescription bottles up one by one. Something for cholesterol; something for blood pressure; something he was pretty sure, based on a few commercials, was supposed to work in conjunction with the cholesterol meds. No sedatives or pain killers.

  He went back around to the other side. Pacer looked a little more alert, scrubbing a hand through his rumpled hair, now.

  Everything Candy wanted to ask would have to wait. With an internal sigh, he went to the dresser and found a pair of freshly-laundered, knotted socks in the top drawer. He carried them to the bed. “Here. Let’s see about getting up. Mel’s making you some lunch.”

  “Mel’s here?”

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  ~*~

  Over the course of her life, Michelle had learned that little quirks she’d thought entirely her own were actually family traits. And, despite the unlikeliness of it, those traits mus
t have stemmed from the infamous Devin Green – the deadbeat-iest of all deadbeat dads – because they were traits shared by all nine of his offspring.

  (Ten, she reminded herself. She had yet to meet her latest, youngest uncle. Fox had called him that, too, Ten, because of course he had, unsentimental to the last.)

  She liked to make sense of things, and so did her father and her uncles and aunts. They liked facts; quantifiable, controllable facts. Her father brought all his logic to bear on the running of the London chapter of the club. Albie had his furniture; Walsh had his economics; Raven could capitalize on anything, but especially her own beauty and style; Fox had approached the business of killing with a mathematician’s exactness. Miles had computers, and Tommy could execute a plan down to the nanosecond. Shane liked pleasing people, making them happy, lending a hand when he could; he’d managed to weaponize that. No one was as accommodating as him. Cassandra was young, still, the youngest, and still finding her way – but Michelle had seen her art online, and knew that, for Cass, pigments and pencils were the chosen weapons of precision. Art was the thing that brought her a pleasant calmness of thought.

  A place for everything and everything in its place.

  She’d always enjoyed inventory. It was a chore for most people, was one now for the employees lugging boxes around the storeroom because she didn’t like the way laundered napkins and paper napkins had been stacked on opposite ends of the room. But for Michelle, there was a lovely kind of calm that came with knowing she had all her ducks in a row.

  “Thank you, Hank,” she said, putting a green circle sticker on the box he’d just set down and making a mark on her clipboard. “That should be it.”

  He nodded. “You’re welcome.” His voice was full of relief. He stepped aside to chug down a water bottle.

  She did one last survey of the storeroom, all their supplies arranged according to use, in neat stacks and rows on the metal shelves, and then scanned her checklist. Every item was ticked off in blue pen. Done.

  It was only then that she realized the angle of the light coming in through the propped-open back door had changed completely, that she was chilled, a cool breeze funneling inside, and that her lower back hurt like a bitch from standing for so long.

  Something brushed gently against the backs of her legs, and she glanced over her shoulder to see that it was a chair. Jinx had TJ perched on one hip, and his other hand had slid the chair gently forward, so that all she had to do was sit down.

  “Here,” he said, expression nearly stern. “You’ve been on your feet too much.”

  “Playing stand-in husband?” she asked with a laugh, but sank gratefully down into the chair. The relief was exquisite, even though her muscles would continue to whine and protest the abuse for the next eight hours or so. “God. That took a while.”

  “It always takes forever,” he said, frowning, bringing his other hand up to help support TJ’s bottom. He was getting big. “You shoulda let someone else do it.”

  “You know I don’t believe in delegation,” she said lightly, but Jinx didn’t look amused. “Are you alright?”

  “Want down,” TJ said, kicking his legs, and Jinx set him back on the rug where he’d been playing with plastic trucks earlier.

  “I’m gonna go shut that door,” he said, and headed to do so. He tipped the delivery driver first, she saw, a quick cash handshake in the threshold before he kicked the block inside and let the heavy metal panel swing shut with a muted crash. TJ ignored the noise, long since used to the loudness that came with growing up with Lean Dogs.

  Under the droning fluorescent tube lights, the breeze thankfully cut off, Michelle realized that the rest of the employees had gone, that they were alone in the storeroom for now, and that Jinx wanted to say something to her. Had maybe been wanting to say it all day, if his frown was any indication.

  This was another thing she’d inherited from Devin Green, a trait that none of them would name, but which they all relied upon: a kind of sixth sense. Candy had said she didn’t like Melanie Menendez; but it wasn’t as simple as being a jealous, hormonal wife. Something about Melanie tripped a wire in her brain, and that wasn’t a feeling to be ignored.

  Maybe anyone could have looked at Jinx now and seen how unsettled he was – or maybe it was just her.

  “Jinx,” she prompted quietly.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, shrugging, attempting a smile. Even at his happiest, his smiles were a bit grim; this one was downright frightening.

