#TeaserTuesday: The Famous Fillette

 

Bob Boudreaux was a face she’d only ever seen in photos that were more than twenty-years-old, but she would have recognized him straight off, despite the intervening years and the graying hair, based on the way the Dogs were seated. Bob sat at the corner-most table, facing the doorway through which she and Colin entered, the front of his cut weathered from long decades of wear, and resplendent with patches. The man beside him was a good ten years younger, slight, but with a serious face, and his own impressive bevvy of patches. His VP, she thought. The others, ranged across the rest of the tables, drinking beer from tall glasses, were his killers. His honor guard. They glanced over their shoulders and flicked disinterested glances up from their hands of cards; she knew they were cataloguing everything about her, and were surprised by her presence at Colin’s side, though Bob was the only one to show it outwardly.

His brows lifted, pressing a tall stack of sun wrinkles up his forehead. “Colin,” he said as they approached the table, “not to stick my nose in your business, son, but I thought your old lady was a blonde.”

“She is.” Ava pulled off her cap and smoothed the crown of her ponytail. “I’m Mercy’s old lady.”

The VP – stone-faced in a very Walsh-like way – went blank and blinking with surprise. “Shit.”

“Shit,” Bob echoed.

“Bob, meet Ava Lécuyer,” Colin said in the voice of a man who was very, very tired of his life lately.

“Wow,” Bob said, and then folded his arms and grinned. “The famous fillette, in the flesh.”

Ava couldn’t decide how she felt about that, so she said, simply, “Hi, Bob. You got a boat we can borrow?”

 

Technically, Ava's been Lean Dog royalty since birth. Even before he was president, Ghost held a position of high esteem among his brothers, and was a legacy member besides. 

But there's a difference between holding a title and living up to it, and one of the cool things about Lord Have Mercy was the chance to write Ava as someone who's fought, and bled, and killed for the club. To see her as a living legend in her own right, alongside Mercy. I always regretted not bringing her and Bob face-to-face in Fearless, but the meeting finally happened, eight years later. 

If you haven't yet embarked upon the arduous journey that is the final installment of the Dartmoor Series, you can do so through the link below:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel