Nine
“Bonjour, Monsier President.” Mercy took off his helmet and set it on the fuel tank of his Dyna.
Ghost sent him a flat, unamused look from his position on his own bike.
Mercy gave him his widest smile. “Come on, boss, it’s a beautiful morning.”
It was a cold morning. Their breath steamed in the dry air, like they were three dragons sitting here in the blue shadows of this pale winter dawn. But it was beautiful too: the sun a bright disc climbing up the cloudless crystal bowl of the sky, the little sparrows picking for scraps across the pavement, industrial smells of burning dampened by the frigid temperature. The weather man was still calling for a white Christmas, and Mercy could believe it.
“Tell me something,” Ghost said. “How long do I gotta put up with this hyperactive, Singin’ in the Rain newlywed bullshit?”
Ratchet grinned over on Ghost’s other side.
“Probably for a while,” Mercy said, mock-serious. “Bein’ married’s some good stuff.”
Ghost mumbled something and glanced away, watching the street in front of them. “They’re late,” he said, changing the subject. You told them eight-thirty, right?”
“Yeah,” Ratchet said. “But you know how dealers are.”
More grumbling from Ghost. “I oughta shove all of ‘em out of town. Permanently.”
His father-in-law was extra cranky this morning, Mercy thought. This business was weighing on him more heavily than any of them would have thought.
The sound of an unhappy engine split the peaceful morning, and Mercy turned to see a decrepit Buick limping toward them. Its primary color was rust, with patches of blue clinging to the doors. It sounded like everything was wrong with it. It belched as it leapt the curb, backfired, and came to a wheezing, rattling halt. There was no telling whether the engine had been shut off, or simply died.
A spark of recognition: Mercy thought back, the walk home from Bell Bar a couple nights before, pressing Ava up against the wall in the cold, interrupted by a noisy car. It had been a Buick. This Buick, if he’d seen properly, and he knew he had.
He frowned to himself as Abraham and Dewey climbed out.
Ghost saw him. “What?”
“Nothing. Tell you later.”
“Good morning,” Abraham said as he approached. He wore a cheap shirt buttoned up to his throat and a canvas duct jacket over it. His jeans were badly out of fashion, belted too high on his waist.
Beside him, Dewey was similarly awkward, in stiff clothes that looked two sizes too big. His hair was still wet from his morning shower and plastered down tight on his head, which only served to emphasize his big ears.
“Morning,” Ghost said in a cold voice. “You’re Abraham Jessup?”
The man nodded. “And my son-in-law, Dewey.”
“Hello,” Dewey said, hands curling with obvious nerves.
Ghost didn’t glance at the boy. “You brought the product?”
Looking slightly taken aback, Abraham nodded.
The white plastic-wrapped brick that Abraham put into Ghost’s hands turned out to be coke, and not cheap shit cut with baking soda.
“You’ll distribute yourself?” Ghost asked. He sounded grudging, like he liked these two about as much as Mercy did, but the coke was legit.
“Us and my brother,” Abraham said. “And sometimes some of the fellas from my church.”
“Your church?” Mercy asked.
He hated Abraham’s smile when he said, “All paths are righteous, if they lead a man to the lord.”
**
Ava didn’t think she’d ever stop finding wonder in the acres of asphalt and corrugated steel that composed Dartmoor. Her father’s shining emblem of MC enterprise would always stir nostalgia and pride in her, the simple act of driving through the main gates a salute to the Lean Dogs’ savvy and ingenuity. With Ghost’s passion and Walsh’s money know-how, this generation of Dogs had elevated the club business from a sad Harley memorabilia shop to a robust string of shops that occupied club-owned land right along the Tennessee River. Dartmoor, named for the mist-shrouded English landscapes that had fostered the black dog legends their club was named for.
Even if she felt a little green around the gills this afternoon, she smiled to herself, because when she pulled up to the clubhouse these days, it was as an old lady, and not a daughter. She’d become one of those admired, mythical women within the club, the beloved wives who kept the men running, so they could keep the MC running.
Maggie and Jackie were already parked before the portico, and Ava took a moment leaning against the side of her truck, deep-breathing the cold air in through her nose, convincing her stomach that it didn’t need to make any sudden moves. Then she went in.
Maggie had insisted on a girl’s afternoon out, a lunch at which they could discuss their plan of attack for Christmas dinner and the New Year’s party that would inevitably follow. Ava knew her mother could plan a dinner like this in her sleep; today was about including Jackie, and making her feel like she was still part of the club family, even though her man would spend the holiday behind bars.
