Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4) (31 page)

Twenty-Seven

Whitney, Tango had learned, was twenty-years-old, owned a secondhand iPhone, and worked at a customer service call center. She had two nieces, a sister-in-law who made a mean baked ziti, and a heroin-addicted older brother who was the reason she was currently locked in a cell.

              She shook her head. “I don’t blame Jason,” she said of her brother. “He isn’t someone who started using recreationally for the fun of it. He was in serious pain and the doctors wouldn’t give him the meds anymore because, well” – she shrugged – “he was addicted to those, too. So he turned to H, and…” She trailed off, playing with the buttons of her blazer.

              She glanced over at Tango through the bars and offered him the sort of shy smile people felt compelled to give when they were trapped in awkward situations with strangers. “You probably think I sound like an idiot.”

              He smiled back, because her face was sweet, and because he appreciated the way she was covering her terror with Southern composure. “No,” he assured. “I think you sound like a good sister.”

              “But a stupid one.” She took a deep breath and the fear stood out in her eyes; it was too big to hide completely. “They said they let Jason go. That he’s supposed to get the rest of the money together and come back for me.” She caught her lip between her teeth and bit down hard.

              “I’m sure he will.” Tango didn’t know what else to say.

              “You’re very nice, but you’re a bad liar.”

              “Well, yeah, pretty much.”

              They shared a miserable grin.

              Whitney took another big breath and said, “So, what do you do for a living? I’m guessing you’re some kind of super cool rockstar what with” – she gestured to her own hair and ears – “all of the style.”

              “Prepare to be disappointed. I’m a motorcycle mechanic.”

              “Who said that wasn’t super cool?” Her smile became truer. “Do you have your own bike?”

              “A Harley Dyna Superglide.”

              She sat up straighter against the wall, eyes sparkling. “Ooh, you’re a Lean Dog, aren’t you?”

              Was there any harm in admitting that to her? Probably not, he decided. “Um…yeah. I am.”

              “No way!” She laughed in delight. “When I was a little girl, my dad used to put me up on his shoulders so I could see you guys go down the street.”

             
When you were a little girl?
Tango thought.
Aren’t you still?
He said, “Well, I wasn’t around then, I’m sure. I was” – stripping and turning tricks – “in school.”

              “So I’ve probably seen you on the road recently,” she said, undeterred. She didn’t really look starry-eyed and adoring, but delighted. This was a nice diversion for her, he realized, so he would indulge.

              “Yeah.” He nodded. “Did you see us on Halloween? We had a whole big ride through the city, old ladies and everything.”

              Her nose scrunched up and it was cute. “Do you guys really call your wives ‘old ladies’? I thought that was only on TV.”

              “Nope. We really do it.”

              She laughed, and then it died suddenly. “Oh no. Yours must be worried sick about you. God, here I am feeling sorry for myself, and you’ve got a wife waiting on you–”

              He held up his left hand to cut her off, showing her the bare, tattooed backs of his fingers, the lack of a ring. “I’m not married,” he said. “Nobody’s waiting on me.” It was the truth, and he was currently being held in a private prison God knew where, but for some reason, the words pained him.

              Whitney drew her legs up, looped her arms around them and rested her chin on one knee. “I bet that’s not true,” she said quietly. “Even if you don’t have an old lady, I bet someone’s waiting on you. The rest of the Dogs?” she guessed.

              It was a small kindness, and the only one she could offer in their bare, adjoining cells, but it made the corners of his mouth twitch. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

              The door opened above them, and he heard the sharp way she stopped breathing, felt his own lungs seize. In his mind he imagined a cold concrete stairwell; he’d been unconscious when they’d brought him in, but he could construct the stairs, the door, the heavy boots of the men in his imagination.

