Seventeen
“Samantha.”
Sam halted in her tracks, tried to keep her smile in check, and turned around.
Ava came down the campus sidewalk toward her, leggings, boots, leather jacket, another of her usual dark ensembles, hair caught up in the wind. How different they looked, and both of them attached to bikers.
The thought of attached sent heat zinging through her belly, widened her smile.
Oh God, but she was totally in love with Aidan.
Ava grinned, the expression full of her brother’s feral charm. There was no denying their relation. Half-blooded, but strong blood. “I need to talk to you,” she said, grin becoming wicked as she reached Sam and they fell into step together.
“I figured.”
“You and my brother.”
“Yes.”
“What’s going on there?”
Sam smiled.
“Aha.”
“No, not aha. Things are…going.”
Ava laughed. “So you two are…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did he tell you about the party?”
“He invited me, actually.”
Ava whistled, and Sam’s heart skipped.
“I take it that’s a big deal.”
Ava tucked her hair back and stared ahead as they walked, eyes on the foot traffic before them, but seeing something in her mind. “Let me say it this way.”
“Oh no.”
“No, it’s alright. Mercy told me about the party when he got home from work yesterday. Most of the time, he’ll just ask if I want to come hang out at the clubhouse and have a drink, very casual. He doesn’t mind if I’d rather stay home with the babies. But last night, he said, ‘Bonita’s agreed to watch the boys. There’s a party, and we’re riding through town beforehand, and you’re gonna be on the back of my bike, fillette.’ He was smiling, but he was completely serious.
“Every once in a while,” she continued, “my dad likes to make a statement to the city. Yes, the club is the subject of gossip, and there’s plenty of people who are afraid of it, but we’re a family too. On Halloween, he’s going to make a family statement. It’s also a show of strength. And a warning to those who are against us. It’s a complicated, subtle move…even though physically it isn’t subtle at all.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Anyway, on that ride, it’s going to be the members and their old ladies.” Her eyes came over. “This is a big party, an intimate, Lean Dogs sort of party, and it’s not open to the public. If Aidan invited you, I think that’s significant.”
Sam took a deep breath. “No pressure then.”
Ava’s expression became thoughtful. “Actually no. No pressure. All the pressure’s on my brother, and he knows it.” Her eyes grew dark and hard to read. “He really cares about you, Sam. I’ve told him he’d better not screw things up.”
A nice gesture, but not exactly a comforting one. “Ava.”
“Hmm?”
She almost chickened out and didn’t ask, but she wanted to know. The Lean Dogs as a club were so interconnected and self-protective, she couldn’t help but be curious. “If I come – if I’m with Aidan – is that going to go over okay with everyone?”
Ava turned her head and gave her a warm smile. “Better than okay. I promise.”
~*~
The impending arrival of out of town brothers always turned Dartmoor into a kicked anthill of activity. By noon, the buzz of preparations at the clubhouse had radiated outward, inflicting the legit business side of things.
Aidan took a smoke break propped against the outer wall of the bike shop, watching hangarounds wheel kegs and cases of beer into the clubhouse. Jasmine and her girls unloaded groceries from one of the club trucks.
Tango appeared beside him, silent, but emitting his own quiet energy. “Sam’s coming?”
“She might.” That still itched just beneath his skin, the way she’d pulled back inside herself and asked if she could think about it. What could there be left to think about?
“It’s got to be scary for a girl like her, coming to a party here,” Tango said. “Anybody with any sense ought to have said ‘maybe.’”
“Yeah.” But he wasn’t reassured. “What about you? You bringing anybody?”
No answer. At first. Then: “Does Sam know about Tonya yet? The baby?”
Aidan bit back a response. The weight of their respective secrets fell heavy across their shoulders.
~*~
In the pocket of his cut, Ghost felt the sharp corners of the folded-up map Tango had given him. He imagined he could see Shaman’s fingerprints on it, glowing like phosphorous, tainting it. The man hadn’t contacted him again about “the favor,” but he knew any lapse in time was about calculation and had nothing to do with forgetfulness. The idea soured his stomach, made him feel less on top of his game as he walked into the police precinct.
The desk secretary showed him to Fielding’s office without fuss. The man himself glanced up once, saw who it was, and returned to his paperwork with a defeated sigh.
“What?” he asked when the door was shut and they were sealed in together.
