Thirty-One
Then
The scariest part, Ghost decided, was that nothing was happening.
Yet.
The day he took Maggie shooting, they stayed up at the cattle property until it was time to get Aidan from school. They’d packed sandwiches for lunch, and spent long hours in the hay loft, surveying the land, talking. Worrying. After they got Aidan, they grabbed a bucket of KFC and took him to the park. Ghost sat on his butt in the grass, awkward and bad at parenting, while Maggie worked with Aidan on his kite, until they finally got it up in the air to the sound of their triumphant laughter.
They were more like siblings than a parent and child – Maggie was a child herself. He felt a pang of deep sadness, like always. Maybe one day he’d stop feeling guilty for stealing her youth, but he didn’t think it would be anytime soon.
They took a whole day away from the club, but the next morning, he’d known his reprieve was over. He’d gone to the clubhouse, knees weak, stomach churning, to face the wrath of Duane.
Only Duane hadn’t been wrathful. He’d been oddly placid, if anything. “We’ll need to set a meeting with the Ryders,” he’d said, and that had been it.
Ghost didn’t trust it for a second. But he was always scared shitless that if he pushed the issue, his tiny little family would suffer somehow.
That’s what he realized in Duane’s office that day: his concern was for Mags and Aidan, for the three of them. And any other worry was distant and unimportant.
Everything was…fine. It shouldn’t have been, but it somehow was.
Roman was gone.
Maggie went to school (so did Aidan).
The construction company broke ground on the garage project. He was going to call it Dartmoor, he decided, thinking fondly of campfire tales of the original Lean Dog, the terrorizing hellhound of the English moors.
Ghost made drops, and watched his business go up.
Pages flew off the calendar.
And everything was fine…
Until it wasn’t.
~*~
There was frost on the windows, but it was warm here, in bed, with Ghost above her. It had started innocently enough, waking to a kiss against the back of her neck, his low, sleepy rumble of “good morning” pressed to her skin. She was the one who’d rolled over, smoothed her hand up his arm, but he’d taken over from there, kissing her without regard for their morning breath, easing her onto her back. He’d pushed her t-shirt up to her shoulders, cold air chasing across her naked skin, and he’d touched her everywhere, until she shifted restlessly, begging.
She clung to him now, fingertips digging into his shoulders, hips lifting to meet each thrust. She liked when he teased and played with her, drawing the pleasure out for long minutes, turning it into a game. But there was something necessary about moments like these, stripped down and basic. The sheen of sweat on his skin, the slide of their bodies together. The way she felt connected to him, his breath hot and rough against her mouth, his shoulders bunching beneath her hands, her nails digging in like claws.
“Almost,” she whispered, tightening her legs around his waist. “Almost – oh – there – God.”
“There you go,” he growled against her throat. “Good girl.”
The sharp crest came, and then the honey-sweet, champagne-fizz spill of pleasure through her blood. She loved feeling him above her, strong, and hot, and savage, sweetly restrained as he filled her. She loved that perfect moment of blissful clarity, when everything in the world ceased to exist except Ghost, the way he made her feel like the most powerful, important thing in the universe.
He leaned down and kissed her. “Damn, baby.”
“I know.” Her voice sounded dreamy and faraway.
Ghost settled down beside her, arm flung across her waist though they were both sweaty; their skin stuck in an unpleasant way, but neither made a move to shift apart.
Body thrumming with pleasure, she closed her eyes and pretended they could stay like this all day. No school, no club, no mundane household chores. No worry.
The worry was the worst part.
Maggie rolled her head on the pillow, gaze searching for his through the gloom. “What are you doing today?”
He looked halfway back to sleep, eyes shut, expression serene. “Gotta go check on the shop. It’ll be ready to open in another week.”
“A week?” It didn’t seem possible. She forgot sometimes how much time had passed.
“They’re putting in the floor in the office today,” he confirmed. “I just gotta get a sign made.”
“Wow.”
He cracked one eye, smiling. “I know.”
It was not a lavish life they led together, and so the smallest of things brought joy. The garage almost finished. Aidan’s good report card. The pizza place throwing in free garlic knots because they took longer than fifteen minutes to deliver. Their quiet Christmas of coffee and cinnamon toast, Aidan tearing into a modest pile of toys on the living room floor, the two of them looking on giftless, because it was more important for the kid to have a presents than it was to spend anything on themselves.
