American Hellhound Read online

  Two

  Mercy laughed until he choked on his own spit, even after Ava balled up her fist and punched him in the arm. “I’m gonna give him so much shit!” he exclaimed, delighted. “That sanctimonious asshole’s gonna get an earful, I promise.”

  Not exactly the way Maggie had hoped breaking the news would go.

  “Just when I start to think you’re really sweet,” Ava said, eyeing her husband with feigned disgust. “You stoop to my dad’s level.”

  “Baby. Fillette.” He put one massive hand on her shoulder and ducked his head so they were eye-to-eye. “He started it.”

  A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. “Trust me. He deserves every bit of it.”

  Maggie cleared her throat to get their attention. “That’s great and all, kids – I’m real happy for you, Merc – but you can’t breathe a word to him until I tell him.”

  Both of them winced in unison.

  “Do you want to tell him here?” Ava offered.

  Maggie shook her head. “No, he won’t want an audience.”

  If she was honest with herself, she was growing more and more depressed by the prospect. These days, Ghost was a responsible man. And a loving one – he loved his children dearly. But he wasn’t tactful for shit. It was one of his more charming qualities.

  So she knew he would love this new baby, and she knew he’d take care of it, and smother it, and make regrettable decisions on its behalf…but she really didn’t want to deal with the initial meltdown bound to happen when he found out that there was a new baby.

  “Can you film it?” Mercy asked.

  Ava punched him again.

  The growl of a motorcycle reached her ears and she sat up straighter, nervous all over again. “That’s him.”

  Ava studied her as they listened to the Harley approach and pull into the driveway. “You can stay if you want the moral support,” she offered, the concern in her eyes belying her calm tone.

  “That’s sweet, baby, but we’ll be fine. I wanna go home.”

  Mercy went to let Ghost in via the mudroom, and he entered the house wearing what Maggie thought of as his President Face. The World On His Shoulders face that said he was going to spend a long night staring at the kitchen cabinets and nursing spiked coffee.

  “I made some calls,” he was saying to Mercy as they walked into the room. “We should have a better feel for who we’re dealing with by tomorrow morning.”

  “Anything to do in the meantime?” Mercy asked.

  “Nah. Just keep an eye out.”

  “Always do.”

  Maggie realized she had clenched her hands together on the tabletop as Ghost drew closer, and she forced them to relax. She was confident that when his eyes came to her, she looked normal.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  When she hugged Ava on her way out, Ava whispered, “Call if you need to,” right in her ear. The role reversal hit Maggie hard – harder than it normally would have. Now it was the daughter offering comfort and refuge. The daughter who had doubts about a man’s ability to accept the consequences of his actions.

  “I’ll be fine,” she whispered back, and gave her a smile she didn’t quite feel.

  The crispness of the air outside was immediately soothing, bathing her too-hot face and neck in relief. She took a deep breath and willed her stomach to cooperate, at least until they were home. She had no doubt her nerves were adding to the morning sickness, and it was all one big cocktail of bad.

  Ghost handed over her helmet when they reached the bike, the streetlamp catching at the worried look he threw her across the Harley. “What?” he asked, because even if she thought she’d been careful, he was so attuned to her that he knew something was off.

  “Just tired, baby. Let’s get home.”

  ~*~

  As it turned out, being on the bike seemed to help. It wasn’t the sort of thing that should, but maybe she’d spent so much of her life on the back of a Harley it had a naturally calming effect, no matter the circumstances.

  Most nights, Ghost left his bike parked in the driveway, but tonight he swung off and went to punch in the code at the keypad to open the garage door. When he walked back to her, she saw the shadow of his .45 in his hand.

  “Here.” He handed the gun to her. “Watch my six.” And wheeled his bike inside.

  Maggie followed, walking backward, eyes scanning the dark street and yard behind them, the heft of the gun a comfort in her palm. She’d been a teenager the last time she asked him if this level of caution was really necessary in Knoxville, Tennessee, of all places. They didn’t exactly live a typical suburban life.

