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1
“DO they
have girls in Tennessee?”
Walsh twisted around on his perch on
a barstool beside the entrance of Le Femme. “We’ve got more women in Tennessee
than you’ve got dentists in the UK.”
“Then why’ve you got no old lady,
and crooked teeth?”
He touched his tongue to his bottom
front teeth out of reflex. They were only a little bit crooked. In a charming
way, he liked to think. He didn’t get any complaints – not about the teeth
anyway.
He shifted his gaze from his
tormentor – a freshly patched punkass from Manchester more interested in the
action inside the club than manning the door as ordered – to his old friend
Sully. “Guess you guys’ll just patch anyone these days, huh?”
Sully lifted his massive shoulders
in a shrug. “We need the new blood. London chapter’s on the thin side these days.”
And it was. Walsh had seen that for
himself in the weeks he’d been here. Back in his motherland.
Kingston Rutherford Walsh had gone
by “Walsh” since he was old enough to understand how very uncool his mouthful
of a name was – at age ten. He’d grown up fast, the scrawny single child of an
unwed mother, working odd jobs for the grocer who owned the storefront on the
ground level of their building. He’d joined the RAF at eighteen; his mother had
plastered the walls of the flat with photographs of him in his uniform. That
one newspaper clipping that had dared to call him a hero. With his devastating
shoulder injury had come medical discharge. And with that, an epic sense of
displacement – he wasn’t made for regular life, for the narrow social boxes of
the city to which he’d been born.
Joining the Black Dogs seemed
inevitable in hindsight. His military loyalty and discipline had served him
well. And it was with the club that he’d learned he had a knack for numbers,
and for getting businesses up off the ground. He opened twelve club-owned
businesses in London before he was sent to the US – to Knoxville, Tennessee –
to turn around a strip club. He’d fallen in love – with warm summers, waving
tides of long grass, the smell of tilled earth, and sweet iced tea. He’d
patched over to the Knoxville chapter. The club used him as a joint resource,
sending him from chapter to chapter, as a kind of MC managerial consultant. He
had a nice little two-room house by the railroad tracks, a huge rainy day fund
sitting in the bank, a brand new Dyna, and an account he wired money to in
London for his mother every couple of months.
He’d stopped in to visit her that
morning, with flowers, chocolate biscuits, and one of those damned teenager
iced coffees she’d developed a taste for. She’d bussed his cheek and called him
“my handsome man.” Mothers.
At the curb, a cab let out three boys
in their twenties, all of them clearly drunk. They pointed to the blue neon
above the door and whooped, shoving and back-slapping.
Amateurs.
“This is Le Femme, yeah?” the least
intoxicated asked Walsh.
“That’s what it says on the door.”
“Are the girls as hot as they say?”
another one slurred.
“Hotter.”
“Ask to go into a private room with
Cinnamon,” Sully said as the trio had their IDs checked.
Once they were through the doors,
and the din of thumping baseline from inside had faded, Sully said, “Boys, it’s
opening night, and we’ve got a full house.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” the newbie asked.
He was still young and stupid enough to believe that if you built it, they
would come – whatever it was.
But Sully sent a clearly grateful
nod toward Walsh. “Our thanks, brother.”
Walsh tipped his head in
acknowledgement. It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last time he led the
charge into a successful, legitimate venture for the Black Dogs, be it
stateside, or back home.
“Hey!” The cab was still at the
curb, the cabbie leaning out of the window. “Those little wankers ran off
without paying!”
Walsh climbed off his stool with a
sigh. He didn’t feel like an argument; and what was a little cab fare compared
to the money Le Femme was about to pull in tonight? Plus, he was in a generous
mood.
The club had opened without a hitch,
all his suggestions implemented beautifully. It was an unseasonably nice evening
for London in November: gentle breeze, cloudless sky, smell of greasy pub food
floating down the street from Evans’s. Neon signage – a restaurant, night club,
three pubs that were trying to be swanky and call themselves “bars,” a tattoo
parlor, tobacco shop, a Goth boutique shut up for the night – painted rainbows
on the oil-glossed street. Walsh thought he might wander down to Evans’s in a
bit, have a pint and some dinner, bring something back for the lads. He’d have
lunch with Mum tomorrow – she’d like that – before he headed back to the States
day after that. The city whispered through his hair and he was, in the moment,
content.
“How much?” he asked the cabbie as
he reached the street, digging for his wallet.
And then the night exploded.
Literally.
Sound flooded everything, all his
senses. Hearing, sight, taste, touch – all of it was swamped with sound. A
great smothering wall of violent noise. And heat. And pressure. The air sucked
out of the world, just went shooting away, and that unstoppable cacophony of
fire and screams shoved him forward. He hit the side of the cab, and had the
breath knocked out of him. The acrid smell of combustion flooded his
lungs.
He blacked out for a second, two,
three, he didn’t know how long. Next thing he knew, he was slitting his eyes
against a rain of stinging powder. Ash. Debris. And he hurt. It hurt to breathe. Hurt to move. Hurt to think. His head
throbbed, as did a hundred little bee stings along his arms and legs. He took a
deep breath and shoved away from the cab.
And lost consciousness again.
This time he woke up on the
sidewalk. He shoved to his hands and knees and waited for the world to stop
spinning. When it did, it didn’t look any better.
The boxy former warehouse they’d
transformed into Le Femme was consumed with orange flames; they licked up into
the night sky, vivid tongues of color amid the smoke and shifting clouds of
ash. Most of the roof was gone. Black blast marks stained the concrete.
Behind him, the cabbie was shouting
something. His voice sounded like it was coming from down a drainage pipe. Not
that Walsh was listening. He blinked and strained to see if anyone was coming
out of the club. They weren’t.
It felt like it took ten minutes to
gather himself, get to his feet, and take the first lurching steps toward the
fire. He staggered to his knees when he reached Sully. The big man was burned,
red and black and slick with blood. A splinter the size of a dagger had
punctured his throat. His eyes stared glassy and unseeing toward the burning
sky. Walsh felt for a pulse anyway, out of foolish hope.
The Manchester kid – Walsh didn’t
even know his name – had lost an arm…and his life.
He didn’t want to think about what
everyone inside looked like. He didn’t want to think, period. This was too much
like war. Too much like a time in his life he hadn’t thought to see again.
He was watching the flames when the
wail of sirens reached his ears.
This
is it, he thought. This is how it
starts. With fire and blood.
In a
sleek, chrome and steel office, in a high rise with a view of the Palace of
Westminster, Sebastian Rolland glanced away from the landmark and toward the
interior of the room.
“Mr. Rolland.” His personal
assistant, Cartwright, stood in the threshold.
“Yes?”
“Just received word from Barnes,
sir. The message has been sent.”
“Good.” Had he been the kind of man
who felt satisfaction, Sebastian would have experienced it now. “Survivors?”
“Barnes believes there was one, sir.
Just one.”
