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.
No time.
Tick, tick, tick…
She selected three tank tops, two long-sleeved tees, a sweater, a sweatshirt, one pair of cutoffs, one extra pair of jeans, a nightshirt, socks, and her tiny toiletry kit that pulled double duty as a wallet. All of it she folded neatly in the backpack and zipped up, checking it off her mental list.
“Where’s Mercy?”
“Here.” He appeared in the doorway of her bedroom, leather jacket on beneath his cut, hair slicked and tied back, sunglasses hooked in the collar of his flannel shirt. Whatever he was taking he’d already packed in saddlebags, attached to the bike. She’d seen the bedroll bungeed on behind the bitch seat. They were ready for whatever the road threw at them.
“Merc,” Maggie said, “when was the last time your shoulder was cleaned? Let me look at it before you go.”
Guilt spiked hard in Ava’s stomach; in the flurry of the last few days, she hadn’t been forcing her ministrations on him like she should have. They’d let the wound slip, and that was something they couldn’t afford to do.
“Nah, it’s fine,” he said, rolling his shoulder reflexively.
“No, let me see,” Maggie insisted. She shooed him from the room. “Come on, it won’t take a second. I’ll dress it real quick.”
Ava took a moment, as they left, to glance around her room, make sure she’d remembered her cell phone charging cord and a hair elastic and her chapstick. She should have been afraid, she reflected, scared to death that she had to run away like this. But all she could find was excitement, a thrilling anticipation. She wasn’t running away alone. Mercy wasn’t leaving her behind. She didn’t want to risk losing her place at school, but it was just school, after all, and this was her future, with her man. This was safety in the form of the two of them together, just them and the pavement and a sunset somewhere along the Gulf.
When she joined them in the kitchen, Mercy was shirtless and straddling a kitchen chair, arms folded over the back of it while Maggie applied a fresh bandage. Her brows were puckered together as she smoothed the edges of the tape.
“What?” Ava asked, fear stirring.
“I’m sending you with supplies,” Maggie said, gesturing toward the brown paper bag on the counter. “Y’all have got to keep this clean, twice a day, no exceptions.”
Ava swallowed. “I won’t forget.”
Mercy stood and reached for his shirt, tossing her a smile. “I’m fine, baby. Don’t worry about it.”
Ghost came in the back door, his cellphone in his hand. “I talked to Stack,” he told Mercy as the big Cajun buttoned up his shirt. “And he’s working something out for you two for tonight. The feds will think to check at clubhouses within riding distance. When you hit the Georgia line, call Sly Hammond.”
Mercy nodded, grinning. “Why that man isn’t one of us, I’ll never understand.”
“For tonight, be glad he’s not,” Ghost said. “And don’t embarrass me,” he added, a stern, fatherly slant to his brows thrown in for effect.
Mercy made a pretend offended sound in his throat and shrugged into his jacket and cut.
Then Ghost looked at her. “Alright. Time to go.”
There wasn’t time to call Leah, or Carter, say goodbye to her brother, email her professors and advisor, stop for one last breakfast as Stella’s, or even make that visit to her grandmother she’d been putting off since she arrived home. She felt the threat of discovery pushing them out the door, down the driveway, to Mercy’s waiting bike. She didn’t even have time to marvel at the cataclysmic changes of a week’s time.
Maggie pulled her into a tight hug, tears slipping silently down her face. “My precious girl,” she whispered. “Be careful. Be so, so careful. Don’t step away from Mercy for a second.” She pushed her back, caught her face in her hands. “I love you more than anything in the world. Come home safe.”
“I love you, Mom.”
Then Maggie hugged Mercy around the waist, her grip fierce. “Love you, too, you big monster. I don’t have to tell you to take good care of her, but I’m going to anyway.”
Mercy cupped the back of her head, briefly. “It’ll be fine, Mags.”
Ghost and Mercy hugged, a back-slapping man-hug that said a dozen different things.
And then Ava faced her father, and she had no idea what to expect.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. When he pulled back, he pressed something cool into her hand. “An extra clip,” he explained. “For the nine mil I put in your bag.”
His eyes said he loved her, and she swallowed the lump in her throat, nodding, hand curling around the magazine.
She glanced back, once, her hand on Mercy’s shoulder as they pulled out of the drive, and watched her mother lean against her father’s shoulder, Ghost’s arm going around Maggie, the early, early sunlight catching the gleam of tears in their eyes.
There was steam rising off the grass of the practice fields in the early wash of first light. Buses rumbled past, belching dark exhaust, the windows filled with hands and faces and bright jackets. At the top of the hill, overlooking a PE para-pro who was setting out orange cones for the day’s walking and jogging tests between the sprayed-on lines of the field, Aidan lit a cigarette and passed his lighter to Tango.
Greg had come in a car this time, a rattletrap Volvo from the early nineties. He wore the dark hood of his sweatshirt pulled up, and worked his hands into fists over and over again that he then forced to relax.
“The mayor isn’t the one backing the club,” he said, eyes downcast, the shame in him obvious. He felt shitty about ratting, but not shitty enough to keep his mouth shut. “But they’re related. He came by the clubhouse yesterday; some drama going on or something. I overheard him talking to Jasper. He’s a real rich fucker, from Georgia, and from here, first, I think. He kept talking about his cousin. I think he’s the mayor’s cousin.”
Aidan traded a flat, orchestrated look with Tango and then leveled his gaze on Greg, working a note of apology into his voice. “That’s great and all, but we already knew that.”
Naked panic streaked across Greg’s face. He raised his voice, as another bus lurched past behind him. “Five years ago,” he said, desperately, “that’s when you guys had that problem with the designer drugs, yeah?”
Aidan felt his brows want to go up and let them. “Yeah. So?”
“William. The guy, his name’s William, that’s what Jasper called him. Those drugs – Wild Bill? – they were talking about them. Wild Bill – William. Our backer is the guy who brought those drugs into Knoxville. He’s been trying to take you guys down for years.”
Aidan felt true surprise. This time, when he looked to his friend, Tango wore a similar expression of curiosity.
“You know this for a fact?” Tango asked. “William Archer was the source of the Wild Bill?”
“I don’t have physical evidence, no, but I heard him and Jasper talking. He’s your guy. I promise you. You get hold of him, and he’ll admit it.” Fast, darting glance between them. He wet his lips. “I hear you guys have a way with…getting confessions outta people.”