Ghost dropped into a chair. “I wanted to see your smiling face,” he said, but heard the hard bite to his voice. He wasn’t truly in the mood to mess with the guy. “I wanted to put you on notice,” he amended.
Fielding’s head lifted, gaze wary. “Notice of what?”
“Some things are in the works for us. And we’re gonna need some leeway. Legal-wise.”
The sergeant braced his forearms on the desk and sighed deeply. He’d lost his do-gooder shine after the accident with Amy Richards. He could be indignant and self-righteous no longer, and it was killing him, slowly. Bloodshot eyes, gray skin, wrinkled uniform shirt. He didn’t smell like liquor, but he bore all the marks of a drinking man.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, tiredly.
“I never kid, Vince.” Ghost allowed his voice to soften, not really liking the idea of grinding the poor guy into the dirt when he was already down. “I don’t need you to do anything. Just look the other way, if you start feeling vibrations underfoot.”
The responding silence was as good as acquiescence.
~*~
The bikes were heard out on Industrial just before nightfall. It was dark enough for the headlamps to flare like glowing eyes, light enough for the riders in their black cuts, helmets and shades to be visible and distinct as they swooped in at the gates and cruised up to the clubhouse.
Aidan sat on a picnic table with Tango and Mercy, smoking, waiting.
“Welcome home, boys,” Ghost said, stepping forward as engines died and helmets were taken off.
“Home?” Candy said with a laugh, swinging off his bike and rising up to his full, formidable height. “You still trying to get me to transfer, old man?”
“Always worth a shot.”
The Knoxville president and Texas VP shared a back-slapping man-hug, and then they were all on their feet, greeting their brethren. Aidan embraced Candy, Jinx, and Walsh’s brother Fox. Then he realized who the fourth Texan was, and stepped back to watch the show, eyes going to Mercy.
There was nothing “half” about the resemblance between the two brothers. Colin was a big man, but he lacked the finely-honed edge of complete and total insanity that lurked beneath Mercy’s affable surface. Still, he was impressive and intimidating in his own right, black hair cropped short, ropy arms bare despite the cold. His prospect cut did little to diminish his aura.
The two sized one another up a long, tense second, and no one else spoke, waiting.
Finally, Mercy was the one to initiate contact. He extended one huge hand for a shake, and Colin accepted it a second later.
“How’s the family?” Colin asked stiffly.
“Good. Ava says to come by the house sometime.”
They let go of one another at the same time, as though it was scripted.
“I need a drink,” Candy announced, and it broke up the last of the awkwardness, and sent them all inside.
~*~
“I expected to ride in and find the city on fire, the way you talked over the phone,” Candy said as he commandeered the bottle of Scotch from the groupie who’d offered it and poured his own drink. He sat at the bar, holding court as was his way, brows lifted as he glanced over at Ghost.
“Not yet,” Ghost said, and gestured to Ratchet.
The secretary was sitting at one of the round bar tables with Rottie, Hound, and RJ, and pushed up like he’d been waiting for this summons on the edge of his chair. It was the first time that evening Aidan noticed the file folder tucked under his arm. He walked to the bar, handed Ghost the file, and then waited, hands linked behind his back.
“Chapel,” Ghost said, and they all headed that way.
It was a tighter fit than normal, with four extra guys, and Ghost waited until they were all settled before he laid the folder out on the massive dining table and spread out its contents, angling them so Candy had a good view.
The Texas VP studied the paperwork a moment, then sat back and said, “Shit.”
Aidan felt a prickling like fingernails at the back of his neck. “What?” he asked.
Ghost looked toward him, and it might have been their first moment of eye contact since that morning in the Teague kitchen a few weeks ago. “Names.”
“Yeah?”
“Our names. Our old ladies’ names. I’m pretty sure it’s some kinda hit list.”
“What?” Several voices asked the question along with him.
“Our little Ratchet’s been busy,” Ghost explained, “hacking into accounts and intercepting emails. This was sent to Ellison himself from one of his top underthugs.” From the printout, he read, “Kenneth and Margaret Teague. Kenneth a.k.a. Ghost. President. 2254 Chastain Street. Kingston and Emmaline Walsh…” And on it went. Michael and Holly. Mercy and Ava…all of them. Names, addresses, club names, and club ranks.
“How long have you been sitting on this?” Mercy asked, voice scary-quiet.
“Two days.” Ghost’s tone said he didn’t expect a bunch of arguing. “I wanted to wait until we were all together.”
