Six
“Don’t worry about me. You know how it works in here.”
Ghost frowned at his friend through the glass that separated them. Yeah, he knew how it worked, and that didn’t ease his conscience much. The handful of Dogs in prison had understandings with some of the gangs, even some of the other MCs who’d lost members to jail sentences. There were protection deals in place, oaths and contracts and any number of little trades that kept his boys safe. But Ghost wasn’t sure he’d ever rectify the childhood friend he’d trusted so completely for so long with the haggard man in the orange jumpsuit on the other side of the glass.
“Justin and the boys are looking out for you?”
“Oh yeah. It’s like old times.” He smiled, but it was weak.
Ghost sighed, and dropped his voice a notch. In here, in this long bank of visitors talking to inmates through phones, no one gave a damn what the men at the next booth were talking about, but he still felt the need for secrecy.
“The DA is talking death penalty, Collier,” he said, the words hurting his throat. “Because of those two kids.”
Collier’s face became smooth, almost peaceful, the lines made less harsh by the acceptance of his situation. “I figure being dead’s not much worse than being locked up forever.”
“Except you won’t ever see your wife again, man. Do you know what that’ll do to Jackie? If she knows you got put to sleep like an actual dog?”
“You guys will look after Jackie for me, I know you will.” Pain streaked across his face. “I can’t help her now. I had to make the decisions I did for the betterment of the club, and she understands that. Wouldn’t you do the same thing, if you were me?”
Ghost stared down at the Formica counter where his elbows rested, the deep scratches carved into its surface during years of anguished visits, from loved ones to inmates.
“You wouldn’t,” Collier said softly. When Ghost’s gaze snapped back up to him, he was smiling. “I don’t blame you for it, I’m just saying. Your family comes first.”
Ghost sighed. “The cops dragged the river. But really, I don’t think Fielding cares if he doesn’t find the bodies. You’re an easy scapegoat.”
“Good,” Collier said, with a firm nod. “That’s what I wanna be.”
“Coll–”
“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I figured out why Andre and Jace turned rat.”
Ghost swore he felt his ears prick up, like the fabled black dog on the back of his cut. “Yeah?”
“Both of them had contact back and forth on their phones with somebody named Shaman.”
Ghost lifted his brows.
“I know, right. Anyway, best I can tell, he’s a dealer, one with some major connections, because everybody seems afraid of him. From what I’ve heard in here, Shaman’s in the business of playing outlaw chess; he’s trying to control the underworld, bringing down whichever clubs don’t suit his purposes, and backing the ones that do. From what I’ve heard, he was betting on the Carpathians getting the best of us,” he said with a grimace.
“Hmm.” Ghost wasn’t surprised. With backing from the mayor, the rival MC had been a shoe-in for leading outlaw force in Knoxville. “How do our losers figure into it?”
Collier held up a finger. Getting to that. “Jace and Andre were in deep debt to him, apparently. They’d bought a little dope off Fisher, which we knew about, but apparently, they’d been buying coke off Shaman. They were in talks, if I believe the gossip, to deal some meth for him, for a pretty cut of the profits. And they owed him bigtime, so he had them by the short hairs.”
“Turn on us, become dealers, erase their debt and fill their pockets. Christ, why did we ever patch those assholes?”
Collier made a helpless gesture. None of them had known how shakable their loyalty had been. Not until it was too late.
“So this Shaman,” Ghost said. “What’s his next move?”
“He wants to get on your good side. According to Justin” – one of their longtime inside members – “he’s sending an envoy. One of his dealers wants to sell as part of your ring.”
“Abraham Jessup?” Ghost guessed, feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach. The dealer Ratchet had met with. The one he was supposed to meet himself this afternoon.
“I didn’t get a name.”
Ghost scratched at his jaw, feeling the bristle that shaving didn’t quite take care of anymore. Maggie liked it; would scuff her knuckles across it and say she liked him rough.
Okay, focus. Mags had no bearing on this conversation.
Didn’t she, though? Weren’t the women in his life the root of his beating heart? The reason the club decisions he made were so much more than club decisions. The reason he hesitated to send Mercy into a dangerous situation, now, because Ava’s whole happiness depended upon him.
