Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4) (41 page)

              Mercy shrugged. “That’s what big brothers do.” Before Colin could respond, he opened the door and said, “Come on. We gotta build this funeral pyre.”

~*~

They laid Kev out in the backseat of one of the trucks. By the time they’d settled him and covered him up with jackets, he’d passed out.

              “Better for him to sleep,” Sam said, easing the truck door shut. “He probably ought to be drugged, truth be told.”

              Aidan shook his head. “He doesn’t like to take anything like that. He used to be a heroin junkie.”

              Sam looked at him, gleam of her eyes in the shadows evidencing surprise.

              “He was?” Whitney asked. She was crouched on the ground beside the rear tire, leaning back against it, small and curled up like some kind of woodland creature.

              “Yeah,” Aidan said, and then he did what he’d needed to do since all of this had started. He snatched Sam into his arms and crushed her against his chest, face buried in the loose pale waves of her hair. “Sam. Jesus.”

              She hugged him back, her arms tight around his neck. She shivered.

              The wind stirred around them, rustling leaves, tugging at their clothes. Jazz was sobbing quietly somewhere behind them, Carter murmuring to her. It was the adrenaline bleeding out, Aidan knew. He wanted to sob himself; but his eyes were dry, and his breathing came easy as he held his girl and inhaled the sweet floral scent of her shampoo.

              “You told Ava,” he said after a while, pulling back a little.

              It was hard to tell, but it looked like she blushed. There was no mistaking the firm tone of her voice, though. “It was the right thing to do. We needed backup.”

              “We did?” He grinned.

              “Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Kev was taken because of some decision your dad made. Your dad’s mess, not yours. You’re learning to clean up yours,” she added, softly, “it’s time he learned the same thing.”

              No one had ever put it to him like that before. He kissed her, on impulse, because she was too right and too perfect, in that moment, dressed like a hooker in the woods.

              A sound startled him, a sudden
whoomp
and a rush, like steam escaping a tight pot lid. An explosion, he realized.

              He turned to look back down the hill, Sam clasped tight to his side. They’d set the house on fire. It was still contained inside, but he saw the bright tongues leap in the first floor windows.

              He also saw his club, all his brothers, dark shapes walking across the lawn, moving toward them. He thought he could pick them out through general size and shape, but really he couldn’t. They were all the same, from this vantage point. Just his brothers. His family.

Thirty-Seven

They were in someone’s house. Maggie, the woman had said her name was. A pretty blonde with an unmistakable aura of authority. She’d led them down a hall to a bathroom, and then a set of bedrooms. Whitney had been handed clothes that she’d since changed into: sweatpants, a sweatshirt, pale gray and feminine in cut.

              She sat now on the edge of a bed, in a warm room full of gentle lamplight, alongside Kev, who lay back against the pillows, smelling of soap, glistening with healing ointments that had been smeared on his neck, his arms, his face. Maggie and her daughter, Ava, had been waiting with warm towels when a huge man named Mercy brought Kev from the shower, his big hands gentle and sweet as he’d laid him out on the bed. The women had dressed him, doctored him.

              Maggie had finally looked at Whitney, afterward. “Oh, baby, you ought to sleep.”

              Whitney had shaken her head. “No.”

              “Coffee?” Ava had guessed.

              “That’d be great.”

              She curled her hand around the warm mug now, and stared down at Kev’s unconscious shape beneath the sheets.

              “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him. “I wish I could take what happened to you and put it on myself.”

              His eyes flipped open, and his voice croaked from between split lips. “Don’t say that.”

              It filled her with joy to see his eyes open. Such pretty eyes, baby blue and liquid with emotion, though his face was stiff with bruises and swelling.

              “I do wish it,” she said. “I hate what happened to you.” Her eyes filled with tears at the memory.

              “No,” he said. “Don’t cry.” His own eyes fluttered shut, his face going slack.

              Whitney thought about going back into the main part of the house, with the murmuring crowd of people.

              Instead, she lay down beside Kev, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

~*~

Aidan took a long swallow of whiskey-laced coffee and set it down with a deep sigh. “Shit,” he said, for the sake of his bruises, those of his brothers, and his own shaking fallout of adrenaline. He couldn’t remember being this exhausted in his life. Nothing had ever tasted as good as this spiked coffee. Nothing had ever been as beautiful as his family standing around him as he sat at Maggie’s kitchen table with his father.