              Three men appeared in front of their cells. Two faceless, muscled thugs. And a medium-sized man with a face of generalities: regular nose, unremarkable brown eyes, thin mouth set evenly above a normal-looking chin. He was a sketch artist’s nightmare, this man, with nothing notable at all to his appearance, not even his soft brown hair. As he stared through the bars, Tango felt a hard shudder move down his back. The longer he looked at the man, the more his bland countenance became unnerving. He was so nondescript as to be perfect; he was nothing and no one by careful design. An unmarked PI car of a human being. Like he wore a camouflage mask over what must be a normal face beneath.

              “You,” the man said, and the thugs slid Tango’s door back. “It’s time to make a phone call.”

              “Oh God,” Whitney said, voice a tight whisper.

              As he got to his feet, Tango threw her a broad fake smile. “Don’t worry, kiddo. There’s nothing I haven’t already lived through.”

~*~

“Hello, Mr. Teague. My name is Bill,” said a modulated voice on the other end of the line.

              “Hello, Bill,” Ghost said, biting down hard on the anger that wanted to bleed into his own voice. He had to play this game; he had to be the president. There was no room here for error – and emotion was never anything but an error. “Can I talk to your boss?”

              “No. I’ll be handling this conversation.”

              How polite it all was.

              Ghost stood in the chapel, the doors shut, flanked by his officers and Mercy. Aidan would have wanted to be here for this, even if all he could do was listen helplessly with the rest of them. But he wasn't back yet, and when
this
call came through, you didn’t let it go to voicemail.

              “Alright.” Ghost put his cellphone on speaker mode and held it in front of him. Michael, Walsh, Ratchet and Mercy crowded close to listen. “You’ve got my attention. Let’s talk.”

              Sounds of footsteps on a hard floor, muffled through the phone connection. A shuffling. A rustling. Then Bill again: “I have Kevin Estes with me.”

              “I know that,” Ghost said tightly. “Kev, you there?” he asked, just to make sure.

              “Yeah, boss. I’m alright.” Tango’s voice was surprisingly steady, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

              Mercy folded his arms, massive biceps clenching and releasing with undirected violence.

              Ghost felt the same. “You guys want all the rest of your coke back, right?” he said into the phone. “Tell me when and where and we’ll make the swap. Let’s not fuck around here.”

              A pause. “Yes, he wants the coke,” Bill said. “But that’s not enough anymore.”

              “What?” all of them said at once.

              Bill’s voice had a smile to it. “You’re going to pay punitive damages, too, Mr. Teague. To the tune of five-hundred-thousand dollars. Or I will disassemble your boy Kevin piece by piece.”

~*~

Kev was gone for a long time. Whitney stared down at her knees, tracing the buckles of her boots with her fingertips, wanting to do something mindless that grounded her. She was here, she was unharmed…but she was
here
.

              She wondered if Jason was getting the money.

              She wondered if he’d abandoned her.

              She wondered what they were doing to Kev up there…

              She closed her eyes tight and tried not to envision anything. He was sweet, and calm, and he’d been kind to her when he didn’t have to be. At first glimpse, she’d seen the tattoos peeking from beneath his clothes and covering the backs of his fingers; the earrings glittering all down his ears; the hair. But then quickly she’d seen the face beneath it all, the kind blue eyes. He wasn’t scary; he was almost pretty. And for the past however many hours he’d been the only thing keeping her sane.

              It seemed like an eternity before she heard the door open. The footsteps that moved toward her were uneven. Someone walking smartly…towing along someone who was having trouble standing.

              Oh no.

              Kev’s cell door squealed open and he was shoved inside. The door closed with a slam. Kev landed on his hands and knees on the cold concrete, and stayed that way, spine curled, the vertebrae standing out beneath his t-shirt.

              His t-shirt that was peppered with blood at the shoulders.

              Whitney waited until she heard the upper door close and then she moved, going to the bars that separated their cells, curling her fingers around them. “Kev.”

              He breathed rapidly, shallowly, his gasps echoing off the floor beneath him.

              “Kev, are you okay?” Her heart began to pound, keeping rhythm with his respiration.

