The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3)

by Gilley, Lauren

  Maggie unloaded a heavy grill pan from her canvas tote and then began pulling out packages of steaks. The way she took the prime position in front of the six-burner stove, the way everyone seemed to be a satellite around her, her authority was a silent, unquestioned thing. “You’ve got the tongs?” she asked Mina.

  “Right here.”

  “I’ll get started on the potatoes,” Nell said, pulling Yukon golds from her bag.

  “You know, I could make more than just salad,” Ava said. “I can cook now. Sort of.”

  “But you make such pretty salad,” Maggie told her.

  “After I get this put together” – Holly was slicing up a pan of brownies – “I can help anyone else.”

  The baby she’d brought in fussed in her carrier, like that wasn’t part of her plan. Lucy – the baby’s name was Lucy, Holly had said.

  Emmie stepped up to the vast island and cleared her throat. All eyes turned toward her, and she wanted to squirm beneath them. Down in the barn, she was all boss, mistress of her domain. Here in the house, not so much.

  “Not that it isn’t lovely to meet you all,” she began.

  Maggie smirked. “But what the hell are we doing in your kitchen?”

  “I would have left out the ‘hell.’”

  The smirk turned into a true smile. “We’re having a club dinner. Welcome aboard, sweetheart, this is your crash course.”

  ~*~

  Walsh remembered to warn Emmie about dinner about a half hour too late. And then he didn’t call because he was afraid he’d get his ass chewed. Part of him loved the idea of his woman waiting at home pissed off. And part of him worried that she didn’t care enough about him to even bother with reaming him out.

  So he was a jumble of uncharacteristic emotions when he pulled up to the big stone Briar Hall house with his brothers.

  Mercy was beside him as they took off their helmets. “You think she’s handling it alright?” he asked with a half-grin and a lifted eyebrow.

  “I expect so,” Walsh said vaguely. “Got a level head.”

  “You didn’t tell her ahead of time though, did you?”

  When he didn’t answer, Mercy laughed. “So wise, and yet so dumb.”

  “Piss off,” Walsh said in a mild voice. “I’ll worry about mine and you worry about yours.”

  “Yeah, but mine grew up in the life,” Mercy reminded, becoming serious. “Yours is gonna take more convincing.”

  Walsh frowned to himself and swung off his bike. So far, he’d felt he’d done a pretty good job with the convincing. The furniture shopping, the spectacular sex. But nothing had been happening. It had just been them, the house, getting to know one another.

  And tonight was all about the club flexing its social muscles. Look here, little girl, you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. You gotta learn to fit in.

  And she hadn’t asked for any of it.

  Everyone dropped back as they approached the door, even Ghost.

  “Master first,” the president said, and all the guys chuckled.

  Walsh rolled his eyes. “Master of what exactly? Getting bitched at?”

  The front door opened as he was reaching for the knob, and Emmie looked like she always did…except for the eyes. Those were too big, and full of that dissociated look soldiers got during wartimes.

  “Hi, love,” he said carefully, hyper aware of his club brothers crowding on the porch behind him, watching their interaction.

  Emmie’s gaze skipped across all of them before coming back to his face. “Hi.” Her tone was guarded. “We’re hosting the big dinner thing, huh?”

  He winced in apology. “Yeah.”

  She stepped back and opened the door wide. “Okay, boys, beer’s being iced down on the back porch. Dinner will be ready in just a bit.”

  Walsh lingered, watching all the Dogs greet her with nods, hellos, and a couple handshakes. When they’d moved deeper into the house like a herd of wildebeest, he reached for her, laid a hand on her waist.

  She jumped a little. Her expression was still detached and frazzled when she turned to him. “You didn’t tell me in advance.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She exhaled deeply. “Nothing to do about it now, I don’t guess.”

  He flashed her a wide, cheesy grin. “Make it up to you later?”

  She snorted. “With interest.”