“So we’re together,” Michael said tightly. “Now what? Do I gotta go home and build a fallout shelter for my woman to live in?”
It was literally the most he’d ever said at church, and it grabbed everyone’s attention.
“I’ll bring a shovel,” Mercy said, “and after, we’ll do my place.” They shared a look of true camaraderie. Two psychos appreciating one another’s violence and seriousness.
Aidan had a brief moment of thanksgiving: Sam’s name hadn’t been on the list.
But his beloved stepmother, little sister, his best friend, his brothers – they were in the enemy’s crosshairs. His stomach lurched.
“Ellison’s backing one company that’s got only one project in the city,” Aidan said. “Why would killing all of us be the next step?”
Ghost actually gave him a considering face, like he appreciated the question. “I don’t think it is,” he said. “This is just him getting organized. He hasn’t made a move against us yet, but he’s planning to, and if we resist too heavily, he’ll start dropping bodies.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rottie said, raking his hands through his hair in agitation.
“We need to make the first move,” Walsh said, words laced with smoke. He was working on the last nub of a cig with one hand and toying with the pack with the other, ready to light the next one up.
“Obviously,” Fox said. He had taken on his brother’s usual mantel of calm, nursing a Scotch and watching them all with cool blue eyes.
Candy grinned. “That’s why we brought the Fox.”
“And I’ve got a real good lead on where to start,” Ghost said, withdrawing something from inside his cut. He unfolded it to reveal a map, locations picked out in red. “Ellison’s properties,” he explained. “In and around Knoxville.”
“Where’d that come from?” Briscoe asked.
But Aidan knew. Surely they all knew.
Well, those of them who knew Tango’s secrets, anyway.
“A friend,” Ghost said evenly. “Now, I say we don’t waste that gesture of friendship…”
And plans were decided.
~*~
The semicolon was vastly underused in modern society, Sam decided as she sat grading essays in her cramped little office at work. Between the choppy, unimaginative sentences, and the run-on sentences, she had little hope left for the English education of future generations.
The last two nights, completely distracted by Aidan, she’d neglected work. This evening, she’d decided to stay a little longer at the school, force some discipline on herself. So far, she was having to reread sentences three and four times, red pen hovering impotently over paper that seemed to swim in and out of focus.
She had a boyfriend. And she really, really wanted to be home with him, rather than here with crappy essays.
Someone rapped on her open office door and she jerked, hand closing tight around the pen as her head snatched to the door. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but she didn’t figure an attacker would like the feel of it puncturing his eyeball.
All the fight drained out of her and warmth filled her, head to toe, when she saw who stood in her threshold.
Aidan shoved his hands in his pockets and braced a shoulder against the jamb. His grin twisted her insides. “Is that special just for me?” He nodded toward her hand and she dropped the pen down onto the desk.
“I thought you might be the UT Strangler,” she defended, smiling back.
His expression sobered. “Is there a UT Strangler?”
“No. Not that I know of, anyway. But things happen on university campuses all the time.” She shuddered. Why had she gone there, of all places?
“I scared you,” he said, stepping into the office, standing in front of her desk and tipping a serious look down into her face. “I’m sorry.”
“I get a little absorbed.” In thoughts of you. But she gestured to her papers. “And all of a sudden I hear a sound, and I remember I’m the only one on this floor at the moment.” She shrugged. “I’m a little jumpy, I guess.”
Aidan frowned and glanced through the door. There was a window set in the far side of the wall, a tall one with a pretty view of the nighttime campus, the glowing security lampposts and the shadowed sidewalks.
He turned back to her and dropped his voice. “Are you armed?”
“Armed with…” She flicked the red pen with her fingernail.
“Nah.” He pushed aside his cut, and showed her the gun weighing down its inside pocket. “That kinda armed.”
She gestured for him to cover it and he did, sighing. “Those aren’t allowed on campus,” she whispered.
“Baby, I’m probably not allowed on campus. I meant for you.”
“I’m not allowed to have one here either.”
He made a face. “Do you think anyone here to hurt you would be worried about what he was ‘allowed’ to do?”
A chill rippled across her skin, made her want to pull her sweater shut. “Is someone going to try to hurt me?”
His eyes shifted away, jaw tightening. “World’s dangerous.”
“So are you,” she said softly.
He hesitated, gaze coming back to her face. When he realized she was mostly teasing, his tension eased. “You’ve probably got me confused with one of my brothers.”
