Eight
Skin retaining the heat of the shower, Ava sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed, combing out her hair; she usually washed it in the mornings, but tonight, she’d wanted the stink of smoke and beer out of it. She ran the comb through the long wet lengths of it again and again, staring mindlessly at her left foot where it peeked from beneath her right knee. The little alligator tattoo on the delicate top of it, right on the bone.
Across the hall, the shower jets pounded against the curtain as Ronnie got ready for bed.
The soft scuff of bare feet on the carpet heralded Maggie’s arrival before she stepped into the doorway and leaned a shoulder in the jamb, arms folded loosely across her middle. She smiled softly, her beautiful face sleepy, the lines around her eyes and mouth more visible. “I know it makes me a bad mama, but I do love that tat.”
Ava stuck her foot out in front of her on the folded-back comforter and stared at it in the full light. “Ziggy did a good job.” Though small, the gator was well-shaped: the squat legs, ridges down its back and tail, the raised head and open jaws.
“That he did.” Maggie glanced over her shoulder and toward the bathroom, then back, her smile becoming wry. “Does Ron-boy know what it means?”
“No. I don’t plan for him to find out.” She widened her eyes for emphasis, and Maggie mirrored her expression a moment, until Ava scrunched her nose and grinned. She sighed. “Everybody’s got a past, right?”
“Yours is just a lot scarier than most girls’.” Maggie’s expression softened, her tone becoming both serious and sympathetic. She had this way, this magic gift of feeling, of comforting and cautioning at the same time. She’d never been a mother for lectures. Grammie Lowe said it was because she’d been a teenage mother with no idea what she was doing. Ava thought it was because Maggie had known from the start that the two of them would need to be friends and allies, women in this sea of outlaw men.
“I saw Ronnie standing by himself,” Maggie said. “And Leah said you went to get a drink, but I didn’t see you at the bar.” Her brows lifted.
Ava didn’t answer; she figured she didn’t have to. Her eyes went back to the inked gator, before she could stop them.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt again, baby,” Maggie said. “Ronnie seems like a nice, oblivious, decent guy.”
“He is.” Another sigh. “I’m not going to mess that up.”
“Good.” Maggie straightened. “I’ve got the sofa all made up for him.”
Ava glanced up sharply.
“What? Did you think your daddy would let you sleep together under his roof?” She snorted. “Aidan’s not the only one who thinks you’re still twelve.”
Ava flopped backward across the bed, the slats beneath the mattress creaking and groaning just as she remembered.
“Ha!” Maggie said. “And that’s the reason he can’t sneak down the hall in the middle of the night.”
“Remind me again why I decided to live at home while I went to grad school,” Ava muttered, smiling despite herself.
“Because you couldn’t live a moment longer without your wise mother’s daily advice.”
Maggie came and sat on the edge of the bed, at her hip, and the tiredness stole over her again, pushing down at her shoulders and drawing her gaze downward.
“How’s Andre?” Ava asked.
Maggie shook her head. “He died on the way to the hospital. Jackie just called. Collier’s upset, because he was his sponsor back when Andre prospected.” The breath left her in a slow rush “This is going to be bad,” she mused.
“I picked a bad time to come home, huh?”
“No.” Maggie twitched a smile and reached over to pat the soft underside of Ava’s wrist. “It’s never a bad time for you to come home.”
Across the hall, the bathroom door opened, releasing a cloud of steam, and a wet-haired Ronnie, his t-shirt sticking to his damp chest. Ava watched the way the cotton outlined his tennis player’s physique, waited for the butterflies to stir in her stomach, and felt less than disappointed when they didn’t.
“Did the water stay hot?” Maggie asked him with layered-on cheer. “I keep telling Ghost the water heater’s fine, but he won’t stop talking about getting a new one.”
Ronnie paused in the act of toweling his hair, frozen in the hallway, his gaze swapping between the two of them on the bed. Ava felt the reservation in him, that sudden caution. The world had been showing her that caution since she was a toddler, whenever anyone found out where she came from, and who her people were.
It was the first time Ronnie had shown her The Fear. “It…stayed hot,” he said, his expression slack.
Maggie stood, cheery and pretending she didn’t notice. “Great. I’ve got you a bed on the couch all fixed. Come take a look.”
“Um…okay.” He looked at Ava, The Fear intensifying.
“Not in my dad’s house,” she said with a sigh. “Sorry.”
When he trudged away, she stared at the ceiling, her mind spinning away from him, toward Andre, what had happened to the club that night because of it. Someone had murdered a member. That wouldn’t be taken lightly. There would be retribution. There could even be war.
She closed her eyes and remembered Mercy’s warm hands on her skin. Her pulse leapt at the memory of his tongue in her mouth.
“Welcome home, Ava,” she whispered.
“You all set? You need anything else?” Maggie asked on her way through the living room.