“It only takes one, Cartwright, to
carry the story along.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that all?”
Cartwright nodded…but he lingered, a
notch of concern sprouting behind the nosepiece of his glasses.
Sebastian picked up the tiny rake of
his desk-sized rock garden and drew it through the sand and pebbles. “What?”
“Sir…sir, if I may ask–” He paused,
and Sebastian nodded. “Why send this particular message to this particular
chapter of the Black Dogs? They were not involved in what happened in Atlanta.”
Sebastian sighed. This was why he
made the decisions, and Cartwright fetched his coffee. “It’s simply a matter of
understanding how their culture works,” he explained. “These ridiculous fucking
bikers have a Three Musketeers motto: all for one and all that rubbish. Action
against any of them will get a reaction. Action against their London chapter
demonstrates our reach. Make sense?”
Cartwright nodded.
“That’ll be all, then.” He dismissed
him with a wave.
When he was alone, Sebastian
swiveled back to face the night through the window. He heard the faint wail of
sirens; they were too close to be headed for Le Femme, but he liked to imagine
that was the case. He toyed with the little rake and wondered, again, why
Maxwell had never revealed the identity of his brother’s killer. “I’ll handle
it,” Quinn had said. And then he’d gotten his stupid ass gunned down, and all
Sebastian was left to go on was the name of an Atlanta homicide detective, and
a lead on the Black Dogs.
There was someone else, though,
someone well below the reach of Sebastian’s people. Someone so small, they’d
never even considered the possibility of a threat.
He would find him, though. And it
would start with the ridiculous fucking bikers.
2
“I worry
about you.”
Layla set her roast on the stovetop
and heeled the oven door shut. Her very modest kitchen in her very modest house
with its very modest furnishings now smelled of beef and peppercorns and red
wine. On the other side of the breakfast bar, her mother Joyce held
five-month-old Mick on her lap. The baby – Marcus Michael Hammond – stared up
at his grandmother in unblinking fascination. He’d never seen anyone who wore
such an orange shade of lipstick, or who had anxiety running through her veins
in palpable currents.
“But as you can see,” Layla said,
gesturing to the kitchen around them with an oven mitt. “Things are just
peachy.”
Joyce pursed her lips, studied the
drab oak cabinets, and bounced Mick on her knee. “Uh-huh.”
So far, project Ingraham-Visitation
was…if not a success, then at least not a total disaster. Layla had picked up
her mom and stepdad at the airport that morning – Valerie and Jillian had
stayed behind with an aunt – and things had been…not as tense as expected. If
nothing else, Joyce was over the moon about her grandson. Even if she wasn’t
psyched about his DNA.
“You’re thin,” Joyce said.
And the tension began.
Layla reached around and smacked her
denim-covered butt. “Trust me: I’m not that
thin.”
“You
look tired,” her mom persisted. “And your hair needs trimming.”
“Mom.”
She strove for patience. “How many parents of five-month-olds do you know who don’t need a hair trim?”
Joyce
exhaled and adjusted Mick, bringing him into her chest so she could snuggle
him. The baby looked, to Layla’s silent amusement, totally perplexed by the
situation. His little blonde brows were drawn together. The blonde fuzz on top
of his head stood erect thanks to numerous grandmother groomings.
Layla’s
heart squeezed. Her little man. Named after her father. Adored by every
shady-ass member of his family. The blessing she’d never thought to ask for.
Her reason for digging deep roots in Georgia.
“I’m–”
“Mom,”
Layla interrupted with a small grin. “You’re trying to make sure I’m not some
poor misused victim of Stockholm syndrome – right?”
Joyce’s
cheeks had the good grace to color. “That’s not what I meant…”
Oh,
but it was. And the low growl of Sly’s motorcycle as he pulled into the drive
was the perfect punctuation to that sentiment.
Layla
tensed, and tried to pretend she hadn’t. “Dinner’s about ready. All I have to
do is set the table.” She reached for the baby. “Let me take him so you can go
wash up.”
Joyce
glanced down at her hands, secured under Mick’s arms. “I’m fine.” She stood,
adjusted him on her hip so she had a free hand. “Here. Hand me the plates and
I’ll walk them over.”
She
was fast realizing – as she heard Sly’s keys at the back door – that she wasn’t
ready for mom and husband to reunite just yet. She’d wanted a buffer, of at
least a couple minutes. To say Joyce didn’t approve of Sly would have been an
understatement. But there wasn’t a way to delay the moment, so Layla pulled
down a short stack of dinner plates and handed them over as the door swung open
and Sly stepped in.
He’d
come from work – navy work shirt open over white t-shirt, oil-spattered jeans,
favorite broke-down boots. His wheat gold hair was flattened from the helmet
and he was wreathed with the smell of cigarette smoke. His face – Layla had
learned to read the subtle tweaks of it – was carefully blank. His blue eyes
settled on Joyce, and Layla knew her mother had to be thinking the same thing
she herself thought every time she glanced at Mick: the baby was the spitting
image.
Joyce’s
hand curled too tight around the plates, knuckles whitening. She lifted her
chin and Layla saw the tremor course down her throat as she swallowed.
“S-Sidney.”
Surprised,
Layla glanced at her husband. He gave her the barest shrug with his eyebrows.
They had both known Joyce didn’t like Sly; it had been a shock, back when Mick
was born, to learn that she was afraid
of him.
“Hi,
Joyce,” Sly said. His voice, if not friendly – he didn’t do congenial as a rule
– was even and pleasant. He braced a hand against the doorjamb, leaving grease
smudges on the white paint, and shucked his work boots. He glanced at Layla and
she read his expression: I’m trying.
I know you are, she
thought back to him. You’re also ruining
my trim paint.
As
if he could read her mind, he went to the sink to wash his hands, dropping a
kiss on her upturned forehead on the way.
Joyce
stood rooted in place, brittle and unsure of the situation.
Layla
sighed internally. So much for this visit being smoother than the ones before.
Back when she was just a few months pregnant, she and Sly had flown to LA,
after their wedding, so Sly could meet Paul, Val, and Jill. The girls had been
horrified and fascinated by the strange older, gritty, incommunicative alien
from Planet South. They’d wrinkled their noses at first…but had pulled Layla
aside before they left and confessed they thought Sly was “totally hot.” Paul
had been his usual kind self, though his brow had been heavy with confusion.
This man was nothing like the boys Layla had dated in LA – in her mind, that
was a good thing. In Paul’s, it was hard to imagine. And Joyce…well, she’d been
much like she had now: bewildered.
“Mom,
let Sly have Mick, and we’ll finish putting dinner together,” Layla said, tone
gentle.
Joyce’s
grip tightened on the baby, eyes darting to Sly where he stood toweling his
hands.
“Come
here, little dude,” Sly said, opening his arms.
Mick
smiled and leaned toward his father.