              “Kev’s asleep, I think,” Maggie said, sipping her own coffee.

              Aidan felt his father’s gaze and glanced toward him.

              “You’re an idiot,” Ghost said, then grinned. “But damn. I raise my glass.”

              Aidan knew that there would be a real discussion later, but for now, he clinked his mug against Ghost’s.

              The women were sitting at the table with him – his women. Sam, Mags, Ava. “You three,” he said, giving them a pretend stern look. “You rats.”

              “Don’t wanna hear it,” Maggie said.

              “Someone had to be the brains of the operation,” Ava added. “And we figured none of y’all were up for it.”

              Where he stood leaning against the cabinets, Mercy chuckled, and Ava’s eyes darted to him a moment, her quick smile warm.

              Aidan felt Sam giving him that same look: that
I love you, you big idiot
look. He gave her back his own version:
I love you, baby. Don’t give up on me yet
.

              Maggie looked at Ghost. “We aren’t about to get raided, are we?”

              He shook his head. “Underground chatter is quiet. Ellison took a major hit tonight. I mean, major.”

              Aidan knew all too well: most of his men dead, all his files and intel confiscated, and, thanks to Vince Fielding’s new allegiances, the cops had put the word out on a breaking news update that Don Ellison was wanted by police for sabotaging his own people and torching his own house. There was no evidence to support any of that, and it would quickly fall apart at the hands of the media. But it bought them a little time. It sent Ellison running, for the time being.

              “You boys look dead on your feet,” Maggie observed. “You ought to try and grab some sleep before the sun’s up.”

              “Yeah,” Ghost said.

              But none of them made a move to leave the kitchen. It was three a.m. and the room held that magic buzz of up-late and doing-important-things. One of those nights when all the mundane responsibilities were burned away by the hot stroke of a fortunate mission. When he was a kid, this feeling had accompanied Christmas Eve. Now it dogged a job well done.

              “Kev,” Ava said, quietly. “This will have…been damaging for him.”

              They all nodded.

              With a sudden flush of helplessness, Aidan said, “I dunno what we can do for him. Bruises will heal, but…”

              It didn’t need to be said. They all remembered the fallout from his first rescue, years before. He’d never shaken that trauma.

              “Where’d Shaman go?” Mercy asked.

              Aidan shook his head. “He took off when we got Kev in the truck. He just disappeared into the trees, same as when he showed up.” It had been creepy as hell, if he was honest.

              “I still can’t believe you let that bastard help you,” Ghost muttered. “He was all dressed up like he was in goddamn
Mission Impossible
.”

              “He wanted to come,” Aidan said with a shrug. “Which is more than I could say for some people.”

              A sharp look from Ghost.

              Fuck you, old man.

              “Anyway,” Mercy said, loudly. “Where’d the girl come from?”

              “Her name’s Whitney,” Sam said. “Her brother owed Ellison and she was being held as collateral. She’s rattled. And doesn’t want to get more than ten feet from Kev.” She shrugged with her brows, as if to say
who could blame her
.

              “Trauma like that makes people close,” Ava said.

              “I’ll take her home,” Ghost offered. “She doesn’t need to be involved in any of this.”

              Sam nodded, getting to her feet. “I’ll go get her.”

              Their moment of basking in the kitchen was dispersing; he could feel it.

              Ghost’s phone rang, and he stepped out the back door to answer it.

              “Come on, Mama,” Mercy said, pushing off the cabinets. “I wanna go to bed.”

              Ava unfolded her long legs and stood. “Me too. It’d be nice to grab a little sleep before the boys are awake.” Before she left the room, though, she came to Aidan, kissed the top of his head. “You’re a good guy, Aidan,” she whispered. “A good friend, good son, good brother. Whatever Dad says, don’t forget that. We all love you.”

              A lump formed in his throat, so he nodded as she stepped away, smiling warmly at him.

              Mercy clapped him on the shoulder as he left the room. A silent communication that said so many things.

              When he was alone with Maggie, she eyed him over her coffee mug and gave him one of her patented, all-knowing queenly smiles.

              “What?” A loaded question with her, always.

              Her smile widened. “Do you remember, when you were ten, and we had to make that pirate ship out of popsicle sticks for your history project?”

              He nodded. “Black Beard, right?”

              “Yep.” Her eyes twinkled. “And you had to do a presentation, and I made you that red coat and the little felt beard to wear?”