              Slowly, he sat back, and she gasped. The blood was coming from his ear, the entire outer edge a mess of red. His earrings were gone; they’d been ripped out, leaving jagged puckers in the skin. He looked like he’d been chewed on by something.

              “God,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

              He gave her a smile that was more of a grimace, his eyes glazed over with pain. “It’s always the stuff that doesn’t leave a mark that hurts the worst,” he said, voice faraway. “Remember that.”

              Tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them away, forced her voice steady. “How can I help?”

              “You can’t.”

              “I can,” she insisted. “Come here.”

              He stared at her.

              “Please.” She slipped her narrow forearm through the bars and held out her hand. “Come here.”

              He shuffled over on his knees and then let the bars take his weight. When she reached for his hand with hers, he let her take it, let her squeeze it. He had long-fingered, elegant hands, pale except for the intricate dominoes tattooed on the backs of his fingers.

              “I can do this,” she said quietly. “And it’s not much, but it’s something.” At least, she hoped it was. Most likely, outlaw bikers didn’t give a damn about having their hands held.

              But Kev didn’t move away, and he rested his head against the bars, close enough for her to smell his fear-sweat, and the fruity gel he’d used to style his hair.

              “I’m sorry,” she repeated, because she didn’t know what else to do.

              He squeezed her fingers. “Thank you.”

Twenty-Eight

Aidan dreamed of money. Floating down out of the heavens, fluttering like fall leaves into his open palms. Half a mil, just what he needed. He counted it, stacked it, bundled it with rubber bands. And then there was Sam, sinking to her knees in front of him, passing her hands up his thighs.
“Aidan, I forgive you. Come back to me.”

              He woke with the phantom feel of her lips against him, and rolled over to find himself hard, sweating, and utterly desperate, stomach knotted from the stress. All of it was a jumble inside him: desire, grief, worry, fury.

              He thought of Tango and that was like dumping cold water into his lap. He hadn’t been at the clubhouse yesterday during the phone call, but Walsh had debriefed him, careful not to say anything inflammatory. It didn’t matter, though. Aidan knew what happened to hostages. He was all too familiar with his brother-in-law’s skillset to be naïve on that front.

              He found Carter in the kitchen chugging down a Red Bull. “I’m heading in early,” Aidan said.

              “I’ll come with you.”

              They were equally subdued. Their brother was being held captive by the enemy; that was a uniting force.

              They didn’t even pretend to clock in at the shop when they got to Dartmoor, but went straight to the clubhouse. The common room looked like a busy office: Ratchet chain-smoking and tapping away at his laptop, Walsh on the phone, Ghost on the phone, Candy on the phone.

              “Yeah,” Ghost said into his cell and snapped it shut. Then he looked at Aidan. “We’re gathering the money.”

              “We gonna have enough?”

              “If I have to sell Mags’ car, we’ll make it work.”

              “What can I do?”

              Ghost shrugged and shook his head.

              “He’s my best friend,” Aidan said quietly.

              His father gave him a level look. “Yeah, I know that. But I don’t know what to tell you except that we’re working on it.”

              And apparently, he wasn’t wanted or needed. He was just the party-hearty fuckup after all, wasn’t he?

              His hands shook as he lit up a cigarette on his way back to the shop. Fuck this. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it –

              Maggie stepped into his path and he pulled up short and almost swallowed the cig, fumbling to gather himself at the last second.

              She put a steadying hand on his arm. She had this way of looking maternal and concerned…and ready to beat so much ass at the same time. He’d always admired that about her, and she looked that way now. “Any news?” she asked.

              He shook his head.

              “Your dad’ll get it sorted.”

              “Mags, I really don’t wanna talk about him right now.”

              She sighed, but nodded. “Why don’t you come with me? No sense sitting around here and worrying.”

              “I was glonna clock in.”

              “After we get back,” she insisted. “Tonya’s in her second trimester and she’s got a doctor’s appointment today.”

              It felt like someone shoved him, right in the middle of the chest.

              “You ready to step up?” Maggie asked.

