“When I was seventeen,” she said, “Mason abducted me, assaulted me, and when I told him I was pregnant, he kicked me in the stomach. You being his cousin” – she swallowed – “will know all that. Just like you knew exactly who I was, where I came from, what kind of history I had. And you pretended to care about me, pretended we were both strangers, when you knew everything about me.
“You can tell them” – nod toward Mercy – “who you work for, who you report to. I don’t care about that. I just want to know why, Ronnie. Why me?”
His eyes went to Walsh, to Ghost, to Mercy, coming to her with a feverish pleading.
“It’s over,” she said softly. “And you’re going to tell me.”
He took a deep breath, glanced over at Mason, whose head had fallen forward onto his chest, tears rolling down his nose as he shivered and gasped and wrestled with the pain. “Because…” He looked at her again, going limp with defeat. “You ran away from the club; you were angry. You were the weak link.”
She hadn’t thought there was any way this could hurt her anymore, but she’d been wrong. Yes, she’d run away. So furious and wounded, she’d been the vulnerable, the broken, the weak spot in the armor of the club.
She turned away from him, breath catching. She hugged her elbows and willed herself not to tremble.
“Why don’t you go on back, sweetie,” Ghost urged. It was an order, but he phrased it like a request, and that warmed her. “There’s nothing left for you here.”
She nodded, and moved toward the door.
Mercy caught her briefly, tipped her head back and let the extractor bleed out of him a moment, just Felix shining in his dark eyes for her. “I don’t ever want you to worry about these idiots again. Okay?”
She nodded.
One squeeze and he turned her loose. “Love you,” loud enough for everyone to hear and not caring that they could.
Ava paused at the door and turned back, one last look at the two men who’d tried to ruin her life. “I want you both to understand that none of this had to happen,” she said. “It isn’t like in the movies; evil always has consequences.”
Ronnie closed his eyes.
Ava looked at Mercy, at the admiration shining in his eyes, the love. “Make them hurt,” she said, and left the garage.
She heard the music fire up as she let the door to the shop swing shut behind her: Metallica, “Master of Puppets.” Heavy metal to cover the screams.
They didn’t hold onto their secrets. Foolish children never did. That was the thing Mercy had always found most beautiful about the array of knives he carried with him in a black canvas case – blades had a way of parsing a man down to his most basic, human parts, stripping away the buffers of money, power, pride. There was no ego under the edge of his knife. Nothing too private, too guarded, too precious to hold onto. Ronnie and Mason were no exception. They came apart at the seams like hand-stitched dolls, but still, Mercy pushed them, because he wanted their blood on his hands.
Ronnie, it turned out, was the ambitious of the two cousins. He wanted to study business law for the time being, sure, but he had greater aspirations. He had a taste for adventure. He wanted to be involved in corporate espionage. He’d had a meeting, after graduating from Georgia, with the CIA, wanting to learn as much as he could about getting into the intelligence game. His father, moneyed, entitled, had connections at the FBI. It was them Ronnie was working for. His cousin Mason Sr. wanted the Lean Dogs out of Knoxville, a takedown that would fuel his eventual run for senate, his climb toward Washington, and God knew the FBI would look kindly on anyone who could get the alphabet agencies into the inner circle of an outlaw organization fifty years in prosperous existence.
So Ronnie had taken initiative; an informal mission to gain intelligence on the Dogs through, as he’d phrased it, the “weak link,” cozying up to an officer’s daughter. The plan had been his idea, one encouraged by his cousins Mason and Mason. The elder, because he wanted to wipe out the Dogs. The younger because he hated Ava Teague’s guts.
The entire relationship had been a lie, down to the seemingly coincidental meeting at the tennis match almost a year ago.
For almost a year, Ronnie had pretended to be Ava’s boyfriend, reporting back to his cousins, father, and some agent named Grey with any tiny bits of club intel he gleaned.
Not that all that pretending hadn’t had benefits. Ava was a pretty, smart girl, wasn’t she?