Ava shuddered; she didn’t want to imagine. She didn’t know what she’d do, at this point, without Mercy’s warm arms around her when she woke, and his French singing as he shaved, and the barefoot breakfast conversations sitting cross-legged on the floor because it was too much trouble to clear her laptop and books off the tiny kitchen table.
Ares was there to greet her when she stepped into the entryway. His thick tail beat a rhythm against the floor as he waited to be scratched.
“Hi, buddy.”
There were voices coming from the small sitting room just to the right, and as Ava passed, she glimpsed Jackie seated on one of the chairs the boys kept for formal visitors, talking to a lean, dark-headed man in a suit. She recognized Ethan Briscoe, Briscoe’s son and the club’s attorney.
Quickly turning away, Ava pressed on into the common room, where Maggie sat at the bar with several open magazines spread before her.
“Hi, baby,” she greeted, and with one look at Ava’s face, she wrinkled her nose. “Stomach still not good?”
“It’s just touchy.” Ava climbed onto the stool beside her. “What are you looking at?”
Maggie took a fast second to press a hand against the far side of Ava’s head, pull her in close so she could leave a motherly kiss against her temple. There was that now-familiar smile as she pulled back, the one that was mingled pride, joy, and maternal grace. She’d expressed so many times how thrilled she was for Ava’s happiness, how right this expansion of their family felt. Mercy at the dinner table, one of them in an official sense, now, felt preordained, a realization of what was always meant to be.
Then she turned back to her magazines. Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Good Housekeeping. “I’m thinking about centerpieces.”
“Uh-huh,” Ava said, and knew from her mother’s glance that she’d failed to sound interested.
Footsteps rapped on the boards behind them, and they both turned.
Ethan and Jackie had come into the room, Jackie to join them, and Ethan because he was the kind of guy who made sure to tip his hat to any ladies present before he took his leave.
“…I’ll talk with the DA,” he was telling Jackie.
She nodded, wings of her red bob swinging against her face. Her expression was one of a trembling unhappiness; her skin looked drawn and too-pale. There was a certain dryness to her, the look of someone who’s done lots of crying and not enough rehydrating.
Ethan squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry until we know more,” he said with a gentle smile.
Jackie nodded again.
Then the attorney turned to them, the pleasing lines of his face drawn into the perfect expression of polite farewell. “Maggie, Ava.” He dipped his head in a little nod. “Always good to see you.”
“You too, Ethan,” Maggie said. “Be sure and come to the New Year’s party. We’ll have plenty of food.”
His mouth turned down in a graceful half-frown. “Maybe I will.” Though he’d never come to a single club function. “Afternoon, ladies,” and he swept around with one last shoulder-squeeze for Jackie and hit the front hall with a stride that suggested a casual confidence. He was an excellent attorney, and as Nell had often suggested, he looked excellent from behind in the tailored suit trousers he wore.
Ava smiled to herself, remembering the words.
And then her eyes fell on Jackie and the smile vanished.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked.
Jackie sighed, and glanced down at the toes of her pumps, brushing her hair back from her face. Her shoulders were thin and birdlike inside her blue work button-up, her hip bones narrow points at the tops of her slacks. She was skeletal these days.
“Nothing’s for sure yet, but there’s talk of transferring Collier to the federal pen.”
Maggie drew herself upright. “What for?”
Jackie’s breath trembled. She wouldn’t look at them. “Because he’s a member of an organized crime family…it’s all bogus. It’s just a way to remove him from Knoxville. The DA knows how much the club can still get done from the inside.”
“That’s stupid,” Maggie said. “Who has the room to worry about that shit? Don’t worry. Ethan will get it sorted.”
But Ava had no idea if that was true.
“Come on,” Maggie slid off her stool. “Let’s go get some lunch, huh?”
At Jackie’s unexcited nod, she frowned and said, “I bet Stella’s is too crowded anyway. We’ll hit Bell Bar.” She went to put an arm around her friend’s shoulders.
Bell Bar, and a stiff afternoon martini for the prison wife.
Michael couldn’t remember having a headache this bad. He couldn’t remember having a hangover ever. He had a strong constitution when it came to alcohol.
But he’d been nine the last time he’d contemplated something as horrible as Holly Jessup’s upbringing. His nine-year-old self had cried into his pillow. His thirty-eight-year-old self had upended a bottle of Crown, and now he was fumbling through his kitchen for the aspirin.