Ronnie was sitting on his makeshift bed, holding his cell phone which he’d just plugged into a wall outlet to charge. He looked skittish as a colt, eyes too open and mouth too small. “Maybe just a glass of water.”
“Okay.” She proceeded on into the kitchen, where she got down two short glasses. One she filled with water at the tap. The other with two good splashes of the Jack Daniels she pulled down from on top of the fridge.
When she returned, Ronnie stood up and accepted his water. “Thanks.” As he sat again, his eyes came to the whiskey, its lush amber color, as she raised the glass to her lips and took a sip.
“Sorry.” She twitched a smile as she stepped backward and lowered herself into the little slipper chair where she liked to have her six a.m. coffee. “Been a long day. I’d offer you some, but you don’t look like a whiskey man.”
He blinked, some of that trepidation replaced with the gentle coloring of rich-boy indignation. He might have come from a completely different side of the tracks from the men in Maggie’s life, but there was one thing she’d found to be true of all men: they didn’t like to have their masculinity questioned.
“So, Ronnie.” Maggie hooked her legs over the arm of the chair and got comfy, glass held against her chest. “You’re going to grad school at UT too?”
“It’s one of my top choices.”
“What’s your area of study?”
“Business. Marketing, specifically.”
“A salesman.” She sipped her Jack and kept her face neutral. She let her eyes take in the little details of him, plucking at areas she hadn’t had the chance to see earlier: the aristocratic shape to his lips, the feathering at his hairline, the flat, glassy color of his eyes. She saw his pulse in a tiny vein along his throat, saw that it was elevated. Saw the sheen of perspiration at his temples. He was a fit, handsome boy, all-American, clean-cut, and made for meeting girls’ parents. “There’s lots of money to be made in that,” she said. “I had a cousin who sold office equipment and ended up a millionaire.”
His brows twitched, his expression asking the obvious: So why’d you end up a biker wife?
Maggie quirked a grin. “We all have our choices to make. College wasn’t for me. But my girl – Ava loves learning. She’s wanted to write books since she was in diapers.”
“She’s a smart girl.”
“Yes she is.” She felt her smile stretch and let it go, allowing it to spread at will. “She was raised by a smart girl.”
“Oh.” Ronnie’s expression tightened with panic. The pulse in his throat looked ready to punch through the skin. “I didn’t mean–”
“I know what you mean.” She waved for him to calm down. “She and I aren’t the same kind of smart. I get that. She’s my little book-smart brainchild.” Maggie had been drinking Jack Daniels since she was sixteen, and she’d developed a taste for its subtle, sweeter undertones. It was almost like honey down her throat as she took another swallow and twisted her smile to something sinister. “Now let me tell you what I mean. When I said you were a salesman, that wasn’t a compliment, sweetie.”
He paled under his golden tan.
“I know your kind. Boys with good backgrounds, boys with money – you see something you want, and you take it for yourself. You saw my daughter, and maybe I should give you some credit. Maybe you saw that she was beautiful, and brilliant, and talented, and quirky in a cute sort of way. Maybe you adore her for that. Or maybe you saw a hot piece of ass and figured, what the hell, she’s from a biker family, she must be easy to nail.”
“Mrs. Teague, I swear–”
“But let me make something perfectly clear to you, Ronald.” She heard the knife-edge in her voice, the one that made Ghost say, “That’s my girl,” and sent prospects and hangarounds running for cover. “If you’re just out for a lay, if you don’t adore my daughter, then you made a big mistake crossing my threshold.”
He was struck mute, staring at her in unblinking disbelief. Maybe terror.
“Understand?”
He nodded.
“Good.” Maggie drained the rest of her drink and stood. “Sleep tight. My husband will be in sometime later. If you hear someone stumbling through the dark, it’ll be him. Try not to make any sudden movements or weird noises. He only shoots when provoked.”
When she put her glass in the dishwasher, she smiled to herself a moment. Then it faded. She hadn’t been bluffing with him. Felix Lécuyer had broken Ava to bits. She’d be damned if she watched some pretty asshole put pressure along those fault lines.
The sound of the bedroom door easing open woke Maggie sometime in the darkest middle of the wee hours. She blinked against the black veil of sleep and inhaled deep the familiar smells of leather and cologne. It was Ghost. Her waking panic dissolved, and she let herself come slowly to the surface, rolling onto her side to meet him when he climbed into bed in his boxers.
“What time is it?”
“Four-thirty.”
Maggie reached through the sheets and found her husband’s chest, the wall of dense muscle, the wiry hair that she laced her fingers through. She shifted closer to him in a practiced move that was no longer conscious, just instinct.
“I heard about Andre.” She didn’t apologize; they’d reached a point in their marriage at which they no longer offered platitudes, but a quieter, more intense understanding.