It was Mason that Mercy made squeal the loudest. Mason, who’d killed his unborn child. And then he’d ended it, and Harry and Littlejohn had come to clean up the garage.
“Spotless,” Ghost told them, and they nodded.
Walsh had written it all down, expressionless throughout. He’d put on paper the revelation that it was Ronnie’s father, William, who was buying up Main Street real estate in Knoxville. He wanted to come back to his home town. He planned to run for mayor once his cousin Mason had moved on to a senate race. Together, they would aid one another in their political endeavors. They would use the Carpathians to do the dirty work of putting any straggling Dogs in the ground, and then they’d wipe out that club too. A gang war ended, a city free of organized crime at last.
A beautiful plan.
Two dead boys, hanging limp against their duct tape bonds, “Ride the Lightning” screeching above their corpses.
A narrow fissure of deep orange lay along the tops of the trees against the predawn sky when they began the walk back to the clubhouse. Ghost halted Mercy halfway there, his face lined and tired in the lingering shadows.
“The feds will come looking for him, when he doesn’t check in,” he said with a deep, bone-weary sigh. “And they’ll want to talk to Ava.”
Mercy had been thinking that, the knowledge growing heavy against the back of his mind. As the bloodlust faded, replaced by an awful fatigue, a painful thirst for a strong drink, and a lust of a very different kind, he accepted the consequences of Ronnie’s death. “Not if they can’t find her,” he said, brows lifting, pressing home his point.
Ghost tilted his head. “She won’t want to take time off from school.”
“She’ll get over it.”
Ghost looked like he almost smiled. “That sounds like my line.”
“That’s the thing,” Mercy said grimly, “I can play father, if I have to. If that’s what it takes.”
Ghost’s eyes rested on him a long moment, studded deep in the centers with a hatred that was going to take years to wear down. It was nothing but paternal, that awful knowledge that his little girl was grown up and that any man saw her in a sexual light. He would have hated anyone in this instance, and Mercy knew that; he thought maybe Ghost was starting to know that too.
“Do you trust me?” Mercy said.
Ghost sighed. “You’re the only one I trust, bad as I hate it.” He scratched at his scalp, down his neck, like his skin was as exhausted as the rest of him. “They’ll expect her to hide, and they’ll expect it to be within the club.”
“They won’t find us in the swamp. You can’t navigate those bayous unless you were born in them.”
Ghost nodded. “Yeah.” He looked at Mercy with unmasked pleading. “And here I asked you back because I needed your help with the Carpathians.”
“What’s more important to you?”
“My daughter,” he said without missing a beat. “Always my daughter. Nothing can happen to her, Merc. I won’t tell my wife I let her baby get hurt.”
“Whiskey for breakfast,” Ava said, bringing her glass to her lips and taking another sip. The golden liquid burned all the way down, a welcome pain that kept her in the present, and kept her mind from spinning back to black places.
“Nothing better,” Maggie said, refilling her own glass from the bottle of Jack on the coffee table in front of them.
The black leather sofa in the common room was soft, warm from their body heat. If she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, she could probably go back to sleep.
She glan
ced over at the still-sleeping Carter. “Dad’s going to offer him a job,” she predicted.
“You think?” Maggie asked, true note of curiosity in her voice.
Ava felt weighed-down with wisdom, like contemplating the horrors of her social life had lent her a foresight. She knew it would fade, this inner calm and sense of knowing. But for now, the whiskey was fueling it. “I think he’ll offer for him to be a hangaround. Carter’s proved himself more than once in the last five years. And he obviously doesn’t have anywhere to go or he wouldn’t be asleep on our couch.”
“Hmm.” Maggie sipped her Jack slowly, with the grace of a practiced drinker. “Maybe so.”
They both tensed at the sound of the door opening.
Walsh came in first, with his notepad. He went to the bar, climbed onto a stool and leaned over to nick a bottle of warm Smirnoff from among the extra stock waiting to be refrigerated. He broke the seal and took a sip straight from the bottle, settling in to tidy up the notes he’d taken, pen in one hand, the other curled around the vodka.