  ~*~

  There were half a dozen collapsible tables in the back of Ava’s truck, and they set them up end-to-end to form a crude dining table that was shamed by the room around it. But since a dining table hadn’t been at the top of their shopping list, it made do. Dinner was a hit: the food was good, the alcohol flowed freely, and there was too much talking over one another for Emmie to have to worry about socializing.

  She studied instead, learning their faces, their speech patterns. Mercy was the big loud storyteller, and the way he outwardly adored Ava was staggering. When Ghost spoke, everyone listened. RJ was a douche, and everyone thought so. Tango and Carter were gorgeous blonde sweethearts; Aidan the overconfident ladykiller. Michael was aggressively quiet, if such a thing were possible, but his face softened when he spoke to his wife or looked at his daughter.

  Walsh had called them a family, all of them together, and as she watched them laugh, talk with food in their mouths, pass around the green beans and potatoes, she could think of no better way to describe them. A big, boisterous family, with obvious love for one another.

  She’d never been a part of anything like it.

  After dinner, the men migrated to the back porch with fresh beers, and Emmie wound up in the kitchen with the women. Ava was told to go sit down and get off her pregnant feet. Holly excused herself to nurse Lucy, and Nell and Mina set about disassembling the tables in the dining room and recruiting some of the younger members to carry them out to the truck.

  With a crawling sensation of dread, Emmie found herself rinsing dishes and passing them to Maggie to be loaded into the dishwasher. They were alone.

  The biker first lady took a breath that sounded like the start of something. Emmie lifted her emotional walls and braced herself.

  “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

  Growing up on a farm, she’d had no experience with being anything besides brutally honest. “It is,” she admitted. “Y’all make for a big group.”

  Maggie snorted. “Be glad nobody spilled anything tonight.”

  “I will.”

  There was a pause filled by the rushing of water on plates.

  “I wasn’t talking about dinner, though,” Maggie said. “That’s the easy part.”

  Emmie sighed. “I figured.”

  “Has Walsh filled you in yet?”

  “I got the ‘club comes first’ speech, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re okay with it then? Knowing your husband’s a part of something so…archaic?”

  “Honey.” Maggie snorted. “It’s not archaic. It’s tradition. Kids nowadays can think what they want, but there’s something to be said for tradition.”

  The part of her that watched the evening news wanted to argue. The part of her that employed classic German training techniques in the arena agreed wholeheartedly.

  “I get that,” she said, though there was a nervous fluttering in her chest.

  “Do you?”

  “You obviously aren’t all that familiar with dressage training.”

  “Decidedly not.”

  The last dish was done and Emmie turned off the tap, staring straight ahead, trying to push down her sudden surge of temper.

  Maggie finished with the dishwasher and clicked the door into place.

  There was no way to stall. “I know what you’re doing,” Emmie said, turning to face the woman.

  Maggie’s mouth lifted at the corners, but her face was otherwise blank, controlled. This was a woman with the sort of aura Amy Richards had always craved. That total ownership of her identity and her superiorit
y. “And what’s that?”

  “Establishing the hierarchy. You’re the boss mare, and I’m the new member of the herd. You’re thinking that Walsh is blinded by the sex, because he’s a man after all, and you want me to know, female to female, that there are rules. This is the ‘don’t fuck with me’ spiel, right?”

  Maggie stared at her, unreadable.

  “I don’t scare easy,” Emmie said, feeling like she’d stepped in it royally, and not caring.

  Maggie was still a moment longer, and then twitched a smile that said be careful, girlie, but wasn’t without a bit of approval and humor. “Thank God for that.”

  ~*~

  “The brass have gotten nowhere,” Ghost said, looking to Ratchet for confirmation.

  The secretary shook his head. “The prints they pulled were all from his kids, and from Emmie.” His eyes flicked over to Walsh for a second. “No syringe, no needle, no scrap of evidence from anyone who wasn’t normally in here.”

  “Which means one of his kids killed him.”

  “They all have alibis.”

  “Or the girl did it.” Ghost shot a half-smile to Walsh before he could protest. “Not that I think that. What about the other two who work here, though?”