Being president sucked.
“Well, keep an ear to the ground. See if you can find anything else out for me,” Ghost said.
“Always.”
Ghost’s chest felt tight. Never had he anticipated this moment, as a boy, as a young man, as a Dog striving for president – that his best friend would wind up so suddenly on the other side of glass like this. “We’ll look after Jackie,” he said.
Collier smiled, wistfully. “I know.”
Ghost sighed. “I love Walsh, but I wish it was you sitting on my left.”
“I know,” Collier repeated. “But you need me here, more than you need me there. Go get ‘em, prez, and you lead our boys where they need to go.”
Holly didn’t know what a person was supposed to wear on her first ever shooting lesson, but she figured her work uniform wasn’t it. Dressed in jeans, her favorite tall cowboy boots, a thick cream turtleneck sweater she’d splurged on just that morning, and her usual jacket, she leaned against the side of the Chevelle, enjoying the weak touch of the December sun on her face, breathing in cold, crisp air and waiting on Michael to show up.
She hadn’t slept the night before, restless and nervous, dreaming, in the snatches of half-sleep, about Abraham and Dewey, and Jacob, whom no one had mentioned having seen in town yet, but who doubtless was still stuck like glue to his brother. She had ugly dark circles under her eyes, because of the nightmares, but hadn’t been able to do anything about them. Michael wouldn’t care; he didn’t want her anyway.
The street was all decked out for Christmas, garlands and lighted holiday tokens on every lamppost: bells, reindeer, sleighs, Santas, angels. At night, they glowed with colored light; the bells even seemed to swing back and forth. All the shop windows were done up with greenery, ornaments, shoe polish murals on the glass. The air smelled like snow, that up-high sharp note of moisture. She loved the idea of a white Christmas, tucked away in her loft window, the streets too slippery for anyone to be out on the prowl, coming after her.
When she heard the grumble of the motorcycle, she turned toward it automatically, and found herself smiling. It was a relief, if she was honest, to know that he wouldn’t take advantage. She could relax a little – with him, anyway.
Michael rode a Harley. All the Lean Dogs did; only American made bikes for them, Matt had told her. His was black, not flashy, the handlebars and pipes the only chrome. She could feel the vibration through the pavement, moving up into the soles of her boots, up her legs, and she liked it. The same way she liked his retro black shades, the way the plain black helmet made his face look harsher, the unadorned leather jacket that framed his lean waist and wider shoulders in a classic, masculine silhouette. He wasn’t wearing his cut. He wore a beat-up Jansport backpack, dark blue, and it should have made him look ridiculous, but didn’t. Nobody with that kind of tension in his jaw could look like a dork.
He parked in front of her car at the curb, killed the engine, pulled off his gloves. “You ready?” he greeted.
She nodded. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He swung off the bike with a fluid movement, graceful, long-practiced. He ran one hand through his hair after the helmet came off, one fast show of self-awareness. Then he reached toward her. “Where are your keys? I’ll drive.”
She kept her arms folded, smiling at him. “Oh, because I’m a girl, and you can’t let me drive?”
“Because you don’t know where we’re going.”
“You could tell me.”
He held his hand in front of her, fingers flexing in silent demand for the keys.
Feeling bold, unable to wipe the grin off her face, she said, “You have the worst manners, you know that?”
“Yeah? You’re the one who stripped naked in front of a total stranger.”
She held up a finger. “One, I wasn’t naked. Two” – a second finger – “you’re not a total stranger. Strange, maybe,” she said, suppressing a giggle, “but not a stranger.”
He sighed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m teasing you. Isn’t that what friends do?” She felt her brows pluck together, felt the awful surge of true curiosity. The only friend she could claim was dead, murdered in the alley of this bar. “I want us to be friends,” she said, softly.
His brows lifted over the frames of his Ray-Bans. Why?
“Do you have any?” she asked. “Because I don’t. And maybe, if nothing else, we could be that. I think it’d be nice.” She sent him a hopeful smile.
He stared at her, projecting bafflement, though he probably didn’t want to. “You’re weird, you know that?”
