Four
“Okay, you can go ahead and sit up for me.”
Maggie pulled her feet out of the stirrups and sat up, smoothing the crinkly paper gown across her lap. Her stomach seemed to shiver, a deep inner chill that had nothing to do with the overeager air conditioning in the exam room.
“Well, doc?” she asked, and missed the joking tone she’d shot for.
She’d been seeing her gyno, Dr. Martin, since just after Ava was born, and never before had Maggie been nervous in the woman’s presence. Dr. Martin seemed to sense that, shooting Maggie a fast, but warm smile before she went back to the chart, scribbling notations. “Your at-home test was correct. Congratulations: you’re pregnant.”
Maggie let out a deep breath, shoulders sagging. “Okay.”
Dr. Martin’s brows tugged together over the rims of her glasses. “Just okay? You didn’t want to be?” It was said without judgement, more like friendly concern.
Maggie shook her head. “It’s not that. I’m just surprised. Maybe a little worried – I’m forty-one.”
“Ah,” Dr. Martin said with understanding. “That’s where I can give you some good news.” She rolled her stool closer. “You’ve already had a successful pregnancy, and you’ve had regular pap smears every year. So we know, to put it bluntly, that the plumbing works and is healthy. We know that you are healthy, overall. We’ll want to monitor this pregnancy a little more closely, as we would with any expectant mother your age.”
“My age. Ugh.”
Dr. Martin patted her knee. “I’m confident, Maggie. Let’s not get worried before there’s anything to worry about, okay?”
Maggie nodded, taking another shivery breath. “Yeah. Okay.”
When the doctor was gone and she was getting dressed, she thought about the worries she couldn’t share with the doctor: her club worries.
If she was honest, there was no such thing as a good time to bring a baby into the MC way of life. There was always a new war, a new drama, a new threat to the family structure. Violence lurked around every corner, so it was never a matter of waiting for a lull.
Even so, she hadn’t expected this news to rattle her the way it had. She felt unmoored, and that made her nervous in a way no outside threat ever had.
On the way out of the office, she allowed her eyes to travel across the black and white photos of the babies brought into the world by the OB team, fat little handfuls of dough with dimpled knees and impossible lashes. It was just a short time ago that she’d brought Aidan here to see the sonogram of his Lainie for the first time. Maybe that’s what this was about: she was a grandmother for God’s sakes. It was her time to lend support to the parents in her life, to be the mother of adult children.
The receptionist wished her congratulations on the way out, and Maggie hoped her smile wasn’t too thin. The smell of the café in the main part of the hospital made her stomach turn, so she left through the outpatient wing, hurrying toward the fresh, fall-scented air that awaited beyond the sliding doors.
The sight of her mother stopped her in her tracks.
“Mom?”
Denise was dressed, as usual, in sleek layers of slacks, silk shirt, and sweater, her jacket folded neatly over one arm. Her pearls gleamed beneath the fluorescent overheads. She stood in front of a vending machine, lips pressed together in a subtle show of distaste as she surveyed the offerings.
She jerked a little at the sound of Maggie’s voice, hand fluttering toward her throat. Maggie had always wondered if she was grabbing for her heart…or for her pearls, as if she was afraid she was about to be robbed. The latter seemed most likely.
“Margaret.” Her gaze swept Maggie like a sergeant’s during troop inspection, searching for flaws. “What are you doing here?”
Maggie imagined the tiny life inside her cringing in terror.
“I had my annual,” she lied. “What about you?”
“Oh, well.” Denise straightened her pearls and smoothed her blouse, gaze flicking away over Maggie’s shoulder. “Your father’s just having a little outpatient procedure.”
Maggie’s stomach tightened, and this time it had nothing to do with morning sickness. “What kind of procedure?”
“A heart cath.” She said it so casually, like it was nothing. Like it was an earache or something.
“What? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.”
Maggie’s heart was kicking a fast, dull rhythm against her ribs. The waiting room seemed to tilt, just slightly. “Has – has he been having problems?”
“A little short of breath, a little too fatigued,” Denise said with a shrug. “We won’t know anything for sure until the doctor takes a look.”
“You didn’t…why didn’t you let me know?”