  “No,” Walsh said. “They were devastated. And their prints weren’t on the doorknob.”

  “Right,” Ratchet said.

  “Had to be the grandson,” Walsh said, grinding his molars in frustration. “He’s the one who left us a spray paint present a couple weeks ago.”

  “But nothing since?” Ghost asked.

  “No.”

  They were all on the back porch, bellies full; the sky was netted with stars and the smell of cigarette smoke blended with pine sap. But unease tickled at the back of Walsh’s neck. It was going too well. He and Emmie, the farm, the loans working out, the cattle property still a secret. In his experience, things didn’t stay serene for long. Especially not when it came to his personal life.

  “Obviously,” Briscoe said with an officious throat-clearing, “we walked into an episode of Dallas with this fucked up family. But they’re gone. They didn’t get what they wanted. What’s the sense in worrying about ‘em now? They ain’t gonna shoot any of us up with H.”

  Nods of agreement.

  “You talked to Sly Hammond?” Ghost asked Walsh.

  “Yeah. He and Eddie had to pick up a car for a client in West Virginia. They gotta pass through, so they’re gonna stop by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Good. Get the scoop on our new friend Agent Grey. They know him better than we do.”

  Before Walsh could answer, Hound said, “I wanna know what the hell happened to Fisher.”

  Many murmured agreements.

  “What’d your lab guy say?” Mercy asked Ratchet.

  “No prints or skin cells, which meant the guy wore gloves. And the DNA on the doorknob was, in his words, ‘a big fucking mess.’ Which leaves ballistics. Striations match a nine mil used in a convenience store holdup from two years ago in Detroit.”

  Ghost exhaled loudly, words swirling with smoke. “Which means jack shit.”

  “The gun was stolen or sold before it got here, unregistered. So we’ve got basically nothing.”

  Aidan started to flick his butt over the railing, caught Walsh’s eye, and thought better of it, dropping it into his beer bottle. “What I don’t get,” he said, “is why Fisher, of all people. I know that kinda shit happens. But Fish? Could you get more harmless and pathetic?”

  “He’s never late with deliveries or payments,” Tango said. He snorted. “He was always ‘Dealer of the Year.’”

  “It was about us,” Ghost said. “A message.”

  “Message of what?” Aidan asked, irritated.

  Ghost looked to Tango. “What about Shaman. Is he the type to do shit like that for fun?”

  Tango glanced down at his toes and shrugged, clearly uncomfortable being asked about…whoever the hell Shaman was to him. “Nah. I really don’t think so.”

  Ghost sighed deeply, took one last drag off his smoke, and ground it out on the sole of his boot. “We’ll deal with it when it’s time to deal with it,” he said with an air of finality. He glanced at Michael. “Holly made dessert?”

  “Yeah.”

  Walsh knew that was all the business they’d be conducting for the day and he let his thoughts drift. And then himself, sliding back into the house with the others, branching off from the living room-bound group and going in search of his old lady.

  She was on the front porch, hands wrapped tight around the rail, head tipped back, breathing deeply toward the stars.

  He closed the door quietly behind him and took careful steps toward her. She had to have noticed him, but he didn’t want to break the spell. She looked lovely with the moon pouring over her face and unbound hair.

  She looked sad, too.

  When he reached her, he traced a single finger down the ridge of her spine and was rewarded with a shiver. He spread his hand and pressed it to the small of her back, stepped into her, until her shoulder was against his chest. “Too crowded, hmm?” he asked against her ear, and she shivered again and leaned into him.

  “I think – no, I know – Maggie’s trying to play Big Bad Queen Bee with me. That’s the annoying part. Everything else is just your general overwhelming too-many-people type stuff.” She turned her head to give him a thin smile. “You really weren’t kidding about the family part.”

  He grinned. “Nope.”

  She went utterly soft, and molded herself against him, face pressed against his chest, arms going lightly around his waist. “I haven’t ever had that,” she said, like she couldn’t believe it. “A real family.”