It was her turn to lift her brows. And you’re not?
He sighed, and shrugged. “Fine.”
They drove out of town, at his direction, Holly shocked she was the one behind the wheel, Michael watching through the window with unruffled calm.
“This is your car?” he asked as they turned off Main and headed out of town.
“Yep.”
His eyes slid over, unreadable behind the lenses of his shades. “Did you steal it?”
Holly felt her palms grow damp on the wide plastic steering wheel, but she laughed. She didn’t know why, but being alongside him today, in the sunlight pouring through the tint-free windows, had lightened her somehow. Left her feeling buoyant and happy.
“I’m serious,” Michael said. “Did you steal it?”
“What, you’re going to turn me in?”
“Just wondering.” He sounded sincere.
Holly sighed, felt herself deflate a little as they took the next turn. “It’s mine,” she said. “After…well, after everything…I think I’m at least owed a car.” Not a lie, and almost the truth. “Maybe I’m wrong, though,” she mused. “Maybe nobody ever deserves anything. It’s just about who takes what.”
She glanced over at Michael’s hard profile. “What do you think?”
His lips pursed. Thinking face. Dear God, he took her serious. He was actually listening to her, considering what to say.
Delight streaked through her. For the first time in so, so many years, sheer delight.
“ ‘Deserve’ is a tricky word,” he said, finally, sunlight striking like white fire off his face. “Like there’s somebody up there” – he pointed at the headliner, the sky beyond – “keeping track of rights and wrongs.”
“Not a man of faith, then?”
“Didn’t say that. Just said it’s tricky.”
“Hmm,” she agreed. “My mom was a believer,” she said, surprised, as she said the words, that they’d come up her throat. She tried not to think too hard about her mother, because it hurt too badly, but she couldn’t talk about church in relation to her father, no matter how many bible verses he’d spewed at her. No, that wasn’t the God that Mom had talked about. How could it be? How could Lila’s gentle, loving God, of sweet forehead kisses and prayer books open in the sunshine be at all related to the God that Abraham carried on his bourbon-soaked breath, when he’d pulled the ropes from the cabinet?
“I believe in God,” she continued. “Most of the time, anyway. I’m not sure how to put that belief in any kind of box, though.”
“You don’t need a box.”
“You don’t think?”
“Nah.”
Holly felt a dozen muscles unclenching, in her neck and arms and her midsection. His stalwart caveman assuredness was a balm to her tattered nerves. Maybe tattered wasn’t the right word. Maybe she’d been born with incomplete, split ends. How could a child born of her father’s seed be at all normal or complete or full-up with love?
“So what’s the plan for this afternoon?” she asked, voice light and perky in her ears.
“We’re gonna see how you take to the guns, and get you shooting straight.”
She made a face. “I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it.”
He shrugged. “Won’t know till you get up there. It’s not hard.”
“I’m not very strong, though. Well, not at all, really.”
“You don’t have to be. You’ll see – anybody can handle a gun; it’s skill, not strength.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you a good teacher?” she teased.
Taking her eyes from the road a beat too long, she searched for a reaction in him. There it was, that tiny twitch in the corner of his mouth. The Michael-smile. “No complaints.”
“Oh,” she went on, feeling bolder, smiling, a lightness in her chest. “So you take a lot of girls shooting, huh?”
“None of them ever talked as much as you.”
She laughed. “I think you need more talking in your life.”
He made a grunting sound that wasn’t necessarily a disagreement.
He didn’t encourage her chattering, but didn’t discourage it either, so she kept talking, about how pretty this shade of blue was in the sky, about what kinds of guns he’d brought with him. He answered her questions. He watched the city slip away as they left Knoxville for the rural outskirts, and he also, she noticed, was as relaxed and loose-limbed as she felt. There was no tension in him. He was totally at ease, head resting against one upraised hand, body rocking gently as the old Chevy’s struts jostled them back and forth. His tiny smile made several appearances, and Holly was heartened. He was a severe man; she liked the idea that she could provide him with a distraction from that severity. She’d never been useful in this way to anyone. She could get high on the sensation, if she wasn’t careful.
