Page 190 of American Hellhound
Aidan gave her a forced smile. “Ma’am, would you do us a favor when the cops get here? Don’t mention us.”
She blinked a moment, then nodded, all seriousness. “Yes, yes, of course.”
It was a long walk back to the street where they’d left their bikes.
Tango said, “Okay, I’m gonna ask something. And you can tell me to fuck off if you want.”
“Wow. I kinda already want to.”
Tango snorted, but when Aidan glanced over he found his friend pensive, frowning down at his boots as he walked, white-blonde hair falling into his eyes. “What do you think about Roman and his guys? And I mean.” He shot an earnest look Aidan’s way. “If you were in charge. If you were the president.”
Aidan tried to laugh, but it sounded like a cough, a sudden bark of sound.
“Would you trust their story? Or…” Run them out of town. Execute them. Turn them over to the cops with planted drugs in their pockets. There were an assortment of possibilities.
Aidan felt uncomfortable, suddenly, like a spotlight had been turned on him. “Why are you asking methat?”
Tango shrugged, but his gaze was pointed. “I haven’t seen your dad like he is around Roman.”
Aidan snorted. “Pissed off?”
“Younger,” Tango countered. “Like…I dunno. More like you.”
“Wow.Okay.”
“I told you to just tell me to fuck off.”
“No.” Aidan frowned and kicked a rock; it skittered off into the underbrush. Why was this driveway so fucking long? “I get it. I think. Or…what do you mean?”
“Well,” Tango said, thoughtful. “Ghost is always, no matter who he’s dealing with, this superior, Godlike, who’s-your-daddy” – Aidan snorted again – “presidential person. You know? He’s always in charge, he’s always the bigger person. He pisses people off. Other guys lose their composure when they’re dealing with him, but he never does. He’sthe boss, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But Roman came back into town and…I dunno. I think we’re seeing young Ghost. Pre-president Ghost. He reminds me of us. Less sure, maybe.”
“Hmm.” He was right, but Aidan hadn’t put a lot of thought into it – aside from a guilty kind of gladness to see that his dad was capable of doubt, that he wasn’t always cruelly sure about everything.
“He was like us once,” Tango said. “He was just a guy in a club who had no idea what he was doing.”
“You sure about that?”
But it was a nice thought. Comforting. And maybe even true.
~*~
Once, when Maggie was pregnant with Ava, she overslept her alarm by almost an hour and was horribly late to school. (End of the year, final exams, morning sickness – you know, normal teenage stuff.) She’d left home without eating, and arrived five minutes late to her calc final…to promptly pass out on the floor. She’d awakened ten minutes later in the nurse’s office, Mrs. Monroe trying to force orange juice down her throat.
So she knew pregnancy and skipping meals didn’t mix, which was why she headed for the kitchen the moment she and Ava arrived at the clubhouse. Even though the smell of frying bacon made her stomach flop unhappily. If she could hold her nose and choke down a few bites, there was less chance of passing out.
Today was not a good day to pass out.
She entered the room to find Holly and the new girl – Roman’s Kristin – standing at the island together, chopping vegetables. Beneath the bacon, she imagined she detected another smell, the metallic tang of fear. Kristin hadspooked animalwritten in every tense line of her body. The frightened blonde looked up at Maggie through her lashes, without lifting her head, hand stilling on the knife.
Maggie had seen new girls nervous around her, because she was the queen, and they wanted to make a good impression – Sam and Emmie – but this wasn’t that. This was a real, visceral fear of strangers. Like a stray dog.
In her experience, strays always did better if you hung back and let them come to you.
“Morning, girls,” she greeted. “What are we making?”