Probably not, she added in her head. “Hey, how did you know where my office was? You’ve never been up here before.”
“I asked Ava.”
“You wanted to talk about your Shakespeare paper?” she guessed.
“I didn’t want you walking to your car in the dark.”
Oh…that could melt a girl. “I walk to my car in the dark a lot of nights.”
“Yeah, but that was before me.”
She sat very still a moment, letting his words hit her full force and then double back to wrap around her. Her smile felt natural, warm, happy. “Before you, huh?”
“Yeah.” He grinned back, a small smile that seemed private, quiet, just for her.
Melting. So much melting.
She started gathering the scattered essays across her desk. “I can finish up here if you’re ready to go.”
“Nah.” He dropped into the chair across from her, the one where her students sat when they came for a consult. “Finish working, then we’ll go home. I’ve got nowhere else to be.” He gave her another of those smiles, like there was nothing else he’d rather do than watch her grade papers.
“It’s boring,” she warned.
“You aren’t, though, and that’s what I’ll be looking at.”
“Are you trying to make me swoon?”
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
“Then yeah.”
Grinning like a lunatic, she shook her head and tried to clear her thoughts. Shakespeare. Focus.
For almost a half hour, she worked in silence, falling into the rhythm of the words, red pen wielded sparingly. She understood grammar and punctuation, and therefore wanted to see it within the papers…but she understood the way the mind didn’t always work cleanly, too. She knew that skill could be cultivated, and artistic appreciation was something innate and precious that needed nurturing, rather than squelching.
After a while, she lifted her head, saw Aidan staring at her, in an unconscious way that told her he’d been studying her the entire time she’d been studying work.
“I didn’t ever have the patience for it,” he said. “The kind of stuff you do. Books and words.”
“It’s never too late to get started.”
She expected him to wave her off, but he gave her a considering face, head tilting again. “Ava thinks I’m stupid.”
“You’re street smart.”
“Is that enough for you?”
She recoiled. “Aidan, I don’t have specifications. You know that I…” She almost choked. “How I feel about you.”
He stared. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
His smile was slow. “How much longer, teach?”
“All of it can wait until tomorrow.”
When he stood, she took the hand he offered, and let her gun-wielding man lead her out to her car.
~*~
“Do you like kids?”
The question caught her by surprise. Sam lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, hovering above Aidan who lay face-down on the pillow beside her. She traced his tattoos with a meticulous fingertip, by the light of her dresser lamp, following the careful patterns of the clusters of red roses across his shoulders. Warm with post-coital bliss, it took her a second to register his question.
Her hand stilled, finger braced in a lush red petal. “What?”
“Do you like kids?” he repeated, his back tensing beneath her. “I mean, do you want them? Like them?” He shrugged, roses jumping. “Whatever.”
Sam stared at his beautifully inked skin a moment, thinking, trying to read intention into his words. Why was he asking this? Why now, when they’d made no promises to one another?
“I do,” she said, carefully, not wanting him to feel any expectation. “I like them. You’ve met my sister. She pretty much qualifies as a kid.”
“Yeah.”
“As to wanting them…” She trailed off. She hadn’t really thought about it, and said as much. “Dad died, and I had to help Mom, look after Erin…I haven’t put a whole lot of thought toward having a family of my own.” When he didn’t answer, she dragged her nail lazily across the outline of a green thorn and whispered, “But I want one. A family. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s too late. Who knows. I’m thirty-two.”
“Pssht. It’s not too late.”
“Maybe not.”
“It’s not.”
She flattened her hand over his spine, wishing she could read his thoughts through the touch of his skin. “Why?”
The pause went a beat too long to be casual. “Dunno. No reason.”
Yeah right. But she wasn’t going to push. He wasn’t telling her he didn’t want children, and that was a good sign. “Tell me about these,” she said, continuing her exploration of the roses. “They’re beautiful.” And big, which meant they must have some importance.
“My roses,” he said in a voice she hadn’t heard before, something low and tender.
She stilled, arrested by that voice, captured in its dark magic.
“Mags has always loved red roses,” he said.
Sam waited for him to say more, but then realized he wasn’t going to. They were for Maggie. Gorgeous bouquets on his shoulders, his back, bleeding down his arms.
She rested her cheek against his skin and listened to air fill his lungs, through the layers of skin and bone. She loved him, and she was so afraid to say it.
“Halloween,” she said, and he tensed beneath her.
“Yeah?”
“I want to come.”