“Well, that’s not true, because Leah’s always in your corner.”
One friend was plenty, but wouldn’t hold up against the onslaught of shame. How long would it be, Ava wondered, before Leah grew too embarrassed to be associated with her and drifted away to join the girls who weren’t called whores?
Their food arrived on heavy white plates and Julian set it before them with a flourish and the assurance that it would be heaven on their tongues. Stella had made for them berries in heavy cream, butter-slathered toast on her freshly made bread, and a hearty casserole of Italian sausage, shaved potatoes and sautéed peppers and onions.
Ava spooned sausage onto her toast and nibbled at the edge.
“You’re scowling,” Maggie said.
With an effort, Ava smoothed her brow. “Am I now?”
“No.” Maggie chuckled. Then sighed. “I hate it for you, sweetheart, I do, but I think–”
The vase shattered; that was their first indication that something was wrong. There was a pretty glass vase – squat, with octagonal cuts that scattered the light – full of fresh daylilies sitting in the middle of their small round table. The heavy yellow blooms bowed their heads toward the tabletop, the breeze stirring them. And then the glass was exploding in all directions; water sprayed across their faces; the blooms erupted into yellow showers of confetti.
The window of the café came down in a rippling sheet, raining onto the 14x14 tiles in brilliant droplets of glass.
Someone screamed.
Maggie was out of her seat and pulling Ava beneath the table with her before Ava registered the crack-crack of the gunfire. She wasn’t a sheltered child. She’d been in attendance the afternoon Ghost had taken Aidan up to the old Teague cattle property and showed him how to handle a gun. Ghost had put Ava in front of him and held his own hands around hers for a round or two, letting her get the feeling of the weapon’s powerful kick.
It was gunfire she heard now. She recognized it. Amid the shattering of glass, the toppling of chairs, the breaking of dishes, the screaming of patrons, the swearing of her mother, and the awful pounding of her own pulse in her ears.
Ava was pushed down to the tiles and Maggie covered her with her body, her hands holding Ava’s head tight against her knees. Ava felt the smooth warm bands of metal that were Maggie’s rings against the skin of her cheek. Under the table, where they hunkered, Ava could see broken dishes, crisp white hunks of jagged porcelain against the orange of the tile. The raspberries had landed with wet red splatters, almost like blood. The cream spread in wide arcs; lumps of sausage, nuggets of potato gathered in the grout lines. There was a column of tiny sugar ants making slow progress from a flower pot toward the spilled food, right beneath her nose. Her eyes latched onto them. Under the din of the shouting, the shattering, the endless automatic gunfire, Ava withdrew to a deep, safe place inside her head and concentrated on the ants: their fragile legs, the tendrils of their antennae, the orderly way they cared nothing for the chaos, only the food.
They were cute, if ants could be such a thing. Cute little black baby ants, all ready to lap up the cream and berries…
There was an awful squealing sound, and then Maggie was pulling her from beneath the table, out into the sunshine. Ava watched her mother’s boot cut a path of devastation through the ants, and wanted to cry out in horror. Instead, she lifted her head, scrambled to her feet in Maggie’s wake, and stood up amid the wreckage.
The patio tables were overturned, the white tablecloths unfurling in the breeze like flags of surrender. The entire bank of windows in the café had been destroyed, and through the yawning chasm, Ava glimpsed cowering patrons, the bakery counter shattered, the tables upended, white blossoms of damage on the honeyed, frescoed walls. Bullet holes. Outside, the tiles were littered with spilled food, daylily carnage, dropped bags. A blue sweater that caught Ava’s shell-shocked eyes.
The elderly couple who’d given them curious glances was on the ground. The man lay on his back, staring sightless at the sun, his wife bent over him, screaming in a high, thin, frail voice. A tide of blood crept outward from under the man’s shoulders.
So much blood. So much red, shiny blood.
“God,” Maggie said. “Oh, Jesus.” She pulled Ava into her side. “Don’t look, baby.”
But it was far too late for that.