With
obvious reluctance, Joyce handed him over, sighing shakily after. “Okay.” She
sounded like she was trying to convince herself she hadn’t just relinquished a
baby to a wolf.
Layla
glanced up and caught Sly’s gaze before he left the room. Marriage hadn’t civilized
him; it had pulled her into the wolf pack.
“So,
um, Sly.” Paul always stumbled a bit
on the name. “How are things at the…garage?” He also wasn’t comfortable talking
about working-class things. He made a game try, though, which Layla
appreciated.
They were arranged around the dinky
round table they’d picked up a secondhand store, beef roast, green beans and
mashed potatoes sending curls of steam up toward the brass chandelier.
Sly paused and gestured toward Layla
with his fork. “Good, I guess. You’d have to ask the boss lady.”
“Business is fantastic,” Layla
supplied when Paul looked her way. And she wasn’t lying: King Customs was
seeing profit margins only dreamed about before…back when Mark had been in
charge…She didn’t like to dwell on that.
“Sweetie,” Joyce said, voice
dropping a fraction, “you aren’t still in business with those…those…”
“Bikers. And yes, we are.” And might
be until the end of time. She left that part out.
“Oh,” Joyce said, hand going to her
throat. She blinked like she might cry.
“Do you enjoy your work, Layla?”
Paul asked. He was trying to be helpful, tone brimming with fake cheer. Bless
him.
“I do.” It wasn’t as simple as enjoy, but she wouldn’t go there. “I’m
sure the rest of the shops on our street hate the noise, but KC’s doing really
well.”
Paul smiled. “That’s good.”
The sound of Sly’s phone ringing was
a blessing. She could hear their collective sigh of relief as Sly stepped away
from the table to take the call.
“Yeah?” she heard him say as he
stepped into the living room.
As a rule, Joyce didn’t approve of
phone calls during dinner. She seemed to be making an exception in this case.
She turned to Layla. “So if business is good, you should be able to afford a
bigger place soon, right?”
Layla frowned at her plate. After
the wedding, she and Sly had bought a little brick ranch house in Cartersville,
just a few miles from the Russell house. The three bed, two bath home was
outdated, but comfortable, and Layla was little by little improving the look of
the place. Already, Sly had laid a dark hardwood throughout. The kitchen was
next on the list of renos. And Cheryl had lent her advice on what to plant in
the bark chip beds that flanked the house on all sides. There was a massive oak
tree in the backyard that begged for a tire swing, and Layla had unearthed a
wrought iron arbor in the side yard that she’d planted with climbing New Dawn
roses.
“We’re not looking to move anytime
soon.”
Joyce blinked like she’d just
pronounced the sky to be green.
“I like our little place. And we
have a lot of work we want to put into it.”
“Well, I–”
Sly reentered, phone held at his
side, expression unreadable.
“What?” Layla asked, feeling an old
familiar anxiety spike in her belly. In this family, bad news was never as
simple as a flat tire or a busted water pipe.
“That was your detective.”
“What
are you…oh, damn.”
Lisa finished lighting the last of
the tall tapers in the center of the table and turned to face her husband,
trying not to look too satisfied with herself. She’d spent a good hour in the
Victoria’s Secret dressing room that morning, growing a pile of discarded
lingerie options, making faces at herself in the masterfully lit mirror that
melted flaws and enhanced assets. She’d felt like an idiot. Drew wasn’t picky;
he wasn’t hard to impress or please. He’d caught her from behind more times
than she could count, when she was in tattered old jeans and an oversized man’s
t-shirt, and told her how hot she made him against the back of her neck.
But she’d wanted tonight to be
special. There was nothing romantic about basal thermometers and ovulation
charts; she didn’t want her man to start thinking that he was a means to an end
for her: just a way to get a baby. She wanted him to understand just how badly
she wanted him, and how badly she wanted him to want her in return.
She wore a deep purple push-up bra
with little crystals sewn into the cups, matching bikini bottoms, garter belt,
white silk stockings. She’d gone all out.
Drew’s expression was priceless.
She set the lighter on the
linen-covered table and propped a hand on her hip. “Dinner first? Or…”
“Not dinner.”
She grinned…
And then his phone rang.
He swore as he fumbled it out of his
pocket and checked the screen. “It’s Sly,” he said, with a boyish, panicked
frown.
“See what he wants; man of few
words, that one,” Lisa said, reaching down to fiddle with the top of one
stocking. She’d just as soon get rid of any interferences while they still
could.
Drew’s expression went from annoyed,
to concerned. “Now?” he asked into the phone. He glanced up with a warring mix
of heat and apology in his brown eyes.
Worry tweaked Lisa’s nerve endings.
Something was wrong.
“Yeah,” Drew said. “No, no…I get it.
Yeah.” He disconnected and his pained face would have made her laugh if she
wasn’t flooded with anxiety. Things had been too quiet for too long…it was only
a matter of time before…
“What is it?”
“Detective Sheppard called Sly. Said
it was an emergency.”
Her brows twitched. If high-and-mighty
Sheppard was calling outlaws, then the shit was deep.
“Baby, I’m sorry–”
“No, it’s fine. You should go.”
He took three aggressive steps
forward, closing the gap between them, catching her gently by the hips and
drawing her in against him until she could feel how much he hated to leave
against the flat of her stomach. “Do not put clothes on,” he said in a pleading
voice. He kissed her, one of those sweet, insistent, incendiary kisses of his
she loved. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She squeezed his biceps. “You’d
better be.”
But the moment he was out the door,
she let loose the shaky breath she’d been holding. She shrugged into her terry
bathrobe and reached for her cell phone.
Layla picked up on the second ring,
and Lisa didn’t even bother with a greeting. “What do you think this is about?”
“Dunno.” Layla sighed. “I’m sure
we’ll find out, whether we want to or not.”
Eddie
met them in the precinct parking lot. He slotted his Jeep in beside Sly’s
Harley and joined them where they sat on the lowered tailgate of Drew’s truck.
The
November night was crisp and windswept. Sly
watched the tip of his cigarette flare orange in the shadows and exhaled
through his nose, the smoke ghostly against the dark backdrop.
Eddie
flipped up the collar of his suede jacket and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Why the hell are we here?”
“I
figure the dick’ll tell us,” Sly said with a shrug, and slid down to the
pavement. “And he better be quick; my dinner’s getting cold.”
Drew
made a face. “Yeah. And Lisa’s ovulating.”
“TMI,
dude,” Eddie said. “Keep that shit to yourself.”
Sly
flicked his cigarette to the pavement before they reached the sidewalk and
refrained from lighting another one. The place made him twitchy and restless.
Two uniformed officers were dragging a belligerent drunk kid in Affliction
everything up to the door, and they had to wait until the way was clear to step
into the lobby. Inside, the din of trilling phones and closing doors and muted
conversation drowned out the cursing of the douchebag in cuffs. The squad room
teemed with activity; the desk sergeant juggled a phone in each hand.
“Shit,”
Sly murmured to himself. He hated it here.
