Page 174 of American Hellhound
“Fuck,” Roman groaned, collapsing. No doubt his feet were still numb, and the jar had been worse for him.
Above, the blast of a shotgun. Yells, shouts, clamber of feet.
Ghost grabbed Roman’s arm and hauled him up. “Move, move!”
~*~
Maggie sat cross-legged in the center of her bed, Ghost’s gun winking up at her from the comforter. It was small. Silver, with a wooden…handle? Is that what you called that part? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about guns, only that this looked like a miniaturized version of the guns cowboys used in old westerns. A revolver? A revolver. She thought. Something told her it wouldn’t be as simple as point-and-shoot, but that’s what Ghost had told her to do.
Downstairs, the TV murmured quietly, something with a monotonous, soothing narrator. A documentary, no doubt; her parents didn’t watch movies, as a general rule. But the fact that they were watching something together at all was its own small miracle. Was it because they hadn’t expected her back for a while? Could they only enjoy one another’s company in her absence? How much they must have loved her weeks with Ghost, then.
It was moments like these that she seriously considered running away, like some melodramatic teenager in a novel.
She hoped Ghost was okay.
In a small way, she hoped Roman was, too.
The horror of what she’d seen – a grown man dragged away against his will – was something she couldn’t think about in concrete detail. The fear threatened to overtake her. So she sat on her bed, and she stared at the gun, and she wondered what her life might look like right now if she’d never asked a scruffy, good-looking stranger on the sidewalk to buy her beer that day.
Then she heard the engine.
In this neighborhood, everyone drove a Mercedes or BMW, a Buick or a Town Car. There was one Jag up the block. Mrs. Henderson had an Impala. The only loud engines belonged to the neighborhood’s teenage sons, and they were all top-of-the-line Camaros and Mustangs.
This engine, though,roared. An ugly sound, like the muffler had been disconnected.
The same engine she’d heard earlier tonight, outside Hamilton House.
She sprang off the bed and went to the window, gapped the blinds with her fingers and peered down at the street below. A jacked-up, mud-spattered truck had pulled up at the curb, and two men were walking across the lawn to the front door. She saw the silhouette of a long shape in one’s hand – a baseball bat? A shotgun?
“Shit,” she said, and then heard the doorbell.
~*~
Roman set the bottle down with a gasp, hand braced against the kitchen counter. “Fuck.”
“I can stay, if you need me to,” Rita offered at the door.
Ghost waved a no. “We’re good. Thanks, Rita.”
She cast a suspicious glance toward Roman – one of the Ryder boys had clocked him in the face and he was starting to bruise – and slowly slipped out.
When the door clicked shut, Collier said, “We’re fucked.”
“No shit,” Ghost sighed. He was really starting to regret that he’d brought them all back here to his apartment. Chances were good the Ryders were keeping tabs on the Dogs at this point, and he’d just led them straight to his home, his kid, innocently sleeping down the hall.
Roman drummed his fingers on the counter, eyes trained on the Jack bottle. If he got sloppy drunk, Ghost had already decided he wasn’t letting him stay over. He probably wasn’t going to let that happen anyway, if he was honest. “You’re gonna need stitches,” he said, nodding toward the split on the guy’s forehead. Congealing blood trickled from beneath his unruly forelock.
Roman probed the area with a wince, fingers coming away red. “Nah, it’s fine.”
“So what now?” Collier asked.
It was really the only questiontoask.
“I’m gonna have to talk to Duane,” he said, and Roman went white. “Alone,” he clarified. To Roman: “He might just put one between your eyes the second he sees you. On principle.”
“Jesus,” Roman said, shuddering.
“Speaking of which: what the hell have you got cooked up with the Ryders anyway?”
