Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (60 page)

~ NINETEEN ~

Ghost

He didn’t think it was a good thing for a hospital to
be bustling, but that’s exactly what it felt like when Ghost stopped in to
visit Tommy two days before Bridget’s plan was set to go down. Ghost had
actually been stopping in every single day since they returned to LeBeau, but
every single day, the stern nurses at the front desk of his ward shooed Ghost
away.

Visiting MC brothers in
the hospital was always tricky. They weren’t technically family, and even in a
place this small, the doctors and nurses didn’t always understand or sympathize
with what was going on. So Ghost and the others had been mostly barred from
visiting while Tommy got out of the worst of it and started to become more
conscious every day. In the meantime, Tommy’s beautiful and strong sisters had
kept the men updated, delivered notes and presents, and promised to let them
know the minute they could visit. Ghost had gotten their text while he was
lying in Bridget’s bed eating cereal and watching TV, after she had already
left for the Academy. He threw his clothes on rushed over.

Ghost made his way around
the busy hallway and swerved right by the front desk without stopping. One of
the nurses, probably out of habit, called out after him, but she was quickly
corrected by another. Ghost didn’t even slow down.

When he got to Tommy’s
room, Will and Jase were already there, hovering around his bed. Tommy was
looking infinitely better than he had the day Ghost saw him last. The color had
returned to his skin, even though half his face was buried under mountains of
white gauze, and the rest was glittered with superficial cuts that were still
red and healing. Like Will, one of his arms was in a sling, and the casts on
both his legs made the blankets bulge in funny ways. He was surrounded by
machinery and had two separate IV lines running into his veins.

Despite all that, Tommy’s
whole face lit up when he saw Ghost come into the room. Warmth spread though
Ghost’s chest in a way that was so unfamiliar, it almost stopped him in his
tracks.

“Ghost!” said Tommy.
“Dude, I’m so happy to see you!”

“Thomas the Tank Engine!”
said Ghost, throwing his arms wide. The door shut softly behind him as he
entered the small hospital room. Jase moved aside to let Ghost get close to
Tommy, and Ghost leaned down to give his brother a gentle squeeze. “You look
positively radiant. What have you been doing to yourself?”

“I think that’s the
painkillers,” Tommy laughed.

“Lucky dog,” said Ghost.
“How are you feeling?”

Tommy shrugged, and there
was pain on his face when he did it. “Good, I guess. I’m glad to be awake. For
a while there, I thought I was just going to be in and out of sleep forever.”

That actually sounded
horrifying. He put a soft arm on Tommy’s shoulder. “You don’t know how good it
is to see you awake and talking, kid. I thought I was going to find a pile of
beef jerky on the side of that highway.”

Tommy laughed, but a
couple of tears popped out anyway, and Ghost instantly felt bad about the
gallows humor. He found a tissue and handed to him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m
trying to work on that… feelings… thing… that you guys do, you know, without
the jokes and stuff.”

“I like your jokes,” said
Tommy as he wiped the tears off his face. “I’m just not feeling like myself
right now, been crying over everything.
Abuela
brought me homemade carne
asada and I started crying over that!”

From across the bed, Will
piped up, “Counterpoint—your
abuela’s
cooking is actually worth crying
over on a good day.”

“Here, here,” said Jase.

“I’m trying to be serious
here, you guys, Jesus! Some professionalism!” said Ghost with mock indignity.
Jase and Will snorted and tried to shut up. “What I’m trying to say, Tommy, is
that you scared the fucking hell out of me lying there on the side of the road,
and goddamn it, I love you bro, and I’m really glad you’re okay.”

The room was silent, but
heavy after he finished. His three MC brothers exchanged glances with each
other in speechless surprise.

Finally, Ghost couldn’t
take it. “What?” he said, looking to each of them. “What, how badly did I just
fuck that up? Super badly? Like, the worst ever?”

“No, man,” said Jase with
a sideways nod. “That… actually wasn’t fucked up at all.”

“Really?”

“That was downright
adorable,” agreed Will with an amused but genuine smile. “I think our Ghost is
growing up, guys.”

“Oh, goddammit, I knew I
should have just stuck with the jokes,” said Ghost as they laughed.

“No, it was nice!” said
Tommy. “I love you too, bro. Thanks for sticking up for me and making sure
everything turned out how it should have. I know nothing will ever go wrong
with you around.”

“Jesus, no pressure!”
Ghost said, raising his hands. “Just perfection. Got it, guys!”