Not with Mercy out of town, they didn’t, but Greg didn’t know that. And who knew: maybe Michael could step up for this special occasion.
“Greg,” Aidan said, sighing, “why are you telling me all this?”
“Because…” Doubt firing in his eyes. “You wanted me to tell you.”
“Yeah, but you’re a Carpathian.” Long, slow drag on his smoke. “I didn’t think you’d really rat them out; I was just pushing.”
Greg’s face closed up, eyes and mouth and brows tightening. It looked like a supreme effort, but he stowed away his visible emotions, got hold of himself, drew up to his full, unimpressive height. “I’m not ratting,” he said. “I’m defecting. I don’t want to be a Carpathian. I want to prospect your club.”
Aidan contemplated the smoldering end of his cigarette a long moment. Opportunity, there it was, shining in front of him. Another chance to prove himself, to grow from the teenager who lived in his father’s eyes into the man he wanted to project to the rest of the club. “Well…let’s see what we can do about that.”
“There’s something else,” Greg said. “Something I can give you.” He was sweating, the slanted sun glinting off his forehead. “I was there the night of the party.” He went white. “I was in the boat you guys found. I didn’t kill Andre, though. But I saw who did.”
Ghost had left the note himself in the wee hours, as they’d walked out of Mason Stephens Junior’s back door in the transitional neighborhood of tidy bungalows. He’d taped it to the sidelight, right beside the doorknob, so it wouldn’t be missed.
My favorite table at eight, it had read. No names, nothing to give him away, no hint of what had happened in the darkened bungalow. Nothing to see now, anyway. Ratchet had come behind them, once the cousins had been bound and gagged, wiping up droplets of nose blood with bleach.
Still, there was some risk involved. The risk that either of the fathers would find the note first. Or that whoever found it wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out the message.
But as Ghost sat in the bath of early sunlight, watching morning rush hour through the tinted window, coffee and Stella’s cinnamon rolls steaming in front of him, his phone chimed with a text alert.
Incoming, Michael alerted him. JL.
His note had worked like a charm.
Jasper Larsen came into Stella’s Café with entirely too much nervous energy pulsing through his movements, his hands half-curled into fists, his steps too large, his expression one of clamped-down aggression.
Ghost gave him a disinterested wave and sipped his coffee, wondering if Stella would come whack him across the back of the hand with a wooden spoon if he lit a smoke indoors.
Jasper slid into the booth across from him and folded both arms across the table in an aggressive way, pitching his weight forward, light eyes sparking.
“What’d you do with him?”
“Oh, Jasper,” Ghost said, shaking his head, prying a cinnamon roll loose from the frosted snarl of them on the plate, the rich smells of cinnamon and warm sugar flooding across the table. “You’ve gotta be cooler, man. That’s no way to start this conversation.”
Jasper grunted. “I ain’t got time for your smartass games, old man.”
“Busy day, then?”
“Where the hell is Mason Stephens?” he hissed.
Ghost sighed and scraped frosting off his lip with his teeth. “I’m gonna give you some advice, because I’ve been dealing with these goddamn Stephens longer than you have, and I’ve learned something about them. For them, there’s no measure too illegal when it comes to gaining a political reputation. Mason Senior almost got his kid killed five years ago trying to flood the streets with tainted X in an effort to make my club look bad. He would murder his own mother if he thought he could stage the crime scene to make it look like I did it.
“They’re the worst kind of predators, him and his kind. All smiles and Ralph Lauren and knives behind their backs.” He smiled. “Golden boys. All-American monsters, looking for a town to torture.”
Jasper made an impatient gesture with his eyebrows. “Yeah. Lots of people hate you.” Tight smile. “I get that.”
“Apparently not, or you’d realize you’re being used.” Ghost kept his voice at an unsuspicious volume, low, but not whispering, the meter of his words light and conversational. It was an art, really, having private discussions in public. “This whole Carpathians versus Dogs thing? That’s been orchestrated by Stephens and his cousin. He’s using you to do his dirty work in getting rid of us. And when we’re gone, he’ll get rid of you, without even blinking.”
Jasper’s jaw firmed up, eyes hardening. “He–”
“I know he bought you that clubhouse, those bikes, all that stupid fucking neon. It was his idea to torch the mattress store, wasn’t it?”
No answer.
“Look, kid, I’m gonna give you some good advice. Walk away. Take your matching bikes, your boys, take all the money he gave you, and go back to wherever you came from. There’s nothing in this fight for you.”
Something dark and fierce stole across his face, a shadow passing between him and the sunlight that struck his profile. “There’s revenge,” he said, voice low and fierce. “That isn’t nothing.”
Ghost made a dismissive gesture and sipped coffee. “Your old man and your uncle were stupid. It got them killed. Let it go.”
“I want Lécuyer,” Jasper said, not backing down. He sat up straight. “Tell you what. You give me him, and we’ll back off. That’s more than a fair trade: peace for one man’s life.” He leaned forward again. “Only an idiot would refuse that.”
“Call me a moron, then. I’d never sell out one of my boys. You want Mercy, you’ll have to get him the old fashioned way.”
“Oh, I plan to,” Jasper snarled, “I just thought I’d give you the chance to make things easy for yourself.” He pushed to his feet, looming over the side of the table. “You’ve really fucked up this time, Teague. Both those boys disappearing – someone’s going to notice that.”
Ghost shrugged. “I figure.”
Jasper’s smile was thin and vicious. “Seems like I’m not the one who needs the advice.” He stole a roll off the plate. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, stepping back, “but you won’t like what I have to say.”
Ghost watched him leave, the sanctimonious set of his shoulders as he pushed through the front door.
When Jasper was out of sight, lost down the sidewalk somewhere, Michael appeared from nowhere and took his seat, sliding into the booth across from Ghost.
“I should follow him,” he said in his perfect, modulated voice. “And cut his throat in the next alley.”
“Not yet,” Ghost said, pushing the plate toward his sergeant at arms. “Soon, yeah, but not now.”
He let the hot coffee flood his mouth, watched the flow of traffic, and wondered how far down the road Ava and Mercy were, how much fear was cycling through her bloodstream.
Michael passed a finger through the globbed icing on the plate and stared at it, like the stuff confused him. “War,” he said, without context, like he’d plucked the word from Ghost’s mind.
Yes, there would be war.
