Authors: Lauren Gilley
“I don’t know.” Tango closed his eyes, his face pained as he swallowed. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to…I shouldn’t have…I just…”
It was a shock. A raw, awful slap from his past, a ghost he’d never thought to encounter again.
“It’s alright,” Aidan said quietly. “It’s fine.”
Except for Tango, it wasn’t.
“The Jessups,” Shaman said, with a graceful frown. “Sorry lot, aren’t they? Maybe half a brain between the three of them.”
Michael sat beside Ghost on a gray leather sofa, hand still on his gun, mind spinning as he tried to digest how unexpected everything about this scenario was.
Ghost said, “There’s just two of them now. The brothers. Something happened to the little one.”
Shaman nodded. “Not surprising. How are they working out for you? Have they pestered you beyond sanity yet?”
Looking bemused, Ghost said, “Yeah, pretty much.” He proceeded to give a brief summary of what had transpired, a summary of their threats about Holly.
“I was led to believe you’d be pissed if I told them to go to hell.”
Shaman rolled his eyes dramatically. “Is
that
what they said? Damn. The fools. Some people never make good employees. You give them one little job, and suddenly they think you
care
about them.” He frowned. “What did you tell them?”
“That’s I’d come talk to you. And here I am.”
Shaman twitched a non-smile. “And so you are.” He plucked a bit of lint off his jacket sleeve, saying, casually, “You of course may do whatever you want to them. Give the girl back, don’t give her back, I don’t care. Kill them if you like. I assume that’s what happened to the one with the ears – you killed him?”
Ghost said nothing.
Shaman shrugged. “They’re of no use to me, either way. Do what you like.”
“Then why use them at all?” Walsh said. “You sent them to us. And suddenly you don’t need them?”
“They were supposed to report back to me about your operation,” he said, addressing his countryman. “They failed to do so. As it turns out, opportunistic Bible-thumping hillbillies are just that – hillbillies. They don’t make very good informants.”
The fact that he was speaking so openly with them, admitting that he’d wanted to spy on them, unnerved Michael. This was no cackling madman revealing his master plan out of overwhelming pride in the last act of a bad romance novel. This was a civilized conversation. And this was a dangerous, dangerous smart man sitting across from them.
Ghost knew it, too. “So what do you want, Shaman?” He smirked. “The satisfaction of giving us a break?”
He snorted. “Hardly. When I do something just for satisfaction’s sake, it’s a lot more fun that this. No offense, gentlemen. You’re delightful company.”
“Then what?”
He pitched forward, bracing his thin forearms on his thighs, large eyes sparkling. “I want to owe you a favor, Mr. Teague. I want you to do me the favor of dealing with the Jessups, and owe me one in return.”
“That sounds like a shit idea.”
Shaman smiled, flashing white, straight teeth, the effect dazzling, masculine and feminine at the same time. “Oh, but it’s nice. I’m a very good debt to have, you see. I’ve yet to find a favor I couldn’t grant.”
“Yeah?” Ghost was furious, and maybe, just maybe, an appropriate amount of scared.
“I want us to be friends,” Shaman said. “Your club fascinates me, and I want to help you at some point in the future.”
“If my boy in the hall’s anything to go by, your ‘help’ ends up in a lot of hyperventilating.”
Shaman drew back, smile fading. “It’s unfortunate that he responded that way. Kevin…” He shook his head. “Let’s not dwell on that. Let’s shake hands, and part on friendly terms, and look forward to seeing one another again.”
Ghost stared at him a long moment. “I don’t have a choice either way, do I?”
“No, I’m afraid not. But it’s so much more comforting to talk as if you do.”
“Why’d you do that?” Aidan and Ghost were faced off from one another in the parking lot. It was starting to snow again, light, swirling flakes.
“Because I don’t want another war,” Ghost said, hands on his hips. He glanced around his son, toward Tango, who stood beside his bike, smoking a cigarette and staring at his boots. “Shaman. You know him from…?”
Tango nodded his head.
“And he was one of the…?”
Another miserable nod. He scuffed his toes across the asphalt and his fingers shook on the cigarette.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Somebody wanna fill me in?” RJ asked.