  When the door was shut, she passed him the gun back and they trooped into the house via the laundry room. The .45 didn’t go back in its holster until Ghost had walked through every room, looked in every closet and behind all the shower curtains.

  Maggie closed the pantry door and pressed her hand against it as she heard him come into the kitchen behind her.

  “All clear,” he said, and then let out a deep exhausted sigh. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  She turned around to face him and let the door hold her weight, unsteady on her feet all over again.

  Ghost stood with his hands braced on the back of a chair, wedding band catching the light, the gray standing out along his temples. It struck her hard, the contradiction: the way he seemed every one of his hard-lived fifty-two years, and the scared-to-death twenty-seven-year-old she’d fallen in love with at the same time. It was a genetic trait he’d passed along to his son. The way he grew and grew, and didn’t grow at all. In so many ways, the club was harmful to him. But it was something that lived deep in his blood, that he’d never be able to cut out of his veins.

  He lifted his head to look at her, and it hit her all over again, like it so often did, how very much she loved him. If the club was his disease, then he was hers. Neither of them seemed in want of a cure.

  “That dog,” he said, voice heavy. “The one in the picture? I’ve seen it before.”

  Her heart stuttered with alarm.

  “It’s been hanging around Stella’s. I’ve seen it a few times, when I was with the guys. And last week, I…” His voice faltered. “I saved it a bit of muffin and fed it on my way out.”

  “The poor thing.”

  “I think someone saw me do that. I think…” He trailed off. They both knew what that meant. Someone was stalking him. Or them. Someone was paying attention.

  Maggie took a deep breath. “Kenny.”

  His gaze tightened, zeroed in on her face.

  “I was gonna break this to you slowly, but, well.” She sighed. “Fuck. I’m pregnant.”

  ~*~

  Maggie was reaching for the aspirin when Ghost finally blinked. “I’m not having a heart attack,” he said, voice tight.

  “Well, you’re having something. Because you’ve been standing there for…” She checked the time on the microwave. “Ten minutes.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Right.”

  He sighed and moved around the chair to sit in it, elbows braced on the table and face in his hands. “Jesus,” he muttered through his fingers.

  “A little presumptuous, but alright, I’ll put it on the list of names,” Maggie deadpanned.

  He let his hands fall down to the table and sent her a look that was part-apology, part-panic. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “You should be.” She was proud of the way her voice didn’t shake, because inside, she was terrified. She’d suspected for a few days now, and she’d learned for sure tonight, but it wasn’t until now, saying it to her husband, that it hit her in full: she was pregnant. It wasn’t the fear of motherhood – no, that had no part in it – but a fear of the unknown future. A fear that this pregnancy, at forty-one, might not go as smoothly as the first. That the club was about to start another war. That Ghost would find no love in his heart for another child, not at this age, with these kinds of distractions a
round him.

  One corner of his mouth tucked back, a careful expression as his eyes moved over her. “Are you okay?”

  “I threw up in the middle of my interview,” she said, sagging back against the counter. “But I managed to hit the trash can. So. Yeah. Guess so.”

  His brows lifted. “You know what I meant.”

  “I’m fine. I just…” She didn’t want to explain it to him, suddenly exhausted. “Yeah. I’ll make a doctor’s appointment for this week and go get checked out.”

  Ghost nodded and stared at her a moment, gaze hard to read – even for her, who prided herself on reading him so well. He stared, and stared…and then got to his feet suddenly, quickly, and walked toward her in a handful of long strides.

  The lump in her throat swelled to something unmanageable, and tears burned her eyes when Ghost didn’t slow, came right up close and pulled her into his arms. He cupped the back of her head and cuddled her in under his chin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, voice rough with emotion this time. “I just want you to be happy and safe, baby, you know that. Everything else we can figure out.”

  Maggie released a deep, shaky breath against his throat, blinking back tears.