Vince Fielding took his office phone off the hook and let the receiver sit balanced over the stapler, the dial tone droning softly to itself. He massaged his face, the back of his neck, working fruitlessly at the all-over tension that had gripped him for days. If he had to field one more call from some hysterical soccer mom wanting to know when he’d get those “demons” off the street, he’d become one of those cops who drank on the job.
The city was in an uproar over the Dogs. A group of parents had arranged a protest on the courthouse lawn for later in the week, and it was expected to draw a crowd. Kids were getting pulled out of any afterschool activities that would put them on the roads at night. The grocery stores and gas stations were running out of bread and milk; people were stocking up and staying home behind locked doors like it was a fucking blizzard or something. He was being called out to look at doorknobs homeowners swore had been tampered with, missing bicycles and stolen newspapers. Everything from shoplifted gum to the common cold was being blamed on the Lean Dogs.
Add to that Mason Stephens’ unrelenting pressure, and the only thing Vince wanted to buy in bulk was vodka. He received no less than three phone calls from the man a day, and always at least one in-person visit. “I want those Dogs locked up, all of them. They’ve ruined this city for too long.”
It was Stephens who’d hooked Fielding up with his two informants, one of which was now dead, which stood to reason the other was in danger of ending up that way.
“Don’t be picky about the charges,” Mason had instructed. “No one’s ever been able to hit those bastards with RICO, or anything club-level. You’ll have to get them individually.”
And so he was dealing with Aidan Teague and Kevin Estes and their prior marijuana busts and assault charges. With an un-enforceable case of statutory rape against Felix Lécuyer. A record faxed over from a precinct in London outlining Kingston Walsh’s various minor offenses. Useless and time consuming, all of it.
There was a soft rap at his door, and Officer Bell stuck her head in. “Sir, there’s an Agent Grey here to see you,” she said, face stiffening into a careful expression. “He’s with the FBI.”
Oh, great. Now the feds were involved.
“Send him in. Thanks, Becca.”
She nodded and slid back. The door opened wide and in stepped a young man who didn’t look much like an agent of any sort.
Closely buzzed dark hair, dark eyes, a belligerent, muscled-up air about him with his blazer over jeans and white-soled sneakers, he pushed his obnoxious Oakley shades up onto his forehead and extended a hand for a fast shake across the desk. “Harlan Grey,” he said, dropping into a visitor chair without preamble when Vince released his hand.
“Vince Fielding.” Vince tugged at his uniform cuffs. “You’ll forgive me for skipping the pleasantries, but I’ve got a lot on my plate, Agent Grey. Why are you in Knoxville?”
Quick, darting sideways smile, sly glance like so many punk kids. Grey linked his hands over his stomach, propped an ankle on the opposite knee and got comfy. “I was going to dazzle you with my case, but we can do the short version, if that’s what you want. I lost contact with an informant of mine yesterday. He’s failed to check in through any of our usual mediums. During our last conversation, he expressed some fear. Now he’s missing.” He lifted his brows. “Word has it you’re digging up dirt on the Lean Dogs. So was I. I think we ought to compare notes.”
“Who was your informant?”
Another grin. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“It wasn’t one of the Dogs, was it?” Vince pressed, stubbornly. He had this sudden worry that his guy was pulling double duty, reporting to the feds as well.
“Nah. Just your run of the mill wannabe cop.” Grey’s brows went up. “One that Mayor Stephens won’t want to hear I’ve lost touch with. I want to know for sure he’s been compromised before I report back to my superior, and before I let the family know.”
Vince sat back, realization dawning. “Mason Junior?” he guessed.
Grey shook his head. “Close, though.” Then he turned the conversation around. “What about you? You got a set of eyes out there? That’s the only way you can get to these MC boys. Trust me: there’s no way in from the outside.”
There was a knock at the office door again.
“Well, you can talk to him yourself, see if he knows where your CI went.” To the door, he called, “Come in.”
The man who stepped into the office wore the usual blank, semi-panicked expression he always wore during these meetings, his bloodshot eyes widened by shock. He wasn’t wearing his cut, but a plain gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.
“Agent Grey,” Vince said, “meet Jace Bagwell.”
They didn’t get to Georgia, they didn’t even get outside of the city before Mercy was turning off, the bike grumbling to a halt.
“The courthouse,” Ava said, glancing up at the brick government building against the dawning pearl-blue sky.
Mercy took his helmet off and smoothed his hand along the loose tendrils of his hair. Then he reached into his cut pocket. “There’s something I think we ought to do before we leave town.” His hand came out of his pocket, and cradled in the big palm was a ring, a simple gold band, without adornment. “My grandmother’s,” he explained, half-twisting so he could see her face behind him. “Yours, if you’ll have it.”
She stopped breathing. “We…we don’t have a license.”
He smiled softly. “Ratchet’s got a friend inside who owes him a favor. There’s a license and a judge waiting on us. Leah, too, I called her while you were packing.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder to keep it from shaking, so her nose rested against his rough cheek, so her pounding heart pressed against his shoulder blade. “Mercy,” she said, because that’s all she could say, as the tears filled her eyes.
“Come marry me, baby,” he whispered. “Before one of us does something stupid again.”
She smiled and wiped at her eyes. “Okay.”
An hour later, she rode out of Knoxville on the back of a bike as Ava Lécuyer.
Thirty-Nine
Fourteen Years Ago
A man’s face. Peering at her through the screen of hollies that formed a rough fence between their yard and the neighbors’. A pale round moon of a face, as the gloom of evening settled over the neighborhood, and the streetlamps began to flicker on one at a time, and the clouds pressed at the horizon, squeezing out the first fat drops of rain.
“Ava Rose,” Mercy had said, his tall thin frame filling up the lighted doorway, and she’d forgotten all about the face. It was time for dinner, just her and Mom and Mercy at the table, Maggie testing some new recipe and Mercy entertaining them with stories of the swamp where he’d grown up hunting alligators with his father. Then it was a bath, and her pajamas, and then Maggie folding the covers up under her chin and kissing her forehead.
“Night, baby.”
“Night, Mama.”
As the light clicked out, she remembered the man’s face, the strange, plastic quality of his eyes as he’d stared at her. He’d put his finger up to his lips. Be quiet. Like he thought she might listen to him. The rain smattered against her window and the wind rushed along the eaves and she shivered. She should have told someone about the man. She was smarter than this; she should have reported it to her mom and Mercy right away.