Then Ghost, who stopped just inside the door and waited until Maggie got to her feet and rose to go meet him.
And then Mercy, traces of blood down the legs of his jeans.
Ava sat forward and put her glass on the table as he came to sit beside her, her stomach tightening, nerves clenching.
He sat close, so they were almost touching, but not quite. His face, she saw in the artificial light, was flecked with tiny dots of blood, across the blade-sharp bridge of his nose and the ridges of his cheekbones.
For a long moment they merely stared at one another, Ava disturbingly fascinated by the blood on him. She glanced at his hands, but they were clean, of course. He’d take a shower and wash his jeans, and then there’d be no traces of the gore. When she lifted her eyes, found his again, she wasn’t surprised to see the desire in them, the crackling warmth. He’d committed unspeakable violence for her, and now he wanted to bury himself in her, his reward for ruthlessness. Like a Viking. First the pillaging, then the…Well, it wouldn’t be rape, no, never, because she wanted it too.
Mercy cleared his throat and made a visible effort to compose himself, gaze sliding away from her so he could concentrate. Ava slid her hand inside of his and squeezed, encouraging.
“You won’t like this, but you’re going to have to take some time off school. A few weeks, at least.” Fast flicker of his eyes, full of apology. “We’re going to have to get away, fillette. They’ll be looking for both of us.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “I was afraid of that.”
His grin was slender, halfhearted. “Guess I get to take you home after all.”
Her heart throbbed. Home to New Orleans, to the swamps of Louisiana that had bred and reared him. It was the most inappropriate thing – given what he’d just done, and how devastating that should have been to both of them – but she wanted so badly to ask about his father. Will you finally tell me? If you take me home, will you turn that secret loose?
“When?” she asked, instead.
“As soon as you can pack a bag.” Ghost said from behind the couch.
Ava turned and saw her father with hands on hips, stern gaze moving between the two of them. The understanding man from the bike shop minutes ago was gone, replaced by her father once more. A different version of him, though, because this version wanted her with Mercy.
“This afternoon, if possible. I’m on my way to call Stack in Atlanta, and Bob in NOLA.”
Mercy nodded. “Yeah.”
“Come on, baby,” Maggie said, reaching out a hand for Ava. “Let’s go get you ready.” There were tears glittering in her eyes.
Carter woke, and for one panicked minute, didn’t know where he was. His eyes struggled to focus. His face was on something soft: a pillow. A table in front of his face: bottle, glasses, ash tray, smoke curling from its crystal center, boots propped on the edge.
He pushed up, wiped at his face, and remembered he was in the Lean Dogs’ clubhouse, in their common room, sleeping on a leather sofa. On the matching sofa across from him, Ava’s brother Aidan and his best friend, Tango, sat having a smoke and a beer, a box of Dunkin’ Donuts between them. Tango had powdered sugar on his chin.
Aidan licked rainbow sprinkles off his thumb and said, “Sleeping Beauty waking up. And I didn’t even kiss you or anything.”
“Ha.” Carter swung his legs to the floor and massaged the stiffness from his neck. “What’s going on?”
“Breakfast,” Tango said helpfully. “Doughnut?”
What the hell. He reached for the box as it was handed to him across the table. There was a maple frosted in there – his favorite – and he speared it with a finger through the hole and took a huge bite, passing the box back. He was starving, he realized.
“What I meant was,” he said as he swallowed, “what’s going on with…” Did he dare say the name? “Mason.”
Aidan made a dismissive gesture. “Nobody wants to talk about him.”
Tango wiped the sugar off his face with the back of his hand. “What about you? What’ve you got going on today?”
He shoved in more doughnut, even as the first bite hit his stomach like a rock. “I’m ‘sposed to be at work at eight. What time is it?”
Aidan said, “That’s a suckass job. What do you do? Ring up cigarettes and lotto tickets twelve hours a day?”