Ghost exhaled; she could hear the exhaustion in his breath. “Collier’s heartbroke. Everybody’s mad as hell. I’m mad as hell,” he amended. “Jesus. I thought we were done with this bullshit.”
“I know, baby.”
When Maggie met Ghost for the first time – when she was sixteen, propped up against the wall in front of Leroy’s, wearing short cutoffs and red lipstick – the club had been entrenched in the typical outlaw pursuits of the one-percenter life. Selling guns, drugs, and protection services, they’d been the sort of “undesirable element” the city had wanted to eradicate. They’d been as outlaw as outlaw got, unrepentant in their sinning. She’d smelled the wicked coming off of the man who would become her husband; it was smoke-scented, vivid and acrid against the clean-scrubbed autumn air.
But even then, Ghost had been working toward a more lucrative, legitimate way to make bank, one that would give him the means to support his son and eat something besides ramen. In those first forbidden years, in the pensive, post-coital moments, he’d confided his dreams to her: a business. A whole fleet of businesses. A way for the club to stand on its own without help from the underbelly. A way for the club to survive. That had been his driving passion: the survival of his club.
“We can’t keep doing this,” he’d told her. “There has to be a smarter way.”
The bike shop had come first. Then the trucking company. By the time Ava was two, the Dartmoor property had been purchased. Walsh had come along, and with his help, the finances had been refined, and Dartmoor had grown again, becoming more profitable than Ghost had ever hoped.
James may have been president for a long time, but it was Ghost who’d brought about the evolution of the club into a sustainable entity. He’d elevated it. And it was that ambition in him, the drive, that Maggie had fallen in love with.
“I’ll take up a collection,” Maggie said, “for his kids.”
Ghost rubbed her upper arm. “Yeah. That’d be good.”
“I’ll call Flanders tomorrow and get the funeral set up.”
“Call Jackie first. She’ll want to help with the details.”
“Of course.” Maggie rolled away from him, sat up and clicked on her lamp, pulled pen and notepad from her nightstand drawer and began making a list, squinting against the light.
“Do that in the morning,” Ghost said, and she heard the underlying request. He didn’t want Maggie the MC old lady beside him; he wanted Mags his wife.
“I’m afraid I’ll forget,” she said, hastily scribbling a last note. “There.” She set the pad on the nightstand and turned off the lamp, slid down into the covers again.
Ghost turned her into his arms and his mouth sought hers in the dark, the sort of unhurried kiss that was a need for comfort.
When he pulled back, he said, “I’m glad Ava’s home. Even if she’s got shit taste in boyfriends.”
Maggie snorted and snuggled her face into his throat. “She’s trying to be normal. We should probably encourage that.”
“Not if normal means dating assholes like that.”
Maggie sighed against his bristly neck. “Well, you didn’t like it when she tried to do things the MC way.”
Ghost went very still against her.
Maggie bit her lip, not sorry she’d gone there, wondering what he’d say in return.
When he spoke, his voice was cold and flat. “That’s because it wasn’t the ‘MC way.’ It was just sick.”
In the dark, Maggie rolled her eyes. Ghost’s reaction to Mercy and Ava had been that of a typical father, amplified by the club, amplified further by the fact that Mercy had known Ava since she was eight-years-old. Maggie herself had been horrified, but in a distant, removed part of herself that was ruled by logic. Her heart had understood and asked no questions, even if she should have rejected the pairing with every fiber of her being. Mercy and Ava were connected in a way that Ghost couldn’t comprehend…and that couldn’t be snuffed out by separation. Inhabiting the same city together would have devastating effects, even if the two of them were in denial now.
But she said, “Well, she’s with Ronnie now.”
Ghost murmured something she couldn’t hear, and kissed her forehead. “I oughtta lock her up.”
“Spoken like a true idiot father,” she said, and kissed the side of his throat. “You’ve got bigger fish to fry right now, baby.”
“Yeah I do,” he said grimly. “I just gotta be president first.”
Ava spent almost three hours pretending sleep might come. She heard her father come home, his soft tread through the house, and the closing of the master bedroom door behind him. At five, she listened to the paper hit the front stoop and pushed herself out of bed. In the dark, she found clothes by feel, dressed, and slipped across the hall to brush her teeth and wash her face. Without waking Ronnie – he slept with one leg dangling off the couch, his blanket wadded on top of his stomach – she went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Barefoot, she disengaged the door locks and stepped out into the black of morning, to retrieve the paper in its plastic sleeve from the stoop. It was a Saturday, and the neighborhood was still deeply asleep, almost haunted in its dark silence. A bat fluttered through the cloud of moths beneath the streetlamp, seeming clumsy, but deadly in his accuracy.