Ghost had pulled her aside late that afternoon, after Aidan had passed out amid his Transformers and Hot Wheels. “You’re still a kid too,” he said, almost bashful, color on his high cheekbones. The amethyst ring had been his mother’s. It was just a little too big, and Maggie wore it on her middle finger…of her right hand. He hadn’t proposed, and she hadn’t asked him to. She was content, and he was still scared of being left; she could read it in the almost desperate way he looked at her sometimes, like she was already out the door.
“We should get up,” Maggie said with a sigh, but made no move to do so.
“Yeah.”
“Five more minutes.”
“Sure.”
But eventually, her internal clock reminded her that she needed to pack Aidan’s lunch, and her own, and put a load in the washing machine…
She flipped the covers back and climbed, shivering, into the late February morning.
Her new routine, she reflected as she smeared peanut butter over Wonder Bread, didn’t feel all that new anymore. In fact, it was hard to remember what she’d done before Ghost and Aidan came into her life.
Or maybe it was more like her coming into theirs.
It was so normal now: Aidan clomping in – “Shoes tied, sweetie” – and Ghost kissing her cheek on his way through. She’d been the child of the household her whole life, but she wasn’t anymore, was instead a parental figure: carpool line, and “have a good day,” and all.
She got to school with fifteen minutes to spare and managed to find a parking place up close by the street. She was locking up the Monte Carlo when someone hissed, “Maggie!”
Startled, she glanced up to find a face pressed to the chain link perimeter fence, a man crouched between the barrier and the high hedges that circled it.
A scream lodged in her throat when she realized she recognized him. “Roman?”
It was him. Scruffier, his clothes dirty and battered, but there was no mistaking his identity. Seeing him like that, hair dirty and too-long, Maggie wondered where he’d been staying. Then she wondered what the hell he was doing outside her school, hiding in the bushes like a fugitive.
“What are you doing?”
He stuck his fingers through the fence and motioned her closer. He looked wild-eyed, like maybe he was high, or just that frightened.
“Nuh-uh,” she said. “Answer the question.”
He made a face. “You’re turning into a real–”
“A real what now?”
“Old lady. A real old lady. Giving orders and shit.”
But from what Maggie had seen, none of the old ladies around this chapter of the Dogs gave orders to anyone besides their husbands. There was a notable lack of female influence in the club. She guessed she was just too naturally pushy to keep her mouth shut and eyes down.
“What do you want?” she snapped, eyes flicking up to scan the road. She didn’t want one of the Dogs to happen past and see her talking to him. It was a slim possibility, but still. He was persona non-grata around here these days; she wouldn’t be accused of conspiring with him. She might be pushy, but she didn’t have a death wish.
He surveyed the parking lot around her. “I need your help.”
“Right.”
His gaze returned to her face, pleading. “I do. Really. Christ, I just…I need to talk to Ghost. I was afraid to go by the apartment.”
“Good call.”
“Maggie, please.”
“I have school. And I can’t stress how much you are not my problem.”
He stared at her, pouting, baleful as a shelter dog.
“Fuck this club,” she muttered under her breath. “Wait here. I’ll go call Ghost.”
“You’re a doll.”
“Shut up.”
~*~
It took a lot of smiling and wheedling to convince the front office secretary to let her use the phone. At this point, everyone from the principal to the janitor knew she was affiliated with “one of those damn Dogs.” But she was still listed, officially, as living with her parents and somehow, miraculously – Maggie suspected it was because the Dogs inspired no small amount of fear in the locals – she’d been allowed to go about her business without any interference from the law. The emancipation paperwork had been put in back in November, and every adult in her life seemed content to let her wait out the four months unhindered. In one month, she’d be an “adult” on paper. In light of that, everyone treated her as such – which meant no favors, no coddling, no kindness.
Finally, though, she was able to call Ghost, and she went outside to wait for him.
At this rate, she’d never get her diploma.
She leaned against the grill of her car, arms folded. The morning had been sharp and frosty, but now that the sun was up, it was rapidly warming. “You’re just gonna squat in the bushes?” she asked Roman.
He was smoking a cigarette, and looking like some sort of goblin hunkered down in the foliage. “Yup.”
“Suuuper attractive.”
He rubbed at one of his knees and made a face. No doubt his legs were going numb.
“Arthritis acting up?” she asked sweetly.
He grumbled something that sounded like “bite me.”
Ghost pulled up with a low growl of bike engine, joining them a moment later. “Jesus Christ,” he said on a sigh, leaning over to kiss the top of Maggie’s head. “You’re some kinda stupid showing your face, man.”
“Just let me explain,” Roman said, again with the pleading eyes, fingers hooked in the fence.
“Jesus,” Ghost said again, closing his eyes like he was in pain. “Shit. Alright. Get in the car.”