Julian staggered out onto the patio, bleeding from a wound in his arm, his always-happy face twisted in anguish. He moved toward the elderly couple, praying aloud. Sirens screamed down the street. People were sobbing.
“Mama…” Ava said.
Maggie had her cell phone pressed to her ear. “A drive-by,” she said into it. “A goddamn drive-by.”
“That’s an automatic weapon,” Ava said.
Beside her, Mercy glanced her direction. “What?”
“The gun they used in the drive-by. An AK-47. That’s an automatic weapon,” she repeated the phrases because she’d heard them before, not because they held any meaning for her. She turned to the tall man beside her for confirmation. “Isn’t it?”
Mercy’s face worked through a hilarious sequence of confused and baffled expressions. Then he settled on a serious one, black brows knitted together. Ava wondered, for a pregnant moment, if he would pat her on the head and tell her not to worry about something like that. “Leave this to the adults,” like James would say.
But Mercy said, “It has that capability, sure. But you can fire a single shot at a time if you want. It’s versatile.”
Ava nodded. “But it was automatic today, at the drive-by, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” His tone was low and deep and gentle. She wanted to dive into it, like the black-surfaced pond up at the cattle property. “It was. They…um…they wanted to really scare folks, and they were in a hurry.”
She took a deep breath. “They were shooting at us, weren’t they?”
Mercy’s eyes, liquid black, softened, drank her in like he didn’t want to have to answer her, and wanted his gaze to do the talking. But again, he was honest with her. “It’s looking that way.”
They were in the clubhouse, the common room, on one of the black leather sofas with chrome legs. Ava’s sneakers dangled in the air above the floorboards, swaying forward and back as she flexed her toes. Her white shoelaces were stained with bursts of red and blue from the spilled berries at the café. Ghost and Maggie were talking in restless, red-tinged voices over in front of the bar. Maggie had tears glittering in her eyes, but not a one had fallen. Her denim jacket was splashed with cream. There were little chunks of potatoes on the toes of her boots. “…do something…” she was saying, her chest heaving as she breathed and talked and fumed. Her hands trembled.
Ghost curled a thick lock of her blonde hair around his hand. “I know, baby, I know.” His voice was soothing, but Ava saw the tension in her father, the fine tremors under his skin. He was so furious, and so composed.
Beside her on the sofa, Mercy sat with feet braced apart on the floor, elbows resting on his knees, large hands hanging between his thighs.
“Why’d you tell me the truth?” Ava asked him. “About the gun.”
He shrugged and the fabric of his shirt rustled as his wide shoulders lifted and dropped. “I never liked being lied to. I didn’t figure anyone as smart as you would like it either.”
It felt wrong, after what had just happened at Stella’s, but Ava smiled, just a little.
He smiled back, his teeth stunning against his dark skin.
Then Ava felt her face go slack again. “What’s going to happen now?” she asked. “You’ll have to find the people with the AK-47?”
Before Mercy could answer, a voice said, “Hey, don’t talk to her about that.” Hound smacked Mercy lightly on the back of the head as he strode into the room, Rottie in tow. “She’s a damn kid. Stop talking about guns.”
“Right,” Mercy said with a sigh.
“Ghost,” Hound said, as he joined his VP. “Shit, Mags, what’s going on?”
Maggie shook
her hair back, composed herself with a deep, shaky breath, and recounted the tale of the drive-by at Stella’s to Hound and Rottie. Her voice shivered with nerves, her eyes were still glossy with moisture, but she didn’t shrink from the story. She told it plainly, honestly, not skipping any of the details, not even the wailing elderly woman and her dead husband the paramedics had zipped up in a black bag.
“Jesus,” Hound said. “The cops’ll be all over this, blaming us.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” Ghost said.
Ava felt Mercy tap her shoulder. “Hey, come on,” he said. “You wanna go get a Coke?”
She’d long since figured out what the adults in her life were doing when they found reasons for her to leave the room during an important discussion. But Mercy had told her the truth, and he’d earned a special place in her tiny heart for that. She said, “Sure,” and followed him out of the clubhouse.