“No,” Ghost and Aidan said together.
Everyone was looking at Tango, wildly curious. All but Ghost, and Aidan, and Mercy for some reason, whose jaw was set at a grim angle like he already knew.
And Michael. Other people’s history didn’t interest him in the least.
He turned away from the sad spectacle of Tango’s discomfiture and faced the wet street; it glittered like onyx against the backdrop of snow. His palms itched, tension curling and uncurling in his gut. He had the go-ahead; now he wanted to take the action. Wherever the Jessups were right now, his knife was hungry for their throats.
He felt a touch at his shoulder and turned to find Mercy standing behind him. He lifted his brows in silent question.
“I was gonna see,” Mercy said, “if you wanted some help.”
“With the brothers?”
He grinned. “Well unless you want me to diagram iambic pentameter for you, or boil a pot of crawfish, I’ve only got one kind of help to dole out.”
Michael almost smiled. Almost. “Thanks, but I can handle them.”
“You sure? I’d love to take that brick and put it through their faces.”
“I’m sure.” Michael gave a short, tight nod. His neck was stiff with tension. “I need to do this myself.”
“I get that.” Mercy’s expression was free of all judgment. Lowering his voice, he said, “They hurt Holly bad, didn’t they?”
More than words could express. “Yeah.”
Mercy clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Good luck.”
Twenty-Four
Snow was different outside the city. While a dusting of white lent an air of the magical to lampposts and parked cars and storefront awnings, it lay against open pasture like a lover, and brought every beautiful curve and hollow to life. It crusted the pine boughs in crystal sugar shards. It drifted between tree trunks and frosted every fencepost.
At Chaceaway, the animals were indoors, save the chickens, who scratched at the fluffy white carpeting in search of morsels beneath.
“It’s perfect,” Holly said, breath fogging the window in front of her as she surveyed the farm and its blanket of powder. It wasn’t a wet, icy snow – the morning news had described the road conditions as “fair” – but a dry dusting. She wrapped her fingers tight around the mug of tea in her hands. “I’d love to go walking in it.”
“Nah, you don’t wanna do that.” Wynn was building up a fire on the hearth. “It’ll just get your boots wet and make your lungs hurt.” He laughed as he glanced up at her, and saw her hopeful face. “Ain’t you ever seen snow before?”
Holly felt her cheeks warm, embarrassed to be reacting with such childlike wonder to snow. “It snowed right before Christmas. But it’s prettier here. It’s…” She turned back to the window, gaze flying across the snow-draped hillocks. “It’s pure here. No one's touched it.”
The sound of firewood thunking around behind her stopped. Wynn took a breath. “And you want to be the first one,” he guessed. There was a note in his voice that made her think he understood so much more than she could ever explain to him. Like he understood the ecstasy of something first and pure and untouched to someone like her.
“Yes,” she breathed, steam from her mouth shivering against the thin windowpane. She turned to face him again – he was on his knees at the hearth, hands braced on the old stones, watching her. “If that’s alright,” she added.
“Sure, sure.” He heaved to his feet with a wince and a popping of old joints. “We better see about getting you a warmer jacket, though. That thing you brought ain’t worth keeping the barn rats warm.”
She smiled. Being warm had nothing to do with jackets, she wanted to tell him. Michael had proved that to her.
Wynn found an out of style plaid wool coat in the downstairs closet. Black, with an overlaid pattern of brown and mustard and white, it had been chic a few decades ago, and was made of a heavy wool, delightfully warm when she slipped it on and pulled it around to fasten the double rows of buttons. It ended at her ankles, to keep the wind off her legs.
She realized who it had belonged to as she finished off the last button. “This was Camilla’s,” she said, lifting her gaze to Wynn’s. A stab of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t be wearing it. Maybe he really didn’t want his sister’s coat on this girl he didn’t know.
But he smiled at her, zipping up his heavy Carhartt jacket. “It fits you. Thankfully I held onto it, or you’d be in one of these.” He plucked at the front of his jacket. “Hat?”
“Please.”
