Page 207 of American Hellhound
She drove it into the side of his neck.
~*~
“What do you mean she’snot here?”
Bonita wrung her hands together, rings glinting in the porch light. “We looked all over, but she’s gone. She went to get the cookies in the kitchen, and she never came back.”
“Now, Ghost…” James started.
Ghost knocked his placating hand away. “What the hell?” And then, louder: “What the hell?”
“Maybe she got scared and ran away,” Bonita suggested.
Ghost shot her a glare that had her shrinking down into the collar of her sweater. “She wouldn’t do that. Notever.”
“Maybe…” James started, and Ghost tuned him out. His heart was pounding like a kettle drum suddenly, all the anxiety from the warehouse coming back tenfold. Panic, he realized now, was something he’d only ever been teased with before. What he felt now, the horrific crash of adrenaline and emotion inside him, squeezing his lungs tight, that was real panic.
“Daddy,” Aidan said, wriggling past Bonita and coming to grab hold of his belt loop. His eyes were wet and red-rimmed, face flushed and tear-streaked. “Where did Maggie go? Did she run away?”
“No. She didn’t.” Because shecouldn’thave. That wasn’ther.
“Ghost,” Jackie said, coming to the door with the cordless phone pressed to her shoulder. Her expression was strange as she held the phone out to him. “It’s her.”
~*~
The phone line at the garage had only been activated yesterday, and Ghost had almost told the guys not to go through with it, not wanting to get billed for an extra week when the place wasn’t open to the public yet. It seemed fortuitous, now, as he pulled in at the new gate, that he’d allowed it to be hooked up.
“Don’t wreck,” Maggie had said over the phone, her voice strange-sounding. He’d never heard her like that before, eerily calm, hushed, lifeless. “There’s no rush. I’m okay.”
“What…?”
“Just come.” And then, spiking his worry to new heights: “I love you.”
He hadn’t wrecked, but he’d rushed, running every stop sign, pushing the speed limit, praying there were no cops out. There weren’t, and now he was pulling down the new, flawless asphalt of the driveway, the pale chips of rock glinting in the moonlight.
The lights were on in the garage bays, visible through the high windows. Duane’s truck was parked in front of the office door.
“Shit,” Ghost muttered, flying off his bike the moment he killed the engine, barely getting the kickstand down. He tossed his helmet to the pavement, not caring if it cracked. “Shit, shit, shit.”
His heart was going to burst if it beat any harder. He might stroke out in the moments between the office door and the door that led into the bays. He prepared himself for any number of possibilities, a scream already building deep in his throat…
But he wasn’t ready for the sight that greeted him. It was something he’d never imagined.
He saw Duane first.
His uncle was slumped over onto his side, wide-open eyes staring right at Ghost. Sightless. The hilt of Ghost’s favorite boning knife protruded from the side of his throat, and there was bloodeverywhere. Arterial spray all over the floor, on his shirt and cut, great red arcs of it on the fresh concrete, spread around the body like the rings of Saturn.
And that’s what Duane was now: a body. He wasn’t a terrorizing paternal figure anymore, nor a lousy president, nor the man who left his own club to the wolves.
He was dead.
“Mags,” Ghost breathed, looking for her.
She stood over against the wall, her pale pink sweater slashed with blood. It was drying in sticky clumps in her hair, grimed under her nails and splashed on both hands and halfway up her sleeves. Dark flecks like freckles dotted her nose and cheeks.
Her eyes were vacant when she lifted them to Ghost’s, skillfully devoid of emotion. It was like the night she’d shot the Ryder in her bedroom. Only worse.
Ghost went to her with an exhale that sounded like a low, broken animal groan of pain. He grabbed her sticky hands and lifted them to his face, turned them over, searching. Patted down her chest and sides and stomach. “Are you hurt? What did he do to you? Mags.”