He directed her through a series of turns that led them deeper and deeper into sprawling farmland. Acres of rolling pasture, yellow, brown, and cropped low for winter, the bare trees crowding at fence lines and around cattle ponds. The sky opened up above the fields, wider and bluer and all-encompassing, hanging over the silhouettes of the Smoky Mountains.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Holly said, delighted by the gravel drives and the hail-dented tin mailboxes. The cows slept in the sun, chewing their cud. Starlings swept from the treetops in spiraling clouds of black wings.
“Hmm,” Michael said. “Turn right at the next driveway.”
There was no box, no sign, just a crushed-gravel path she might have missed for the tangle of honeysuckle-choked hickory trees.
She braked to a halt in the road. “Here?”
“Yeah.”
The Chevelle bucked as they left the pavement, steel frame creaking as the tires bit into the uneven gravel footing.
Through the close-reaching branches of the trees, they started up a gentle slope, driveway crowded with limbs, and came upon a closed gate, a Warning Private Property sign. Wood and wire fence fed off from either side, disappearing into the trees.
“I’ll get it,” Michael said, climbing from the car.
A heavy new length of chain held the gate to the post, secured with a combination lock that Michael spun and unfastened with a few quick moves. He opened the gate and waved her through. In the rearview mirror, she watched him lock it behind them.
She felt a tightening in her stomach. This was a guarded, private place that he’d brought her inside. Up this unnoticed driveway, behind a locked gate, any number of horrible things could happen to her.
She felt the film of sweat slick across her chest, the back of her neck, as she remembered breaking the rusted lock and chain during her escape. The way her damp palms had slipped on the shovel handle. The frightened pattering of her own breath as she listened to the awful clatter of the chain sliding loose.
That was then, and this is now, she told herself, but the sound of the chain links tapping against the gate sent her spinning back. The strike of metal against metal quickened her pulse, and tightened her hands on the wheel.
“You had to lock us in?” she asked as Michael climbed back inside and shut the door.
“It always stays locked,” he said, and she could detect no tension in his voice or posture. “It’s private property.”
“Yours?”
“The club’s.” He glanced over at her. She could just see the shadow of his lashes flickering as he blinked behind his shades. “Well go on. We don’t have all day.”
“Right.” She took a deep breath, and put her boot on the accelerator.
The gravel drive began a steady climb through a dense patch of forest, and then leveled out, swinging through big, gradual turns. Though it was afternoon, there were still edgings of frost on some of the shriveled limbs, and the blanketing pine needles, here in the tree-created shadows.
“How much farther is it?” Holly asked, and hoped her voice didn’t sound too choked.
“A little ways,” Michael said, unconcerned. He looked relaxed, even more so than earlier. Wherever they were, he liked this place. It brought him peace.
Maybe that meant he wasn’t planning on killing her when they finally stopped.
The drive climbed again, this time through a series of fast, switchback turns, the path carved into a hillside that just didn’t seem to end.
And then, suddenly, the trees fell away and they were in the open, and the brilliant sun was pouring over them, and Holly gasped a little.
Ahead of them lay a dilapidated farmhouse of white clapboard, porch spindles missing, tin roof eaten by rust. It looked like something from a horror movie. All around it was open pastureland, dotted with trees, fields bisected by little lines of oak and sweet gum and hickory and pine.
“Take a right,” Michael said, and his voice startled her. When she’d seen the house, all thought had left her, and fear had flooded her system. “Head up to the barn.”
The Chevelle rolled to a slow halt.
She had to wet her lips to speak. “The-the barn?”
“Up there.” He tapped at the window with a fingertip. Then, voice becoming serious: “Hey.” He pushed his shades up onto his forehead and she saw the seriousness in his hazel eyes. “Take a right, go to the barn, and we’ll shoot. Okay?”
She took a deep breath, and then another. The inside of the car felt too small, suddenly. Under the leather cuffs at her wrists, she felt the old familiar burn of the ropes.
It was the house. That awful, once-white house, so much like the house behind the rusted lock and chain, the one she’d broken with a shovel. She looked at that house, and she felt her arms and legs pulling. Felt the greasy sheets beneath her bare back.