Her bedroom door was open, and she rolled her head toward it. There was Mercy, stepping away, his big hand falling away from the doorframe.
Fear made her throat tight. “Mercy?”
He halted and came back, filled the threshold again. “Yeah?”
“I saw someone.”
“Where?” His voice changed, the velvet gentleness hardening and rising. He sounded aggressive and tightly-wound, as he came into her room, charging toward the window to gap the blinds and look through them, just a tall shadow in the glow from the streetlamps.
“In the bushes,” she said. “Before dinner. I saw him and I…” She took a deep breath. “I forgot to tell, but I should have.”
His head turned toward her. She couldn’t see his expression, but his voice softened again. He wasn’t angry with her, just worried. “That’s okay, fillette. Where exactly did you see him? Tell me everything you can remember.”
She recounted the moment, his moon-shaped face, the raised finger to his lips, the strange look in his eyes that she didn’t know how to describe properly.
Mercy nodded as she finished, and stared out the window a long time. Then he came to the bed, and his hand found the top of her head in the dark, the gesture familiar, comforting, affectionate. “Don’t be scared. It was probably just some pervert.”
Ava smiled. How wrong that, at eight, she not only knew what a pervert was, but she knew that “some pervert” was much less frightening than the monsters from which Mercy had been charged with protecting her.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, dropping a kiss on top of her head, his face pressed into her hair. “I’ll be right out here.” And in the half-lit hallway, he took up a posture sitting with his back to the wall, legs stretched out in front of him.
Ava rolled onto her side, so she faced him, hand tucked under her cheek, eyes fuzzy with fatigue and filled with the warm image of Mercy sitting in the puddled light from the open bathroom door. “You’ll stay there?” she asked, hopeful, not sure if it was wrong to want him there, but wanting it anyway.
“Yes, fillette, right here.”
Fillette, she thought as she closed her eyes. I wonder what that means.
**
Present Day
They stopped at the first Walmart they came to, and bought two prepaid cellphones, and then turned their own phones off, took the batteries and SIM cards out and stowed them in an interior, zippered pocket of Mercy’s cut. No chances: that was their motto. They had no idea who would be chasing them, but there was no doubt there’d be some major tech involved.
At a Shell station in Calhoun, Georgia, Ava sat in the shade of the gas pump canopy, sideways on the seat of the bike, and texted her mom from the new phone.
Stopped for gas. Everything fine.
She glanced down at the plain gold band on her left hand and her stomach leapt with a frenzied kind of excitement. She had champagne in her veins, and a head full of marshmallows. She was breathless, giddy. Almost four hours on the road, and she was too ecstatic to be sore or wind-beaten.
Yeah, everything was fine. Everything was spectacular.
Great! Love you both. Be safe. Text me later, came Maggie’s immediate answer. Ava knew her mother would then delete their text exchanges.
As Ava stowed the phone in her pocket and zipped it shut, she heard boots behind her on the concrete, and then a massive arm wrapped around her, across the fronts of her shoulders, tops of her breasts. Mercy’s face in her hair, like always, since the beginning, one of those gestures he’d kept, would always keep, no matter how old she was. He kissed her head. “Sitting out here smiling to yourself like a crazy person,” he scolded with a low laugh.
“I’m pretty sure you can’t call your wife crazy.”
He laughed. “That’s one of the perks of being married, sweetheart.”
Married. The word zinged through her, sang in her bloodstream. He was her man – he’d always been – and he was her husband, too, and she didn’t know if she wanted to cry or laugh, or maybe both, because she was so purely happy.
She tipped her head back, as his face lifted, so she could look up at him with a wry smile. His face was upside down to her, and the sun struck his high cheekbones, tanning them a rich gold. “Any other perks?”
He kissed her, his chin against her nose, the stubble tickling her skin. His tongue played between her lips and she brought her hands up to frame his jaw, holding him down against her as she opened her mouth.
The guy gassing up his truck at the next pump over cleared his throat loudly and Mercy lifted his head, shooting him a glare.
Ava bit back a laugh. “We are obnoxious,” she said. “We’re like those handsy people waiting in line at the ferris wheel.”
“Which ferris wheel?” he asked, distracted as he murder-stared the truck owner back around to the other side of his pickup.
“Every ferris wheel in the entire history of state fairs.” She tugged at the front of his sweatshirt. “Don’t scare the man.”
He made a snorting sound, but backed off, stepping to the pump and pulling the nozzle off the rack so he could fill the bike. “Did you talk to your mom?”
“Yep.” She swung her legs around so she faced him.
“Did you…?” His brows went up and she understood.
“No, I didn’t tell her.” Her eyes went to the ring. The fingers of her right hand went to the ring too, the tips running across the smooth gold circle. “I just…” She shrugged. “Want to enjoy it first for a little while, I guess.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts, you mean?” There was a bitter twist to his smile.
“No.” She was firm. “I mean, if this is our honeymoon” – she gestured to the gas station, the customers filling their cars, the two kids screaming over dropped ice cream sandwiches at the sidewalk – “then I don’t want to hear my dad bitching us out over the phone for half of it.” She gave him a wide, bright smile, too full of exuberance to let his doubt about her sincerity slow her down.
He studied her as the pump ticked, ticked, ticked.
“Don’t look at me like you’re waiting for me to regret it,” she said. “Because that’s not going to happen.”
His smile was small, but more true this time. “I know.”
Ava didn’t want him going down this rabbit hole any further than he’d already gone. “So where are we going from here?”
“Cartersville,” he said. “We’ll get something to eat, catch a few hours of sleep, and head out while it’s dark.”
She nodded. “The people we’re staying with – they’re club-friendly?”
He nodded. “Guy went to London with us. I trust him.”
And he didn’t trust easy. His word was more than good enough for her.
Ava got to her feet and put her back to the gas pump, so she stood alongside him.
He watched her. “What?”
She slid her arm around his waist, inside his jacket, leaning into his side, breathing the smell of road and wind off of his clothes. “I needed to do this,” she said, smiling against his flannel-covered chest.
His free hand came up, settling against the back of her head. There would always be something reverent and paternal about the way he touched her, her little girl self always in his conscience. His voice dropped to the barest whisper. “Do you wish–”
“No. Hush,” she admonished, the way he always did with her. “I don’t wish anything but this.”
