Fifteen
Now
Maggie woke up warm, and a little bit breathless when her alarm went off. Ghost lay right up against her, his front plastered to her back, his arm tight beneath her breasts, squeezing hard enough to impact her breathing.
“Babe.” She elbowed him lightly and he snorted against the back of her head. “You’re going full boa constrictor on me.”
“Wha…? Oh.” His arm loosened – she took a deep breath – but didn’t move away. “Sorry.”
She covered the back of his hand with her own, lacing their fingers together. “Bad dream?”
“Yeah.” He moved their hands down, so his palm spanned the lowest part of her belly. He was no fumbling, first-time father; he knew where the new little life was growing, and he cupped it familiarly.
That simple touch was enough to warm her blood. She shifted back against him, pressing her shoulders into the hard wall of his chest.
He hummed his approval and nosed into her hair, working his way to the vulnerable skin at the back of her neck. He moved their hands lower, lower, pushing past the waistband of her sleep pants. She wasn’t exactly sexy lately, in her flannel, opting for comfort and warmth rather than slink – the pregnancy thing left her craving coziness – but he didn’t seem to mind, cupping her through her panties.
“You feel sick this morning?” he asked against her throat.
Her breath shivered in her lungs. “No.”
The sheets rustled as he shifted up onto an elbow, and then over her, bracketing her with forearms and thighs. He had a crease on his face from the pillow, his eyes still heavy-lidded and sleepy. Maggie loved him like this, shirtless and warm and easy.
His mouth hovered over hers – sour morning breath – and then his cellphone rang.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “It’ll keep.”
Maggie leaned upward into the kiss, mouth open against his.
The phone rang again.
“Jesus,” Ghost muttered as he pulled back, looking thoroughly aggravated.
“Twice in a row,” Maggie said.
“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled off of her to answer it. “Yeah?” he answered.
In the silence that followed, Maggie felt the first stirrings of unease.
“Yeah. Be there soon. No, don’t call the cops,” Ghost said, and hung up.
Maggie turned her head on the pillow and watched the muscles ripple in his back as he took a deep breath.
“Get dressed.”
~*~
Ghost didn’t want her to come in, but like hell was she not going to see it with her own eyes. Rottie and Carter shifted to let her through, and then the nausea she hadn’t felt all morning crashed over her, hard.
Her office had been trashed.
Everything on the desk had been swept to the floor, including the phone and computer. Each drawer had been upended: thumbtacks, staples, pencils, loose change, and granola bars were everywhere. The wastebasket was kicked over. The file cabinets were locked, thankfully, so the customer information was safe. It was a mess, but like all messes, could be picked up.
What bothered her the most – frightened her – were the words spray-painted across the blank stretch of wall where her calendar had hung: Lean Bitch.
Walsh and Ghost stood in the center of the small room, hands on their hips, surveying the damage.
“Mostly superficial,” Walsh said, and then eyed the spray paint. “I’ll get a hangaround to cover that up.”
“I don’t get it,” Maggie said, and they both looked up, startled. Why, she didn’t know – Ghost shouldn’t have expected her to actually stay outside.
Ghost lifted a questioning eyebrow.
“It’s stupid,” she said, willing her heartrate to slow. In her experience, getting mad was a whole lot more productive that getting scared. “Look at that. Lean Bitch. Like I’m a groupie? Throw my shit all over the place and call me a slut? That’s what high school girls do, not rival clubs.”
“She’s got a point,” Walsh said.
“There’s not even a threat in all this.” She waved to the office around her. “It’s just inconvenient.”
Ghost made a face. “Security cameras?” he asked Walsh.
“Ratchet’s already pulling the footage.”
With a sigh, Maggie set her purse on top of a file cabinet, crouched down, and began gathering scattered printer paper.
“Babe, don’t do that,” Ghost said. “I’ll have one of the guys do it.”
“It’s my office. I’m the one who knows where everything goes,” she reasoned, even as her stomach rolled in protest. “Did whoever it was pick the lock?”
“Kicked in the door,” Walsh said. “I got the call from the alarm company after midnight, but decided not to bother you guys.”
Maggie frowned to herself. Sparing them the trouble was sweet, but she didn’t want to be seen as the invalid to the club, pregnant and easily excitable. It’s why she had to clean up her own mess.
“Let me get Harry in here to help,” Ghost said, and it wasn’t an offer this time.
Maggie sighed again. “Fine. If it’ll make you feel better.”
~*~
The only thig that was going to make him feel better was catching the asshole responsible for all this.
“What’ve you got?” He leaned over the back of Ratchet’s swivel chair.