Ava went back inside, into the kitchen again, setting the paper on the table and pouring it from its sleeve, watching the pages rustle, feeling like an intruder in this kitchen in which she’d grown up. It seemed wrong to her, in ways inexplicable, to come back home and ask to be taken in by people she’d left behind. College had always felt like abandoning her family, no matter how insistent they’d been in telling her they wanted her to go. “I never had a chance to go to school for free,” Ghost had said, and stamped her tender feelings about departing with another layer of guilt. Leaving Knoxville had felt like a statement she’d never wanted to make: that the wide world had something better to offer than her people did. That had never been true in her mind, but being back here now left her melancholy, alone like this in the early morning hours.
Because it felt like the charitable thing to do, she rummaged in the cabinets and began laying out the ingredients she’d need to make a big pot of oatmeal. She liked cooking – it was homey and domestic, Southern and comforting, a way to show the men in her life that she cared. Ghost wouldn’t sleep late, she knew, not with what had transpired last night, and this would be a way to earn her keep, making everyone breakfast.
Once she had the oats on, she took a mug of coffee to the table and sat, flipping the paper over idly and scanning the headlines.
The top one caught the breath in her throat, and sent her hurtling back through the fields of her memory.
Back to Mason Stephens threatening her with the impending governorship of his father, all those park bench and bus stop ads.
Back to Stephens’ loss and Mason’s more treacherous assaults against her as they grew older.
Back to a hideous night in which her unswerving love for Mercy had proved her salvation…and damnation.
Back to a vague mention of the mayoral race her mother had made on the phone a few months back.
All the way to the present. To the words before her, and the chain of events they would inevitably kick off.
Gang Violence in Our Own Backyard; Mayor Mason Stephens Vows to Shut Down the Lean Dogs
Nine
Fourteen Years Ago
Maggie closed her car door with her hip, juggling purse, umbrella, grocery sack, and keys as she tried to keep dry beneath the onslaught of drumming rain. It was a murky night, colors and shadows running together in an underwater gloom. Standing in her driveway felt like being at the bottom of the river, the wind like water currents, the visibility almost zero.
Poor Dublin: as one of the newest, youngest members, he had been designated her tail for the day, and was slopping through the rain on his bike. She couldn’t imagine how he was seeing through his nighttime riding goggles in this mess. The headlamp of his Harley cut a dim swatch through the inky black; the raindrops flashed silver in the beam.
“Thanks,” Maggie called, tossing him a wave.
He started to swing his leg over the bike and she sighed and headed up the front walk. She didn’t need him to walk her in, but whatever. She was tired of arguing with bikers. Her feet hurt; her back hurt. She was exhausted, and sick to death of walking through her daily life worried that an AK muzzle would sprout from a car window and bullets would pepper the air. Her steps were dogged by Dogs, the irony hilarious and terrifying at the same time. The club was at war, and as a general, Ghost was needed on the front lines. Which meant the underlings were on watch dog duty. Which meant as she sold pansies and pallets of sod at McMurray Nursery, a Dog was never too far off, waiting and watching, guarding.
In the dark, she almost ran into the bike parked in front of the garage, and the rain boots she’d worn to work splashed through the sidewalk puddles. She turned up her nose at the pale, bloated worms that wriggled in the larger pools of water.
Dublin followed her, ducking beneath the stoop and waiting as she unlocked the front door.
“Go on,” she told him with a shooing gesture. “Go get out of this weather. And be safe.”
He dipped his head. “Yes, ma’am.” And jogged back to his bike.
Maggie elbowed the door open, snapped her umbrella closed, dropped it on the front step, and entered the house shaking raindrops from her ponytail.
Slowly, as the paychecks rolled in and the club’s legitimate interests expanded, she was adding flavor and comfort to their modest ranch house. In the narrow entryway, she’d just added an antique hall tree, with spotted mirror, coat hooks, bench, and storage cubbies. She set her grocery bag on the bench, toed off her boots, hung up her soggy hoodie, then grabbed the bag and headed into the living room. She halted in her tracks as her eyes fell on the scene before her.
On the living room sofa, the TV throwing blue panels of light across them, Mercy sat with his socked feet on the coffee table, one hand on the remote, the other resting on Ava’s tiny shoulder; Ava lay on her side, curled up like a cat, her head resting on Mercy’s thigh. It was a familiar pose, one that Ava usually took up with her father. Tonight, it was her watcher and protector that she slept against. And Mercy, for all the terror of his face and form, had the air of a great beastly mastiff as he encircled the girl with one large arm and looked both relaxed and ready to eliminate anything that dared threaten her. The still shot of them together like that spoke to so many things: a protectiveness, a sweetness, some deep tenderness in him that was touched by his small charge. Something wicked and primal in the misunderstood man reacted with pure delight to Ava’s childish wonder and instant acceptance. Maggie had heard them talking together, Ava usually sounding the adult and Mercy the awkward kid.