As
the uniforms finally got their charge wrestled into a chair, Detective Leo
Sheppard appeared, striding through the glass door into the lobby with a Law & Order worthy scowl marring his
dark good looks. “Gentlemen,” he greeted. “Come with me.”
He
led them through the squad room and down a narrow back hall hung with aerial
photographs of Alpharetta. The room at the very end was a conference room, a
mini-blind-covered window overlooking the dumpsters out back, harsh fluorescent
tubes glaring down onto the cherry look-a-like table. A small white shoebox sat
in the center of the table.
Sheppard
went to the head chair and Sly hung back by the door, Eddie and Drew flanking
him. The detective may have put a bullet in Maxwell Quinn, but he wasn’t to be
trusted. Sideways glances proved the other guys thought the same thing. They
stuck their hands in their back pockets and waited.
Sheppard
fell into the chair, looking exhausted, and pulled a disgusted face when he
glanced up at them. “I didn’t call you in here so you could stand around posing
like The Expendables. You’re not in trouble. I–” He caught himself with a sigh;
yanked his tie loose. “I need your help.”
Sly
felt his brows shoot up.
“I
think I hit my head on the way in,” Eddie said.
“Detective,”
Drew said, ever respectful, “I can guarantee you don’t.”
“Help
with what?” Sly asked. He didn’t have the patience for this. He was hungry,
tired, and even worse, not sure he wanted to go home and face his mother-in-law
again. That added up to annoyed.
“Do
you want to sit?” Sheppard asked. When they didn’t, he continued with another
sigh. “You all know about Maxwell Quinn’s son, right? I figure Mark kept you up
to speed on him.”
Sly
nodded. “He’s doing time for vehicular homicide.”
“Not
now, he isn’t.”
Okay,
so maybe he wasn’t so annoyed anymore. “He’s dead?”
“He’s
loose. New evidence was brought to
light and his sentence was overturned.”
“What?” Eddie asked. “He was high off his
ass when he plowed into that taco stand.” He grimaced. “There’s a joke there,
somewhere.”
Sly
ignored his friend. “What evidence?” he asked Sheppard. Max Quinn, married five
times, had left behind one child, a son named Chad. The kid was twenty-two, a
complete embarrassment to the human race, and addicted to everything he could
get inside his veins. After Quinn’s death, Mark had been the first to tell them
that, according to the chain gang grapevine, Chad Quinn was no better than the
rest of his family and would be serving time. Chad, the sole inheritor of his
father’s estate, would have been a major target for his dad’s old business
partners, if he hadn’t gone and gotten himself arrested. Sly almost wondered if
killing three pedestrians at a food truck festival downtown had been
purposeful, just so Chad could escape the answer-hungry foreign partners of The
Refined Gentleman.
“A
Fulton county detective – Grey – reopened the case. Surveillance footage from a
bank next door showed that it wasn’t Chad, but a friend, behind the wheel. Chad
was two blocks away, and came running to the scene. The friend fled; Chad got
collared.”
“Bullshit.
His uncle’s a rapist; his dad sells rape. And we’re just supposed to believe he’s
the victim of coincidence?”
“The
footage was doctored,” Eddie said.
“Obviously.”
Sheppard drummed his fingers on the table. “But I wasn’t involved in the case –
either time. I couldn’t contest it. I don’t know how Grey got all the way to a
judge, but the whole thing smells damn rotten.
“I
told Grey that, when I ran into him at the state pen.”
“You
were there why?”
“Doesn’t
matter.” He’d been visiting Mark; Mark had kept them up to speed on that, too.
“But Grey…I think he’s all wrapped up in this Quinn, Refined Gentleman
clusterfuck.”
“Why?”
Sly asked.
Sheppard
reached for the shoebox, and his hands shook. “Because this was delivered to
the station to me today.” He pulled off the lid, set it aside, and reached
inside, coming out with a handful of glossy candid photographs that had
obviously been taken with a telephoto lens. “That’s my family,” he said, and
his voice lost some of its usual icy calm. “And this” – a gesture to the
pictures – “can’t be anything but a threat.”
Eddie
stepped forward, snagged the pics, and passed them around. A house, a sprawling
behemoth of a house, tan stucco with skinny cypress trees flanking its wings.
In its circular drive, a red-haired woman with a baby on her hip walking out to
a blue BMW.
“My
sister,” Sheppard explained. “Ruth – that’s her and her husband’s house by the
golf course.” He swallowed hard, and it made a wet sound in the back of this
throat. “She’s all the family I’ve got.” When his eyes lifted, they glimmered
with naked fear and vulnerability. “And Quinn’s people have found her.”
“Anyone
could have taken these,” Eddie said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Yeah,
but I didn’t shoot just anyone.”
Sharp grooves of distress carved around Sheppard’s mouth. “I shot Quinn, and
now it’s time to pay the piper.”
Drew
said, “If that’s true, then you need to put a security detail on your sister.”
“He
can’t,” Sly said, and saw the miserable confirmation of that sentiment on the
detective’s face. “Not if he wants to keep his badge.” To Sheppard: “You have a
whole station full of cops, but you called us.”
“Yeah.
I must have lost my mind.”
3
THEY
promised to look into it and then met Ray at Waffle House for a late dinner and
reconnaissance. Ray, already full of Cheryl’s cooking, sipped his coffee and
asked, “What do you think, Sly?”
If it was at all possible, the
Russell patriarch had mellowed. Losing his brother to jail, almost losing his
daughter and niece to human traffickers, had finally instilled in him that he
couldn’t do everything, that it was okay to do more delegating. Sly had seen
the pills the doctor had prescribed him: he needed to calm the hell down, or
face a heart attack.
“I think he’s damn spooked to reach
out like this. But is it related to Quinn? Dunno.”
Ray held a swallow of coffee in his
cheek and glanced over at Eddie, then sideways at his son-in-law.
“We’ve been waiting on the other
shoe to drop–” Drew started.
And Eddie said, “Maybe it’s not
gonna drop on us.”
Ray shrugged. “It’s worth a few
phone calls.” He said nothing further, which meant he wanted to spend the rest
of the evening not thinking too hard about it. Sly tended to agree.
It was after ten by the time they
paid the tab and dispersed. Drew and Eddie walked to their rides. Sly lit up on
the sidewalk in the yellow neon glow of the Waffle House sign, and Ray lingered
beside him a moment, hands in his jacket pockets.
“I thought you’d stopped,” Ray said
with a gesture toward the smoldering Camel in Sly’s right hand.
He shrugged and took a drag. “I did.
Technically.”
“It’s bad enough Mick’s old man is a
hundred-years-old. He’s gonna have lung cancer too.”
“Forty-one,” Sly corrected without
rancor. The ribbing didn’t bother him; ribbing was Ray’s way of caring, and
care he did.
To demonstrate his understanding,
Ray said, “Did Joyce make it in alright?”