~*~
He should have known. That’s what he kept thinking the entire ride out to the country. He watched the shapes of Roman and Maggie’s head through the back window of the Monte Carlo and kicked himself mentally, over and over, for not preparing for this eventuality.
Roman was human herpes: just when you thought everything was okay, he turned back up, ill-timed, annoying, unseemly. Caught up in the garage, lulled by the false sense of peace, Ghost had allowed himself to forget about the man. And now he was turning up at his old lady’s school, harassing her.
Not that Maggie had looked all that harassed, he’d noticed with pleasure. While losing none of her softness with Ghost, she was hardening externally every day, adding new layers to her solid candy shell, as stalwart as an older, more experienced woman. Ghost already thought she had a leg-up on Bonita, who’d always struck him as frivolous and unbothered. Maggie had all the makings of a club wife, the kind the Knoxville chapter hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
They parked in front of the house when they reached the farm, and Ghost got his first good look at Roman.
He looked terrible, thin and bedraggled. Back at Halloween, he’d been as fit and muscular as Ghost – well, almost, he’d never been the boxer that Ghost was – but now he seemed almost gaunt, a scarecrow draped in filthy clothes. And he smelled. Like spilled beer, and BO, and cigarettes.
He patted his jeans pocket. “You got a smoke?” he asked Ghost. “I smoked my last one at the school.”
Ghost gave him one, and his lighter. He was pissed to see him again, to see the trouble he’d brought with him, but he found he couldn’t hate him, not when he looked so pitiful. “What’s going on, Roman?” he asked, with less heat than he’d intended to use.
Maggie leaned against the side of her car, arms folded, not even pretending not to listen. They were a team now; she knew what he knew, and damn club etiquette.
“Why are you here, Roman?” Ghost asked.
Roman took short, hard puffs on the cigarette, working it down to the filter and flicking it away.
Ghost walked over to ground it out with his boot. “Tryin’ to set my field on fire?”
“Okay, it’s bad,” Roman said on a gusty sigh.
“What is?” Maggie asked.
“The whole underworld’s gone crazy. The Ryders. The Gonzales brothers. Every dealer within two-hundred miles. All of ‘em want Duane’s head on a pike.”
“I haven’t heard that.”
“Because you don’t hear shit that Duane doesn’t want you to! Don’t you get it? The club’s not plugged in. It’s out of the loop.”
Ghost frowned. He didn’t doubt for a second that Duane was withholding intel from the rest of the club – he spent long hours locked away in his office, poring over ledgers, snapping them shut when anyone poked their head in the door. Couple that with Roman’s shaking hands and stained shirt and wild eyes, and it was a very believable story. But Ghost hated to let Roman think he was so easily swayed.
“How would you know that?”
Roman took a shaky breath and reached to push his hair off his face; when he did, his sleeve bunched up and Ghost caught a glimpse of raw, abraded skin at his wrist. Rope burn. “The Ryders kinda, uh, well, they found me.”
“Shit.”
Maggie swallowed with an audible gulp. “They turned you loose?”
“I, uh…” He flicked a sideways grin that was more of a grimace. “The girl they had looking after me, bringing me food and stuff, took a shine to me. I flirted a little bit. Got her to untie one of my hands.” He shrugged.
“So they’re looking for you,” Ghost said.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why’d they keep you alive in the first place?”
“Thought they could work something out with Duane, I guess.”
“Jesus.” Ghost was exhausted, suddenly. “This is a goddamn soap opera.”
“Ghost–” Roman started.
“Shut up. I’m thinking.”
“This kind of thing won’t go away until the Dogs prove they’re the dominant entity around here,” Maggie said, reasonable, calm. He’d turned her into a regular little outlaw.
“Yeah. You stay here,” he said to Roman. “I gotta set some stuff up. This is ending. I’m ending it.”
~*~
“What do you want me to do?” James asked.
Act like the goddamn VP you are, Ghost thought. He said, “I want you to come to a parlay with me. The heads of all the crime families in the area. We’re gonna have a real sit-down with them, and you’re gonna act as Lean Dogs president.”
James set his glass of sweet tea down slowly, shooting Ghost a raised-brow look. His voice was infuriatingly calm. “I’d like to remind you that we already have a president.”
Stella’s was packed with its usual lunch crowd, and no one was paying them any attention. Still, Ghost lowered his voice another notch. “And I’d like to remind you that he’s a piece of shit. This town’s a powder keg right now.” One growing hotter every day beneath the surface. The laughing, chatting café patrons around them had no idea. One day they’d wake to the news that a gunfight had erupted in one of their neighborhoods, and they’d wonder where this “new” criminal element came from – when it had been growing quietly in the shadows all along.
