The shadows grew long across the floor. The air cooled her skin until she was covered in gooseflesh, shivering and sliding her hands up beneath his shirt, seeking warmth.
It wasn’t the way it had been before. That automatic sense of safety, of shelter and peace; it was gone, decimated by the months apart, shattered by that moment she’d awakened in his apartment and found him gone. It wasn’t just the two of them anymore; the baby, and his leaving – they were in the room too, whispering and rustling in the corners, like the settling of bird wings. The unfailing man who’d helped to raise her had taken the most simple and precious thing she could offer him – her love – and he’d shoved it away.
The longer they lay on the floor, the more the moment began to hurt. The more Ava saw of the cruelty in his coming here today, the way he’d come for her body, like it was his to hold or reject. Like she didn’t even have a say in anything.
She was crying by the time she sat up and turned away from him, pressing her hands over her face, drawing her knees up to her chest.
Mercy’s large, rough hand settled in the middle of her back, a warm brand against her skin, some silent communication she didn’t know how to read.
“I don’t know you anymore,” she said again, voice broken and shivery, “and that’s the worst part.”
She listened to him get to his feet, straighten his clothes. He kissed her, one lingering stroke of his lips against the top of her head, and he left. Again.
The next morning, as she pressed a cool washcloth to the dark circles under her eyes, she cut him out of her heart for good.
At least, she thought she did.
Twenty-Eight
Present Day
A cold, wet nose touched the back of her hand, and Ava gapped her fingers, finding Ares standing in front of her, head cocked to the side, expression curious and concerned.
She sat up. “Hi, sweet boy.”
He wagged his tail and thrust his muzzle into her palm, begging for a scratch behind the ears, which she was happy to give.
“Did you know I needed a friend? Huh?” She smiled as he leaned into the scratching. “Good boy.”
Minutes had passed, but she felt like she’d traveled through a wormhole and back, physically bruised from the memories.
“Ares,” she said with a sigh. “Why did I think it’d be easy coming home?”
The purposeful scuff of boots on the hardwood told her that she wasn’t alone. She jerked, glancing across the room, pulse thumping.
Michael stood at the mouth of the chapel hallway, watching her with mechanical scrutiny, not a single muscle moving, not even blinking.
Ava shivered involuntarily. Mercy scared the piss out of most people. Michael scared her, the stillness and silence of him.
Ares swiveled around, and stared back, giving Michael a dog to Dog flinching contest.
“Hi,” Ava said, giving him a stupid little wave.
He didn’t respond, in any way.
Another set of footfalls, these coming from the dorm hall, entered with much more noise than Michael had. Ava breathed a sigh of relief to see her brother come into the common room.
“What up, Mikey?” Aidan asked. He was eating beef jerky straight out of the Jack Links package. “You want?” He offered a piece to Michael.
Michael turned to regard his club brother, and Ava saw the white flash of a new patch above his cut breast pocket: Sgt. at Arms. So he was an officer now, as of that morning’s meeting. Mercy had been bypassed, in favor of the steely newcomer.
“No? Your loss,” Aidan said, coming to sit beside Ava on the couch. He threw himself down and the springs squeaked in protest; Ava felt herself bounced gently as his weight was displaced.
“What about you?” Aidan tipped the bag in her direction.
As her eyes followed Michael’s departure from the clubhouse – out the front door with a familiar squeal of the hinges – she reached in and broke off a little piece of jerky that she fed to Ares.
“Hey, that’s too good for him,” Aidan protested.
She ignored him. “He seriously gives me the creeps.”
“Michael?” Aidan shrugged and folded a long strip of dried beef into his mouth, speaking around it. “He gives them to everybody. He’s just like, I dunno, a robot or something. Like Spock.”
“Spock was a Vulcan, not a robot.”
“Whatever. Michael’s good at what he does, so nobody can complain too much.”
“And what does he do?” Ava asked, feeling a frown draw her brows together. “It’s not anything someone else could do for the club?”