Sly snorted. “Just in time to give
me the ‘I hate you for touching my daughter’ look when I walked in the back
door.”
Ray socked him on the shoulder and
stepped off the curb. “Tell her we said ‘hello.’ And Cheryl wants her to come
to dinner tomorrow night.”
Yeah, that would go over well.
“Sure,” Sly said to his back.
Halfway to his truck, Ray paused and
turned, his expression not quite so blank as one of Sly’s poker faces. “You
talked to your brother-in-law the last couple of days?”
“He’s due into the shop tomorrow.”
Ray twitched a frown. “’Kay.” He
didn’t say what Sly figured they were both thinking: what in the hell were they
going to do with the kid?
Johnny
checked the time on his phone. 10:18. Dinner would be long since cleared away,
leftovers packed into Glad containers in the fridge. He frowned. He’d told
Layla not to expect him – and he wasn’t sure he’d wanted to go anyway – but his
stomach was gnawing at his backbone. The last time he’d eaten had been the
PowerBar he’d choked down at a red light that morning. The Mountain Dew he’d
had back at the shop churned around his gut like a vat of battery acid. The
company he could have done without, but the dinner would have been nice.
Instead of the Formica-topped table
in his sister’s depressing kitchen – the place smelled like baby food, smoke,
and a life thrown down the toilet – he sat at the end of a long, scarred bar,
sideways on his stool, monitoring the meeting taking place at a round center
table and the door of the place at the same time. It was a shithole of a bar,
one with a view of the interstate ramp and a Texaco. This weekday night crowd
seemed to be made up of truckers and construction workers. Windowless, the
building was narrow, cramped, and stale-smelling. Half the neon signage along
the wall flickered or was out. Johnny would have preferred to be just about
anywhere else, but he was a prospect, and prospects did as they were told.
Cheryl had been the first one to
break into tears when he’d dropped the news on the family. Layla had gone white
to her hairline; she’d pressed a hand to the base of her throat, the other held
protectively over her then-pregnant belly, and leaned back against Sly. “You’re
a dumbass,” Lisa had said, scowling fiercely. The men had been less demonstrative,
but their disapproval had been just as heavy across his shoulders. As Ray had
put it, he was already part of close-knit family; why did he feel the need to
go join someone else’s? Especially when this new family was
leather-and-life-bound, without a prayer of escape. Once you were patched, you
were patched; a person didn’t just walk away from an outlaw motorcycle club.
“I think he’d take you up on the
offer if you asked him to dance.”
Johnny pulled his gaze away from the
door. The comment had come from behind the bar, from the black-haired bartender
who was keeping his beers fresh.
She wasn’t bigger than a minute,
with long, long legs that didn’t seem to help her in the height department.
Pale, slender, she was all blue eyes and white teeth. Her hair, obviously died,
was a midnight bluish black, tied up in a heavy ponytail with a wispy fringe of
bangs. She had a definite Goth thing going – black tights under supershort
cutoffs, skull-printed black tank top, arms loaded with bracelets, too much eye
makeup – and he found himself liking it, even though that wasn’t his usual
type.
“What?” he asked.
Her grin was too cheeky for this
hellish bar full of old men, too bright and full of life. “That guy you’ve been
staring at the last hour. I didn’t take you for the kind to crush on the DOT
crowd, but I’m sure he’d think you’re purdy.”
It took him a beat to catch what she
meant, then he felt his cheeks flush. He’d been staring at the entrance, but he
could see, given her vantage point, that it could look like he was staring at
the man in the orange vest two stools down.
“Oh…no, I’m - I’m not–”
She giggled, pressed the back of her
hand to the tip of her nose to squelch it, and looked all of about sixteen. “I
know,” she said, shaking away the last of her laugh. “You just looked so
serious over there. I had to say something.” She flashed him another smile,
this one almost shy and inviting.
Johnny fidgeted on his stool. He’d
never been any good at flirting.
“You’re with those bikers over
there, right?” She gestured to the Black Dogs, and then to Johnny’s very plain
black leather prospect cut. “You’ve got one of those vest things.”
“Cut,” he corrected automatically.
Then he felt bad for being short. He softened his tone. “And yeah, I am.
Mostly. Sort of.” This sounded bad. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I am.”
She giggled again, eyes curling up
into crescent moons. “You’re cute.”
He felt the tips of his ears turn
scarlet. What the hell did he say to that?
“Hey, how ‘bout a refill, darlin’?”
another patron called from down the bar, and she whisked away with a flick of
her dish rag and a wink for Johnny.
Glad she was gone – he could only
fumble through their exchange for so long without crawling inside his collar –
he turned back to his watchdogging…and nearly leapt out of his skin when he saw
Danner standing right behind him.
“Jesus.”
“You’ve got to stop jumping,
probie,” the blonde biker admonished. Thirty-two, Danner had been patched in
just under a year ago. He was keen on having someone lower in the ranks around,
but didn’t abuse his power. Aside from Johnny’s sponsor – Jaeger – Danner was
the Dog he liked best. “No chick ever put ‘jumpy’ on her list of turn-ons.”
It wasn’t possible to blush anymore,
so Johnny ducked his head. “I don’t jump,” he said lamely.
“Uh-huh. Settle your tab. We’re
going.”
Off to God-knew-where to do
God-knew-what. He sighed, dug a crumpled ten from his wallet, and left it on
the bar.
He glanced over his shoulder once.
The bartender was scraping a tip off the bar into her apron pocket. Her smile
was gone; for the first time, he saw the shadows under her eyes.
The
lights in the center of the house were off when Sly killed his engine in the
driveway. In the silence that descended, the last rally of autumn crickets
sawed out a hard song. The air was heavy with chilling dew. He counted two lit
windows – the spare bedroom where Paul and Joyce were staying, and the master
bedroom where his wife waited for him.
He let himself in the back door,
relocked it, toed off his boots, and moved through the main part of the house
without turning on a light. They’d been in the place long enough now for him to
know its pathways without thought. When he reached the mostly-closed door to
the master, a floorboard groaned beneath the carpet. The softest of sounds came
from within: Layla’s quiet gasp of surprise.
“It’s me,” he said as he eased the
door open.
The scene that greeted him was a
welcome one, amusing, endearing, and arousing all at once.
Layla sat in the middle of their
bed, an open bottle of foot lotion abandoned on top of the sheets; he could
smell the honey and lavender undertones of it. She was in the shapeless white
t-shirt she slept in, legs curled beneath her, bare toes peeping out, her
toenails painted a bright red. Her mahogany hair spilled loose around her
shoulders, damp and curling at the ends from the shower. Her fresh-scrubbed
face was bright, cheeks pink, eyes green and round and trained on the door. One
hand was braced on the mattress, the other was shoved beneath her pillow; a
taut line of tension gripped her arm. She’d been reaching for her .38.