It was a cute picture, and Maggie smiled a moment, lingering in the shadowed foyer. But she’d been jailbait. She’d been a mom at seventeen. She knew what it was to have a heart that sang a siren’s song to deeper waters, and older men. She knew what it was like to get tangled up in the confusing feelings of age difference.
Mercy had heard her come in, and he glanced her way, his eyes dark and flinty. Maggie saw the way he reared back from her in his mind, the way he wondered what she’d say to him.
“I know it’s past her bedtime,” he said, “but she fell asleep and I didn’t want to wake her.”
Maggie nodded on her way through to the kitchen where she put her bag and purse down. When she returned, she half-expected to see Mercy getting to his feet, but he was still planted squarely on the sofa, still holding Ava against his side.
Sweet boy, Maggie thought fondly, with only a touch of worry for the future fate of Ava’s emotions. Right now, she was glad to have a six-five monster watching over her baby.
She settled into her favorite little chair and pulled her feet up beneath her. The empty pizza box on the coffee table told her neither Mercy nor Ava was hungry. She’d reheat leftover meat loaf for herself later.
“Aidan’s not home yet?” she asked, taking the elastic out of her hair and running her hands through her damp locks.
“Nah. He and Tango were on cleaning duty last I heard. James told ‘em to wipe down the weight room floor to ceiling.”
Maggie sighed. “Those boys…I swear. Neither one of them’s gonna graduate. I told Ghost he couldn’t prospect them until after they were done with high school…” She pursed her lips and silently cursed the situation. This new threat from the Carpathians had sent panic rippling through the club. Aidan and Tango had been begging to prospect since they’d obtained their driver’s licenses. Two weeks ago, they’d gotten their wish. Now, they had old beat-up bikes of their own; they wore cuts with Prospect bottom rockers. And instead of calculus homework, their evenings were filled with club housekeeping and strategizing revenge.
“Aidan has his books with him,” Mercy said, clearly trying to console her. “He’s a sharp kid; maybe he can keep up with both.”
Maggie twitched a smile for him, her gaze lingering on his massive hand where it rested on Ava’s shoulder. “He’s so wild,” she murmured. “Sharp, yeah, but restless.” She leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair and propped her temple against it. “My mother thinks I ought to kick him out of the house if he won’t keep up with school.”
Mercy’s dark brows jumped.
“I’d never do that. That’s the kind of mother she was. That doesn’t accomplish anything. I mean, look how I turned out.”
He grinned. He had one of those truly happy grins, one that didn’t seem to belong on his harsh face.
Maggie changed the subject. “You’re good with her.” She nodded toward Ava. “She doesn’t take to new people right off most of the time. She likes you.”
There were people who feigned modesty, suck-ups who wanted to appear gracious. The way Mercy’s face twitched held nothing fake. He wasn’t a man who’d had many compliments in his life; he didn’t know what to make of them. In the pale wash of blue light, his cheeks darkened slightly. “Well, she…she’s smart. I don’t ever spend any time with kids, really, but I don’t guess most of them are smart and quiet.”
Maggie snorted. “God knows I wasn’t.”
Mercy’s returning smile was polite; his eyes went to Ava, the little sleeping cat-like creature she was at his side.
It wasn’t just the children who were smart, Maggie acknowledged; her husband was a quick-thinker too. He’d perceived that vacant spot in Mercy, the cold loneliness. She wondered, though, if Ghost had ever anticipated that Mercy would grow to love his little charge. Because that’s what it was, the type of love that an uncle or father or big brother would have shown. Ava – who’d had so much trouble making friends at school – had captured this big biker effortlessly.
The rain drummed ceaselessly on the roof.
“You want a drink?” Maggie asked. “It’ll be a while before the boys get home.”
“I don’t guess you’ve got any Johnnie Walker Red,” Mercy said with a hopeful voice.
“Oh, honey.” Maggie stood. “Never doubt the liquor cabinet of an MC old lady.”
**
Present Day
“He’s the mayor?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Maggie stirred the bubbling pot of oatmeal and stole a taste on the end of the wooden spoon. She made a face. “Ugh. Baby, you’ve got to tend what you’re cooking. This is like oat paste.”
“No, Mom, you didn’t tell me.”
Maggie knew she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted anything to deter her daughter’s return home. So sue me, she thought. “I know I told you he was running.”
“Yeah, but…”
Maggie turned from the stove and saw Ava sitting at the table, eyes on the front page of the local paper, expression horrified. She was still in the terry shorts and tank she’d slept in, her hair a little flat as it fell in sheets down her shoulders. It was hard – especially after they’d been apart for any length of time – to rectify her little girl with the young woman who sat before her now. Beautiful in an unassuming way, long-limbed and sure-footed and all grown up.
Yes, Maggie had known that the news of Mason Stephens Sr. finally winning office – here in Knoxville, no less – would upset Ava. And yes, she’d withheld the news on purpose, not wanting anything to discourage her baby from coming home.