  “No, it’s not,” she said, quiet but firm. “What’s bothering you?”

  His attempted smile fell away – he looked better when he was being his surly, serious self; his beard betrayed the tautness of a clenched jaw beneath. He stared at her a long moment, and she swore she could see the debate waging in his head. He’d not been her biggest fan when she first arrived; save Jenny and Darla, the club had operated too long as nothing but a gang of bachelors; most of them were unused to leaning on women; unused to trusting them with sensitive subjects.

  She liked to think that he respected her now, but she didn’t expect a genuine response.

  He surprised her, though. “They haven’t made contact, yet.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Whenever someone tries to rattle our cage” – he walked forward, closing the distance between them, until he stood at the edge of TJ’s rug – “they make some big display, and then they reach out. It’s like ‘See what I did? Give me what I want, or I’ll do it again.’ There’s a reason for killing somebody.”

  She thought of her own experience with killers, and had to agree, nodding.

  “The people they’ve killed aren’t people we know. Scaring Pacer I get, but then to jump to spooking us–”

  “Wait. Scaring Pacer you get?”

  He gave her another considering look. Another debate warred within him. Then his gaze hardened with resolve, and he said, “Pacer’s a dumbass.”

  She stared at him, unflinching, waiting for further explanation.

  After a moment, he gave a short, sharp nod. It struck her as a gesture of respect. Things might never be warm between them, because he wasn’t a warm man, but he thought her trustworthy, now. That was something. That was really all she needed, here.

  “He’s a dumbass,” Jinx continued, “and he’s weak. Candy told you he tried to prospect back when he was younger?” When she nodded, he said, “Jack could tell straight off he wasn’t Lean Dogs material, and cut him loose. That was the right move, but he shoulda cut all ties, instead of letting him hang on.”

  “Not everyone’s cut out for one-percenter life,” she said, frowning. “And all clubs have friends at the fringes. Nothing unusual about that.”

  “Yeah, but those friends aren’t supposed to start wars with other outlaw clubs and need their asses bailed out.”

  Her brows went up.

  “You ever heard of the Vultures?”

  “No.”

  “That’s ‘cause they don’t exist anymore. They only had the one chapter, in Odessa, but they were growing, looking to expand. They did things dirtier than the Dogs, but they were getting stronger, and Jack knew we’d have to either broker a peace, or push them out of Texas, eventually. Their president had a real chip on his shoulder.

  “Pacer was trying to put together his compound, then, and needed capital. His credit was too bad for the bank to give him a loan; he came to Jack, but Jack knew he’d never pay it back. It was bad business loaning money out to Pacer, and he knew it. So Pace went to the Vultures, and when he defaulted, they tried to kill him.”

  Michelle felt her own jaw tightening. It was a timeless story; she knew exactly where it was going.

  “Jack went to war on his behalf. The Vultures are gone, and Pacer’s still around to ask for more help.”

  Help that Candy wasn’t hesitating to offer.

  “Candy’s got a big heart,” she said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “Yeah,” Jinx said, flatly, and the tamped
-down worry in the back of her mind swelled.

  “I’ve not met Pacer yet,” she said. In fact, she’d never heard of him before this incident. “Why was Candy the first person he thought to call?”

  He lifted his brows. “Because of that big heart you just mentioned. And now.” He heaved out a breath. “Whoever wanted to send a message to Pacer is sending it to us instead.”

  ~*~

  Candy got Pacer up, into socks, and a robe; he didn’t bother – once he’d seen how wobbly Pacer was on his feet – to try to talk him into putting on real clothes. Candy held his arm as they went down the hall to the living room, startled by the weakness of the older man’s grip; by the unsteadiness of his steps.

  “Alright?” Candy asked, halfway to their destination.

  Pacer wheezed something that might have been an affirmative.

  In the living room, Melanie had opened all the blinds, and light poured in through the windows. The air smelled like she’d spritzed some sort of perfume or freshener, a clean linen scent.

  Pacer squinted, and leaned more heavily against Candy.

  He got him settled, arduously, into a recliner, and Melanie bustled in with a laden tray: soup, a grilled cheese, and a steaming mug of coffee.

  “Here we go,” she said with false brightness. “Derek, you wanna grab that TV tray for me?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  As he unfolded it, Candy was struck by the sadness of Pacer’s life – and not even now, in this pitiful state, but on a good day. Eating alone most nights in front of the TV; he was well-acquainted with that phenomenon. His evenings had been much quieter and duller before Michelle entered his life – though he’d at least had Jenny. Pacer had no one most of the time, if the single TV tray was anything to go on.

  They got him all set up, and, under both their gazes, Pacer picked up his spoon and began to eat with mindless, mechanical slowness.