“Pretty much, but that’s all I got. Seriously, what time is it?” He held the doughnut in his teeth as he reached for his sneakers under the coffee table. “I’m probably late. Shit, and Val doesn’t have a key to get in…”
“Untwist your panties, Gertrude,” Aidan said. “It’s six.”
Carter relaxed a fraction, chewing more slowly.
“Do you like your job?” Tango asked. He had one of those pleasant, soft, almost-bright in a subtle sort of way voices. He was the oil, and Aidan was the vinegar. The salad dressing needed them both, the smooth coating and the abrasive acid.
Carter shrugged. “No one likes jobs, I don’t guess.”
“Really?” Aidan’s dark brows went up. “I love mine, man. I get to play with bikes all day.”
“I’m not a mechanic,” Carter said, shrugging again. He shoved his feet in his shoes, licked frosting off his fingers and bent to do the laces.
“You could learn,” Tango said. “Or not. Dartmoor’s diverse. There’s lots of different things you could get in to.”
Carter froze, head lifting. His pulse pattered in the ends of his fingers, high in the tops of his ears. “Are you guys…offering me a job?”
From the back hallway, Aidan’s father, the indomitable patriarch of the whole club with that gaze that could bend rebar, stepped into the room, arms folded loosely across his chest. “I’m offering you a chance to mop the floor for me for the next couple of months, take out the trash, go on beer runs.”
Carter felt his hopes sink.
“And if you do that worth a shit, then I’m offering you a job…and a chance to prospect.”
The hope took a U-turn, one he’d never expected to mean anything to him.
“I appreciate what you’ve done for my family,” Ghost said, “twice, now. I’m not just offering you a paycheck, kid. If you play your cards right, I’m letting you join that family.”
Aidan almost smiled, seeing the wonder steal over the kid’s face. Carter Michaels, star of Knoxville High, fallen so far he couldn’t even see the old ladder to the top anymore, was listening to Ghost, and he was wondering if he could allow himself to love the idea of prospecting this club.
Carter’s blue eyes slid over to land on them at the couch, silently asking if this was legit, or some sort of trick.
“Think about it,” Aidan said, as his phone rang and he fished it from his pocket. “Not like you’ve got anything else to look forward to.”
He pressed the cell to his ear. “Yeah?”
Breathy, quick, frightened voice: “Aidan. It’s Greg.”
Aidan sat up, tens
ion tightening his limbs. He kept his voice low and controlled, though, as he got to his feet. “Greg. Hey, man, what’s up?”
Tango sat up straighter.
Ghost’s eyes came over, sparking with interest.
Carter watched, still wondering.
On the other end of the line, Greg took a deep breath and let it rush back out across the phone. “Can we meet? I’ve got some things I want to tell you.”
Bingo. Fucking jackpot. Intel, hand-delivered, and all of it Aidan’s doing. This was good for the club, sure, but this was a personal win for him, too. This was him proving useful to his brothers. Taking initiative.
He resisted the urge to pump his fist in the air and said, “Somewhere we won’t be bothered. Tango and I’ll see you at the high school in a half hour. The parking lot by the practice fields.” Where no one would expect an MC rendezvous to take place. Neither law enforcement nor the Carpathians would be looking for them there.
“Yeah. Sure.”
When he hung up, Aidan looked at his father and heard the pride ringing in his voice. “Our rat’s feeling chatty.”
Ghost nodded. “Good job.”
High praise coming from the boss man.
Thirty-Eight
“Light layers, I’m thinking,” Maggie said, bringing an armload of t-shirts from the closet to heap alongside the others on Ava’s bed. “It’ll be warm down there, but the bugs will be bad.”
“Right…” Ava said, staring at the small backpack she would take, mind spinning, thoughts refusing to sync up. This was it, she realized, that moment the stopwatch inside her had been ticking toward all along. She was running, fleeing, hiding, flying face-first into a world she could only imagine.
“Will you need shoes besides the boots?” Maggie asked.
“No.” Fatigue was beginning to get the best of her, but there was no time to rest. Ronnie was gone; Rottie was burying him up at the cattle property as they stood here, and his handlers would come looking for him.
No time.
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