Ava glanced up, her brown eyes wide with fear. “He’s not kidding around,” she said, tapping the paper with her index finger. “He’ll want blood, and he’ll come get it.”
“Try to come get it.” Maggie clicked off the burner behind her back and moved the pot off the stove in a covert move. Bless her heart: Ava liked to cook, but she sucked at it. “What happened last night wasn’t on us.”
“Like Stephens will care.”
Ronnie, sporting monstrous bedhead, shuffled into the room, stretching his arms up over his head.
Ava half-turned to him. “Oh, hey. How’d you sleep?”
“Fine.” He put both hands on the back of Ava’s chair. They didn’t kiss, didn’t touch; they maintained a respectful distance. It was all very circumspect.
It was nothing like Ava had been with Mercy. When Ava was still just a girl, there’d been that effervescent affection. When Ava was a teen, there’d been that longing, that way Mercy had hated his own tangling of love and new, sudden attraction. Those two had never had a prayer. The energy had shimmered between them, dark and healthy in a way no one else had seen and so, so strong.
But Ava with Ronnie – that was nothing. That was Melba Toast.
Maggie waited for Ronnie to meet her gaze. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.” As she went for another mug, he asked, “What’s going on?”
“Satan’s the mayor,” Ava said.
“Don’t give him that much credit,” Ghost said as he entered, and Ronnie nearly jumped out of his skin. “He’s not smart enough to be Satan.”
Ghost was dressed, his salt-and-pepper hair damp from the shower, his cut in his hands. At fifty, his pecs and biceps stilled filled out his black muscle shirt in a way that left Maggie’s pulse skipping. He’d maintained that post-army hardness and strength in all the years they’d been together. From the slicked-back feral charm of the twenty-seven-year-old who’d caught her eye, to the proud, stern MC vice president who graced her kitchen every morning, her love of him had become more precious and resilient as she’d grown up within their marriage, like a hard shiny pearl. The jagged passion of girlhood had evolved into something sterling and beautiful.
“Satan’s minion, then,” Ava corrected. She dropped the paper with a disgusted face and turned to her father.
Ghost shrugged as he dropped into his usual chair. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. He can’t touch us. We haven’t done anything.” Then he lifted his unforgiving gaze to Ronnie and the poor kid went rigid with terror.
“How’d the couch work out for you?”
“Fine.” Ronnie swallowed hard. “Sir.”
“You gonna get your own place? Or have I got to put you up from now on?”
“Ghost,” Maggie said. “Don’t.”
“He’s going to get an apartment, Dad,” Ava said in an exhausted voice.
“Is that true?” Ghost asked Ronnie.
“Don’t torture the boy,” Maggie said, turning her back on the situation and going to the fridge for a fresh cantaloupe.
She could no longer see Ronnie’s bulging eyes and quivering lips, but could envision them as she heard the tremors in his voice.
“I – I’ve got two places to go look at today. Believe me, sir, I don’t mean at all to overstay my welcome.”
In a mock-affronted voice, Ghost said, “ ‘Believe’ you? Is there something wrong with my couch?”
“No, sir. I just meant that – that I didn’t want to…to infringe. I mean…I don’t want to bother you–”
“You think I don’t know what ‘infringe’ means?”
“Dad!” and “Ghost!” Ava and Maggie said together.
“What? I can ask questions in my own house,” he grumbled.
“Ronnie’s a responsible young man,” Maggie said as she sliced into the cantaloupe. “He’s not planning on living on our couch long term. Are ya, Ronnie?”
“N-no, ma’am.”
Maggie bit down hard on her tongue as she pulled down a serving platter, her back still to the crew at the table. Ronnie. Oh, Ronnie, you don’t have a prayer. Ava had grown up with decisive, unshrinking men, not stuttering yuppies.
“What’s for breakfast?” Ghost asked. “I smell something burned.”
“How sweet, baby.” Maggie plated the sliced cantaloupe and went to the pantry for the box of Cheerios.
“Well, I smell it.”
“I burned the oatmeal,” Ava said in a miserable voice. “I’m just never going to be any good at this cooking thing.”
“Here.” Maggie set the cereal, three bowls, and the cantaloupe on the table. “We’ll have to make do.”
Ghost reached for the Cheerios and his quick, disgruntled glance told her his mood this morning had nothing to do with breakfast, and everything to do with Ava’s boyfriend: an annoyance dumped onto his pile of annoyances.
Maggie gave him a quick tight smile that said stop worrying about that, and passed out the bowls. “Ava, when do you need to leave this morning?”
Ava glanced up at the wall clock and gasped. “In forty-five minutes! Oh, shit.” She bolted up from her chair, hair trailing behind her as she whipped around and headed for the hall.
“At least eat something,” Maggie said.
“No time!”