  “I know, love.” His hand found the back of her head, held her to him. “I know.”

  Twenty-Nine

  With a home base in Georgia, Ray Russell ran a security operation that complemented the MC, aided them at times, but was on the other side of the outlaw spectrum. Outlaw Light, with no artificial sweeteners. His two best guys, Sly and Eddie, were classic car mechanics by day, professional badasses by night, and Sly in particular was one of Walsh’s favorite non-club people.

  They arrived at Briar Hall around lunchtime, when Walsh had the house to himself. He was on the front porch with his laptop, feeding Dolly scraps from his sandwich when a gorgeous burgundy Barracuda and a black Dodge Ram pulled up.

  Sly was driving the client’s car, and tossed Walsh a fast wave as he climbed out and hooked his shades in the neck of his plain white t-shirt.

  “I’m driving that the rest of the way back,” Eddie said as he got out of the truck. “Nobody said you were in charge.”

  Sly pulled up short and glanced at his friend with a tiny amused smile. “I did.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “When you say twelve-thirty, you mean twelve-thirty,” Walsh called in greeting.

  “Old habit,” both men said together, and joined him on the porch.

  Walsh stood and handshakes were passed around. He went inside to fetch them beers.

  Sly waited until they were all settled to cast an appraising eye up the front of the house. “So.”

  “Explain the mansion,” Eddie said, grinning. “Did you marry an heiress? Is it like in those books chicks like?”

  Walsh snorted. “I married a broke-ass barn manager with no mother and an alcoholic shit for a father.”

  Eddie’s grin widened. “Is she hot?”

  “Very.”

  “That’s all that counts.”

  “Explain the house, though,” Sly said. “I thought we were here on fed consult. Didn’t know we’d be staying at the Four Seasons.”

  “Don’t expect a mint on your pillow, mate.”

  Walsh gave them the abridged version of things, brief and comprehensive.

  When he was done, Eddie whistled. “Talk about your unforeseen complications.” He leaned over and tapped Sly in the arm with his knuckles. “You know all about that, dontcha, man?”

/>   Sly exhaled sharply through his nostrils, like a horse. “She handling it okay? That’s a lot of change in a short amount of time,” he said seriously.

  Walsh thought about that morning, about waking up beside her and throwing an arm across her waist, her snuggling back against him. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s smart. She’s adjusting.”

  ~*~

  “Anybody need a salt block, do you know?” Emmie asked, surveying the row of white and brown mineral licks lined up on the floor beneath the halter display. Given the chaotic turn of her life, she didn’t know when she’d be back in the feed store with time to shop at her leisure. Walsh said friends would be in for dinner, and there was already an anxious grinding in her gut at the prospect. She wasn’t a social person, and wasn’t sure she wanted to become one.

  But the store was working its magic on her, like always. Something about the tang of leather, the pungent herbaceous scent of sweet feed, the strike of boots on an old stained concrete floor. It was like a drug to a horse girl, the racks and racks of saddles, the stacks of fluffy saddle pads, the shelves of spurs, color-coded braiding bands and brushes with stiff neon bristles.

  Lawson’s had been her favorite tack and feed shop since she was nothing but a little mouse following along behind Amy. It was delightfully shabby, unpretentious, and sold everything under the sun, all of it crammed into an old converted warehouse space, and smelled charmingly of the coffee and cookies the owner’s wife provided fresh daily.

  A trip to personally pick up feed with Becca was just the way to unwind after an evening of hosting too many bikers to count.

  “Champ does,” Becca said as she sorted through the nylon halters, searching for something hot pink no doubt. “And maybe Tally. He licks that stuff like he’s a salt junkie or something.”

  The mention of a junkie put to mind drug dealers, and criminals, and nefarious deeds, and the dead man’s face Emmie had seen in the pasture next door.

  She shook her head to clear the memory. “Right.” She bent down to heft the blocks up into their cart. “I’ll have him deliver some of the big ones for the pasture when he brings the pallet of shavings.”