So don’t look at the house. Look at Michael.
His eyes were very large, in the shade of the car, without the usual, purposeful narrowing. Pretty, animal eyes, she reminded herself. She loved his eyes. They were full of intelligence and cunning. And now, they were boring into her.
“Okay?” he repeated.
It was a reassurance. He wasn’t going to pet her head and tell her it would be alright, but in his own way, he was reassuring her.
Realizing that eased the knot in her stomach. Allowed her to breathe.
“Shooting,” she said. “Right.”
“Right.” He tapped the window again. “Out behind the barn. Drive us up there.”
She nodded, and some of the feeling came back into her hands and wrists. “Okay. I can do that.” And with a few more shaky deep breaths, she could, accelerating again, turning the car up the hill, toward the hulking shell of an old barn.
It was old fashioned, as far as barns went: weathered gray planks for siding, high, steep roof that peaked in the center and fell down to level above two separate wings of inside space, with a wide center aisle. There were open sliding windows above the yawning mouth of the main door: had to be a hay loft. At the end of a wooden arm, a rusted pulley dangled above the loft windows, catching in the breeze.
Holly parked in front of it, in the ghostly tire tracks packed into the dirt. Evidence of many others before them.
And Michael, in what felt like a show of true kindness, began talking. Soothing her, in his own indirect way.
“There’s a nice level spot around the other side, and the plants will give a little cover for the sound.”
“Is there anyone around to even hear us?”
“Nah, not really. And if they do, nobody cares. There’s all kinds of shooting that goes on around here.”
“How reassuring,” she said, dryly.
“It should be. We’ve got absolute privacy.” And he leaned into the backseat for the backpack he’d left there earlier.
Tangled grass grew right up to the edge of the barn on the other side, the unmown stalks dead and brown and matted to together like the coat of an old unloved dog. But the ground was fairly level, once you got down the gently graded slope against the wall, and moved down into a little hollow nestled among the eleagnus. Birds shot from the brush at their approach, doves fluttering hard to escape their path. Two rabbits darted for cover, brown coats gleaming in the bright winter sun.
Holly smiled, and slowly, slowly, her pulse began to settle, and her nerves to firm up.
“What a pretty old farm,” she murmured. “Why’s it abandoned?”
Michael shrugged. “My boss inherited it when his old man died. I think it had bad memories, or something.”
“Hmm. I can understand that.”
“Yeah?” He cast her a fast, unobtrusive look that she met with silence, then shrugged again. “Wait here, and I’ll get everything set up.”
With his backpack and his leather jacket and his perfect-fitting jeans, he walked about fifteen yards straight out from the place they stood, to a place where three sheets of plywood were set up between two rickety sawhorses. The plywood was full of little holes where daylight shone through – they weren’t the first two people to use this spot for target practice.
Michael let the bag fall to the ground, and crouched to pull things out of it: paper targets, tape, a few old beer bottles. Behind her sunglasses, Holly watched not what he withdrew from the bag, but the man himself, soaking in all the little details she wasn’t afforded in the dark of Bell Bar every night. The way the leather stretched tight across his back, highlighting the exact shape of his shoulder blades, and the sleek muscles around them. The way his jeans gapped a little in back and she could see the white waistband of his…yeah, boxer-briefs, if she had to guess, dark gray, contrast stitching. All over his body, his muscles were compact and close to his body; a wealth of strength without all the extra bulk. She loved the proportions of him. The way at six feet, he was taller than the other men in her life had been, but the height never made her feel any smaller. It was never really size that made a person feel little, after all, but words. Deeds. Evil intent.
But the time he’d finished setting up a line of targets and beer bottles for her to shoot, and was walking back, Holly had realized something. She wanted him. She’d never thought she’d feel that way, not after all that had happened. Sex was an awful, filthy thing for her. But she wanted this man. And even though the idea of actually being with him scared her witless, she couldn’t deny the acuteness of her fascination, the deep physical ache inside her. It didn’t even have to be sex; she craved something small, some tiny gesture of affection and intimacy.
Pathetic.