Mercy bought a Coke at the machine beneath the portico and handed it over like he was afraid his large hand would somehow hurt her much smaller one.
Ava sat down at one of the picnic tables and took a slow sip, letting the carbonation fizz against her tongue a moment before she swallowed. Mercy sat down across from her and stared out over the parking lot, toward the bike shop. His profile was regal, like it belonged on a coin. And a little cruel, if she was honest. She’d been raised by cruel-looking men; she found a certain comfort in the things other girls found frightening.
“You don’t have to stay with me,” she said, and Mercy’s head came around.
His eyes had amber striations in the slanted late-morning sun, full of a depth she hadn’t noticed before. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll sit out here and wait for Mom, but you don’t have to stay, if you don’t want to. I’ll be fine.”
His head tilted, in a way that reminded her of a dog.
“Nobody wants to be a babysitter,” she elaborated. “I get it.”
His deep voice softened to that gentle, patient note he always seemed to use with her. “I’m not babysitting. I like sitting out here with you.”
She lifted her brows to say really?
He nodded. “So.” His tone shifted again, signaling they wouldn’t spend any time talking about his motives. “Doesn’t school start soon for you?”
She made a face and sipped her Coke. “I don’t want it to.”
Instead of doing what everyone always did – instead of lying to her about how fun school was and how excited she should be – he mirrored her expression and said, “I always hated the idea of it. I’m not smart, not like you. ‘Course, being smart’s its own cross to bear, I ‘spose.”
“I’m a nerd,” she said with a sigh. And before she could catch herself, the whole Mason Stephens story was pouring out of her.
Mercy listened with silent fascination, scowling by the time she got to the end.
“I’m a biker whore,” she said. “The whole school thinks so.”
“That little shit doesn’t even know what a whore is. Somebody needs to beat his ass,” Mercy said, a darkness stealing across his face. “Did your mom complain to the school?”
She nodded. “Mason got detention.”
“Oh, detention, how terrible.” Mercy rolled his eyes. “Kid needs to get stomped. Whore,” he repeated, making a face like the word tasted bad. “Next time he says something like that, tell him he’s got a little prick. Tell him to go fuck himself.”
Ava grinned, thrilled at the idea of using such forbidden, grownup language in school like that. “Then I’d get detention,” she said with a laugh.
“Sometimes a little detention’s worth it.” He shook his head. “Listen to me. Forget everything I just told you. I suck at giving advice.”
Ava laughed again. “You wanna come to school with me? You could tell Mason those things for me.”
“Wish I could, fillette, but they’d have to arrest me. I’d throw that punk through a window.”
The very idea of it left her smiling until her face hurt.
Neither of them heard Ghost and Maggie approach and were startled at the same time. Maggie laid a hand on Ava’s shoulder, pushed her hair back and toyed with it out of mindless affection and comfort.
Ghost looked at Mercy, and Ava watched Mercy harden beneath her father’s gaze, snapping to attention like a military recruit, attuned to each flicker of his president’s eyelashes.
“PD wants them to come in and give statements. Follow them to the precinct, and then home. Stay with them until I get back to the house tonight.”
Mercy nodded. “Yes, sir.”
And just like that, the Teague women had a security detail.
Seven
Present Day
“Your dad owns all of this?”
“The club does, collectively. The Lean Dogs operate as a fully legitimate business, like UPS or Publix. They have a bank account, assets, stock options, the works.”
“Hmm.”
Ronnie was anything but interested – he was being polite at this point – but walking across the grounds, putting some distance between herself and the shameful moment in the clubhouse, talking about technical things, was helping to clear her head and cool her steaming skin. The party raged behind them, ambient light throwing a vivid impression of the Northern Lights across the surrounding buildings, but ahead was a gentle breeze and a whole maze of family history for her to explain.