Sly propped a shoulder in the
doorjamb and watched the startle leave her, replaced with the warm, patient
emotion she always beamed his way with mind-reading glances and patient smiles.
“You gonna shoot me?”
A corner of her mouth twitched. “You
gonna give me a reason to?”
She wasn’t the same girl he’d picked
up at the airport on a sticky August afternoon, in her yellow sundress and
high-heeled sandals. She was thinner, leaner, harder around the edges. There
was a caution, an awareness, about her now that was more animal than genteel
Southern lady; it was sexy, but he regretted it all the same. She was more
guarded with strangers, more suspicious of smiles. She carried a gun in her purse
beside the extra pacifier, and she knew how to use it. She was a ferocious
mother. And when Sly reached for her between the covers at night, she arched
into him, breathed against his neck, welcomed his touch. But she had changed,
and it was because of him. Every so often, he allowed himself to feel like a
bastard about that.
She rearranged her legs so they
stretched before her, and abandoned the gun for the foot lotion. “What did
Sheppard want?” she asked as she squeezed a dollop into her palm.
There was wisdom in playing things
close to the vest. Logic dictated that the less someone knew, the less it could
hurt them. That had been Ray’s policy when it came to Cheryl for a long time.
But as they’d all come to learn over the last couple of years, information had
a way of attacking even the most innocent and uninvolved. As a result, Sly told
his wife more than he should have; they didn’t have secrets, and he liked it
that way.
Sly crossed to his dresser and
started lining up his keys, phone, and wallet across the top with military
precision. “He thinks someone’s threatening his family. A box of PI photos was
delivered to the precinct – got him all jumpy.” He glanced sideways and caught
Layla’s reflection in the dressing table mirror.
“Hmm.” She made a thoughtful face as
she massaged lotion into her arches. “Who does he think is behind it?”
“Quinn’s
son, he says. The kid’s case was overturned and he’s out of the joint.”
“Overturned?”
“There’s a dirty cop
involved.”
She
made a face, one he was coming to recognize – my, God, how many nefarious people can there be in the world. Then
she shook it off. “And he came to you guys.” She didn’t sound surprised; he
turned and leaned back against the dresser, brows lifted in silent request for
her to elaborate.
She was happy to oblige. “When Leo
shot Quinn,” she said, pulling her feet up so she sat cross-legged; Sly tried
to ignore her use of the detective’s first name. “The department cleared him;
it was a good shoot. No one dug too deep, so they don’t know Quinn was unarmed,
that the gun in his hand had been planted, or that Ray was ever there. If this
is little Quinn – what’s his name?”
“Chad.”
“How appropriate – If this is Chad,
then Leo’s got every reason to think that going to his boss will turn the
spotlight back on himself. He can’t risk the department finding out he shot
Quinn in cold blood.”
“But why blackmail a cop? Just have
him killed.”
“They need him for something,” Layla
said, and Sly watched her realize the truth of the statement as she said it.
Her Chapstick-soft lips formed a little O. “They’ve put him over a barrel, and
that’s right where they want him.”
But
why? echoed silently through the room between them.
“Sly,” she said on a sigh, “can’t
things ever just…be?”
He hated to tell her, but the
no-secrets thing cut both ways. “No.”
“Ha!
Whoever heard of an MC doin’ business outta Alpharetta?”
Johnny wondered the same thing.
In
the glow of the security lamps, Simon Piper’s skin had a certain wax museum
sheen. His rat-brown ponytail hung in limp tatters over one shoulder; bony arms
protruded from the home-cut sleeves of an old Bud Light t-shirt with a denim
vest over it. He smelled – end of sentiment. Just smelled. His teeth gleamed
wet and tobacco-stained in the night.
“The
neighbors don’t like it much,” Doc said, pushing up his bandana to scratch at
his scalp. “But I expect they’ll get over it.”
Piper
laughed – a clogged, nasty sound. His presence was a blemish against the posh
uptown scene unfolding around them.
A
year before, when the Black Dogs had lost their clubhouse to fire, they’d faced
a decision: rebuild, or start over in a new building. Black Dog Cycle had been
lucrative…to a degree, no doubt hampered by its East BumFuck location. Prez and
vice prez Stack and Rev had concluded that if the Temple crowd could afford
some bike parts, the wealthy Alpharetta crowd could afford even more. There
were tons of weekend road warrior dentists, doctors, and lawyers looking to
spend more than they needed on Harley-brand everything, down to bandanas and
headlamp polishing cloths. Given that half the Dogs’ crew were taking day jobs
as mechanics with King Customs, a relocation just made sense. Stack had leased
a stand-alone, two-story stone and stucco building with front and rear parking,
a marquee out front, and boutique neighbors. The place had been a law office at
some point, so the downstairs had been redesigned for retail shelves and a
counter. And the upstairs they’d renovated into a new clubhouse, one with a
bird’s eye view of the street and anything unsavory that could be coming down
it. Though, what more unsavory there could be besides the Dogs, Johnny didn’t
know. There were already three petitions circulating to have the MC kicked out
of the city. And business was booming.
They didn’t belong here…and they seemed to be loving that.
In
the dark cool evening, a few stragglers from the steakhouse across the street
were bundling into Burberry coats and walking to their cars, shooting glances
at the old Caprice parked under the streetlamps and the crowd of bikers
gathered around its open trunk.
“How
many are here?” Jaeger asked. The light painted shiny patches across the
plastic cases of dozens and dozens of bootleg DVD cases.
Piper
picked at his nose like they weren’t watching him. “Three-hundred and fifteen.”
“You
counted,” Corey said. “I’m impressed.”
“I
can count!”
“Far
as you know.” Jaeger turned to Johnny. “Take these up to the storeroom. Danner,
give the kid a hand. I don’t want this shit sitting out here longer than it has
to.”
Danner
grumbled something under his breath that sounded like “fuck me.”
Johnny
leaned down into the trunk – it smelled like piss for reasons he didn’t want to
understand – and gathered up an armload of stolen merch. He had no idea why the
club would want to move the stuff, but it wasn’t his place to ask. So he
followed Danner to the exterior staircase along the side of the building and
clambered up to the clubhouse entrance.
“We
need another prospect,” Danner said as they moved through the common room and
headed back toward one of the half dozen storage rooms that overlooked the back
lot.
“You
just don’t like our quality time,” Johnny said, mock-pouting.
“I’d
like it a lot more if I wasn’t schlepping shit around with your wannabe ass.”
Johnny
sighed. It was all part of the script: pretend to hate the prospect, say mean
shit to the prospect, debase him on every level. When they weren’t within the
club, Danner was a decent guy to hang around with.
“You
know–” A case slipped off the top of the pile in Johnny’s arms and crashed to
the short-napped carpet. It busted open with a crack. “Shit.”
But
when he deposited the rest on a work bench and reached to pick it up, he didn’t
find a broken copy of The Avengers.
Instead, a slender, retail-ready plastic bag of white powder.