              “I…” No more screwing around. No more being a worthless piece of shit. “Yeah,” he said on an exhale. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

~*~

He’d never been in this wing of the hospital before. When it came to his nephews, he hadn’t become involved until they’d arrived into the world, and the labor and delivery ward wasn’t the same as the OB/Gyn practice. Once he passed through the double doors at Maggie’s side, the hospital fell away, and in its place, a waiting room floored in wood-look tiles, with black and white photography prints on the walls, potted plants, soft lighting, and soothing jazz playing from hidden speakers.

              He wanted to make a comment about wishing the rest of the place was this swanky, but there was a lump in his throat.

              As if sensing his need for it, Maggie curled her arm around his, giving the impression he was the one supporting her, when the opposite was true. “She knows we’re coming,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay.”

              When they reached the desk, Maggie leaned across it to explain their presence to one of the techs.

              “Follow me, please,” the young woman said, and came around the desk to lead them through a door, down a hall lined with more black and white prints, to an interior waiting room, this one small and private.

              Aidan spied a spread of maternity magazines on one of the coffee tables, alongside a display of brochures with a cartoon uterus on the front.

              “You wanna sit?” Maggie asked.

              “Not really.”

              Maggie sat, jean-clad legs crossing. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now. Right now, this seems like this huge big mess. But I can say with one-hundred percent confidence that you won’t regret keeping your baby.”

              He lifted an eyebrow. “You never wanted to leave Ava outside the firehouse?”

              “Ass. You know I love my baby. I love you. Just like you’ll love yours. But even if–” She couldn’t make herself say it, the idea of him not loving his child too terrible to contemplate. “You would regret giving it up,” she said firmly. “I know you, and you’d hate yourself every day for it.”

              Aidan heard the clip of shoes approaching them across the tiles and turned to look.

              Tonya was starting to show a little. Not much, because she was lithe and fit, but her clinging shirt belied a slight curve to her belly. Beside her, her mother was the poster child for Elegant Older Ladies.

              Maggie stood and came to stand beside him, taking his hand in her warm, strong one. “How’d the appointment go?” she asked in a businesslike voice.

              In a matching tone, Tonya’s mother said, “It went well. She and the baby are perfectly healthy.”

              A mom-to-mom stare-down of neutral expressions and guarded gazes ensued.

              Tonya had a little paper rectangle in her hands. Another photo of some sort, Aidan realized.

              “What’s that?” he asked, surprised he was able to get the words out.

              She extended it toward him. “It’s for you,” she said in a flat voice. Apparently, he’d knocked all the fight out of her the last time he’d seen her. “You can keep it. It’s the baby.”

              A startlingly clear image of the baby this time, no longer a blob, but a life, in unquestionable detail.

              “Congratulations,” Tonya said. “It’s a girl.”

              Aidan stopped breathing.

              Maggie leaned against his shoulder, and her fingers squeezed his as she looked at the image. “A girl,” she breathed. “
Your
girl, baby.”

              Tonya said, “She’ll need a name. Be thinking of one.”

~*~

He hadn’t counted on it hurting this much. The ears, like the fingertips and the ends of the toes, were full of nerves, and the outer edge of his ear stung and pulsed and throbbed. It was making his whole head ache.

              He’d had worse, of course he had. A man had taken his virginity at age twelve – and that didn’t count the things that had been done to him in the years preceding. But this still made him clench his teeth. Mostly because he knew there was more to come. Five-hundred grand wasn’t anything Ghost could go withdraw from the bank. And if he were in his president’s shoes, he wasn’t sure he’d roll over so easy.

              He held onto the stone solidness of Ghost’s voice over the phone line earlier. “We’re getting you back, Kev. Understand?” And he held onto little Whitney Howard’s hand, like a shameless pussy, because she was small and sweet and she smelled like soft, feminine, comforting things, as her hair flicked through the bars and teased at his face.