“Okay.” He reached her, and the bag went on the ground again. He spread a black-stained kitchen towel on the soft bed of grass, and then the guns came out. “We’ll start with this” – a small revolver with a long blue barrel that glimmered in the sun – “and move on to these” – another revolver, larger, heavier, with a shorter barrel, and two matte semiautos that had the hair on the back of her neck standing up.
He tipped his head back, so he was looking up at her as he crouched on the ground. As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “Don’t be intimidated. They won’t jump up and shoot you all by themselves. They only do what you make them do.”
She took a deep breath. “I know.”
“What’s scarier: these? Or the fact that you felt scared enough to try and hire a hit man?”
She frowned at him. “Not a very good hit man.”
Undeterred, he stood, the small revolver in one hand. “Pay attention now. This is a .22 magnum…”
She had small hands, but he said that didn’t matter. With a touch like feathers brushing across her skin, he cupped a hand beneath hers, showed her where to rest the grip of the gun, positioned her fingers where they needed to be. He touched her arms, elevated them to the proper angle, so they were straight out in front of her. He stood behind her, and tipped her head so she could align the sights properly, with one eye closed. When he stood behind her, she could feel his radiant body heat; she could smell the cigarette smoke, the shampoo, the cologne. He’d put cologne on, to come shooting with her. Her heart danced. What would it be like, she wondered, if he closed his arms around her, pulled her back into his chest? What would if feel like to be embraced, rather than subdued?
Michael wasn’t capable of such softness, she reasoned, as he stepped clear of her. Best not to wish for things that would never happen. Wishing had never gotten her anywhere in the past anyway.
“Target on the left,” Michael instructed. “Aim for the bullseye. Line up your sights – there, like that – and remember what I said. Deep breath in, half out, hold it, relax, aim and slowly pull the trigger back.”
“Got it,” she said, and took her deep breath, closed her right eye, stared down the barrel of the .22 toward the green and black paper bullseye affixed to the plywood downrange. She let half of the breath out, finger caressing the trigger. Then held it, pulled back slowly –
The gun went off with a ripping crack of sound. The barrel kicked upward, toward the sky, grip tugging at her hands.
“Jesus!” She fumbled the weapon, managed not to drop it. “Oh my God.” Her heart was hammering against her breastbone, thumping in the pads of her fingers where they touched the gun. Michael had been right – the recoil hadn’t been strong at all – but she still hadn’t been expecting such movement, even after watching Michael shoot a few rounds. The gun had looked so controlled in his hands. She felt small and weak and incapable, and it made her throat tight with stress.
“I’m sorry,” she said, glancing from the unblemished target to Michael, who watched her from behind his Ray-Bans with something almost like real interest. “I figured I wouldn’t be any good.”
He gave the tiniest smile, wider than the usual twitching. It warmed her immediately, helped with the sense of inadequacy. “Honey, nobody hits the target on their first shot.”
Honey. She could float away on that word. She wondered if he knew he’d said it, or if it had slipped out without his consent.
“Not even you?” she asked.
“Well…I did. But that’s different.”
“Oh, right.” She snorted, rolled her eyes. “How could I not have known? You probably gave the bullet the evil eye, and it jumped out of the gun and flew right into the bullseye so you wouldn’t get angry with it, right?”
Another little smile. “Something like that. Here.” He grew serious again, stepped up beside her, adjusted her grip. “Try again. This time, I want you to keep your hands real tight on the gun, but keep your arms loose. Can you do that? You’ve gotta separate the muscle groups in your head.”
“Okay.” She shook her hair back, waited for him to back off from the firing line – one of many terms he’d inundated her with – and refocused, thinking about loose arms and tight hands.
A thought struck her. “You know” – she lowered the gun, turned her head to glance at him over her shoulder, voice sounding muffled and strange through the big ear protection muffs he’d put on her – “I saw in a movie once that the instructor stood behind the student and helped her hold the gun. Like, when someone helps someone else swing a baseball bat. Would that help? Just till I get the hang of it.”
He frowned. “The only reason guys do that is so they can feel a woman up. No, it won’t help. You’ve gotta learn to control the gun yourself.”
Deflated, Holly nodded and turned back around. The smile had given her false hope; he didn’t want them to be close, didn’t want there to be any confusion about their relationship.