Denise sighed and tilted her head back, so she could look down her aristocratic nose at her. “You don’t exactly like to hear from me.”
And just like that her mounting fear turned to anger. “No. I don’t like to be ridiculed. I don’t like it when you pass unfair judgement on my kids–”
“You only have one child, dear, the boy isn’t yours.”
“See? Just like that. That is why I don’t call you like I should. That is why we can’t have the kind of mother-daughter relationship I have with Ava. When I do talk to you, you tell me what a disappointment I am. But then when Dad’s in the hospital with a catheter shoved in him, you can’t bother to let me know? God, what the hell, Mom? What the hell?”
People were staring at them now, turning away from the TVs and toward the developing argument.
“Keep your voice down,” Denise hissed.
Maggie went to the nearest chair and sat down, hard, digging out her phone so she could let Mina know that someone would need to man her desk.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting to hear how my father’s doing,” Maggie said, matching her mom’s frosty tone. “Hate me all you want, but you can’t keep me away from him.”
Denise stared at her a long moment, mouth set, then sighed and sank down into a chair two spaces over.
~*~
“Yeah. Okay. Be careful.” Ghost tucked his phone away, frowning to himself.
“Problem?” Walsh asked.
“Maggie’s dad is in the hospital.” Which meant she was at the hospital, which meant there was no one keeping an eye on her. Damn it, this was why they needed prospects at all times: guard dog duty.
Walsh glanced back at his laptop; he’d been glued to the thing all day and Ghost had no idea how he could even see at this point. “You gonna go up and sit with her?”
“Yeah. There’s nothing going on around here anyway.” Because, to his frustration, there were no leads on their dog killer. Aside from his weird premonitions.
Walsh nodded without looking up. “I’ll call if anything changes.”
“Thanks.”
It was that time of year when evening came on quickly and suddenly. Outside, the sun was already down behind the tree line, the last light the color of fallen maple leaves. A fog was creeping in off the river, low and sinuous, stealthy as a cat as it slunk across the Dartmoor lot. The breeze smelled of a sinister kind of wood smoke, wildfires in the mountains grown vicious thanks to the drought.
Ghost spotted an unfamiliar bike, a man sitting astride it, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.
Against the backdrop of the orange-smeared sunset, the figure was just a silhouette: masculine shape, wide shoulders, hair just long enough to get caught in the wind. As Ghost approached, the man pushed a hand back through it, smoothing it along the crown of his head, a once-familiar gesture, just now remembered. The cherry of a cigarette glowed in the semi-darkness.
Ghost squared up his own shoulders and put a hand on the butt of the Colt that rested just inside his cut, in his shoulder holster. It was an ordinary sight: a biker sitting on his bike in the middle of a biker compound. But nerves like fingers crawled all up and down the back of his neck. And he realized his instincts were correct when he finally got within visual range of the man’s face.
“If I were you,” Ghost said, fingers curling around the grip of the gun now, “I’d hope you just look like someone I used to know, and that you ain’t actually him.”
The responding laugh lifted the hairs on his arms. Low, and deep, maybe a little rougher from the years and smoking, but otherwise just the same. “Ah, Kenny. You never did learn how to greet a friend properly.”
“No, I did. You never were a friend, though.”
Roman chuckled and swung a leg over his bike, standing upright. He was of a height with Ghost; they’d always been able to stare each other right in the eye. Duane had always wondered if that contributed to their animosity. Really, it was just because Roman was a disloyal shithead.
In the faint glow of his cigarette, Ghost could see that Roman’s face had aged like his own had, full of lines and too rough at the sharp corners, sandblasted by the wind and road. There were light streaks in his once-gold hair. But his profile, strong and sure as ever, still looked like something stamped on a Roman coin, his nose just this side of too large.
“I got your message,” Ghost said, and tried hard not to grind his teeth.
Roman’s brows went up. “What message?”
“Don’t get cute, Roman. I haven’t seen your ass in years. Explain yourself.”
He chuckled again, and Ghost hated the sound. “You didn’t think that I might be here to help you?”
“It’d be the first time.”
“Jesus, you aren’t still sore about that old shit, are you?”
“I’ll say it again: Explain yourself.”