“No. I don’t believe that.”
In the mid-afternoon, with the blinds shut, the chapel gave the dark, deep impression of an English study, a shuttered library, the smell of wood polish thick as smoke. It was the first chance Aidan had had to be alone with his father, and they’d needed to be alone, because what Greg had shared that morning didn’t belong out in the open air.
Aidan took a hard drag on his smoke – how many cigs was this for the day so far? – and said, “That’s just what he told me,” on the exhale.
Ghost sat leaning against the back of his chair, one elbow bent as he gripped the velvet-tufted arm, the other hand raised, knuckles pressed to his lips as he studied the toes of his boots with a deeply disturbed frown. He shook his head. “Collier? Collier. He’s torn to bits about losing Andre.”
“Yeah, but is it grief? Or guilt?”
“Jesus Christ,” Ghost muttered. His eyes came up; they looked black in the gloom. “Where’s Greg?”
“Tango’s keeping an eye on him.”
“Bring him in here.”
Aidan nodded and pushed to his feet, grinding his smoke out in the nearest ashtray.
It felt like a long walk back to the common room, his shoulders roped with dread. “Your VP,” Greg had said before, by the practice fields. “I saw him, plain as day, stab your guy Andre.”
“And the girl he was with, she didn’t see it?”
“The VP was in a hood,” Greg had said. “He came out of the shadows, like, out of nowhere. But he turned to me at the last second, after, and I had a flashlight. I saw his face. The girl never got a good look at him, I’m sure.”
Aidan had wanted to puke his doughnuts up on the grass right there. Instead, he’d invited Greg back to the clubhouse, friendly and not at all suspect. Tango had a way of putting everyone he was around at ease, so Greg doubtless had felt like a guest all this time, and not a captive.
Aidan found them in front of the TV, Tango offering commentary on the episode of Seinfeld they were watching, making slow, easy gestures with his hands to accentuate his point. Greg was smiling, but when he glanced at Aidan, the nerves were shining in his eyes.
“Come back here,” Aidan said, nodding toward the chapel. “Dad wants to talk to you.”
“Okay.” Greg looked afraid, but he got to his feet.
Where the Carpathian couldn’t see, Tango asked a silent question, brows raised.
Aidan sighed and gave a fractional headshake in response.
“Just tell him what you told me,” Aidan told Greg as they moved down the hall. “And no fucking around, okay?”
“No, none.”
To a son with no claim to any sort of authority, Ghost possessed an enviable gravitas, a presence larger than his frame, in Aidan’s eyes. When they entered the chapel, Ghost was on his feet, his back to them, peering through the blinds he’d gapped with his fingers, smoke curling from the end of a freshly lit cigarette. He turned at the sound of their footfalls, one of those slow, mob boss turns Aidan didn’t know how to pull off yet.
“It’s Greg, right?”
Greg bobbed his head; his swallow was audible. “Yes, sir.”
“Have a seat.”
Greg fumbled into the nearest chair, clumsy with nerves, and Aidan sat down beside him with more grace.
Ghost took his time coming to his seat, his movements deliberate and unhurried. He turned the velvet-covered dining room chair into a throne, the way he occupied it. “Time,” Maggie had told Aidan. “It takes time to become a true king, baby.”
“Aidan tells me,” Ghost said, his eyes laser-focusing on Greg, “that you saw Andre’s murder.”
“Yes, sir,” Greg said, stuttering a little.
“Walk me through it.”
Greg took a deep breath. According to him, he’d been able to see the party lights from the water. He’d cut the boat’s engine and floated in to shore, letting the current and the aid of a canoe paddle get him to ground. He’d known where the gate was, and that was where he’d headed, slinking along, small and silent, through the cloaking dark that hugged the river. He’d seen Andre and the blonde groupie groping at one another, stumbling, laughing, both clearly drunk. Their voices had been too loud, carrying across the distance. The girl wanted to go down to the water, “walk on the beach” as she put it. Andre told her she was a dumbass for thinking the bank of the Tennessee River was a beach. They’d argued. Greg had crouched along shore, not sure what to do with this unexpected hiccup in his plans.
Finally, Andre had opened the gate; he’d had the key in his pocket and had unlatched the heavy Master lock. Before the couple could get down to the water, a man in a hood had appeared. He’d caught Andre by the shoulder, spun him, stabbed him. Greg remembered the sound of the knife going into him. There’d been a bit of struggle, and the girl had screamed. The assailant had fled, then, as the girl shrieked at him. He’d turned, and Greg had seen his face: Collier.
“So you expect me to believe,” Ghost said, when the tale was finished, “that Collier Hershel murdered his own prospect?”
Greg lifted his chin up out of the collar of his sweatshirt, not defiant, but deciding to be brave. Aidan felt sorry for him, a big squeeze of real sympathy. “It’s what I saw, sir.”
Ghost closed his hand into a fist and brought it up under his chin, pensive and intimidating without thought. “What were you doing?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What were you doing here that night?” Ghost’s brows went up a fraction.
“I…” Greg dampened his lips and glanced away. His pulse trembled in the side of his throat.
“What,” Ghost repeated, slowly, “were you doing?”
“I’d…I’d rather not say.”
“Yeah, that’s not an option.”
“We know you’re a Carpathian,” Aidan said, in an effort to smooth things over. “We know that whatever you were doing, it’s gonna piss us off. Just tell us. You gotta be honest if you expect us to trust you.”
Ghost made a gesture with his free hand that said go ahead. “Nothing we haven’t heard before.”
Greg took a breath. “Jasper said…well, he thought…if we could get hold of one of…the women…” He shrank down into his shirt, red-faced and miserable.
Ghost’s smile was thin and grim. “Like father like son. Those boys have a real thing for going after women and children, don’t they?”
“We had surveillance photos,” Greg said to the tabletop. “Of the wives. And your daughter.” His eyes cut to Ghost, though his head stayed down.
Ghost sighed. “God, I wish she’d been born a boy.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” Greg whispered. “Honest, I didn’t. But Jasper–”
“Was your president,” Ghost finished.
“And you were doing what you were told,” Aidan said. He clapped a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Chill. We know it was Larsen, and not you.”
Greg nodded. His eyes had a suspicious sheen to them.