They broke into laughter.
The moment was interrupted when the door to the room swung open, and a few
familiar figures darkened the doorway. It was the Dogs from Eagleton who had
been on the run, and leading them was Lucero. His eyes looked dim and distant,
and his posture was far more defeated than the last time Ghost saw him, but he
still had that angry look permanently etched on his face. Ghost wondered
internally if he had begun treatment yet.

The mood in the room got
tense. Will stood up from the chair he sat in on the far end of the room. Ghost
locked eyes with Lucero, ready for a challenge.

But Shaun stepped forward.
“Hi, guys. I hope we’re not bothering you. We heard Tommy was awake, and we
thought we’d stop by and visit, since we’re heading straight back to Eagleton
after the operation.”

Ghost exchanged looks with
Will, who looked to Jase. None of them felt particularly alarmed. The tribunal
had sealed Eagleton’s fate, and they’d only be hurting themselves if they tried
to take it out on LeBeau now.

“That’s Tommy’s call,”
said Ghost. “What do you think, bro?”

“Sure,” said Tommy. “Come
on in, guys.” He waved to the Eagleton men.

From outside the hallway,
one of Tommy’s shift nurses was trying to peek over the shoulders of the tall
bikers in the doorway. She pushed through them with a huff. “I’m sorry, Mr.
Castillo, but you can’t have this many visitors at once. Some of you are going
to have to leave.”

“Really?” said Tommy,
disappointed.

“It’s cool, we’ll have plenty
of time to come back and visit,” said Ghost. “Let Eagleton have their time. We
can head out.” He nodded to Will, and Jase joined them heading for the door.

The bikers exchanged
slightly tense pleasantries as they moved past each other. When Ghost passed
Lucero, both men paused and looked at each other, and the rest of the room
stopped to look at them, ready for a fight.

“Well, Lucero,” said
Ghost. “You’re still a piece of shit in my book. But at least you’re man enough
to be here and look in Tommy’s face, and that means something.”

Lucero’s jaw clenched, and
Ghost could tell he wanted to bite back dreadfully, but he controlled himself.
He was probably under a very tight leash with his club. “I don’t give a fuck
what you think, McBride.”

“Makes sense,” said Ghost.
“And you were totally on board with the plan, so that also makes me want to
bash your face in significantly less.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a
fucking monster. Who says no to helping out an abused kid?”

“Who indeed,” said Ghost.
He slid by Lucero toward the door. “I guess you can rest easy knowing you’re
not the
biggest
piece of shit in the world.”

Jase rolled his eyes and
pulled Ghost toward the door by his cut.

“Bye, guys,” said Tommy.
“Good luck Friday.”

“We’ll video it and show
you how it went! Go viral, and all those other cool things kids say!” said
Ghost.

“No, we most certainly
will not,” said Will, shaking his head and pushing Ghost out the door.

As it fell shut, Ghost’s
voice rang out from the ward, “Yes we will!”

~ TWENTY ~

Bridget

She hadn’t felt this feeling in so long. Not since she
spent nights watching the true night sky twinkle above the dark cold desert,
and woke up to the sounds of hellfire. Bridget knew this particular brand of
anxiety, and it was the same kind she got in warfare. The feeling clashed
heavily with everything else her senses were taking in: the quiet of the
Academy after hours, the comfort of her favorite outfit and boots, the familiar
faces and voices of Muriel and Henrietta as they made small talk near the
office door. Bridget tried to take ease in the fact that she wasn’t really
about to enter a war zone, and even if she was, she had the home field
advantage. The thoughts soothed her only a little.

She knew Ghost would
understand exactly how she felt in that moment, and she wished badly that he
was there with her. She wasn’t afraid of doing her end of the job alone, but
she knew damn well she’d be having a much better time doing it with his
charming, goofy smile staring back at her. But it was alright. Ghost had a
different job to do today.

Yesterday, with Muriel and
Bridget hovering at her sides, Henrietta had made a call to the house of
Stephen Cary, and spoken with the man himself. Their plan had been carefully
devised. Months ago, when Toby first started showing signs of extreme anxiety,
Bridget had tried diligently to get ahold of the Carys and arrange a meeting to
address her concerns about their son. She left messages with household staff
and voicemails at Mr. Cary’s office, but no one ever cared enough to call her
back. The silence made sense now, of course. But it also told Bridget they
would have to employ a little trickery to get what they wanted out of him.

“He’s not going to come if
we call about Toby,” she had said with disgust. “We need to give him a reason
to come. We need to give him a reason to care. So, what does he care about?”

After a few minutes, they
had all decided unanimously: money.