His house had belonged, before him, to a widow who’d left behind one child, a son, when she’d passed two years ago. The place had been full of furniture, appliances, the kitchen cabinets packed with delicate blue, white and yellow dishes. “Keep what you want and trash the rest,” the son had told Michael. “I don’t have any use for it and I don’t have time to sort through it all.”
The frilly furniture Michael had sent to Goodwill, keeping only the sturdy, basic pieces that he needed, mixing in the furniture he already had. The kitchen he’d left as is. He only used one plate and glass at a time, but there’d been something that had kept him from boxing it up. Some latent thought that he might have need of stainless flatware and colored china and little linen placemats. Some secret longing for a wife, perhaps.
He was digging through one of the upper cabinets, pushing aside blue juice glasses, when he remembered that he’d taken the aspirin into the bedroom last night.
He was so hungover.
The tidily made bed seemed to stretch forward as he entered the bedroom, the plush chocolate-colored quilt like a soft, welcoming hand, waiting to catch him.
But the comfort wasn’t appealing. Not this morning. He’d left coffee brewing in the kitchen and he shook out three aspirin from the bottle on the nightstand, going into the bathroom to scoop up a handful of water from the tap and swallow them down.
Thankfully, the old widow had shared something of his taste in bathrooms: utilitarian white everywhere, sink with plenty of storage beneath, medicine cabinet with mirror. He turned on the shower and pulled off last night’s rumpled, stale-smelling clothes while he waited for the water to heat up.
He happened to catch a glimpse of his reflection, as he pulled a towel from the cabinet and laid it on the counter. He almost didn’t recognize himself, the way his eyes were bright, almost feverish, gleaming with a strange light inside a face that was clenched tight with an active, vibrating tension. He looked wild, unpredictable, pulsing with energy.
Ghost was wrong. He didn’t need a break; this wasn’t the look of fatigue, overwork. This was purpose. This was, for the first time in a long time, something more than obedience. This was revenge. Revenge by proxy, but no less driving.
Passion.
The archangel was awake.
As he turned toward the shower, he had a fast, indistinct glimpse of the wings inked into his back.
Holly felt a lightness in her chest. She’d had maybe an hour of sleep, but physical exhaustion was no match for the swelling hope that filled all her dark corners.
Her immediate future was no longer a mere play at survival, awaiting the moment her family caught up to her. For the first time ever, she could think about her future as hers.
Michael had done that for her. Simply by promising, he’d changed the course of her whole life.
She had no idea how to thank him for that.
“Holly, table six is yours,” Vanessa said as Holly passed her coming out of the kitchen. There was a deliberate coldness to her voice. She refused to make eye contact. She, along with the other girls, continued to blame Holly for Carly’s death.
Holly felt a fast stab of grief, regret, guilt. “Okay.” Her voice dimmed in her throat.
But then she was out on the floor of the bar, amid the din of chattering lunch patrons, and she reminded herself that it was only a few short hours until dinnertime, and Michael’s appearance.
The guilt wasn’t going anywhere, but it could live in one of her mental storerooms, alongside her countless other regrets.
There was a familiar, slender dark-haired silhouette at table six by the window, Ava Lécuyer managing, as usual, to make jogging pants and a shapeless sweater look elegant.
Her mother sat beside her. The beautiful biker queen with the golden mane: Maggie Teague.
And across from them, a woman in office clothes with a sleek red bob that Holly had seen a time or two, one of the other old ladies.
Holly took a fortifying breath and approached their table with a bright hello.
Ava glanced over, gave her a bare smile of recognition.
Maggie said, “Hi,” as she flipped through her menu, one eye on the redhead, pretty features tight with concern. “We’re going to have Chardonnay” – she gestured between herself and the redhead – “and–”
“Ginger ale?” Holly guessed, looking at Ava.
Another small smile, this one surprised. “Yeah, that’d be good.” She turned to her mother. “Merc and I are in here a lot,” she explained.
“Oh, bless you,” Maggie said to Holly. “He must drink y’all out of Johnnie Walker.”
Not expecting a friendly overture, Holly smiled. “We keep an extra case on hand.”
“Smart.”
A thought struck her. A fast flare of nostalgia, the kind she felt for something she’d never had, and probably never would. What would it be like, she wondered, to be one of these Lean Dogs old ladies? There were women in Knoxville who looked down their noses at the biker wives, but even among those snobs, there was a certain amount of awe and respect. Maybe even fear. These three women at this table, they could strike fear in people, thanks to their connections. What must that feel like, Holly wondered, desperately, to be a woman capable of making others afraid?
She guessed she’d never know. Michael wasn’t offering to tattoo his name on her, after all, just utilize his professional skillset.