“Set up your shot,” he said behind her.
She did. She fixed the target in her sights and thought about this frustrating dynamic between the two of them. She didn’t want to feel this pull toward him, and he didn’t want her to feel it either. But it was there, like a magnet drawing to metal, and she hated him a little for making this all so difficult, when he could have just taken on the contracts, and then she wouldn’t have to worry again, not ever. Could he imagine? What it would be like to go to bed every night with the knowledge that no one was coming for her? There would be no more ropes, no more locked doors, no more bible verses, no more one after the next after the next, a nightmare that wouldn’t end, in the bed where her mother had died.
No, Michael couldn’t conceive of that, because he was a strong, frightening man, and he had no reason to be afraid of anything.
She swept the trigger back with her finger and the gunshot didn’t spook her this time. Her hands controlled the kick of the .22. She didn’t jump or yell. And when she peered downrange at the target, she saw the tidy hole just right of center, its edges glowing green where the black ring had been punctured.
“I hit it,” she said in disbelief.
Michael’s hand was so warm it seemed to burn her as it landed on her shoulder and squeezed. “Good.”
When she glanced over at him, there was an unmistakable pleased expression on his harsh face. No one had ever been pleased with her, not since her mother had died. She felt her chest tighten, wanted to cry, wanted to fling her arms around him. Oh, you have no idea, no idea at all how wonderful you are, just for this, just for being proud that I did something right.
His hand squeezed her shoulder again and then fell away. “Let’s shoot a few more rounds with the .22, till you’re real comfortable with it, and then we’ll move to the .38.”
There was a member of the Arkansas chapter, Bug, who’d once told Michael that he thought it was “damn stupid” teaching any woman how to shoot. “Then they’ll known what they’re doin’ when they get real pissed off at ya.” He’d then spat an eloquent stream of Copenhagen juice onto the asphalt and declared the afternoon “hot as balls.”
Michael hadn’t said so – why bother? – but he’d thought that comment was the dumbest in Bug’s history of dumb comments. Women should know how to shoot. Women should be competent and confident with a gun, one that best fit their size and strength. He’d held that sentiment since the night his father beat his mother into a bloody dead pulp, and he believed it still. Women were no physical match for the evil men of the world who wanted to do them harm; they had to level the playing field. God made man, and Samuel Colt made him equal. When he’d come to Knoxville, back to his home state to serve the mother chapter, he’d been glad to see that Ghost Teague had instructed and armed his wife and daughter. That’s what you did when you loved them and wanted them safe: you put the power to defend themselves into their hands.
Had Camilla McCall been carrying a .45, that night at Uncle Wynn’s farm, it would have ended very differently. The gaping gunshot wound in John McCall hadn’t been a consolation to nine-year-old Michael. Just another image to haunt him all his days.
So it was with a weightless, free feeling in his chest that he watched little Holly master the heavy .38 and then reach for the .45 semiauto with excitement gleaming in her eyes.
My little gunslinger, he thought, and then he wondered where the my had come from, because she wasn’t anything to him but a waitress with a great rack and a bad history trying to catch up to her.
Right. Keep telling yourself that, asshole.
“Here, this one’s a little different,” he told her, and when he showed her how to rack the slide and eject the empty magazine, he knew that his hands lingered against hers longer than they needed to. Her skin was soft and white and delicate to the touch, the blue veins visible in her palms and between her small knuckles. Child’s hands. The sleeves of her sweater had been pushed back and he saw again the brown leather cuff bracelets she wore, three fingers wide and too bulky for her arms.
When she accepted the gun from him, the right cuff shifted, and he caught a fast glimpse of an angry red scar, hidden beneath the leather. So that was why she wore them: to cover up something she’d deemed unseemly to the restaurant patrons.
He’d lost all fear at this point that she’d shoot wild and hit him with a ricochet. “Go for it,” he told her as he stepped back and secured his ear muffs.
She fired off four rounds in quick succession, taking out each beer bottle with a shower of amber glass.
Michael felt a smile threatening as she lowered the gun and turned to him, beaming.