He handed her a knitted beanie that smelled like mothballs and she snugged it down over her ears.
“Ready?”
“Yep.”
The first step out the back door the snow compressed beneath her boot, the muffled crunching moving through her, ringing electric in her ears, blasting a smile across her face. The air was cold and damp, and the incredible new-fallen snow smell filled her nose.
Perfect, yes.
They took Cassius with them, and the Dane lifted his feet high to get them clear of the snow, leaping and skittering like an excited colt. Songbirds, bright red cardinals and petite chickadees, flittered from branches to the feeders and then back again, stealing bites of black oil sunflower seed as they passed through the yard and skirted the barn. Holly was silent and rapt as she absorbed it, drinking in each detail, pressing them into the scrapbook pages of her mind to pull out and look at later.
“This is a nice trail,” Wynn said as they passed between two tall pines. “I take the dogs down this one a lot.”
There wasn’t anything visible of the path, only a snow-covered clear track between the trees that signaled a trail. Holly followed him down it, trusting his senses and Cassius to get them back to the house later. If nothing else, they were leaving deep tracks. Better than breadcrumbs.
The trees stood like sentinels alongside the track, stoic and impartial. How beautiful were trees? The world’s silent witnesses to countless fits of passion; the keepers of deep woodland secrets; the stakes holding down the windblown surface of the earth, when humans tried to send shockwaves to its core.
Surrounded by tall pines, she didn’t suppress the words that built up in the back of her throat.
“I used to walk in the woods like this when I was a little girl,” she said, breath puffing white. “With my mom. There were all these little secret trails around our house, and we’d pack lunch and spend all afternoon looking for deer and naming the birds.”
“I always liked it out here,” Wynn said beside her. “You can think about things. You can talk, too. And the trees listen.”
She nodded. Yes, her thoughts exactly.
It felt like they went for miles, slow, pleasant progress zig-zagging through forest and edging little white meadows. Then the trees opened up, and Holly spotted a regular sequence of ridges lying beneath the snow in front of them. Train tracks.
“Trains don’t come that often anymore,” Wynn said as she stepped over the rail and kicked snow off the trestles, uncovering a damp wooden tie to stand on. “You can hear the whistle at night. Sounds like a ghost wailing.”
“I bet.” But she was distracted; the tracks had her undivided attention, as she stared down the long tunnel of trees, where they finally disappeared into the gray horizon.
She stepped to the next tie, and the next, then spun and looked down the opposite stretch, ending in a curve that could have been yards or miles away. Distance had no meaning, in the pine-green and snow-white cathedral doming around them.
Time stopped.
“Where do these go?” Holly asked, clutching her mother’s hand as they stood on the worn brown trestles. It had taken hours of walking to come to this spot, this endless stretch of tracks in the middle of the forest.
Lila stared off into the distance, where the tracks met the sunset. The breeze stirred her long dark skirt, fanning it against the slender shapes of her legs, tickling Holly with its ends. Ribbons of hair streamed away from her face. Her eyes were wet and shiny, reflecting the molten colors of the sun as it sank.
“I don’t know, baby,” she said quietly. “But I bet it’s somewhere wonderful, don’t you?”
Holly took a shallow, straining breath, the cold air making her lungs ache. Lila had never found what lay at the end of the tracks. For her, they had only been a fantasy, an out of reach promise of escape. A reminder that the world was full of constant movement, but that time would always stand still for her.
“Holly!” Wynn said beside her, and she snatched her head around.
She had climbed up onto the slick metal rail without knowing it, and as her feet went out from under her, Wynn caught her wrist in one bear paw hand.
“Ah!” She grabbed at his arms, his jacket, staggering down onto level ground, going to her knees when her ankle gave out. But then she was still, and safe, and unhurt, she knew, as she caught her breath.
“That was close,” Wynn said. “You alright? What were you doing?”
She shook her head, not able to explain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t have a worse fall than that,” he said, righting and stepping back from her. “You coulda–”
The rest of his sentence broke off into a masculine yelp, and his left foot flew forward and he collapsed. Above the sharp intake of her gasp, Holly heard the crunch of bone breaking.