Ghost studied the wall a long moment, that old photograph of the London mother chapter at Baskerville Hall, and then seemed to return to himself, tension uncoiling in his arms. “Aidan, set Greg up in a room,” he said. Over the top of Greg’s head, his gaze was sharper than his voice, the suggestion unmistakable. For the moment, Greg was their prisoner, not their guest.
**
Ghost sat in the empty chapel once Aidan ushered Greg out. This room. The smell of it, the dark energy in its walls, the faces of the men in the photographs. This was his room, his inheritance. All his life, he’d been working toward this chair at the head of the table, the long view down to the end of it. In this sacred room, he’d asked Collier about what was wrong, and his vice president – and friend – had lied to him.
Maybe.
If Greg was telling the truth.
God knew.
Aidan wanted to be in charge of something, the prince taken into the king’s closest confidence. But it was moments like this that reminded Ghost how ill-prepared his son was. Some of that was his fault, if he was honest – always a father, never a teacher – but part of it was the disgusting entitlement of the younger generations.
Ava wasn’t like that. Ava was rational, gathered, self-possessed. Ava was responsible in ways he himself had never been at that age. Not meek – no, her cooperation could never be called that – but secure enough to not be so filled up with questions and rebellion.
Yeah, Ava should have been born a boy – the true prince.
And he shouldn’t have sent her knight away five years ago. He’d always wanted a king for her, someone she could rule beside. But it was the knight who was devoted, who was in her thrall and would die defending her.
He lived and he learned, and wasn’t that a shitty way for things to play out?
Finally, he pushed to his feet and went out into the clubhouse, chest heavy in anticipation of what he now had to do.
In the common room, Rottie and RJ were coming in, smeared with dirt, their hair and clothes chunky with the stuff.
“It’s done?” Ghost asked.
Visibly exhausted, Rottie fell onto a barstool and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Over where the old septic tank for the house used to be. Ground’s wet; faster decomp.”
Ghost nodded. “Good job. You guys seen Collier?”
They glanced at one another. “Nah,” RJ said. “People don’t generally offer to help with burials.”
Ghost sent him a reprimanding look. “If you see him, tell him I want to talk to him.”
When he was outside, he called Collier’s cell. He expected it to go to voicemail, and he was proven right.
“Damn.”
Maggie had learned, over the years, that in times of club crisis, when bombarded with external threats, it was imperative that they maintain as normal a routine as possible. They had to look untroubled to the outside world. Nothing tipped the cops off worse than erratic, frightened behavior. So even though she was in knots over Ava leaving, she sat at her desk in the central office and waded through the balance sheets from Green Hills, Harry keeping dutiful watch propped against the wall outside.
When Ghost walked in, she said, “You know, if that cute redheaded boy needs a recommendation letter when it comes time to vote him in, I’ll be happy to write it.” She smiled and gestured to Harry through the window with her pen.
Ghost didn’t return her smile. “You talked to Jackie today?”
“No. Why?”
He propped his hands on his hips and frowned to himself. “I’m looking for Collier.”
Like a fingertip passing down her spine, she caught the vibe of something off. Her smile dropped away, this new dread feeding off her existing anxiety. “What?”
He shook his head. “If you talk to Jackie, be real subtle. Don’t freak her out. But see if she’ll tell you where he is.”
“Ghost.”
But he was already walking out.
Cartersville was a small city, its charming aged center surrounded by cattle land and rural churches sprouting like white mushroom caps from the wide green flats of pasture. Their hosts lived on a quiet street of old, but well-maintained homes, all of them low and dark-roofed, tall pines casting shadows like fingers across the pavement. Evening was coming on, the first modest blush of it, rose and gold in the middle of the sky.
Mercy pulled into the driveway of a tidy brick ranch with freshly-painted green shutters and door. There was a black Dodge Challenger and a Harley FXR under the carport. Mercy parked alongside the other bike, under cover, where the Dyna wouldn’t be easily spotted.
“Thank God,” Ava murmured as she stood and stretched her legs, grateful for the chance to be on her feet again. She unbuckled her helmet and turned lifting it off her head into a long, skyward stretch that popped the kink in her lower back.
“You haven’t ridden in a while,” Mercy said knowingly, his smile sympathetic as he set his helmet on the handlebars.
“Not that I don’t like it,” she rushed to say.
“But it’ll kill ya,” he finished. “We’ll stay here a while.” He winked. “Get you all loosened up.”
She smiled back…and then felt it fade. She’d only just now realized: this was their wedding night, and they were guests in someone’s home. Someone’s small home. Crap, she couldn’t have sex feet away from kind strangers who’d offered to put them up for the night. Because Mercy had put his beloved grandmother’s ring on her finger, and the consummation of that would be no quiet, dark of night, secret thing. She didn’t think she could allow herself to do even that much on someone else’s sheets; that just felt wrong.
She didn’t get a chance to explain, because a side door opened at the top of a short flight of steps and a man came out of the house to greet them.
He was about six feet tall, like her father, lean and narrow-hipped and walked with an effortless, contained energy that looked unconscious. He was blonde, that blonde that starts as tow-headed on children and becomes a burnished, platinum-gold on adults, his skin tan, lined heavily around the eyes and mouth, his eyes a very clear, bright blue. He was in jeans and a long-sleeved white tee with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Classic, she thought. Straight out of an old movie, nondescript rather than handsome, his expression very composed and quiet.
Mercy grinned and stepped ahead of her to shake the man’s hand. “My non-Dog brother,” Mercy greeted with a laugh. The veins stood out in his hand and wrist as he shook hands, but the blonde man didn’t appear concerned that his fingers had just been crushed. “Sly, man, when you gonna come be a real outlaw?”
Sly’s smirk was small. “Soon as the missus comes to her senses and leaves me. And soon as Ray quits paying me so well.”
Mercy laughed. “You keep saying that, but I ain’t seen evidence of this money.” He moved to the side and his hand came back for her.
Ava stepped into the circle of his arm and he pulled her up tight against his side; not protective, just affectionate. He wanted to touch her. He was feeling the magnetism of that ring, too.
“Baby, this is Sly Hammond. Sly, my wife: Ava.”
“Hi.” She reached to accept his shake – hard, deep, old calluses like Mercy: a mechanic too – and saw the tiny flicker of surprise in his face. He hadn’t known the president’s daughter that Mercy was bringing would be Mrs. Lécuyer. He reminded her, a little, of Walsh, and the comparison put her at ease “I really appreciate you letting us stay for a while,” she said.