“Did you see that?” She was thrilled, breathless. “I got all of them!”
“I saw.”
“I just…” She struggled for words, her free hand gesturing to the air, her chest lifting in an enticing way under her sweater. “I don’t know how to describe it, but I feel…”
“Brave?” he suggested. Because he knew that was exactly how she felt, the same way he’d felt the afternoon Uncle Wynn had walked him beyond the goat pens and showed him how to handle the shotgun. Like he had some control over the dark, bad things in life now. Like he had a say so, in the threatening world.
Holly’s eyes widened, huge and brilliant green in the sunlight. “Oh, no, I’m not brave.”
“What do you call asking someone to commit murder for you?”
She blushed and looked away, shame and guilt warring for supremacy across her face. “Well…”
“It’s a good thing, being brave,” he said, taking a step in closer, not sure why. “It’s a good thing the gun makes you feel that way.”
She glanced back up at him, uncertain now. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
But her good mood had fractured; he could see that in the shadowing of her face. “Gun or no gun, I’m still only me, and that’s not much to be brave about.”
“Holly…” he started, not sure where he was going. He didn’t understand why, but he felt like a shithead, suddenly. Like he’d come across a woman on the side of the road with a flat tire, and rather than fix it for her, he’d offered her a jack and a wrench and wished her luck.
She stared at him, her gaze a blend of contradictions: trusting, yet wary; hopeful, yet despairing. Life had been one long disappointment for this girl. He didn’t know how, but he knew that it had, and he wanted, standing in front of her, to do something about that.
But before he could continue, she was staring at the .45 in her hands, passing a hand along its matte black finish. “So where do I go to get one of these for myself?”
“Nowhere,” Michael said, and his voice was rougher than he wanted it to be.
Her head snatched up, confusion sparking.
“I mean,” he said, “you can just keep that one. You don’t have to go to all the trouble of buying one that way.”
Her pretty brows drew together, marking her smooth pale forehead with a single crease. “But it’s yours.”
“I’ve got plenty. Take it.” He reached into the bag, drew out two spare clips. “Here. Ammo.”
She stared at him a long moment before she accepted the magazines. Her fingers were cool and smooth against his. “Are you sure?” She was already bundling the clips against her middle, nestled beneath her breasts like a mother clutching a child.
“I’m sure.” He almost reached toward her, but had nothing else to offer. Nothing physical, anyway. “You’ll have to practice. You can’t let yourself get rusty; don’t wanna shoot holes in walls and cars and shit.”
Her smile was fleeting. “Right.” Another look his way, questioning this time. “But where would I practice?”
She couldn’t come up here alone, not when it was locked. And not when the Lean Dogs used this property for such dark-of-night activities.
“I can take you to practice.”
“You can? I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore after this.”
He felt a twinge of regret. He wasn’t a kind man; didn’t know how to be. And he’d been cold to her, maybe even cruel, and she thought he hated her. If only she understood that it had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with his place in the club, his inability to put the Dogs at risk because of anything personal.
“Well, we haven’t worked on knives yet,” he said, lamely. “We can do that another afternoon. Get some more target practice in, too.”
She nodded, but she was feeling last night’s hurt, the bruise of his refusal, and the desperation of being alone.
It killed him, just a little. She was small and brunette and helpless…like his mother had been, all those years ago. It was stirring up long-buried emotions in him.
“Holly, you’ll be alright,” he told her.
The look she gave him was faraway, and impossibly sad. “No I won’t,” she said, softly. “But I never expected to be. Thank you for the lesson, and the gun.” She took a step back. “I…I won’t bother you again.” And before he could come up with something else stupid to say, she was striding back toward the car, the winter wind plastering her sweater to the curves of her body, hair snatching over her shoulder, a mahogany banner.
Michael exhaled, realizing that he was tired, sore and restless thanks to the underlying frustration she inspired in him. Telling himself he was making the right call, he packed away the rest of the guns.
With this confidence boost, Holly would stop being so frightened, and she’d get over her infatuation, her crush, whatever it was, and she wouldn’t make any more requests that he kill anyone for her.
That was his hope. Otherwise, he was in danger of doing something regrettable.