The cigarette hit the pavement, a tiny shower of sparks.
“Okay, so,” Roman said. “You’ve got a shitstorm brewing.”
Ghost’s pulse accelerated. But he said, “And you know this how?”
“Just because you run the underworld doesn’t mean you hear all the gossip.” He reached into his back pocket and Ghost’s hand spasmed. He was fully prepared to shoot the man at this point. But Roman pulled out a folded and crumpled piece of paper, rather than a weapon of his own. “Here.” He held it out to Ghost. “This is an email I got a few weeks ago.”
A part of him didn’t want to take it; it felt like some kind of capitulation to entertain a request as simple as reading an email. It was childish, Ghost knew, his hatred of Roman, but it was the way he felt all the same. He couldn’t will it away.
There was just enough light to read what he quickly realized was a recruitment message. A club that fancied themselves the Dark Saints. They were searching for new members who had “experience with firearms,” were “accomplished riders,” and who “prided loyalty above everything else.” It was a shockingly well-written message given that it had been put out by an outlaw. Ghost hadn’t found a whole lot of literacy among clubs, other than his own.
“Never heard of these guys,” he said, trying to hand the email back.
Roman waved him off. “You keep that. Give the addresses to your tech guy.”
Ghost frowned. “Why should I care what some other club’s doing?”
Roman folded his arms and braced his feet apart in a pose that meant he intended to stay a while. “The Saints ain’t exactly new,” he started. “They’ve been around about five years now. Got their start in Denver and they’ve been expanding, slowly, one chapter at a time, making their way east.”
“How many chapters?”
“Seven. And they’re recruiting – obviously.”
“Recruiting where?”
“Anywhere that can support a chapter. But I happen to know they’re setting one up here.”
“There’s not another club in Knoxville, I’d know about it.”
“Not Knoxville. Spring City.”
“There ain’t shit in Spring City.”
“Yeah, well, now there’s a chapter of the Dark Saints there.”
Ghost felt a stab of betrayal. How had no one in his circle of brothers, dealers, and rats thought to tell him there was a new club setting up shop just beyond their borders?
Then a more frightening thought occurred: no one had known about it.
“What are they selling?” he asked, voice a snarl.
“Mostly prescription pain meds. Heavy duty shit.”
Something Ghost’s crew didn’t sell; there was a market. Scripts were the fastest-growing sector of the drug trade.
“They’re intentionally laying low,” he said. “Because either they don’t want any trouble from us…”
“Or they want to get their arsenal built up before the trouble starts,” Roman finished. “Good guesses, both.”
Ghost took a step back. “So let’s say any of what you just told me is true. Why would you come give me a heads-up?”
“Seemed like the friendly thing to do.”
“Try again.”
For the first time, Roman’s self-satisfied smile slipped a little. “I want back in.”
“In?”
“The club, Ghost. I want back in.”
The last of the sunset went out like a doused match, there and then gone the next second. It brought with it an ominous gust of wind.
“You understand what ‘excommunicated’ means, right? Or did you hit your head real hard since I saw you last?”
“You were the one who gave me the boot. And no one’s around now who was back then. You could overturn it.”
Ghost couldn’t form words. He stood there, struck dumb by the sheer nerve of the man.
“You were in a bad accident, that’s it? Your head went through a windshield or something?”
Roman grinned, teeth gleaming in the dark. “You asked why I was here, and I’m just telling you.”
“Why’d you kill the dog, Roman? Huh? It’s bad enough you think I’ll actually bring you back into my club, but did you have to do that to a defenseless animal?”
“What dog?”
Ghost took an aggressive step forward, spine tingling like he had hackles, and like they were raised. “You lying, dog-killing piece of shit. Get off my property.”
Roman breathed a laugh, but he climbed back on his bike. “That’s fine, I’ll go. You’ll be calling me soon anyway. That I can promise.”
“Don’t fucking count on it.”
Whatever Roman said in return was drowned by the roar of his Harley coming to life.
Ghost watched him go with a lump of dread in his stomach. He’d been around too long to believe in coincidences. Somehow, this was all connected.
He heard footfalls approach from behind, and Walsh’s voice said, “Who was that?”
“Somebody who doesn’t have any business here.”