“This is Knoxville, James, not Oakland. I don’t want this turning into some kinda California gang city. We need to get a handle on this now, and we can’t do that with Duane.”
James was expressionless, spearing pasta with his fork. “What do you propose we do about him, then?”
Ghost took a deep, unsteady breath. “Vote him out. Take his patches.”
“You don’t sound too sure about that.”
“Oh trust me, I am.”
James chewed, eyes steady on Ghost’s face. When he swallowed, he said, “I don’t know if the boys will take your word for it.”
“No, but they’ll take yours. Just like they accept it if you make me your VP.”
“That’s what I’m doing, then?”
“Yeah. That’s what you’re doing.”
~*~
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“I think it is,” Ghost said, more viciously than he’d intended. He was buzzing with nerves, and more concerned about Mags and Aidan than he should have been – he acknowledged that, but it didn’t mean he could change the way he felt.
Maggie sat down on the edge of the bed, beside the arsenal he’d laid out and was methodically strapping to his person. “I’m armed. And dangerous now,” she teased. “We’ll be okay here.”
He settled his .45 into his shoulder holster. “You just don’t wanna spend all night with Bonita, huh?”
She groaned. “Not really.”
“There’s safety in numbers, babe. I don’t want to take any chances. And it’s only one night.”
Her smile was tight. “Yeah.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“Just to be sure…”
She leaned down and scrunched up the leg of her jeans, flashing her new harness boots…and the knife tucked inside the left one.
“Gun too?” he asked.
It rested on the comforter beside her hip. She patted it. “Gun too.”
He guessed that would have to be good enough.
~*~
It was a cool night, but the air held faint stirrings of spring, the scent of frost replaced by hints of growing grass and pear tree buds. Bonita had screens on the windows in her living room, so she’d cracked the sashes open a few inches to let the freshness in. She didn’t seem at all nervous about a possible security breach, so Maggie decided not to worry about it.
“Does this sort of thing happen a lot?” Maggie asked the room at large.
Bonita, Nell, and Jackie were all tucked comfortably into the wingback chairs around the artfully rustic plank table arranged in the dining area of the large room. They were playing poker, which Maggie didn’t fully understand yet, a pitcher of margaritas and tall blue glasses spread among them. Aidan was watching TV, looking bored and sleepy. Maggie could relate.
“Nah,” Nell said. “Things’ve been pretty quiet around here lately.”
“You showed up just in time for things to get crazy,” Jackie said, with what may or may not have been a pointed look.
Ugh, screw her. Maggie refused to be blamed for the club’s problems. The Lean Dogs were afflicted with a cancer that had been growing slowly but surely, undetected for years, everyone content to live in uproarious debauchery until it all fell down around their ears.
Idiots.
There was a slight chance she was turning into her mother.
The timer dinged in the kitchen.
“Cookies,” Bonita said with relish.
Maggie was the first one out of her chair, grateful to escape their curious/accusatory gazes a moment. “I’ll get them.”
“Gracias, chica.”
Maggie breathed a sigh of relief as she headed around the corner, toward the droning buzzer.
Bonita’s kitchen had a certain Texas flair: bold travertine floors, Mexican tile countertops, walls a deep gold and hung with festive décor. All the appliances were state of the art, including the big six-burner stove…
In front of which stood Duane Teague. Aiming a gun toward her.
~*~
Ghost wanted to throw up. He didn’t, and he thought that was what counted. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, letting it blow out across his dry lips. His heart pounded in his throat, his wrists, his ears, his temples, a tight band of pressure around his head.
Fifteen steps away, inside the designated warehouse, their parlay waited.
Or it might have devolved into a trap at this point; he wouldn’t know until he walked in.
“Second thoughts?” James asked.
Ghost took a deep breath and glanced out across the riverfront, the water glittering like cold jewels in the moonlight. His breath misted, pluming like smoke, but soon the nights would be warm and muggy, the pale glow of the sodium lights alive with moths, the air heavy with the algae tang of the Tennessee River.
He knew the sights and smells and changes of this city better than he knew the lines of his own tattoos. It was a part of his blood. It was his; he felt this in a gut-deep flash of knowledge. Knoxville belonged to him, to his Dogs. No one was going to turn it into a lawless nightmare, not even his own uncle.
“No,” he said, and meant it. “No second thoughts. I’m ready.”
James nodded and they headed inside.
Collier was waiting at the door – the only brother Ghost had trusted with this mission – gun held in a deceptively loose grip. “We ready?” he asked as they approached.