He nodded in response. “Come on in. Lay made enough food for fifteen people.” Tiny eye roll, little half-smile. A man who loved his wife.
They followed Sly up the three wooden stairs into a laundry room that fed into a kitchen. The smell hit Ava first: warm, homey, chicken and bread smells. Her stomach growled, reminding her that her last meal had been a Slim Jim and a Coke.
They entered a kitchen that was in the process of being remodeled: original but repainted white cabinets and dated appliances over new beige tile, topped with shiny new light fixtures. A blonde little boy sat in the center of the room, stacking wooden blocks with fierce concentration. A baby slept in a battery powered swing. And at the stove, a petite brunette was denuding stalks of rosemary over a steaming cookie sheet. Ava spotted two chicken potpies before the woman turned to them, her smile sweet, her eyes large and green.
Her gaze cut over to her husband first, like a fast reflex. Not an MC old lady, no, but Ava recognized the signs of a woman who lived with an outlaw, that need of confirmation, one last check that these were guests and not threats. Then she smiled at them.
“Mercy, you take up way too much space in my kitchen,” she said, eyes sparkling with good humor. She looked at Ava. “Hi, I’m Layla.”
“Ava.” She accepted the other woman’s handshake; Layla had little hands.
“Mercy’s wife,” Sly said, and Layla’s eyes went wide, moving between Ava and Mercy.
“Really now?” She laughed, her sideways grin knowing. “Champagne with dinner?”
Mercy actually looked sheepish. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
Layla, Ava learned as they sat down to dinner, was twenty-seven, loved to cook, was the daughter of one of Sly’s dearest friends, and ran the desk at the family garage she half-owned, King Customs in Alpharetta, Georgia. Their boys were toddler, Mick, and one-month-old, Wesson, named after Smith & Wesson, whom they called Wes. Their early dinner was chicken potpie, salad, potatoes, and homemade gravy, along with the promised champagne. Ava picked at her food, and noticed Layla doing the same, most of her energy consumed by helping Mick. The circumstances of their flight from Knoxville weren’t mentioned at all.
“Ava,” Layla said, tearing a dinner roll into bites for Mick, “Sly says you’re in grad school?”
Ava nodded and sipped at her champagne to push the potpie down her throat. It was delicious, but she was a little nervous, and the flaky crust was sticking on its way down. “At Tennessee,” she said. “Creative writing.”
Layla’s brows went up, expression sharpening with real interest. “You’re a writer?”
Ava nodded.
“I love to read.”
“She uses my good work bench as a bookshelf,” Sly said.
Layla made a halfhearted swat at his arm and continued, undeterred. “What do you write? Novels? Short stories? What genre?”
Ava wanted to squirm in her chair, self-conscious with her writing in front of others. “Short stories mostly, right now,” she said. “But I’d love to write a novel, someday…” She hadn’t thought about her future much in the last few days. Mercy’s leg brushed up against hers under the table; whatever direction the weeks, months, years ahead took, she had him now. She had a husband. She…
The sudden rush of happy thoughts sent an excited shiver through her, and her voice strengthened as Layla drew her out of her shell with more and more questions about school, her writing, her plans.
“Let me help,” she said when they were finished, stacking Mercy’s plate on top of hers.
“That’d be great.”
“You want a beer?” Sly asked Mercy.
“Yeah.”
“Here, hold my baby.”
Ava watched from the counter, biting on her smile, as tiny Wes was put in Mercy’s arms and he accepted the bundle as if it were priceless and breakable – which it was. She watched them leave the room, Sly calling Mick along, her heart gooey at the sight of her man with a baby in his arms. He would have been a good father. Would be, still, in the future.
“You’ve got that look,” Layla said.
Ava tore her eyes from the now-empty doorway and began loading the dishwasher as Layla filled the sink with hot water and suds to wash the pots and pans. “What look?” she asked, playing innocent, feeling her ears warm. She’d been busted.
Layla had let some of her hostess politeness slip, her smile wry and knowing. “My cousin’s been trying to get pregnant for over a year now. I know that face.”
“Oh, we’re not trying,” Ava said. She shook her head as she slotted the spoons in the appropriate rack. “Hell, we got married this morning. And we’ve got so much else to worry about…”
Layla was laughing, low, under her breath. “Doesn’t matter though, does it? When you want one, you want one, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop wanting it.”
Ava paused, bundle of knives in her hands.
Layla shrugged. “Mick wasn’t planned,” she admitted. “Neither was getting married, at first. It all just slammed into us. But then, in the middle of” – she made a broad gesture – “well I don’t have to tell you about crazy outlaw family drama–”
Ava grinned.
“ – but I wanted another baby and Sly didn’t take one second of convincing. He was all, ‘Sure. Right now? Let me get my pants off.’ ” She chuckled. “I can guarantee, no matter what else is going on, all you’d have to do is drop one hint, and Mercy would be all over that.” She made a face. “No pun intended.”
Ava laughed. “Oh no, he’d intend the pun.”
Layla pulled a pot from the suds and rinsed it under the tap. “How long have you guys been together?”
Not long, Ava started to say, because it had only been a matter of days since he’d told her he loved her, and threatened to put Ronnie’s head through a windshield. She shuddered; she didn’t want to think about Ronnie. And she hated the taste of not long on her tongue, the way it made her feel cheap and disposable. It wasn’t the truth, anyway. Because the two of them here in this house, married, running away to the swamp together, that “together” had been building since before either of them knew to watch out for it.
“Forever,” she said. “Keeping us apart was always the problem, never getting us together.”
Dishwasher loaded, Ava closed the door and moved to dry the pots as Layla passed them over.
Layla said, “I know enough about the MC world to know that there’s things you guys can’t, and won’t talk about with outsiders.” Her face told Ava that she wasn’t offended by this. She was a part of an underground network, too. She knew the drill. “So I don’t really expect an answer when I ask, Why are you guys on the run?”
Ava framed her answer carefully. “Sometimes personal business and club business get tangled up. My dad thought it’d be safest for me to leave town for a while. Mercy’s always been the one to look out for me.”
Layla’s expression was soft and thoughtful as she scrubbed. “How much older is he?”
Ava could sense no judgment. “Thirteen years.”
Layla nodded. “Sly and I are fifteen apart. It works, you know? He’s not trying to prove anything. He isn’t searching for anything – or anyone – else. Life’s awful enough as it is; it’s nice not to fall in bed next to a minefield every night.”