Regroup.
“I’ll be right back with your drinks…”
Her breath caught in her throat. On the sidewalk outside, beyond the deeply-tinted window, stood her husband.
“An engine is like a woman.”
“I’m dying to see where this goes,” Mercy said.
On the other side of the picnic table, Aidan gestured for him to be quiet, his attention still on his young pupil. Carter Michaels had never done one thing mechanical in his life, but Aidan was convinced he could make a mechanic out of their newest, youngest prospect.
“An engine is like a woman,” he repeated, “because you have to know what you’re doing. You make the right diagnosis, the right adjustments, and it’ll start right up.”
“Wait, I’m confused,” Mercy said. “You diagnose all those poor women you sleep with?” He bit down hard on his grin when Aidan shot him a dark look.
Beside Mercy, Tango reached for another onion ring from the communal pile in the middle of the table and said, “Nah. The diagnosing comes after. When the burning sensation starts.”
Mercy couldn’t contain his sharp, punching laughter.
Tango chuckled.
Carter turned a thin smile into a throat-clearing.
Aidan said, “Alright, how’s an engine like a woman?”
“Hey, man, this is your analogy. I’m just making fun of it.”
Aidan made a face.
“God, you’re a cry baby these days,” Mercy said with a dramatic sigh, earning a scowl. Aidan had been seriously on edge for the last few weeks, and he for one was tired of it.
Gracefully, Carter stepped in. “No, I think I know what he means,” he said, defending his sponsor. “Engines are touchy. You’ve gotta put some work into them, to get them running right.” Then he frowned, disappointed in his own explanation.
Mercy reached for his soda. “An engine is like a woman in that you have to love it,” he said, relenting. “You learn. You make understanding its strengths your top priority, and you help doctor it through its weaknesses. You become an expert, on that engine, and then you stand back and marvel at its power.”
Tango whistled. “Cajun biker poet,” he said, appreciatively.
“I don’t guess anybody has to wonder which woman you were comparing it to,” Aidan grumbled.
“Nope.” Mercy grinned at him. “You can suit yourself, brother, but I like a quality engine.”
Again, Carter tried to hide a smile.
Growing serious, Mercy said, “You’ve just got to study up, kid,” to Carter. “Being a mechanic’s a trade like anything else. Some people take to it more naturally than others, and some have to work a little hard. Same as any job.”
Carter nodded and sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Yeah, I know.” In the afternoon sunlight, his hair was brilliant gold, his young face dotted with faint freckles.
It was lunch time, and despite the forty-two degree temp and the tugging wind, the day had turned out sunny, and all of them were too restless to be cooped up any longer. Their hands were tight and chapped from the cold, joints stiff from working on unhappy bikes just as resentful of winter as they were. When the pavement gained the faintest trace of warmth from the sun, they sent Carter out for Burger King, and were now eating it on the picnic table out in front of the bike shop.
“Ghost’s got other stuff you could do,” Mercy went on between bites of burger, “but you’ll need to be able to work on your own bike. You gotta learn this stuff anyway.”
Carter’s shoulders slumped further at the mention of “bike.” He was having trouble with the idea of trading his red Mustang for a Harley.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, staring at his food.
“You could get something decent, with the money you get from the trade-in,” Tango encouraged. “Better than what I had.” He snorted. “You guys remember that old Indian I had?”
“I remember the sound of it backfiring every fifteen seconds,” Mercy said.
“We shoulda had it bronzed,” Aidan said. “Proof it even existed.”
There was the sound of a throat clearing behind Mercy, and it startled all four of them.
Aidan’s eyes tightened, narrowing a fraction, signaling a threat.
When Mercy turned, he was prepared to see something he didn’t like, and there was Michael, hands on his hips, watching them from behind his sunglasses with his expressionless semblance of a face locked in its usual positions.
“Can I talk to you?” he asked.
Mercy was beyond done with this asshole’s failure to be a human being. He feigned searching the table. “You’re talking to me?” Hand on his chest, overly dramatic.
Michael’s face compressed the smallest bit in a frown. “Yeah.”
Mercy turned his back to him. “I’m eating lunch.”
“I want to talk to you,” Michael persisted in his toneless voice. “For a second.” A beat, then, the faintest trace of some emotion: “Please.”
Clearly, the man was suffering a major catastrophe if he was almost having emotions and saying please. It would serve him right, Mercy thought for one dark moment, to make him wait some more. But the Lean Dog part of him, that didn’t want to cause even more club drama than he already had, sighed and turned around. “What about?”