“Yep,” Ghost said, pretending his voice wasn’t tight. He could be as sure as he wanted, but the nerves were still skittering through him, raising unwilling goosebumps down his arms and back.
He thought about Maggie, the last thing she’d said to him when he dropped her off with Bonita and the girls. “You’re gonna be great.” Like he was a kid she was sending off to school to give a presentation. An athlete headed to an important game. Almost silly and shallow on the face of it – great. But it was confident, too. A simple statement for what was, in her eyes, a simple truth: she had every confidence that he would, in fact, do great.
The notion warmed him.
Collier led the way through the propped open door, taking point. Ghost and James walked side-by-side, as equals.
Everyone else was already there: three reps from each of the outlaw organizations in the city. Though “organization” was being generous with some of them.
There were the Ryders, the Gonzales brothers, Molly Love and two reps from her crew. There were faces Ghost didn’t recognize, their expressions uncertain. With a jolt, he realized the Dogs were the celebrities among this crowd, and that they would have to live up to the hype.
“Good evening,” James greeted. He came to stand at the head of the loose circle of outlaws, hands hanging casually at his sides. “I think you all know me.” There were indistinct murmurs among the crowd. “This is my vice president, Ghost. I believe you know him also.”
“Vice president?” one of the Gonzales boys said. “I thought you was the VP, James?”
“Yes, well, the club’s in the midst of a realignment…”
And the meeting started.
~*~
Maggie swallowed, or tried to; her throat wouldn’t work. “Hi, Duane,” she whispered.
“Hi, sweetheart.” His voice was pleasant, light. Completely at odds with the gun pointed at her face. “Sorry to interrupt girls’ night, but I’m gonna need you to come with me.”
She took a deep, shaky breath, heart pounding just beneath her skin. Her thoughts raced: could she run? Would he shoot? Her gun was in her purse in the other room; she hadn’t anticipated using it in the house like this. What did Duane have planned for her? Rape? Murder? He wouldn’t really…would he?
“No,” she said.
He took two long strides around the kitchen island, jamming the gun into her face, smile never faltering. “If you don’t come with me,” he said, pleasant and up-tempo, “and one of those bitches comes in here, I’ll blow her goddamn brains out.”
“Duane…”
His free hand shot out and grabbed hold of her arm, a hard, punishing grip. “Right now. Don’t make a sound.”
Ghost would have told her to fight, she thought. But Aidan was in the next room, and more than any of the women, she wanted to protect him. She couldn’t forgive herself if anything happened to that sweet boy.
“Okay,” she said, following as he manipulated her toward the back door. “Okay, okay.”
She’d always thought of herself as someone who would resist capture, too independent to go along with anyone’s demands like this. But the cold gun barrel pressed between her shoulder blades quieted all her resistance. She marched out the door and into the dark yard ahead of him, trembling.
“Duane,” she tried as they walked around the side of the house. “I don’t know what you–”
“No, you don’t know,” he said. “You don’t know shit. But you’re gonna learn. Bitch.”
“Duane.” She was panting, her heartrate soaring now, a high staccato beat in her ears. “Please.”
He smacked her once, across the back of the head. “Shut up.”
The slap rang through her like the toll of a bell, an echo inside her skull. She staggered a step, and he grabbed at her arm to force her forward, toward the truck parked at the curb in front of the house.
She wasn’t going to go quietly after all, she decided.
Maggie ducked and twisted at the same time, sliding out of his grip so she faced him. He was shocked – eyes suddenly wide – and that bought her a fraction of a second.
She bolted. Toward the street, where the neighbors could see her if she screamed and put up a fuss. She was no athlete, but she pushed herself as fast as her lungs and legs would allow, arms pumping, lungs screaming, thundering across the lawn.
Duane tackled her.
His weight knocked her down and crushed her into the grass, forcing all the air out of her lungs.
“No!” she gasped, squirming. “No, please!...”
Pain blossomed at the back of her head, and then everything was black.
~*~
When Maggie was five, she had a pink and white dollhouse shaped like a castle, with dolls dressed up as a prince and princess. Her mother came to sit on the edge of her bed and picked up the prince doll, smoothing his gold cloth epaulettes.
“One day,” Denise said, “you’ll meet a prince of your very own. He’ll be handsome, and rich, and he’ll buy you your very own castle.”
What she’d meant was that Maggie would meet a smooth-voiced, blond Southern boy with a law degree who could buy her an antebellum mansion and all the Jimmy Choos she could ever want.