  “We managed not to fuck up the first two too bad, what’s one more, right?”

  “You know who’s going to make relentless fun of you about this, don’t you?”

  He thought about it a minute, then said, “Ah, shit.”

  Maggie laughed and it eased the tension she’d been carrying all evening. They’d be okay. That’s what they did: whatever was happening, whatever the risks, whatever the obstacles, they pushed through. And they lived, and they loved each other.

  Three

  Ghost didn’t get much sleep. If any. He wasn’t sure he ought to count the hour he drifted in limbo, unsure if the light behind his eyes was real or imagined. He was alert and full of useless nervous energy at five, a good hour before the alarm was set to go off. He watched the clock, the glowing numbers moving so slowly, and listened to Maggie breathe beside him. He felt her warmth, but they weren’t touching, her back maybe an inch from his elbow.

  He wondered if he rolled over and put his arm around her if he could feel the baby already, the first slight shift in her body.

  No, he decided. She didn’t look any different; too soon to feel anything.

  He stared at the dark ceiling and marveled at his own inability to cope. Years ago, when Maggie told him she was pregnant with Ava, the news had hit him full in the face like Mercy’s sledgehammer. He’d stood silent, gaping, unable to wrap his brain around all the ways in which he was such a stupid asshole for knocking up a teenager.

  His Uncle Duane’s voice echoed inside his head: You’ve got to get your shit together, boy. He’d been right…about that, at least. The year before he met Maggie had been an ugly one, and it hadn’t been anyone’s fault but his own. He wasn’t sure he’d ever explained it to Mags properly, not then and certainly not now, even though he had a chance to do it all over again. He hadn’t been angry about the baby, no, never. And he’d certainly never been angry at Maggie or blamed her for anything. Instead, he’d been angry with himself, and his own reckless stupidity.

  He thought the same thing now that he had then: why hadn’t he taken any steps to prevent this? Why hadn’t he been careful? Why hadn’t he been adult enough to have a freaking conversation about it, for God’s sakes?

  The ugly truth of his behavior toward Aidan was this: he had always been just like his son. It ran in the family or some shit. He’d never been Duane’s perfect soldier. No, that had been…

  He sat up so fast he thought he might pass out.

  Maggie shifted. “Mmm?” she mumbled, still half-asleep.

  His heartbeat throbbed in his ears, and his face, and all down his arms, strangely absent from his chest. For a moment of shaking clarity, he couldn’t breathe, could only think yes, him. It had to be him. But then he sucked in a breath and it all seemed stupid.

  “Nothing,” he told Maggie. “Go back to sleep, baby.”

  She mumbled something he couldn’t hear and resettled.

  Ghost wasn’t going back to sleep, though.

  He slid out of bed, ignoring the cracks of protests of his ankles and knees. Fuck getting older, just fuck it. He walked to his closet and eased open the door, spun the dial on his gun safe and eased it open with a well-oiled click. The box he wanted was on the top shelf, next to his ammo boxes. He pulled it down and took it to the kitchen.

  It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the bright overhead light, then he took another minute to start the coffee machine. Finally, settled at the table in boxers and a t-shirt, he flipped the top off the old box and started flicking through the contents. Photos. Hundreds of them, pre-digital camera, all developed and organized neatly by year, their negatives stowed behind each dividing tab.

  He flipped all the way back to when he was twenty-seven, back to when Duane was president, and he was just a regular member and not an officer. Right after Olivia left him – and left him with Aidan. Back to when the best, brightest, most promising young member was Roman Mayer.

  He closed his eyes and tried to recall the photo from the precinct, the man with the hood and the knife who’d killed the dog. He’d been tall and strong-looking, but that was all he could tell. Nothing about his posture or his clothes had given him any clues. Only the message: he wanted Ghost dead.

  Roman had reason to want him dead, once. But that had been a long, long time ago. Since then, new enemies had come and gone. New tragedies had unfolded. After all that, could this really be Roman? Coming out of left field, without warning?

