Forty-Six
It was an eerie sound, the baying of the dogs. Somewhere between a human scream and the lonely howl of a timber wolf. They ran with their noses hovering over the ground, leaping like gazelle through the rough tussocks and clumps of jagged rock.
“Doesn’t matter if we can’t keep up,” Michael said. “They’ll put him at bay.” He had his hand wrapped around the leash of his uncle’s giant black stud dog, the Great Dane they called Cassius, after the Roman conspirator. The beast was obedient enough, but Aidan saw the moon strike a wild light in his eyes, heard the excited strain in his panted breath.
The three dogs brought along were the ones who’d tracked and helped to kill Holly’s father and uncle.
They knew how to track the scent of man.
Not so different from a wild boar, after all. Only a pig of a different color.
“Fan out,” Ghost instructed, and they did, a loose line of hunters closing in on their prey.
Aidan stepped in a hole that sent a jolt straight up his spine and clapped his teeth together. He bit the tip of his tongue and tasted blood. Would Cassius smell it, he wondered. Make a dive for his throat with those great drooling jaws?
Best not to think of it. Just press on through the dark, flashlight pinging across the terrain. Rock, loose bits of gravel, hard-packed dirt, tufts of moss and grass. He skidded and braced a hand against the trunk of a pine tree, the bark rough and sticky beneath his palm.
Were there bears up here? Coyotes? Mountain lions?
Something screamed, a high sharp sound, with a tail end like a cough. His pulse thundered in his ears and he caught his breath to listen.
“Bobcat!” he heard Michael call from off to his right.
He exhaled and started moving again, a little tremor rippling down his spine. “Fucking bobcats. Fucking asshole making a break for it,” he muttered.
They’d come up on the cabin just after nightfall. The windows had glowed with cheery warmth and a thin tail of gray smoke had curled up from the chimney. It was April, but it was cold up here in the mountains; his mind had filled with visions of a crackling fire, mugs of coffee. He’d flashed back to his wintertime honeymoon with Sam: the fire-gilded skin, the way her mouth had tasted like chocolate.
Ellison had had romance on his mind too, obviously. They’d looked in the windows to find him in a compromising position on the couch with his assistant.
Mercy and his sledgehammer of doom had taken down the door. In the chaos that ensued, the assistant was killed.
Ellison managed to grab his pants and flee out the back door.
Unarmed.
White skin gleaming in the moonlight when he left the shelter of the trees.
The dogs were giving chase.
In a strange way, Aidan felt little urgency now. The dogs would catch up to their quarry. It was going to happen, it was just a matter of waiting. This trek through the pine trees was merely a way to pass the time.
His thoughts went to his family, his two girls waiting at home for him. Sam’s tear-bright eyes as she’d kissed him goodbye. Lainie squirming in her arms. All he wanted was to go home to them.
But first, the killing.
The voices of the hounds changed. No longer a questing bark, but hard insistence.
Aidan halted, listening, trying to get his bearings.
Michael materialized beside him, startling him. “They have him.”
A thrill moved through him, a flash of heat in his blood.
Ellison had gone to ground, or tried to anyway, in a small rock cave. But it wasn’t deep. When their flashlights hit it, the space was revealed to be no more than a shallow depression in the face of a huge boulder. Ellison was gleaming with sweat, scratched like he’d been in a fight with a wildcat, feet bloody. He held a long pine branch in one hand that he brandished at the dogs. And then his gaze lifted as he was surrounded by a different kind of Dog.
“Bear. Sammie,” Michael called, snapping his fingers. The Blueticks went to him, long tails wagging, proud of a job well done.
“Mr. Ellison,” Ghost greeted. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Bite my ass, Teague,” the disgraced kingpin said.
“Oh no. I’ll leave that to this big fucking dog we got over here. I just wanted to gloat a little bit.”
“You always had a flair for the dramatic,” Mercy said with a dark laugh. He was as bad as the Dane, reeking of bloodlust, the big monster.
Ghost nodded, gesturing to the whole crew of them with a sweep of his arm. “Take a look, Donnie boy. And understand something.”
“Not sure what good understanding’s going to do at this point,” Walsh said dryly.
“You didn’t make an enemy,” Ghost said. “When you targeted us, our women, our families – you made a whole fleet of enemies. There’s not a man here who wouldn’t run a knife through you.” He grinned, briefly. “But I’m gonna save the honors for my pig-killer.”
Ellison took a deep breath, square jaw trembling, though his eyes remained hard. “You won’t hold onto it forever,” he said. “Knoxville?”
“This monopoly you’ve got on the underground. The MC way of life is backward. It’s dated, and it has a shelf life. Kill me. Fine. But you can’t hold onto your kingdom.”
A sensation like fingertips tickled up the back of Aidan’s neck. A man as proud as Ellison couldn’t go to his grave without blowing a little smoke. But Aidan wondered if a shred of truth colored this particular cloud of vapors.
Ghost smiled, expression ghoulish in the flashlight glow. He lifted a hand, and gestured to Michael.
“Hold,” Michael said, and turned loose of Cassius.
The Dane rushed in…
And Aidan heard the whisper of Michal’s knife leave the sheath.
He didn’t look away, when it happened. His stomach didn’t cramp and his gorge didn’t rise. He thought of Sam. Of Lainie. His girls.
Safe now.