What Maggie had found instead was a biker prince, dark-haired and dark-eyed, broke, dressed in leather, offering her an outlaw empire…and nothing but a promise of a better future.
He had dragons to slay, too. That was her first thought when she groaned and blinked herself awake: Duane was a dragon. Greedy, violent, unpredictable, and so, so dangerous.
She cracked her eyes to find a dimly lit room. Hard concrete floor beneath her, corrugated steel walls around her. Her head was pounding, a steady bass thump in time with her pulse, but she could smell fresh-cut wood, the crisp scent of newly soldered metal.
She blinked through a film of tears and grit and realized she was in the garage. Ghost’s brand-new, almost-finished garage.
Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.
She sucked in a low, quiet breath. Wherever Duane was, she didn’t want him to hear that she was awake.
Sensations filtered into her awareness. The bitter coldness of the floor and the air, and the steel wall at her back. She was seated, slumped back against the metal. Her left hand was caught in some sort of binding – she turned her head and saw police-issue handcuffs chaining her to a length of exposed water pipe. She felt the lump coming up on the back of her head where Duane had hit her. Felt myriad bruises on her arms and legs and torso; he’d manhandled her into the truck, and into the garage.
With her right hand, she felt along the floor, found nothing but cold concrete. Nothing within reach, but at least she had a hand free.
And she still had the knife in her boot. She felt the sheath digging into her ankle; he hadn’t patted her down. His first mistake.
She froze when she heard footfalls, shutting her eyes and slumping back down. She listened, breath catching in her throat, as Duane walked to stand in front of her.
He kicked her boot. “I know you’re awake.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. His handsomeness was overshadowed by the harsh tube bulbs overhead, the way they carved out all his lines and wrinkles and gray hairs. He looked old and tired, less like Ghost and more like the worn-out biker he was, something skeletal about his cheekbones and temples, the too-harsh cut of his jaw and the dark bags beneath his eyes. He didn’t appear confident and in-control, but nervous, on-edge and feral.
He wasn’t a president, in that moment, but a king with a price on his head.
“He thinks he’s real smart, doesn’t he?” he asked.
She had to wet her lips and clear her throat before she could force out the words. “Who?”
“My nephew. He thinks he’s got it all figured out. Get rid of me, take the crown for himself. Build whatever the fuck he wants.”
“Duane,” she said, carefully, “I don’t know what you’re–”
He kicked her foot again, harder this time. “Don’t lie to me. This is all your idea anyway. That boy was a good little soldier until you came along.”
She decided it was better to keep quiet.
“You started filling his head with all these big ideas, and now nothing’s good enough for him: not the club, not me. He’s got no respect for his elders. For the way things are done.”
He bent at the waist, leaning down to shove his face into hers. “You don’t got anything to say for yourself?”
So much for being quiet… “Ghost always had dreams,” she said, careful to keep her tone neutral. “He finally got brave enough to insist on them.”
He slapped her. So hard and so quick she didn’t see his hand pull back, was suddenly staring at the opposite wall, head kicked to the side, cheek stinging where his palm had smacked her. She made a ragged, unconscious sound of distress.
“I hate your fucking guts,” Duane said, without any special feeling. Just stating a fact. “You’ve ruined my boy.”
She darted her tongue across her lips and tasted blood in the corner of her mouth, on the side where he’d slapped her. Jesus. She turned, slowly, back to face him, making cautious eye contact.
Still crouched in front of her, he pulled a pair of leatherwork gloves from his back pocket and tugged them on. “He thinks he can work something out with all the idiot thugs of Knoxville,” he said, mostly to himself. “But what’s he gonna do when he realizes one of those rednecks killed his old lady, huh?”
And that was when the real fear took hold. He was going to kill her, and blame it on the Ryders, or someone else. Use her death to bring Ghost back into the fold.
He grinned at her, an echo of Ghost’s grin, sharp and white. “The shame of it is, I coulda really liked you. Too bad you had to fuck with my club like this. Things coulda been different.”
~*~
“Duane’s out of his damn mind,” Neil Ryder said.
Ghost snorted. “No shit.”
James said, “We understand that Duane has made some regrettable business deals lately. That’s what we aim to fix.”
“If we can all come to an agreement,” Ghost said, gesturing to the room at large, “then we can promise that Duane won’t interfere in any of the arrangements.”
“He stepping down?” Molly asked, doubtful.
“Something like that.”
~*~
He unlocked the cuffs and took a firm grip on her hair, dragging her into the center of the room.
Maggie gasped at the pain, reaching with one hand to claw at him in helpless reaction – it felt like he was pulling her hair out by the roots. With the other hand, she flailed for her boot, and the knife inside it.