Ava hadn’t been sure how guilty she looked when she burst from the clubhouse, but Ronnie’s quiet concern had told her that, more than anything, she looked panicked. He hadn’t asked any questions, just suggested they take a walk, for which she was immensely glad.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked out across the Dartmoor lot. The wind tugged gently at his hair, as if caressing it. “I thought the whole point of all these biker ga…” A darted glance her way. “Clubs,” he corrected, “was that they didn’t mind breaking the law.”
Ava bit back a grin. Without tipping her hand, she said, “That’s great in theory, but a man can’t make a living on rebellion. Each chapter of the club has respectable business dealings. Little mini corporations set up to keep the members in cash.”
“That sounds like a collective.”
“It’s a family.” When her hair brushed across her face, and she inhaled, she could smell Mercy. “A fucked up family, sometimes, I’ll give you that.”
He snorted. “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything…”
“You’re smart like that.”
Set a few hundred feet in front of the bike shop, the building that had long ago been decided as the ugliest on the property, Bonita had insisted on a garden. “With a bench for me to sit on,” she’d decreed. “And a shade tree.” James had agreed immediately. Then he’d realized that the inches-thick asphalt paving the lot would be impossible to tear up in orderly chunks for the planting of Bonita’s garden. Raised beds had been built instead; two-foot walls of masonry stone supported trucked-in black earth and potting soil. A long rectangular garden was accessed via carved stone stairs, and beneath a short canopy of gnarled apple tree limbs, a stepping stone path weaved between perennials in Bonita’s favorite shades: purple salvia; lilac catmint; white Shasta daisies; yellow coreopsis; lush apricot Easy Does It roses, their thorny stems tangling in the shade of heaps of butterfly bush. There was a bench, as Bonita had wanted, and even a thin, trickling stream and burbling waterfall. It was a gorgeous oasis amongst the harsh planes and angles of the industrial complex.
Ava recognized the shy fragrance of the butterfly bushes and the perfume of the roses, herby tang of the catmint.
Ronnie said, “It’s not as great as you thought it’d be, is it?”
Her stomach clenched in a painful way. She folded her arms across her middle. “What isn’t?”
“Being back here.” His tone was gentle, knowing. Like he felt sorry for her.
She chewed at the inside of her cheek, hating the sudden tears that burned her eyes.
Red misted her vision. Before she could catch herself, remind herself that she was a soon-to-be grad student and not a biker chick anymore, she said, “That’s the dumbest phrase in the English language. ‘You can’t go home.’ ”
Ronnie said. “Um, what it means–”
“I know what it means!” she snapped. “It means every educated person it supposed to put their hands on a Pat Conroy novel and sob about how awful their childhood was and how much their parents warped them, and how far beyond that they’ve grown. Right?” She turned blazing eyes to him. She might have snarled. “Well I am not warped, Ronnie. I’m not basking in Prince of Tides hometown shame right now. You got that?”
His brows were fused to his hairline, his eyes horrified saucers. “I – I got it.” In the moon and the lamplight, he waxed pale, each line at the corners of his mouth a harsh cut against his white skin.
“Oh,” Ava said. She put her hand to her mouth and turned away from him, facing the garden and its dancing apple branches. “I shouldn’t have – . God, I’m sorry.” She faced him again, vision swimming as the tears came. “Ronnie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
He pushed a hand through his hair and regained some of his composure. “I think you did, actually. That’s all you’ve done since we got here.”
“No, I–”
“You don’t want me here.” He flashed her a grim, tight smile. “Do you?”
She swallowed hard. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s how you’re acting that counts.”
Ava bit down hard on her lower lip, watching the twisted limbs of the apple trees sway in the breeze. Yes, she was acting that way, but not because she wanted to. She couldn’t seem to grab hold of the turbulent emotions boiling inside her, and she didn’t trust herself to explain it with any amount of elegance. She couldn’t tell Ronnie about Mercy, not when the whole world wanted to pretend nothing had ever happened between them. She couldn’t express one fraction of the pain it had caused to feel his touch again and then walk away.
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