Aidan gave her a measuring look as he swallowed. “What? You want Mercy to be sergeant? Be running around with Dad all the time? In your face every time you turn around?”
She sighed. “No.”
“He’s outside, you know.” Aidan pretended to find the contents of his jerky bag fascinating.
“I know.” She sighed again. “How fucked up is it that I miss him?”
“Pretty fucked up.” He bumped her shoulder with his in what amounted to a big show of support from him. “But I get it.”
“You do?”
“Not even a little bit. Just being nice.”
She snorted. “That’s a first.”
“Hey, I’m nice. I’m super fucking nice.” Wicked half-grin. “Just ask Monique.”
“Ugh.” She let her head fall sideways, so it was supported on his shoulder. “You’re hopeless.”
“Kinda great, huh?”
Ares looked between them, thumping his tail on the floor, hoping for another handout.
“Hey, Aidan? Thanks for running the creep show off.”
He made a dismissive sound.
Ghost found them like that a moment later, when he entered the clubhouse. Ava straightened automatically; she grimaced inwardly. Back in town twenty-four hours, and she was trying to keep her father from seeing her vulnerable.
“Good, you’re here.” Ghost propped his hands on his hips, like he didn’t have time for this conversation but felt compelled to initiate it anyway. “We need to work out a schedule, so you can have constant protection…”
Ava managed not to roll her eyes.
“Have you talked to any of the baby mamas yet?” Maggie asked under her breath as she and Jackie looked over the rows of coffins in the Flanders’ Funeral Home showroom.
Jackie, in black slacks and crisp blue oxford, her city courthouse ID clipped to her belt, folded her arms and leaned in closer, until Maggie felt one wing of her sleek red bob touch her temple. “Both of them wished they were the ones who’d done him in. They’re not coming to the funeral, they said, but they’ll be happy to accept the collection for their kids.”
Maggie pursed her lips and passed her hand across the top of a mahogany coffin with polished brass rails. “Figured as much.”
“Collier, though,” Jackie said of her husband. “He’s bad tore up, Mags. I’ve never seen him like this.”
Maggie gave her friend a little bump with her shoulder in silent understanding. Collier and Jackie had no children of their own. Fuckup or no, Andre had been like a son to Collier. The sergeant – now vice president, thanks to the morning’s vote – was devastated.
“Ladies,” a female voice said behind them, and they both cringed as they turned. “Hello, ladies. Maggie, Jackie, I thought I recognized you from behind.”
Esther Monroe – a true grand dame in the Old South tradition, a battleax with coiffed gray hair, a girdle beneath her stiff floral dress, and a purse to match every pair of shoes in her closet – marched toward them in pearls and white kid gloves. In the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. Her bulky hips swayed; her chins wobbled. Her painted lips were drawn up in a puckered smile and her eyes were bright with intent as she bore down upon them.
“Shit,” Jackie whispered.
Maggie thought the same, but pasted a smile on her face and said, “Morning, Esther. How are you?”
“Fine, fine.” She came to a
lurching halt in front of them and made an automatic reach for her back. “My sciatica isn’t doing so good. You know how it is – this late summer humidity.”
“Right,” Maggie and Jackie said in unison, nodding.
“I was just walking by,” Esther continued, ignoring them, “and I saw you two through the window, and I pointed to Gladys, and I said, ‘There’s Maggie Teague and Jaclyn Hershel,’ and Gladys said, ‘Did you hear what went on at Dartmoor last night with those Lean Dogs?’ And I said, ‘No, what?’ And then she told me that someone was murdered over there at y’all’s biker party, and I just couldn’t believe it. I had to come in here and ask for myself.” She pitched forward at the waist and looked like she might tip over as her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s not true, is it, girls?” She made another grand waving gesture. “Of course, why else would you be in Flanders’ if it wasn’t?”
Jackie checked her watch; she was on her lunch break. She was a secretary over at the courthouse – a job that was strategic for the club, one she’d insinuated herself into for her husband’s benefit – and her boss was an asshole who chewed her out if her break ran four minutes over.