              “What’s it like?” she asked. “Being a Lean Dog.” And he knew she was seeking to distract him.

              He was okay with that. Sitting up a little straighter, but not releasing her hand, he said, “Not that I can speak from experience, but I think it’s like being in one of those great big Italian families.”

              “Yeah?” She laughed softly.

              “Except nobody’s Italian. Not in Tennessee, anyway. Our New York chapter, yeah. But,” he said, refocusing, “it’s a brotherhood. We’ve got some of the old timers, and the legacies, who are related to the founders. Muscle and brains and the weird awkward ones.” His laugh was a little hollow. “The club is everything,” he said, sobering. “It’s the only thing I’ve got.”

              “It sounds like a pretty good thing, though.”

              It sort of did, when he laid it out like that. When he didn’t think too hard about where he was.

              The outer door opened, up at the top of the concrete stairs.

              They both froze. Tango imagined her stomach filled with dread the way his did.

              “Get back from the bars,” he told her. When he let go of her hand, the cold air closed over his own. “We don’t want to look weak to them.”

              She nodded and scooted toward the center of her cell.

              When their captors arrived, they were both quiet and composed, cross-legged on the floor.

              Bill the Faceless wasn’t with the two goons this time. That wasn’t a relief.

              The two thugs bypassed Tango’s cell at a lazy stroll. Their eyes were on Whitney, and in an instant, the dread in his belly boiled up to become anger, burning back the haze of physical pain. The dogs had been let off the leash…and they’d decided they wanted to play.

              One of them whistled, and the other laughed in an unmistakable way as they peered through the bars at Whitney.

              “Baby, baby, baby,” one said to the other. “How old you think she is?”

              “Betcha she can’t even drink yet,” Number Two responded, voice dark with intent. “Can ya, sweetheart? You even eighteen?”

              Tango glanced over at Whitney, saw her wrap her arms around her knees and lift her chin, rebelliously silent.

              “Don’t feel like talking?” One said. “Maybe I oughta come in there and see if your tongue’s working.”

              Oh shit… Tango’s hands curled into fists.

              “Twenty,” Whitney said. “I’m twenty.”

              The thugs laughed.

              “Just a little piece of veal,” One said.

              The sound of the key grating into the lock of her cell door lifted the hair on the back of Tango’s neck. Whitney shot a frantic look toward him, eyes huge – pale blue eyes liquid with fright. It was a look that communicated everything: her terror, her innocence, her panic. Twenty, life only just beginning, and she was about to be violated unspeakably by her captors. It happened every day, all over the country, abuses carried out by sociopathic animals.

              But it wasn’t happening on Tango’s watch.

              He surged to his feet. “Do you not know who I am?”

              “Shut up,” Two said, not interested.

              Tango went to the front of his cell, wrapped his fingers around the bars. “No, I don’t think you get it.
Do you know who I am
?”

              They looked over at him, irritated, but distracted from Whitney for a moment. “The fuck are you talking about?”

              “Those earrings were hooked to his brain,” One suggested. They laughed again.

              “You ever heard of The Cuckoo’s Nest?”

              You’d either heard of the Nest, or you hadn’t; there was no mistaking it for anyplace else. And clearly, these two had heard. They both stilled, the smiles dropping off their faces.

              “I used to work there,” Tango said, and there was nothing true about the word
work
. His heart pounded as the memories crashed across him. He couldn’t talk about that place without thinking about Miss Carla, about the boys, about Ian, about
all of it
. “I was one of the features.”

              The two guards moved toward him, slowly, a little hesitant, but fascinated.

              “You never went in there, did you?” Tango asked. “But you were curious. You thought it was disgusting…but there was that little bit of fascination, wasn’t there?” He was aware of Whitney staring at him, and hated himself as he continued. “You wanna find out?” he asked. “You wanna see one of Miss Carla’s Dancing Boys? Take a good look.”

              Thug One walked up to him, glaring down at Tango with utter contempt. He hawked and spat on the concrete. “Shut up, faggot.”