“Oh my God! Wynn!” She shot to her feet, rushing to him.
He sat in the snow, his left leg stuck out in front of him at an awkward angle. His weathered face was scored with harsh lines of pain. He grunted and reached for his lower leg, hissing through his teeth when his hand landed on his calf.
“Wynn.” Holly laid a hand on his shoulder, bending over him, more than a little panicked. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
“It’s not your fault,” he gritted out. “It was that damned rock.”
She glanced over and saw it; filmed with slick ice, it had lain hidden beneath the snow.
She grimaced. “God. Do you think it’s–”
“Broken. Yep. I know it is.”
She straightened and pushed her beanie back off her forehead, suddenly hot all over with anxiety. “Do you think you can stand up? I could help you walk back. You could put your arm around my shoulders–”
He shook his head. “That’s real sweet, darlin’, but it’s three miles back and you’re just a little thing. You can’t hold me up all that way.”
Cassius circled his master, snuffling at his face, whining and wagging his tail.
“I’m alright,” Wynn told the dog, stroking his head. “You just calm down, Old Cass.”
Holly knotted her gloved hands together. She’d brought her little red child size gloves, her favorites. They seemed too bright in this gray and white landscape.
“What can I do to help?” she asked. “Is there someone I can call? Can I…oh God, Wynn, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Calm down,” he soothed. “It hurts like a bitch, but it’s just a broken leg. Nobody’s dying.” He managed a pained smile
She gave him a miserable one in return. “I just feel awful about it.”
“I know. But here’s what you’re gonna do. Take Cass here, follow the tracks and go back to the house. There’s no good cellphone signal out here. Find the list of numbers by the phone in the kitchen, and call Fred Mashburn. Okay? Tell him what happened and he and his boys can come help me back to the house.”
She nodded. “Fred Mashburn. Got it. But what about you? Shouldn’t Cassius stay here and keep you safe?”
“Ain’t nothin’ but coyotes in these woods, and they don’t want an old tough strip of meat like me. No. You take Cass. I’ll be just fine.”
“Will you be warm enough? Do you need my hat?”
“No, sweetheart. Go on, now. And don’t you slip and break your leg, or we’ll have to hope Cass turns into Lassie and fetches help for us.” He laughed, but his complexion was paling. His leg was hurting him badly.
“Alright. I’ll be back soon.” With great regret, she left him sitting there. “Come on, Cass,” she called, and with an order from his master, the Dane followed her back down the trail.
“I can’t believe how stupid I am,” she said to the dog once they’d gone a little ways. “Having damn…
flashbacks
…and getting sweet old men hurt…”
Cassius pulled to a sudden halt beside her, growling low in his throat. The sound scared the hell out of her. She jumped, and glanced up wildly.
“What? What is it–”
Her heart lurched. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, not trusting that what she’d seen was real.
But no, they were still there. Not ten feet up the trail. Standing side-by-side, ugly smudges against the snow.
Abraham and Uncle Jacob.
Jacob smiled. “There she is.”
Michael gave up on finding the Jessups himself. They had no fixed address, and short of going back to Loving Embrace and asking Shaman if he had any ideas as to where they might be hiding out, he was going to have to leave the tracking to the trackers. So that’s just what he did. In the most awkward exchange of his life, he asked Hound and Rottie if they could please, would they mind please, if they weren’t too busy with club stuff, find the Jessups. They’d stared at him with shock before their manners kicked in and they agreed, saying they’d enlist Ratchet’s help.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Hound said. “We’ll have ‘em pinned down by tomorrow, you can put money on it.”
With plenty of assurances from them, he left the clubhouse and headed for home – Chaceaway, which at the moment was the home that had raised him, and the place where his woman waited. It didn’t get much more home than that.
The roads were clear, and though the cold seeped through his clothes and into his skin, the ride out to the farm was a pleasant one. Lighter inside than he’d been in – well, in a long time, he let the wind and the road and the feel of the bike between his legs shake the tension out of him. He breathed in the smell of snow and thought about Holly’s blinding smile when she laid eyes on him, and he felt…he felt happy. Truly, simply happy.