“Well…” Maggie took a deep breath. She had the advantage of having been raised by both a pageant mom and an outlaw husband. She knew the sinuous hidden paths of debauchery cloaked in diplomacy. “There was a bit of an incident last night at the party. Very unfortunate.”
Esther made a face that was half-sympathetic, half-intrigued.
“You see…”
And then, over Esther’s head, Maggie saw something she didn’t want to see: Sergeant Vincent Fielding of the Knoxville Police Department making a beeline toward her.
“Heads up,” she muttered. To Esther, she said, “Esther, dear, can you excuse me just a second?” and stepped around the confused old lady to get to the cop.
Vince Fielding was Maggie’s age. They’d graduated from Knoxville High as a part of the same class. Vince had been the stiff dork with the ROTC uniform beneath his blue gown. Maggie had been the pregnant seventeen-year-old with a belly tenting her gown.
“Sergeant Fielding,” Maggie greeted. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Maggie,” he said with a stiff nod of greeting. In a flat, emotionless voice, he said, “I was sorry to hear about Andre. You’re handling the funeral, I take it?”
Maggie gave him a sweet smile. “Well unless you’d like to drag his mistresses in here and ask them to cough up the cash, yeah, looks like I’m handling it.”
“The club looks after its own,” he grumbled, echoing a sentiment often expressed, so rarely taken seriously by outsiders like him.
“That’s right.”
“Where’s Kenny?” he asked. His eyes were pinging around the room, touching everything but her face. He didn’t like her, and she didn’t guess she blamed him.
She laughed. “If he knew you were calling him ‘Kenny,’ he’d be here like that” – snap of her fingers – “to kick your ass. Ghost is out and about.” She made a vague gesture. “He’s a busy man.”
Vince finally made eye contact; she saw the dislike in his dark irises. “Yeah, I know.” His double meaning was plain. “But you know better than anyone that I need to talk to him about last night. He can either come down to the precinct and talk to me, or I can show up at the clubhouse.”
Before Maggie could answer, the door of the showroom opened and Jace stuck his head inside; his eyes were still bloodshot, his voice still scratchy. “Hey, Mags, I saw Sergeant…oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” She waved him back out in the hall. “I saw him, Jace, thanks.” When he ducked back out, she said, “A girl can’t find a good security detail these days.”
“You know, most women don’t need security details,” Vince said. “Most women marry regular Joes without histories of gang activity.”
“Most women aren’t me, Vince,” she said, giving him one last, beaming smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me…” She stepped past him and heard Jackie following, making an excuse to Esther.
The casket showcase had a view of the street through tall windows Maggie had always found ill-placed. Because of them, she and Jackie had been sitting ducks while they shopped. Flanders’ wasn’t the nicest funeral home in town, but it was one that had always served the Dogs, and for that, they were all loyal customers. Down a short, carpeted hallway, they found the owner, Byron Flanders, waiting for them amid the potted urns in the sunlit lobby. Bright rays slanted in through the front, white-swagged windows, finding the delicate hollows of the orchids and lilies.
Flanders – narrow, petite, immaculate, almost effeminate – glided toward them in a tan summer suit, his footfalls silent on the short-napped carpet. “Ladies, I trust you found something that will suit?”
“Yes.” Maggie told him which coffin they’d picked out, anxious to get all of this settled and get the hell out before Fielding and Esther caught up with them. That potential conversation sounded like the gossip circle from hell. “And we’ll just go across the street and talk to Ramona about flowers…”
But Flanders was shaking his head. “I’m afraid that…well, anyway, I can provide the flowers for the service, if you’d like. Fresh-cut or artificial, your choice.”
Maggie frowned. “Something happened to Ramona?”
Flanders glanced away, his expression verging into oh dear territory. “Not exactly…”
For years, she’d used Ramona Baily’s florist services, at her boutique shop As A Daisy across the street from Flanders’. Maggie admitted that she’d been busy and out of touch with town life, what with Ava coming home and Ghost stepping up to president, but Flanders’ face told her she’d missed something big.
