Twenty-Eight
Aidan dreamed of money. Floating down out of the heavens, fluttering like fall leaves into his open palms. Half a mil, just what he needed. He counted it, stacked it, bundled it with rubber bands. And then there was Sam, sinking to her knees in front of him, passing her hands up his thighs. “Aidan, I forgive you. Come back to me.”
He woke with the phantom feel of her lips against him, and rolled over to find himself hard, sweating, and utterly desperate, stomach knotted from the stress. All of it was a jumble inside him: desire, grief, worry, fury.
He thought of Tango and that was like dumping cold water into his lap. He hadn’t been at the clubhouse yesterday during the phone call, but Walsh had debriefed him, careful not to say anything inflammatory. It didn’t matter, though. Aidan knew what happened to hostages. He was all too familiar with his brother-in-law’s skillset to be naïve on that front.
He found Carter in the kitchen chugging down a Red Bull. “I’m heading in early,” Aidan said.
“I’ll come with you.”
They were equally subdued. Their brother was being held captive by the enemy; that was a uniting force.
They didn’t even pretend to clock in at the shop when they got to Dartmoor, but went straight to the clubhouse. The common room looked like a busy office: Ratchet chain-smoking and tapping away at his laptop, Walsh on the phone, Ghost on the phone, Candy on the phone.
“Yeah,” Ghost said into his cell and snapped it shut. Then he looked at Aidan. “We’re gathering the money.”
“We gonna have enough?”
“If I have to sell Mags’ car, we’ll make it work.”
“What can I do?”
Ghost shrugged and shook his head.
“He’s my best friend,” Aidan said quietly.
His father gave him a level look. “Yeah, I know that. But I don’t know what to tell you except that we’re working on it.”
And apparently, he wasn’t wanted or needed. He was just the party-hearty fuckup after all, wasn’t he?
His hands shook as he lit up a cigarette on his way back to the shop. Fuck this. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it –
Maggie stepped into his path and he pulled up short and almost swallowed the cig, fumbling to gather himself at the last second.
She put a steadying hand on his arm. She had this way of looking maternal and concerned…and ready to beat so much ass at the same time. He’d always admired that about her, and she looked that way now. “Any news?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Your dad’ll get it sorted.”
“Mags, I really don’t wanna talk about him right now.”
She sighed, but nodded. “Why don’t you come with me? No sense sitting around here and worrying.”
“I was glonna clock in.”
“After we get back,” she insisted. “Tonya’s in her second trimester and she’s got a doctor’s appointment today.”
It felt like someone shoved him, right in the middle of the chest.
“You ready to step up?” Maggie asked.
“I…” No more screwing around. No more being a worthless piece of shit. “Yeah,” he said on an exhale. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
~*~
He’d never been in this wing of the hospital before. When it came to his nephews, he hadn’t become involved until they’d arrived into the world, and the labor and delivery ward wasn’t the same as the OB/Gyn practice. Once he passed through the double doors at Maggie’s side, the hospital fell away, and in its place, a waiting room floored in wood-look tiles, with black and white photography prints on the walls, potted plants, soft lighting, and soothing jazz playing from hidden speakers.
He wanted to make a comment about wishing the rest of the place was this swanky, but there was a lump in his throat.
As if sensing his need for it, Maggie curled her arm around his, giving the impression he was the one supporting her, when the opposite was true. “She knows we’re coming,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay.”
When they reached the desk, Maggie leaned across it to explain their presence to one of the techs.
“Follow me, please,” the young woman said, and came around the desk to lead them through a door, down a hall lined with more black and white prints, to an interior waiting room, this one small and private.
Aidan spied a spread of maternity magazines on one of the coffee tables, alongside a display of brochures with a cartoon uterus on the front.
“You wanna sit?” Maggie asked.
“Not really.”
Maggie sat, jean-clad legs crossing. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now. Right now, this seems like this huge big mess. But I can say with one-hundred percent confidence that you won’t regret keeping your baby.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You never wanted to leave Ava outside the firehouse?”
“Ass. You know I love my baby. I love you. Just like you’ll love yours. But even if–” She couldn’t make herself say it, the idea of him not loving his child too terrible to contemplate. “You would regret giving it up,” she said firmly. “I know you, and you’d hate yourself every day for it.”
Aidan heard the clip of shoes approaching them across the tiles and turned to look.
Tonya was starting to show a little. Not much, because she was lithe and fit, but her clinging shirt belied a slight curve to her belly. Beside her, her mother was the poster child for Elegant Older Ladies.
Maggie stood and came to stand beside him, taking his hand in her warm, strong one. “How’d the appointment go?” she asked in a businesslike voice.
In a matching tone, Tonya’s mother said, “It went well. She and the baby are perfectly healthy.”
A mom-to-mom stare-down of neutral expressions and guarded gazes ensued.
Tonya had a little paper rectangle in her hands. Another photo of some sort, Aidan realized.
“What’s that?” he asked, surprised he was able to get the words out.
She extended it toward him. “It’s for you,” she said in a flat voice. Apparently, he’d knocked all the fight out of her the last time he’d seen her. “You can keep it. It’s the baby.”
A startlingly clear image of the baby this time, no longer a blob, but a life, in unquestionable detail.