Henrietta pulled up the
family’s tuition records. They were rich enough that there had never actually
been a real problem, of course; Bridget bet the Carys didn’t even monitor their
own monthly spending anymore. But it gave her enough data to come up with a
convincing lie about a failed wire transfer and some problem with the IRS
related to the family’s last tuition payment. It was the only play they had, so
they ran it. Henrietta delivered the news to Stephen Cary and asked him to
bring the family over to the school the following evening so they could discuss
it. He was so furious, Muriel and Bridget could hear him screaming through the
phone receiver, and he didn’t even question why Henrietta wanted the family to
come.

“You better fucking
believe we’ll be down!” he had shouted and hung up. The women exchanged heavy
glances and Henrietta hung up her office phone.

That evening, they had
huddled together in Henrietta’s office for a final brave push before the Carys
arrived. Bridget sent the news to Ghost via text that everything was still set
to go, and put him on stand-by for his part of the plan. A bunch of emojis
returned, and she just laughed and told the women they were set.

Muriel gave both Bridget
and Henrietta a hug before she grabbed her jacket and purse. Bridget held her
shoulders and said, “Thank you so much for helping with this.  You’re a great
friend.”

“Always,” said Muriel with
a tense smile. “You were right. We are their guardians. I’ll always help.”

Bridget kissed her cheek
and Muriel turned to leave, hurrying out to the parking lot for her next task.
While Henrietta waited in her office for her guests, Bridget did one last quick
run through the school to make sure no one was lingering around after hours.
Getting the children out after the final bell was nothing, but they had worked
incredibly hard to get every single staff member out. Henrietta had finally
settled on a bullshit lie about fumigators coming for a quick overnight spray.
Bridget was unwilling to take any chances on anyone else’s lives tonight, and
emptying the place was the only way to be sure.

Bridget was a hallway over
when she heard the unmistakable sound of the heavy front doors opening and
closing. Quickly she headed back toward the office just in time to get a
glimpse of the Cary family far down the way, heading for the headmistresses’
office. Stephen Cary, a short man in a tailored gray suit, stalked ahead of his
family with a red and angry face. Behind him, his wife, Miranda, walked,
holding Toby’s hand. Miranda was a former beauty queen, but there was no light
on her lovely face. Toby wore a thin gray jacket with the hood up, like he was
trying to hide, and clung closely to his mother’s side.

Bridget’s breath caught in
her throat as she saw the bodyguard from the natural foods store trailing in
behind them, a scowl on his bandaged and healing face.

Oh, fuck
, she thought.
What if
he recognizes me?
She hadn’t considered Cary would bring a bodyguard to a
meeting at his son’s school—none of them had. She realized this was probably
her fault for confronting the housekeeper like she did. Cary probably upped his
security needs afterwards.

But there was no stopping
the plan. It didn’t matter much now if the bodyguard recognized her; she had
the Carys right where she wanted them. It was just a question of how ugly this
was all going to go down.

Bridget waited until the
Carys were in the office until she quietly made her way down the hallway to
join them. Being Toby’s teacher, they felt they could justify her
presence—which was good, because she wasn’t about to let any of this go down
around Toby without being there. Aside from his family, everyone else involved
in this little scheme was no better than a stranger to him, and Bridget refused
to build a plan that kept her out of the way. She wanted him to have as little
trauma from all this as was possible.

Miranda Cary had taken a
seat near the door, sitting in such a way that made her already thin frame seem
even smaller, like she was purposely trying to take up as little space as she
could. Toby stood in front of her, wrapped in her arms, his chin drooped on his
chest. The gray hood covered his face and as best as Bridget could tell, he was
trying to ignore everything going on around him. Stephen Cary, predictably,
stood and leaned over Henrietta’s desk aggressively. The bodyguard had tucked
himself into the corner near the bookshelf.

Bridget didn’t make eye
contact with any of them as she slid into the office and stood next to
Henrietta’s chair. Stephen Cary had been in the middle of a verbal lashing, and
he stopped with an incredulous expression when Bridget’s arrival interrupted
him.

After the sound of his
raging voice, the silence was deafening. Already Bridget felt like she was
getting a taste of just the kind of horror show Toby and his mother lived in.
Stephen Cary stared at her like she was a mosquito, silent, waiting for her to
grovel or apologize or explain herself.