He grunted as he wrenched her forward, putting his back into it. The concrete rubbed her jeans raw, and her hip on one side, where her waistband was pulled down and her bare skin touched the floor.
She scrabbled at the leg of her jeans, trying to get beneath it, fingers dancing for the hilt of the knife.
This wasn’t going to be some long, drawn-out, villain monologue moment like in the movies, she realized. He wasn’t going to tell her his master plan and taunt her like a cat with a mouse – there was no need. She knew why he was doing it. And she didn’t doubt for a second that he really would kill her.
“Quit it, bitch,” he hissed, as she clawed at the back of his hand. He threw her down to the floor and moved around her, straddled her hips, his knees on the floor, pinning her down. He took hold of her hair again, and with his free hand, he produced a knife as if by magic, pressed it to her throat.
He considered her a moment, their noses almost touching. He smelled like whiskey and sweat. Maggie could smell her own fear, acrid and sickly.
“Don’t take it too personal,” he said.
He’d made the fatal mistake of leaving one of her hands free, and in it she now clutched the knife Ghost had given her, a slender boning knife with a wicked length of blade.
She drove it into the side of his neck.
~*~
“What do you mean she’s not here?”
Bonita wrung her hands together, rings glinting in the porch light. “We looked all over, but she’s gone. She went to get the cookies in the kitchen, and she never came back.”
“Now, Ghost…” James started.
Ghost knocked his placating hand away. “What the hell?” And then, louder: “What the hell?”
“Maybe she got scared and ran away,” Bonita suggested.
Ghost shot her a glare that had her shrinking down into the collar of her sweater. “She wouldn’t do that. Not ever.”
“Maybe…” James started, and Ghost tuned him out. His heart was pounding like a kettle drum suddenly, all the anxiety from the warehouse coming back tenfold. Panic, he realized now, was something he’d only ever been teased with before. What he felt now, the horrific crash of adrenaline and emotion inside him, squeezing his lungs tight, that was real panic.
“Daddy,” Aidan said, wriggling past Bonita and coming to grab hold of his belt loop. His eyes were wet and red-rimmed, face flushed and tear-streaked. “Where did Maggie go? Did she run away?”
“No. She didn’t.” Because she couldn’t have. That wasn’t her.
“Ghost,” Jackie said, coming to the door with the cordless phone pressed to her shoulder. Her expression was strange as she held the phone out to him. “It’s her.”
~*~
The phone line at the garage had only been activated yesterday, and Ghost had almost told the guys not to go through with it, not wanting to get billed for an extra week when the place wasn’t open to the public yet. It seemed fortuitous, now, as he pulled in at the new gate, that he’d allowed it to be hooked up.
“Don’t wreck,” Maggie had said over the phone, her voice strange-sounding. He’d never heard her like that before, eerily calm, hushed, lifeless. “There’s no rush. I’m okay.”
“What…?”
“Just come.” And then, spiking his worry to new heights: “I love you.”
He hadn’t wrecked, but he’d rushed, running every stop sign, pushing the speed limit, praying there were no cops out. There weren’t, and now he was pulling down the new, flawless asphalt of the driveway, the pale chips of rock glinting in the moonlight.
The lights were on in the garage bays, visible through the high windows. Duane’s truck was parked in front of the office door.
“Shit,” Ghost muttered, flying off his bike the moment he killed the engine, barely getting the kickstand down. He tossed his helmet to the pavement, not caring if it cracked. “Shit, shit, shit.”
His heart was going to burst if it beat any harder. He might stroke out in the moments between the office door and the door that led into the bays. He prepared himself for any number of possibilities, a scream already building deep in his throat…
But he wasn’t ready for the sight that greeted him. It was something he’d never imagined.
He saw Duane first.
His uncle was slumped over onto his side, wide-open eyes staring right at Ghost. Sightless. The hilt of Ghost’s favorite boning knife protruded from the side of his throat, and there was blood everywhere. Arterial spray all over the floor, on his shirt and cut, great red arcs of it on the fresh concrete, spread around the body like the rings of Saturn.
And that’s what Duane was now: a body. He wasn’t a terrorizing paternal figure anymore, nor a lousy president, nor the man who left his own club to the wolves.
He was dead.
“Mags,” Ghost breathed, looking for her.
She stood over against the wall, her pale pink sweater slashed with blood. It was drying in sticky clumps in her hair, grimed under her nails and splashed on both hands and halfway up her sleeves. Dark flecks like freckles dotted her nose and cheeks.