In her absence, Ghost and Ronnie regarded one another with contempt on one side, terror on the other.
“Right, then,” Maggie said, sliding out her chair. “Some weather we’re having, huh?”
**
Mercy dreamed of the swamp. Its mists and vapors, its brackish glass-topped water splitting against the prow of the bateau.
He sat at the outboard, steering, the motor a low purr echoing off the surface. Ava sat in the bow, her legs drawn up beneath her, her dark hair glimmering in the hazy sunlight as she watched the bayou slide past from behind the lenses of her sunglasses. She wore cutoffs and a white tank top, her limbs sun-bronzed. Her small elegant feet were bare, resting against the bottom of the bateau; he could see the navy nail polish on her toes.
When she turned to regard him over her shoulder, her smile was wondrous, her lips soft and pink. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “Why’d you ever want to leave?”
But then, like always happened, he remembered that Ava had never been to New Orleans with him.
And then his eyes opened, like old rusty steel vent shutters, heavy and gritty with the sleep he hadn’t had enough of. He was in the dorm room where he’d had Ava in his lap the night before, alone, still fully dressed, and mildly hungover. Last night, the party had dispersed, and they’d sat vigil around the bar, waiting for news from the hospital. Hound and Rottie had gone hunting, wanting to be just the two of them, keeping low profiles on the streets as they sniffed around for whispers of what had happened at Dartmoor.
In truth, he wasn’t sure why he’d hoped for a peaceful return. Knoxville had always been both the best and worst place for him. That would never change.
He wouldn’t shed any tears for Andre on a personal level; he hadn’t known him well and couldn’t claim to have liked him. But on a club level, the murder of any member was a capital offense. Especially since Andre’s murder hadn’t been about him, but about the colors he wore. It was a murder against the club, not just the man in it.
Welcome back, Merc. Now get to work.
The clubhouse was quiet, but in the distance, he could hear the humming of air wrenches at the bike shop. Whatever internal drama within the MC, it was a Saturday, a work day, and the Dartmoor businesses would be running like always.
Mercy shoved out of bed, brushed his teeth with a swallow of the Johnnie Walker he’d left on the nightstand, and went to greet the day.
The common room was in a crepe streamer shambles, chip crumbs, empty bottles, damp napkins, and condom wrappers littering the floor and every table service. A hangaround was in the process of sweeping and trash-collecting. The kid nodded to Mercy on his way through and said a quick “morning, sir.” Louisiana members Matt and Grady were at the bar, talking over coffee, the hangaround behind the bar laying out napkins, swizzle sticks and a jar of creamer.
“I like how respectful the flunkies are around here,” Mercy said as he climbed onto the stool next to Matt. “They call me Sir. I could get used to that.”
Grady chuckled a thick, smoker’s laugh. “Whoever said these Millennials can’t respect their elders was wrong. They find their manners when it counts.”
“You’re the only one who thinks that,” Matt said, voice distracted. He was reading a newspaper and slid it toward Mercy. “Read that. See what you’re getting yourself into.”
The front page declared that the mayor, some dick named Stephens, was “vowing” to shut down the MC. There was a hastily snapped nighttime photo of the ambulance leaving the clubhouse, clearly taken from a distance. So the press had been alerted. That photographer had been waiting to take photos, before anyone knew that Andre was being carted off to the hospital.
Then the name struck home: Stephens. Mercy had never met the Knoxville mayor, but he’d had an intimate run-in with the man’s son, Mason Jr. The night five years ago filled his mind and crippled him a moment, bringing back to him that awful fear and tenderness that had accompanied his usual rush of furious adrenaline. That night, he’d been murderous on Ava’s behalf, and it was an experience he had no desire to repeat. It was too lethal, that kind of rage, too all-consuming.
“You picked a good time to patch Tennessee,” Grady said with an eyebrow twitch. “Good luck with all that shit.”
Mercy pushed the paper back as the hangaround handed him a steaming mug of coffee. He nodded a thanks. “Nothin’ I haven’t seen before,” he said. “I can handle it.”
Grady smirked. “Just make sure you’re handling the right thing.”
Matt chuckled into his coffee.
“I could take offense to that,” Mercy said. He sipped his coffee and found it sugared just the right amount, no cream. He saluted the hangaround with his mug and earned a pleased smile for it. Knoxville had way better flunkies than NOLA.
A sudden tangle of footfalls heralded brothers coming in the front door.
“Good, you’re up,” Ghost said as he stepped into sight, a supportive arm ready for an unsteady James should the president wobble. “You ready for church?”
“Yeah.” Mercy took a slug of his coffee and slid off the stool with one last glance for his NOLA brethren. Grady and Matt gave him openly confused glances; neither of them understood why he’d throw himself against temptation again, not after what had happened before.
But that wasn’t their business.
To Ghost, he said, “Let’s do it.”