“Congratulations,” Tonya said. “It’s a girl.”
Aidan stopped breathing.
Maggie leaned against his shoulder, and her fingers squeezed his as she looked at the image. “A girl,” she breathed. “Your girl, baby.”
Tonya said, “She’ll need a name. Be thinking of one.”
~*~
He hadn’t counted on it hurting this much. The ears, like the fingertips and the ends of the toes, were full of nerves, and the outer edge of his ear stung and pulsed and throbbed. It was making his whole head ache.
He’d had worse, of course he had. A man had taken his virginity at age twelve – and that didn’t count the things that had been done to him in the years preceding. But this still made him clench his teeth. Mostly because he knew there was more to come. Five-hundred grand wasn’t anything Ghost could go withdraw from the bank. And if he were in his president’s shoes, he wasn’t sure he’d roll over so easy.
He held onto the stone solidness of Ghost’s voice over the phone line earlier. “We’re getting you back, Kev. Understand?” And he held onto little Whitney Howard’s hand, like a shameless pussy, because she was small and sweet and she smelled like soft, feminine, comforting things, as her hair flicked through the bars and teased at his face.
“What’s it like?” she asked. “Being a Lean Dog.” And he knew she was seeking to distract him.
He was okay with that. Sitting up a little straighter, but not releasing her hand, he said, “Not that I can speak from experience, but I think it’s like being in one of those great big Italian families.”
“Yeah?” She laughed softly.
“Except nobody’s Italian. Not in Tennessee, anyway. Our New York chapter, yeah. But,” he said, refocusing, “it’s a brotherhood. We’ve got some of the old timers, and the legacies, who are related to the founders. Muscle and brains and the weird awkward ones.” His laugh was a little hollow. “The club is everything,” he said, sobering. “It’s the only thing I’ve got.”
“It sounds like a pretty good thing, though.”
It sort of did, when he laid it out like that. When he didn’t think too hard about where he was.
The outer door opened, up at the top of the concrete stairs.
They both froze. Tango imagined her stomach filled with dread the way his did.
“Get back from the bars,” he told her. When he let go of her hand, the cold air closed over his own. “We don’t want to look weak to them.”
She nodded and scooted toward the center of her cell.
When their captors arrived, they were both quiet and composed, cross-legged on the floor.
Bill the Faceless wasn’t with the two goons this time. That wasn’t a relief.
The two thugs bypassed Tango’s cell at a lazy stroll. Their eyes were on Whitney, and in an instant, the dread in his belly boiled up to become anger, burning back the haze of physical pain. The dogs had been let off the leash…and they’d decided they wanted to play.
One of them whistled, and the other laughed in an unmistakable way as they peered through the bars at Whitney.
“Baby, baby, baby,” one said to the other. “How old you think she is?”
“Betcha she can’t even drink yet,” Number Two responded, voice dark with intent. “Can ya, sweetheart? You even eighteen?”
Tango glanced over at Whitney, saw her wrap her arms around her knees and lift her chin, rebelliously silent.
“Don’t feel like talking?” One said. “Maybe I oughta come in there and see if your tongue’s working.”
Oh shit… Tango’s hands curled into fists.
“Twenty,” Whitney said. “I’m twenty.”
The thugs laughed.
“Just a little piece of veal,” One said.
The sound of the key grating into the lock of her cell door lifted the hair on the back of Tango’s neck. Whitney shot a frantic look toward him, eyes huge – pale blue eyes liquid with fright. It was a look that communicated everything: her terror, her innocence, her panic. Twenty, life only just beginning, and she was about to be violated unspeakably by her captors. It happened every day, all over the country, abuses carried out by sociopathic animals.
But it wasn’t happening on Tango’s watch.
He surged to his feet. “Do you not know who I am?”
“Shut up,” Two said, not interested.
Tango went to the front of his cell, wrapped his fingers around the bars. “No, I don’t think you get it. Do you know who I am?”
They looked over at him, irritated, but distracted from Whitney for a moment. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“Those earrings were hooked to his brain,” One suggested. They laughed again.
“You ever heard of The Cuckoo’s Nest?”
You’d either heard of the Nest, or you hadn’t; there was no mistaking it for anyplace else. And clearly, these two had heard. They both stilled, the smiles dropping off their faces.
“I used to work there,” Tango said, and there was nothing true about the word work. His heart pounded as the memories crashed across him. He couldn’t talk about that place without thinking about Miss Carla, about the boys, about Ian, about all of it. “I was one of the features.”
The two guards moved toward him, slowly, a little hesitant, but fascinated.
“You never went in there, did you?” Tango asked. “But you were curious. You thought it was disgusting…but there was that little bit of fascination, wasn’t there?” He was aware of Whitney staring at him, and hated himself as he continued. “You wanna find out?” he asked. “You wanna see one of Miss Carla’s Dancing Boys? Take a good look.”
Thug One walked up to him, glaring down at Tango with utter contempt. He hawked and spat on the concrete. “Shut up, faggot.”
“How many little crying virgin girls have you terrorized?” he taunted them. “Doesn’t that get boring? More of the same, and same, and same. How’s that a challenge? How’s that sport?”
Whitney made a small distressed sound.
Tango delivered his challenge: “You wanna torture somebody? You wanna see who can take it? You start with me.”