“Nothing very useful.” He sounded apologetic as he opened the proper window and clicked Play. Onscreen, the camera mounted beneath the gutter of the central office had captured a man dressed all in black, hood pulled up over his head, face shaded by the brim of a dark ballcap. He wore gloves and moved quickly, without hesitation, jogging across the lot toward the office and kicking in the door with one economical motion.
“I’d say six feet,” Walsh said. “Pretty built if he can climb up and over that damn fence.”
“Young,” Hound added. “My old bones couldn’t do that.”
Ghost silently agreed, but didn’t voice it. He didn’t like to think of his own bones as “old” just yet.
The perp was inside the office only a few minutes, and then emerged, back to the camera, sprinting back toward the fence.
“So we got nothing,” Ghost said, grinding his teeth. “Except it looks like the asshole who killed that dog.” He stepped back from the computer and reached up to rub at a tense knot along the side of his neck. Before all this was over, he was going to need a full-body massage to get the anxious kinks out.
“I thought the point of your field trip yesterday was to get these guys off our backs,” Aidan said. He was sitting on top of one of the bar tables, feet in a chair, smoking and looking judgmental.
“It wasn’t those kids.”
Aidan made a disbelieving sound. “Thought you said they were young.”
He shook his head. “But they were scared to death. I don’t think they’d risk this. Not without some kinda reason. This is Roman. It has to be.”
“Okay,” Aidan said, and his tone said he still didn’t believe, the little shit. “Then let’s go dig Roman outta whatever shithole motel he’s holed up in and let him have a tea party with Mercy.” He grinned, and Mercy reflected it.
“I’m down with that idea, boss.”
Rottie put up two fingers. “I can find him.”
Of course he could. And they could wrestle him into a chair, duct-tape his arms, and Mercy could set upon him with his tackle box full of tricks. Easy as one-two-three.
Ghost didn’t think there were any alternatives. “Alright–” he started.
The clubhouse door burst open and Carter entered, breathing hard. “Guys. You need to get out here.”
~*~
Some would have described it as thunder. But Maggie knew it was bikes right away, that faint rumbling she could just make out through the open office door. She’d been around this club too long to mistake it for anything else: the thunder of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
And since all the Lean Dogs were currently watching security footage in the clubhouse, it meant strangers on Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
“Shit,” she said, surging to her feet. “Harry.”
He moved to the door and peered out. “A lot of ‘em,” he said, voice tense. “Can’t see ‘em, but…”
Maggie stepped up behind him and peered over his shoulder.
Early sunlight glinted along the street as the roar of tailpipes swelled. A long phalanx of bikes – Lean Dogs long. They turned in at the gate and slithered onto the property, a shiny black snake, scales flashing in the daylight.
Maggie caught sight of a robed figure on the back of a cut, the words Dark Saints. And the bottom rocker: Colorado.
Her hand moved automatically to shield her stomach.
~*~
Ghost had never in his life seen something like this. He wished he wasn’t seeing it now; he blinked a few times, hoping it was a mirage that would fade. But no such luck.
Seventeen Harleys sat in front of his clubhouse, parked in a gleaming row. A motley collection of men of all ages – and levels of scruffiness – stood lighting smokes, darting comments to one another, and scrutinizing the compound through the lenses of their sunglasses. Their cuts labeled them as Dark Saints, Colorado chapter.
A man with a tidy salt-and-pepper beard stepped forward; he had a president patch sewn over his breast pocket.
Ghost saw his own men fan out beside him, a human wall blocking the entrance to the clubhouse. Mercy and Michael looked murderous. Walsh looked like he’d just bit into a lemon.
Ghost balled his hands into fists, felt the tendons leap in his arms.
Never, in all his years as a Lean Dog, had a rival club dared to venture onto their turf en masse like this. Never.
The bearded president made it within three feet of Ghost before Michael growled a warning low in his throat – the sound more dog-like than human. The president halted, hands held out to show he meant no harm – for all that that was worth.
“That’s close enough,” Mercy said, just to push the point home.
“Fine, fine,” the Dark Saints president said. “We ain’t here to start nothin’.”
Ghost sent him an unfriendly smile. “You understand, don’t you, that bringing your whole crew right to my front door could maybe look like an act of aggression to some people?” To me, he left unsaid.
The man shrugged. “I got no beef with you.” His expression said yet. “I’m looking for one of your boys. Roman Mayer.”
“One of my boys? Roman hasn’t been a Lean Dog in over twenty years.”
The man looked like he almost smiled. “Well then. I think he’s got some things to explain to both of us.”