But she didn’t. Bridget’s
face was a blank mask as she returned it, looking into the bastard’s eyes with
her own thousand-yard stare. She could almost smell the stench of his internal
cowardice, trying to intimidate a woman he didn’t even know. But she didn’t
give him the satisfaction. She’d won a thousand battles like this with men
much, much tougher than Stephen Carey would ever be. Like an alpha, she held
his gaze until he diverted away first, and then she grinned downwardly to
herself.

“As I was saying,” Stephen
Cary continued, turning back to Henrietta. “I don’t understand how you fucking
people can be so stupid as to fuck up a recurring wire transfer. I thought this
place was supposed to be giving my fucking kid a leg up in the brains department,
and you’re telling me this is what’s happening at the top?” He rapped his
fingers and knuckles on the desk ask he spoke, and it was stupid, but all
Bridget could think about was the way dictators gave their rousing speeches.

Bridget was blown away by
how aggressive his language already was. Educators dealing with angry parents
was a tale as old as time, but typically, there was some ramp-up to this level
of bitterness. Not with Stephen Cary, apparently. Everyone around him was
either serving him, or in his way.

“Mr. Cary,” said
Henrietta. “
We
didn’t have anything to do with the integrity of the wire
transfer. We simply receive it, and this month, your bank informed us that they
could not make the transfer. As such, your son’s account is technically in a
delinquent state.”

“This is absolute fucking
horseshit!” yelled Cary. He threw his hands into the air, and both Miranda and
Toby flinched so imperceptibly that Bridget almost missed it. It made her blood
boil. “Delinquent? Do you know who the fuck I am? I buy and sell ten times what
this shithole school is worth every
day
!”

“Mr. Cary…”

“I don’t want to hear your
fucking excuses!”

Cary raged on, and
Henrietta took it. Her job had two parts: to lure Cary inside the school, and
to stall him until Ghost’s end of the plan was in place. She knew she was in
for the verbal abuse, and judging by the look on her face, it was rolling off
her back like water.

Bridget dared a glance at
the bodyguard in the corner. She felt her breath catch in her chest when she
realized he was staring at her, eyes narrowed. He was trying to figure out
where he recognized her from.

She looked away quickly,
trying to stay calm, and covertly checked her phone from her back pocket. No
messages.
Fuck, Ghost, hurry up.

“You need to get this
fucking bank on the phone right fucking now.”

“Mr. Cary, with all due
respect, this isn’t really my responsibility to fix. I’m happy to provide
whatever information about our deposit accounts that your institutions require,
but I’m not going to fix this problem for you.”

Stephen Cary picked up the
black phone on the desk and shoved it out toward Henrietta. The headmistress
pitched back, startled, and both Miranda and Toby tensed up and froze in
horror. Bridget had to stop herself from springing forward to knock the phone
out of his hand and block him from Henrietta.

Even though he hadn’t
taken a swing at her, the move was so aggressive that everyone in the room,
even the bodyguard, had frozen. Bridget watched Stephen carefully with cold, angry
eyes.

“Call the bank,” said
Stephen Cary in a low, dangerous voice. “Get this settled,
now.
”

Henrietta’s face flushed
red.

Bridget couldn’t keep her
cool anymore. She stepped forward hard. “You need to put that fucking phone
down and step back from her desk right this second.”

A whimpering sound escaped
from Miranda Cary’s throat. She clutched Toby tighter into her chest. Toby
stared in fright at Bridget. He wasn’t frightened of her; he was frightened for
her.

Stephen Cary turned his
hateful gaze to Bridget, and she met it with steeled wrath. He stood up
straight with the phone still in his hand, cord wobbling. “What the fuck did
you just say to me?”

“Put the phone down, and
step back from the desk,” said Bridget, louder this time. “You’re not very good
with boundaries, Mr. Cary.”

“Who the
fuck
does
this bitch think she is?” spat Stephen as he dropped the phone on the desk
carelessly. The bodyguard stepped forward like he had given an order, and
that’s when Bridget saw the realization dawn on his face.

“Boss,” said the guard,
and raised a meaty finger. “This is that same bitch from the parking lot! The
one who brought the bald guy!”

Fuck.

Bridget’s eyes raced from
the guard, to Cary, and back again. Both of them stared at her with violent hatred
burning on their faces. Henrietta, Miranda, and Toby all looked on in horror,
pale with mouths agape.

Gears were turning in
Stephen Cary’s mind; Bridget could see it on his face. He wanted badly to beat
the shit out of her right then and there, but he was too smart for that. And he
knew he couldn’t even talk about what he knew about her without exposing
himself to the accusations of abuse. But his face told her everything. He knew
exactly who she was; he knew her agenda; and he suddenly knew he’d just walked
into a trap.