“Purse, keys, phone…” Ava checked her reflection in the floor length mirror on the back of her bedroom door. She wore pressed black skinny trousers, black leather pumps, and a pale blue summer sweater over her sleeveless white silk blouse. She’d flat-ironed her wavy hair and then secured it in a sleek ponytail. In her ears, she wore the diamond studs Ghost had given her for her high school graduation. Her fingernails were unpainted.
All very professional and severe.
She was a totally different girl than she’d been the last time she’d checked her outfit in this mirror.
“Ten till!” Maggie called from down the hall.
“I know!” she called back. She snatched her slender leather briefcase off the bed and ducked into the hall, trying not to hurry so fast that her heels got tripped up in the carpet nap.
Maggie was packing a brown bag lunch for herself at the kitchen table, and she had company. Jace sat at the table, drinking coffee out of a Tweety and Sylvester mug, his eyes half-open and the color of a bruised pomegranate. He was in the rumpled flannel Ava had seen him in the night before.
“You might want to mainline that,” Ava said, gesturing to the coffee.
“Oh, I missed you,” he grumbled.
Maggie swatted him hard on the side of the head without taking her eyes off Ava, smiling. “Well, don’t you look…” Her smile, brittle already, began to crack around the edges.
“Like a yuppie,” Ava said. “Yeah, I know. Bye, Mom, I’ll call you in a bit.”
“I didn’t say yuppie,” Maggie called as she was walking toward the front door.
“You were thinking it, though.” Ava snagged the keys to Maggie’s CTS from the bowl in the entryway. “Love you.”
“Drive safe.”
It all felt very much like being back in high school, down to the bummed ride. Ronnie had scheduled several apartment showings for the morning while she was at her appointment, and she’d lent him her truck. It had been Maggie’s truck, once. It had been nearly totaled once; Ava still smelled the stink of gas and motor oil, still heard the hiss of steam in her nightmares sometimes.
She hit the unlock button on the black Caddy’s fob and then came to a startled halt. Jace wasn’t in the kitchen to sober up, she realized. He was there as sentry, because there was one waiting for her behind the car, lounging against his parked bike.
A young man she didn’t recognize snapped to alert at her appearance. He was in a cut, but without the usual accoutrements. She caught a clean white Prospect patch over one breast pocket. He was very tall and very thin, his hair a mop of unruly mud-brown twists. He had faint acne scars along his chin, and washed-out blue eyes.
“Ma’am,” he greeted as he dialed a number on his cellphone and then pressed it to his ear. Into the phone, he said, “Yes, sir, she’s here.” Then he extended the phone toward her. “Your dad,” he explained. “So you know I am who I say I am.”
Ava eyed him with impatient curiosity as she took the cell. “Dad, is this necessary?”
Ghost’s voice was never less imposing over the phone. “Absolutely it is.”
Ava sighed. Other girls could wheedle cars and gifts and larger allowances from their fathers. Hers was immovable in all things. “I’m on my way to the college. I don’t want to roll up with an armed guard.”
“Tough. Say hi to Littlejohn; he’s your new shadow until further notice.”
The line disconnected.
Anger boiled inside her, an anger that hadn’t existed during her childhood and teenage years. For five years, Ghost had been content to leave her in Athens, Georgia, without any MC protection or support, convinced it was the best way to keep her away from Mercy’s influence. All those nights she’d walked to her truck in the dark, gone to restaurants and bars, sat in movie and drama theaters, perused the shelves of bookstores until they shoved her out the door at closing time – where had Ghost’s orders and bodyguards been then? She’d learned to watch out for herself. She had a concealed weapons carry permit. She had a family heirloom knife she kept on her at all times and a .38 she carried when she could. For five years, she’d governed herself, and now here was Ghost, archaic and unstoppable in his paternal domination.
It was an impotent anger, though. What could she do? This lackey would follow her regardless.
She handed his phone back. “I didn’t see any prospects last night.”
“I’m new, ma’am. They gave me this first thing this morning,” he said, plucking at the side of his new leather cut. “Me and Harry.” He held his head at a deferential tilt, glancing up at her though he stood so much taller. “We were the ones who went with you down to see Andre.”
“Oh.” Her face warmed; in her haste last night, she’d never noticed what either of those hangarounds had looked like.
“We’ve been wanting to prospect for a long time now. Your dad got voted in as president this morning, and then he told us to come into the chapel, and made us prospects.”
“That’s how it tends to work,” she said. “Alright, well, I’m Ava.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She reached for his limp hand at his side and gave it a shake. “No ‘ma’am,’ please. I’m so not a ma’am.” She turned to the Caddy, opened the backseat and set her briefcase inside. It was with mixed amusement and resignation that she accepted his escort. “Try and keep up,” she told him, sliding behind the wheel. “I don’t want to be late.”