  “No,” he said to himself, and slammed the lid back down on the box.

  The coffee maker beeped and he got up to answer its call.

  ~*~

  Maggie shuffled through her morning routine, nursing sips of Sprite and nibbling at exactly three Club crackers – Ghost counted them. His gut tightened in sympathetic guilt every time she pressed her knuckles to her lips and took a moment to compose herself.

  “Maybe you should–” he started.

  She gave him a look. “Stay home? Yeah, no. So everyone can think I’m shaking in my boots after a little police interview? No, I’m going.”

  “Nobody’s gonna think you’re scared.”

  She snorted and got up from the kitchen table like her bones ached. “Honey, when a woman stays home, someone always think she’s scared.”

  “Not my woman,” he insisted.

  She patted his cheek on her way to pour out the rest of her Sprite.

  He followed her in to Dartmoor, half afraid she’d pull over to throw up. But by the time she climbed out of her Caddy in front of the main office, her color looked better, her game face securely in place.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Her nod was firm. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” And she gave him a grin before she let herself into the office.

  But because she knew him, she had to know he’d worry about her. The worry was lodged in his esophagus somewhere, like heartburn. He watched the closed office door a long moment, wondering if it was shut because it was too cold outside, or because she just didn’t feel like having a portal open to the whole lot right now. Finally, with a sigh, he walked over to the clubhouse.

  Walsh was waiting for him, sitting on top of a picnic table with a steaming travel mug of coffee and what was probably his third cigarette of the day; Walsh chain-smoked when he was worried, the only outward sign that he ever fretted about anything.

  “I heard from Dennis,” he said, rolling off the table in one smooth motion and falling into step beside ghost, coffee and smoke balanced in the same hand. “He said he had a visitor a few days ago.”

  “What kind of visitor?” Ghost drew to a halt just outside the clubhouse door and turned to his VP, hands on hips and heart feeling its age.

  Walsh took a hard drag. “Someone who knew you had hold of his leash, and who wa
s asking about you.”

  Dennis was one of their newer dealers, but one of the most trustworthy. He was organized, clean, and ruthless about keeping his underlings on the up-and-up. Well…as up as anyone dealing dope could get. He wasn’t the kind of idiot who’d squeal and get them all busted. So Ghost knew Dennis hadn’t said anything he shouldn’t; it was the idea that anyone was asking in the first place that gave him goosebumps.

  “What’d the guy look like?” he asked.

  Walsh pulled out his phone and turned a blurry photo toward him. “He managed to take this. Can’t tell much, though.”

  It was true; there wasn’t much to tell. Dennis’s phone had been moving, and held in shadow, when he snapped the picture. But to Ghost, it was like looking at a ghost – except, to his knowledge, Roman Mayer wasn’t dead. Roman would be older now, his own age, but the blurred figure in the photo had an unmistakable aura of Roman about him. The shape of his face and eyes, the little smirk tugging at his mouth, like he knew his photo was being taken and he didn’t give a shit.

  No, Ghost thought. No fucking way. The Twilight Zone impossibility of having just thought of the man that morning and seeing what looked like his face now swept over him in a dizzying wave. He’d been on his way inside to grab more coffee, but now he thought a Scotch was in order.

  Walsh detected his shift in mood. “What?” he asked, expression unreadable, eyes very blue in the shade.

  “I think I know who that is.”

  Walsh’s brows lifted a fraction. “Yeah?”

  “Old buddy of mine,” Ghost said with a sigh, and opened the door. “Long story.”

  Walsh followed him into the clubhouse, and then to the bar, face a mask of blank insistence. Ghost knew his expression: Long story or not, I’m your VP. Try me.

  He reached over the bar top and plucked up the Jack, pulled a glass from the overhead rack. Chanel was over in front of the TV, feather duster in her hand. When she saw him serving himself, she turned toward the bar and said, “Oh, I can–”