Her eyes were vacant when she lifted them to Ghost’s, skillfully devoid of emotion. It was like the night she’d shot the Ryder in her bedroom. Only worse.
Ghost went to her with an exhale that sounded like a low, broken animal groan of pain. He grabbed her sticky hands and lifted them to his face, turned them over, searching. Patted down her chest and sides and stomach. “Are you hurt? What did he do to you? Mags.”
“I…I’m fine.” Her voice was this detached, floaty thing, like it was coming to him down a faulty telephone line.
“Maggie.” He couldn’t stop touching her, her face and her throat, still looking for injuries, worrying that some of this blood might be hers.
“He…” she started, and then the words came easily. “He came to Bonita’s. I went into the kitchen, and he was there, he’d broken in, or he knew where the key was, I don’t know. But he was there, and he had a gun. I tried to get away, but he took me with him. He…” She touched the back of her head, wincing. “When I woke up, we were here. He…”
“Are you okay?”
Her eyes came to his face, and behind the shield of shock, he could see the riotous, bloody tumble of emotion snarling around in her head, fighting to get out, howling and clawing and trying to rectify what had happened – what she’d had to do. “He said he was going to make it look like the Ryders did it. To get you back on his side.”
Ghost let out an unsteady breath and had trouble taking another one. He framed her face with his hands to ground himself. “And you had your knife.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I…”
“No.” He crushed her to his chest, holding the back of her head, clinging to her. “No, I’m not…Jesus, I’m…thank God. Mags, thank God. Good girl.”
They held each other for a long time, dry-eyed, swaying with fatigue and shock.
Finally, Maggie pushed back, face paper-white beneath the splash of blood. “What are we gonna do?”
He wanted to sit down hard on the cold concrete, pull her into his arms, and just hold her for a few hours. His good, sweet, ferocious, uncle-killing, wonderful girl. He wanted to pull her so tight to his chest that he absorbed her, drew her into his own body, hold her tight inside his ribcage, and let every scrap of wonderful soak into his blood, so he could face the challenge that now lay before him. He wasn’t just the fuckup nephew anymore: he was a king. A king in waiting, but one all the same. James was his placeholder, but the club, and its future, lay in his hands.
But he couldn’t do that. He had to keep her at his side, because he’d need to lean on her the whole way, however long it took. He needed her to stick knives in the throats of the monsters he couldn’t handle himself.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. Jesus Christ, he’d almost lost her.
Against her skin, he said, “I’ve got an idea.”
~*~
The ground hadn’t been tilled, nor seen the tenderizing hooves of cattle, in over a decade. And so it was hard. Packed-down sand full of rocks. In the headlights of the truck, Ghost could see the shine of sweat on his arms, bare now; he’d peeled off first his jacket, and then his shirt, and finally his wifebeater as he dug, overheated and bare-chested, his skin steaming in the cool night air.
Maggie helped, her shovelfuls small and not efficient, but she toiled alongside him, stripped down to her tank top, her skin stark white in the wash of the headlights…save where it was dirty brown with blood.
Around them, the night was alive with the rustle of bare tree limbs and the crackle of underbrush as foxes and deer ventured to the edge of the woods to see what the humans were doing, digging a hole in the dead of night. A whippoorwill called, too-cheerful. Clouds scudded across the moon, distorting their shadows so they looked like strange, inhuman things mining rocks and earthworms.
Ghost finally straightened and swiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one dirty glove. “That’s deep enough,” he decided, and levered himself out of the hole, reached down to pull Maggie out by both hands. Her jeans were a ruin of mud up to the knees, her elbows dusky with earth, and the tip of her nose for some reason, a deeper shade than the blood spatter beneath her eyes. Eyes that looked luminous and blue in the headlights.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
They’d wrapped Duane in a roll of old burlap and it took both of them to send him down into the hole. He landed with a muffled thump that sounded alive. Ghost wondered, standing on the edge, wondered if –
But no. He’d checked his pulse himself. He knew. No one could survive that kind of blood loss…not even a hellhound.
“Bring me the can, baby.”
Maggie fetched the can of kerosene from the truck. The roll of paper towels they’d use for kindling, the matches.
The flames started with a soft whump, and a flash of bright orange.
Maggie moved to stand beside him, their shoulders touching, steamed skin gluing to steamed skin. He found her hand with his and linked their fingers together.
They watched the flames catch and spread, the edges of the burlap blackening and curling. Smoke belched up from the hole, a muddy black against the clear indigo backdrop of the night sky. Eyes flashed at the tree line: animals…watching other animals.
Ghost said, “I wanna get married.”
Maggie took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”