Michael motioned with his head toward the parking lot and walked that way. So this was a private talk, then.
With a grimace as his knee pulled, Mercy stood. “Don’t eat my fries.” And followed his least favorite brother.
Michael came to a halt in front of a customer’s waiting bike and turned suddenly, bringing Mercy up short. His hands went back on his hips. He held his head at an angle that projected deference. There was some sort of eagerness in him, a stress Mercy had never noticed before.
Without lifting his shaded eyes to make contact, Michael said, “How did the meeting with Abraham Jessup go this morning?”
Mercy shrugged. “It went. Why?”
“Did Ghost make a deal with him?” His voice was taking on a tight, clipped sound; not his normal, businesslike quality, but one less stable.
Christ. Michael McCall was feeling things.
“Yeah,” Mercy said. “He’s gonna give him that northeast territory that Junior abandoned. He’s got decent coke to sell.”
“Shit,” Michael said to himself. Then his head tipped back, gaze fixed to Mercy’s face, the shapes of his eyes just visible through the lenses of the glasses. “What do you make of him?”
Mercy was shocked. “You want to know if I like him or not?”
“That’s what I asked, isn’t it?” Impatience. Anxiety. Veiled, but there, under the granite surface.
Mercy studied him a moment, the way his knuckles looked white where his fingers were digging into his hipbones. A vein stood out in his throat, a muscle in his jaw throwing a thin, straight shadow where it was raised. The man was riled. Given his normal state, he could have been on a rampage, for all Mercy knew.
“Ghost is letting the guy deal,” he said, carefully, not knowing what Michael’s stake in all this was. “And all our dealers are shitheads; comes with the territory. But–”
Michael inhaled.
“ – this one makes my skin crawl. I don’t know anything about him, but no, I don’t like him. Guy gives me a bad feeling.”
Michael nodded. He swallowed and his throat worked. He glanced away, out across the vast Dartmoor lot that spread off to his right toward the nursery. “You met the son-in-law?”
“Weird as hell.”
Michael nodded again. “Thanks.” He turned to walk away.
“Hey,” Mercy said, staying him a moment. “Why do you care?” he asked, curious, but not unkind.
Michael hesitated. “They’re very bad people.”
“Well…so are we, most of the time.”
He shook his head, brows drawing together in an obvious scowl. “Not like this.” He glanced at Mercy, briefly, before he left. “Not even you.”
Ghost was in the trucking offices, because that was where the most incompetent managers always seemed to be. The newest secretary, a mousy, nervous thing, stood off to the side, hands clasped together in front of her, while Ghost pawed through the paperwork nightmare on the desk.
Michael hesitated in the doorway. It had always been a priority of his to keep anything personal or dramatic away from the club. He never wanted to cause his president any worry.
But he was too full of pulsing energy to let that stop him now. It might have been the hangover, but it felt like an awakening of sorts. Like someone had doused him with cold water. He had something to do. Something personal, even dramatic. And he felt, after all he’d done, that the least his president could do was grant him the time he’d promised.
“Ghost?” he asked, stepping into the office.
He startled the secretary, and she shied hard, bumping into the wall.
Ghost glanced up with surprise, but as a rule, the man never startled. “Yeah?”
Michael braced himself inwardly. Here went nothing. “I think I want to take you up on your offer. You’re right; I need a little time off.”
Ghost nodded and went back to his paperwork. “Good. Fine. Whatever you need.”
Was it really that easy? He’d never tried it, so he hadn’t known. Ghost had been the one to suggest a break to begin with, but so often, people went back on their word.
“You’re sure?”
Ghost spared him a curious look. “Yeah. Go visit your uncle. Get laid. Something. You’re too wired.”
Michael searched his mind for a secret disappointment. Had Ghost told him no, then he would have had a valid reason for backing out on Holly. If he’d wanted it. Turned out, he only felt relief. He didn’t want out of his commitment to Holly. In fact, now that he was free, all he really wanted was to get to her.
“I’ll have my cell, if you need to reach me.”
“Sure.” Ghost gave him an absent wave. To the secretary, he said, “Is this your handwriting here?”
“Y-yes, sir,” she stammered, taking a tentative step toward him.
Michael turned and stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine, feeling like a great weight had slid off his shoulders.
He might be nervous, later, when he had to lie to his club, pretend he had no idea what had happened to Abraham, Jacob and Dewey Jessup. But for now, all he felt was a sweeping exuberance. Like the wings down his shoulders might actually lift, and carry him the distance to the demons that needed slaying.