He
picked it up and held it at arm’s length like it might bite. “Um…what the hell
is this?”
Danner
shot him a patronizing glare. “What’s it look like?”
Johnny’s
pulse leapt in his ears; he felt, for reasons inexplicable, like he’d been
betrayed. “I didn’t know we dealt coke.”
“We
don’t. Not officially.” Danner shrugged. “We move products that move well,
whatever they happen to be.”
Johnny
swallowed back the rest of his questions. He was neck-deep in sin –
voluntarily. Now wasn’t the time to get inquisitive.
4
COFFEE,
shock jock radio, slow traffic, burgundy sunrises: the start to all of her
mornings. Layla was the first one onto the King Customs lot each day. She
unlocked the doors – pedestrian and roll top – booted up the computer, lined up
the boards, looked over the schedules she’d made the night before. Mick had a
play pen wedged in the corner behind the desk and she played mommy between
handling customers and mechanics. It was chaos, but it was her life. She’d
chosen it.
This morning, Joyce had insisted on
keeping Mick home with her. “That garage isn’t any place for a baby,” she’d
said. Then she’d tried to convince Layla to take a personal day so they could
shop and catch up. Layla had refused. She didn’t trust the garage to function
without her careful supervision. And she couldn’t stand the guilt of being
around her mother and feeling uncomfortable there. If she was at work, she
wouldn’t have to think about that. She wouldn’t have to ponder all the ways in
which her old life and her new life glanced off one another in incongruous
surges of tension. If her past and her present weren’t part of the same
tapestry, what did that say about her? How many of her own personal threads had
unraveled and been re-stitched in new patterns?
She missed Mick.
She
wished she and Sly had a habit of carpooling.
Pale daylight was skating across the
lot of King Customs when she turned into it. This was always the most peaceful
time of the day – now, and after night fell. After dark, though, was an
exhausted sort of peace. This was a breath-held, energized quiet.
This morning was going to be an
exception. Two cars were parked in front of the office: an old Volvo wagon the
color of Georgia red clay, and a dark blue Crown Vic. The Crown Vic – and she
hated that she could recognize a specific unmarked cop car – was in her usual
spot, so she parked beside it, and climbed out with her purse and travel coffee
mug held up like shield and sword. Detective Sheppard sat on the hood of his
car, working on the last nub of a cigarette. She was surprised to see him
smoke; he’d never smelled like he did. On the bench beneath the office window,
Father Morris sat in faded jeans and a sweatshirt, an out of fashion
windbreaker zipped over it, his hands in the pockets.
“Sorry,” Layla said as she closed
her car door with a hip. “I’m not awake enough to come up with a suitable
joke.” She gestured between the two of them, the odd picture they made.
Sheppard leapt to his feet in a way
that brought to mind a guilty little boy. He looked so serious, she wanted to
laugh. She didn’t, but bit down on her tongue as he tossed his cigarette butt
to the sidewalk.
“I just thought of it. A priest, a
cop, and a mob wife walk into a bar…”
Sheppard didn’t grin. “Morning.”
Layla quirked her brows and stepped
around him. If he wanted to be melodramatic, she could play along. “Morning.”
Glancing toward Father Morris, she said, “Good morning, Father. To what do I
owe the pleasure?” When Sheppard frowned, she said, in an undertone, “What? He
has much better manners than you.” She unlocked the door and stepped in,
flicking on the lights, letting them follow if they would.
“Good morning, dear,” Father Morris
said. He entered first, and took great care settling his small frame into a
chair as she went around the desk, shed her jacket, and pressed the power
button on the computer. “You look very nice this morning.”
She hadn’t had time to finish drying
her hair and it was frizzing something awful. A giant hole had opened up in the
armpit of her thousand-year-old Gap sweater and she was hoping she could keep
her elbows at her sides all day to hide it. The toes of her favorite ankle
boots were scuffed beyond the reach of shoe polish. But she smiled at the aging
father and said, “Thank you.”
Sheppard perched a hip on the far
edge of her hulking metal desk and reached to toy with her paperclip holder. He
picked up the plastic cube and rolled it between his palms. “When’s Sly getting
in?” he asked without making eye contact.
“He was in the shower when I left.”
Though why he showered before getting
covered in grease every day, she’d never know. “And since he won’t want to
stick around and have breakfast with my mother, he’ll be here soon.”
“Your mother?”
“We’re not going there. Why do you
need him?”
He shot her a fast, narrow-eyed
glance. “How much did he tell you?”
She didn’t respond right away. It
wasn’t his business how honest she and her husband were with each other. “Are
you hiring him?” she asked instead.
He reached inside his suit coat and
withdrew a sealed white envelope.
Layla felt her brows go up. She
nodded. “He told me about your family. And about Chad Quinn.”
Sheppard flicked a glance toward the
priest.
“Father Morris isn’t going to pass
any of this along to anyone,” she assured.
“I don’t run in any of the right
circles for that,” Father Morris joked in his calm little way.
Sheppard made a face. “I won’t say
it out loud,” he said, resistance lacing his words. “I can’t say that I’m hiring them.”
Layla held out her hand. “That
works. You’re not getting a receipt anyway. There’s no balance sheets for
vigilante justice.” The envelope landed in her palm; it was heavier than she’d
expected.
Sheppard stood. “Have him call me?”
“Sure thing.”
“I don’t regret what happened with
Quinn…but nothing can happen to my family, Layla. I can’t be the reason they’re in danger.”
He’d never, she figured, felt this
sort of remorse. He’d always played by the rules. Once you crossed the line,
skeletons went up in your closet like a whole new wardrobe, and there was no
taking them out.
“I understand,” she said gently.
His face was heavy with stress lines
as he nodded to her and the priest and saw himself out.
“I encouraged him to come and see
me,” Father Morris said as the Crown Vic fired up in the parking lot. “I think
counseling would help ease his conscience.”
Layla twitched a smile. “How’d he
take that advice?”
“There was an expletive involved.”
“He’s kind of a wired guy,” she
lamented.
The father nodded. “So many are
these days.”
The sun’s red dawn was softening to
a rich gold through the windows. A mockingbird with a beak full of pine straw
hopped through the lot and then took wing. It was setting up to be a beautiful
day. It felt like a lifetime ago since Layla had nothing more to worry about than
how blue the sky would turn out to be. She said a silent eulogy to her former
naïve self, then said, “Is anything the matter, Father Morris?”
He took his time answering, fitting
the pads of his fingers against those of the opposite hand, taking several
careful deep breaths. “There’s something I want to talk to Ray about. A
possible – well, he calls them charity cases. I have a feeling he won’t want to
see me come to him with another small problem. Not when things are so…” He
gestured to the walls around them.
Layla smiled, and could feel that it
didn’t touch her eyes. “Father, you’re probably the only one in the world who
thinks our souls are worth saving. Uncle Ray will listen to your problem.”
“I thought it might be better
received if you told him about it.”