“What?”
He opened his mouth to answer, and was drowned out by the thunder of a bike engine. Several bike engines.
Maggie went to the window, Jackie at her side.
Across the street, backing their Harleys in at outward slants against the curb in front of Daisy, were five men in MC regalia…who were decidedly not Lean Dogs. As they dismounted, Maggie spotted three-piece patches: Carpathians on the top rocker, Tennessee on the bottom, snarling wolf in the center; and most importantly, that tiny MC square.
Jackie sucked in a breath. “Jesus Christ. On Main Street. In the broad fucking daylight.”
Maggie bit down on her lip as one of the bikers plucked at her memory. “That one.” She tapped a finger at the glass. “The old president’s son. Jasper Larsen.”
“How do you know that?” Jackie asked.
Maggie sighed. “Because Mercy killed his father and uncle on Ava’s bedroom floor.”
Twenty-Nine
Irresponsible hoodlum was Grammie Lowe’s favorite descriptive phrase for Ghost. Denise Camden Lowe, of former Little Miss East Tennessee fame, had made what she liked to call an educated decision the day her teenage daughter dragged a twenty-seven-year-old biker through the front door for the first time. Men who rode motorcycles and marked themselves in permanent ink were wastrels of the worst kind. “He’ll never amount to anything,” she’d warned Maggie. “And taking advantage of a little girl – he’s a monster!”
The monster part was debatable, depending on which angle you were looking from. But irresponsible…clearly, Denise had never been on the receiving end of one of the man’s lectures.
“…at all times,” he was saying, pacing back and forth in front of the sofa, hands jammed at his hips, his posture comical. He should have been a drill sergeant, Ava reflected.
“Why doesn’t he just duct tape you to his back?” Aidan whispered from the corner of his mouth.
Ava bit down on her tongue against a giggle.
“What?” Ghost whipped around on them, dark eyes flicking between the two of them.
Aidan cleared his throat and said, “I was just explaining to your sweet princess here how important it is to listen to your wise–”
“Stuff it,” Ghost said, and resumed pacing.
Aidan
lifted his brows at her and she pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from snorting.
Princess? she mouthed, when she could. Kiss my ass. She stuck out her tongue at him.
He feigned a deep bow in a moment when Ghost was turning on his heel and had his back to them, sitting upright and munching jerky innocently when their dad passed them.
Ares groaned dramatically and flopped down across Ava’s feet, driving the heels of her pumps into the floor and turning her ankles at uncomfortable angles.
“We know their MO,” Ghost said, hands clasping behind his back, now. “They don’t want to fight; they want to terrorize. Which means” – sharp, direct glance at Ava – “they hit us where it hurts, in the soft spots. And thanks to what happened last time” – harsh frown, brow crinkling – “they’ll remember you.” He halted and faced her fully, a cross between an angry school principal and a biker king, both at once, and her daddy also. “Even if you’re all grown up.”
She nodded, and felt the tremors move beneath her skin as she swallowed. Last time, she’d been eight. Last time had been the drive-by, and Erik and Peter Larsen climbing through her bedroom window in the middle of the night.
“I’m not the only one they’ll remember,” she said with a shaky breath.
Ghost’s expression was grim. “God help the man who tries to take him against his will. Merc I’m not worried about.” But his brows plucked tighter, like maybe he was starting to worry – for a reason that had nothing to do with the Carpathians.
Ava bit her lip and wished she hadn’t mentioned him.
“Now,” Ghost said, ramping up again. “You–”
Maggie had a way of announcing herself with nothing but her footfalls. The door burst open and in she strode, resplendent as always in just jeans and boots and plain cotton, Jackie at her side in her work clothes, looking comfy with her new role as vice president’s wife.
Maggie pushed up her sunglasses and Ava saw the glimmer of real fear in her mother’s eyes, along with a healthy dose of aggression. “Carpathians,” she told Ghost. “In front of Ramona’s on Main. Counted five of them.”
Fearless Page 33