“My mom says older men appreciate you more.”
“Your mom’s a smart woman, then.”
Ava snorted. “She’d love you for that.”
After they’d finished cleaning up, before they left the kitchen, Layla caught Ava gently by the sleeve. “Just so you know,” she said, quietly, “they found some mold when we moved in, and Sly had to replace the sheetrock and insulation in the guest room.”
“Okay…”
“The walls are thick.” Layla winked. “And I know you got married this morning. Just try not to wake up the babies.”
Ava felt her face turn red. “I wouldn’t…”
“Don’t we all think that?” Layla said with a little laugh. “I don’t mind, I promise. That’s why God made washing machines.”
But still, Ava felt like a bad guest. The spare room, as Layla showed her after a couple hours of dozing on the sofa while the TV murmured in the background, would be turned into Wes’s room when the time was right, but for now, held a double bed, writing desk and a tall dresser. The coverlet was pale blue, the pillows done in shades of ice and chocolate. The clean, creaseless sheets smelled like rain; Ava felt immediate guilt when she turned them back.
She dressed Mercy’s shoulder, showered, and climbed between the covers while Mercy showered. She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but her eyes opened on darkness, body stirring against the feel of Mercy sliding into bed beside her, pressing the length of his frame against her back. He smelled like soap, and the warmth of the water clung to him.
“You feel nice,” she murmured, still groggy, snuggling back against him.
His face settled against the hollow of her neck; his arm slid around her waist, pushed up under her shirt so his hand could find her breasts. “Nice? Just nice? I gotta tell ya, as far as compliments go…weak, baby, just weak.”
“You’re a shithead,” she said, smiling. “How about that?”
“That’ll cost you.” His arm tightened, his hand closed over her breast, and as he shifted, pushing her down into the mattress, his hips came under her ass and she realized he was naked.
“Mercy,” she hissed. “You cannot be naked in these people’s sheets.”
He was in a mood, though, and he wasn’t going to take anything seriously. The overgrown kid in him had come out to play, and that was always the hardest of his personas to reason with. “Okay, college girl, maybe there’s some stuff they didn’t teach you at school. You’re supposed to consummate your marriage. On your actual wedding day. Which is today, in case you forgot.”
“And in case you forgot, we’re guests in someone’s home, and their tiny kids are asleep right down the hall.”
There was a low laugh threaded through his Cajun purring voice. “So try not to scream.”
“Good guests don’t get…bodily fluids…on people’s sheets.”
“You don’t know that. What if Sly and Layla rent this room out as a brothel on weekends?”
“Mercy.” She attempted to pull his hand away, and only succeeded in pushing it down her stomach, where he then reached into the waistband of her shorts, fingers going down between her legs. “Can’t you wait one night?” Until they could find some sleazy motel in Mississippi somewhere, where their neighbors wouldn’t give a damn.
“No.” He opened his mouth against her neck, tongue flexing against the pounding pulse point in her throat. His fingers teased her. “Can you?”
She applauded herself for holding out a full five seconds. Because in those five seconds, his fingertips worked against her until she was slippery.
“No,” she breathed, as her hips rolled, unable to keep still any longer. “No…but, God, Mercy, this is wrong…”
But he was tugging her shorts down, and his palm was against her sex, pushing her legs farther apart. And then he was entering her from behind, as they lay on their sides, nestled together like spoons.
His hand splayed across her belly and he drew her back against him. They barely moved, the sex slow, easy nudges of his hips, and the bed made not a sound. The sheets whispered and even that was hard to hear.
Ava fell into a pleasure-swamped dream state, half-awake, feeling drunk and languid. She could have drifted like this, searching, for hours, it felt like. But they had to sleep; they had to find some kind of finish.
He eased her over onto her stomach, helped her get her knees under her. The hard thrusting sent her over the edge and she felt him come as the spasms pulsed through her.
“Just wait till I get you alone,” he murmured afterward, as he pulled her up against his chest. “Just wait, fillette. You won’t be able to stand it.”
The alarm went off at four. They dressed in the dark, and before they left the bedroom, he kissed her, petting her hair and neck for long moments, a wordless greeting and display of affection and a desperate sort of need to be touching that she echoed in her own skin. They needed time together. Real, unbroken, continuous days of time, to take back what they’d lost in those lonely five years, and whisper quietly about what they planned to do in the years to come. To enjoy each other and breathe the same air. She hated the travel, and his hands on her hair told her that he hated it too.
Layla and Sly were waiting in the kitchen, Sly dressed, Layla in a gray silk robe tied tight at her waist.
“I made sandwiches,” Layla said. “So you don’t have to eat roller food on the road.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Ava said as she accepted the tightly rolled bags that were just the right size to fit in the saddle bags.
“Hey, this big monster brings my hubby home safe from London” – Layla gestured to Mercy – “a few sandwiches are the least I can do.”
More than a few sandwiches, Ava reflected, feeling the heat wash across her face. “I pulled the sheets off the bed and–”
“It’s fine,” Layla assured. She smiled. “Really. Don’t worry about it.”
“Wait, what’s wrong with the sheets?” Sly asked, glancing down at his wife.
Layla elbowed him. “Do you guys need anything else before you hit the road? Drinks? Chapstick? I can’t imagine traveling all that way on a bike.” She shuddered.
Ava took a deep breath, touched with dread at the idea of getting back on the Dyna. “No, I think we’re good.”
Layla hugged her in the kitchen, wished her well.
“Thank you so much,” Ava said to her, squeezing the other woman’s small shoulders. “You have no idea. This was so wonderful. Thank you.”
“Stop on your way back through,” Layla encouraged. She squeezed Ava’s hand as they pulled apart. “Good luck.”
Sly walked them out to the driveway. “I know you’ve got an army of Dogs at your back,” he told Mercy, “but if you need anything, let us know.” His face, expressionless and harsh with its lines framed by the overhead security light in the carport, was somehow benevolent.
“I appreciate it, man. I owe you one. Personally.” Mercy shook his hand, pulled him into one of those man-hugs she’d grown up witnessing.
And then Mercy was on the bike and she was settling onto her perch behind him, hands on his leather-clad shoulders.
“Ready?” he asked, before the motor turned over.
She pressed her helmeted head against his back and nodded, so he could feel it.
And they were off.