Her brows lifted in surprise. Since
when was she the gatekeeper to all things nefarious? But she nodded.
“I have a family of parishioners,”
he began, “with four children. A nice family; they’ve been a part of my church
since Ken and Martha were first married. All of the children had their
christenings with me. I know them well.” He took another deep breath and looked
very old, his hair more white than gray, his hands veined and brown and
wrinkled. “Their youngest daughter is…troubled. She left home about six months
ago and Martha came to see me last night, in tears, very convinced that the
girl has become involved in some sort of drug-selling ring.”
“Hate to say it, but that’s not
uncommon.” Especially, she thought, if this girl was from a strict, religious
family.
“No,” he agreed. “But I promised her
parents that I would try to find her. Even if she won’t come home, they want to
know that she’s safe. That she’s still alive. They want the chance to talk to
her.”
“And you think the guys could find
her,” she guessed.
“I think they have a very good
chance. The gang Martha mentioned – every crime organization in the area has
some kind of dealings with the Black Dogs.”
Half of whom Ray employed. One of
which was her own poor misguided brother. A note of fear shivered up her spine.
She was only willing to be involved with the club up to a point. Everything
about this scenario frightened her, for so many reasons.
She reached for a pen and a Post-It.
“What’s her name? I’ll at least pass the info along to Ray.”
“Arlie Scott.”
Technically,
Johnny lived with Rico these days. Ray had unofficially kicked him out the
night he’d announced he’d prospected with the Dogs. “When you’re wearing that”
– he’d flicked the front of his new cut with a fingertip – “you’re not the
nephew who lives under my roof.” He’d slept at King Customs that night, with a
dinner of Seven-Eleven beef jerky, his dreaded cut shoved beneath his head as a
pillow. Layla had found him the next morning; he’d seen the tears that filled
her eyes before she turned her head away. She’d offered, on more than one
occasion, the guest room at her new place. But he hadn’t been able to bring
himself to take her up on it, and so he slept on Rico’s futon, amid old Cheetos
bags and week-old laundry, on the nights he didn’t crash at the clubhouse after
a hard day of being everyone’s go-fer.
There weren’t blinds on the living
room windows, and first light, slatted with the pattern of the fire escape one
story up, pressed at the heavy seams of his eyelids. No hangover had ever been
worse than the complete exhaustion that dragged at him. He sat up, blinked back
sleep, and waited for the room to stop spinning.
The apartment, as usual, looked like
the Tasmanian Devil had blown through. Burger wrappers, Big Gulp cups,
uncountable issues of Car and Driver.
There was a clean-clothes/dirty-clothes organization system no one had ever
been able to figure out; stacks of t-shirts and jeans and breakaway track pants
turned walking into the kitchenette into an Olympic event. And that was without
mentioning the horror of the bathroom.
Why didn’t he live with his sister
again?
Upstairs, Mr. Montrose turned on
talk radio, and the scratchy voices reverberated through the floor. The sound
made Johnny’s teeth itch, and he flipped back the fleece throw he’d slept
beneath. Time to face facts: it was another day.
He was still in jeans, socks, and an
undershirt. He finger-combed his hair on the way to the bathroom. Blocking all
sensory receptors, he brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face. Wash your hair, his aunt Cheryl’s voice
sounded in his head. Later, he told
her ghost. First, he wanted to –
In his back pocket, his phone chimed
with a text alert.
“Shit.”
It was from Jaeger: Get ur ass here ASAP. Jaeger wasn’t an
asshole on purpose, it was just one of his more charming traits.
Before he could put his phone away,
another text came in, this one from Layla. Will
you be in this morning? She always wrote in complete sentences. Eddie’s bringing donuts. :)
Guilt writhed in his belly like an
unhappy snake. Assholes he could deal with; sweet, cajoling sisters, not so
much. She tried, valiantly, to make up for the years they’d spent apart. But it
was hard to relive the past they didn’t have when there was a baby that looked
just like Sly involved. He had these dim, long ago memories of Layla’s
little-girl face hovering over his, sun painting a halo around her dark head,
and he couldn’t rectify that child with the woman Sly had bedded and wedded. It
was just wrong. No matter how hard Sly tried to play big brother, it was never
going to feel natural.
He was saved having to respond by
Rico.
“Dude, you in there?” he called
through the door.
Who else would be in there? “Yeah,”
Johnny called back. “You need in?”
“Nah. Meet me in the kitchen.”
Jesus…what now?
He stared at his reflection in the
toothpaste-flecked mirror. He looked like shit. “Shit,” he repeated to himself.
He slipped his phone into his back pocket…and his fingers touched a scrap of
paper. He pulled it out; it was the receipt from The Pink Elephant, from the
night before. He’d paid cash for his last round, but with his first, the
bartender had brought him a receipt. He hadn’t noticed before, but there was a
phone number scrolled across the bottom, alongside a smiley face the message: Call me sometime. I’ve got a weak spot for
cute bikers. He folded it up and put it in his wallet for safekeeping, not
sure if he planned on calling her, or if he liked the idea of her having weak
spots.
Rico waited for him on a barstool at
the kitchenette’s peninsula. His hair – slicked back during the day – stuck up
in wacky bedhead spikes, a black that gleamed silver in the early light. He was
still in the t-shirt and boxers he slept in, and was nursing what Johnny knew was
an espresso from a mug that read “You wouldn’t like me when I’m sleepy.” His
slender brown fingers trembled around a cigarette, and his exhaled plumes of
smoke stuttered with nerves. This was serious, then.
“What’s up?” Johnny asked as he slid
onto the stool beside him and stared at the dingy window above the sink. A
thick cloud of white tumbled across the view: Mr. Montrose had opened his
bathroom window to apply hairspray again.
Rico took a breath. “You got in
really late last night.”
Dread gathered in his throat. “You
were still up.”
“Yeah, but…” Rico had rehearsed
this, but he’d been unable to come up with counterpoints. It was typical; it
was one of the things Johnny had always liked about his best friend. “You” –
sharp drag on the smoke – “This is my place, you know? And you should – you
should show some courtesy.”
A knife between the shoulder blades
wouldn’t have hurt worse. “What?”
“You can’t just – just – come in all
late, you know? And, like, disturb my work.”
“You hack into websites!”
“But I get paid for it!” He turned a
big, brown-eyed glance to Johnny that brimmed with regret. He had one of those
easy to read, expressive faces – like a puppy, Lisa always said – and he
couldn’t conceal how much he hated what he was saying. But he said it anyway,
and Johnny wondered whether it was Ray, or – in a brother back-stabbing move –
Sly who had told Rico to scorn him for his, as they called them, “poor life
choices.”
“Rico,” he said, helplessly.
“I don’t think.” Rico sucked in a
huge breath. “That this is gonna work out. You living here.”
And just like that, the Dogs were
taking his closest friend away.
“I–”
His phone rang. It was Jaeger. Of
course.
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