              “Most embarrassing moment of my life.”

              She laughed. “You were precious.”

              And she’d been eighteen, and a fabulous mother, standing in the back of his classroom, Ava on her hip, whistling and cheering after he took his final bow.

              “And afterward,” she said, voice softening, “you said, ‘I wish Dad could have come.’ Because you wanted him to see you doing so well.” Her eyes filled with moisture. “He was there tonight, baby. He saw you doing so well.”

              “Mags–”

              “I know I’m not your mama. But you’re my boy. So trust me when I tell you this. Your daddy’s a complete idiot, and nothing he ever says comes out right. But he’s so proud of you. I know he is. When you’re talking to him, later, remember that, and don’t get too caught up in his incredibly stupid word choice.”

              He nodded. “One thing, though.”

              She lifted her brows.

              “Do me a favor and don’t ever say you’re not my mama again, okay?”             

              She started to speak, then nodded instead, lips pressed together as emotion overtook her.

              The back door opened and Ghost returned, his gaze moving between them. “Everything alright?”

              “Fine, baby.” Maggie stood and went to pour her coffee out in the sink. “I’m gonna go see if the girls need anything.” She kissed Ghost on her way through; kissed Aidan on the cheek too.

              Then they were alone. Father and son. The sitdown Aidan had been dreading for months.

              He waited for the old familiar writhing in his gut, the band of perspiration that always broke out beneath his collar.

              But they didn’t come. Numb…or, maybe…calm, finally, he watched Ghost drag out a chair and sit down across from him.

              So often lately he’d noticed his dad looking old and weary. But tonight there was a new vibrancy to the man, an echo of the tan boxing champ who’d once swept Maggie Lowe off her high-heeled feet. The fighting had invigorated him. For the first time in months, his face was free of strain, the sun and laugh lines softer than normal in his wind-roughened face.

              They sat a moment, the silence gathering between them…but not in a sinister way. Aidan could sense no malice radiating off his father, and that was when he realized what was about to happen: not a lecture, but a conversation.

              They hadn’t had one since their talk in the spare bedroom of Ava and Mercy’s house, right after his hideous bike crash.

              Ghost said, “Right after Ava was born, we had this guy come in as a prospect, and he turned out to be a mole for a rival club. You remember?”

              Vaguely. He’d been just a kid, and no one had explained things to him outright, but he remembered the tension around the dinner table, the way Maggie had peeked out the windows more than usual, her face tight with worry. He nodded.

              “Duane was an impatient man, but a very patient president,” he said of his uncle. “So he thought it prudent to keep this mole on, let him think we didn’t know what he was up to, let him lead us back to his people when the time was right.”

              “Sounds smart.”

              “It was. And dangerous. I had two kids, and a wife fresh outta high school, and I didn’t have the stomach for waiting. So I killed the guy. Slit his throat and burned the body.” The matter of fact way he revealed this brought up the fine hairs on the back of Aidan’s neck. That’s what it was, to become a president of the Lean Dogs – you lost the part of yourself who found horror in the unspeakable.

              “What did Duane say?” Aidan asked.

              “He was furious. Called me names. Threatened to take my patches. He didn’t mean any of it, obviously.” He shrugged. “But he said I was a stupid kid, acting rashly out of fear. That fear would get me killed one of these days, he told me. It would get my brothers killed.”

              Aidan stared at his father, finding it hard to see even a trace of fear in the man sitting across from him.

              “I
was
afraid,” Ghost consented. “I still am. I’m scared shitless all the damn time. And you know what?” He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “Duane was wrong.”

              Aidan felt his brows go up.

              “A little fear’s healthy. The day we stop being afraid is probably the day we stop being human.”

              “What are you afraid of?” Aidan asked.

              “Failure.” The answer was immediate. “Failing in a way that gets everyone hurt. I’m afraid for Mags, and you, and your sister, and all our brothers.”

              He reached for his coffee. “And when you figure out what you’re afraid of, you figure out what you have to do. The things you can live with, and the things you have to change. You were afraid for Tango,” he said. “And you couldn’t live with letting something happen to him. I couldn’t either.” His voice lowered, became rougher. “But you made the smart call, and I didn’t.”

              Shock went through him like champagne, fizzy and golden. A pleasant shock; one that felt like a deep compliment – well, because it was.