Page 69 of American Hellhound
“It’s about Duane.” Ghost lowered his voice. “He’s getting worse.”
“Worse?”
“Okay, he’s the same. But…” He recounted the tale of the deal gone bad, Roman getting shot, killing their attacker and leaving him to rot in the woods.
James sucked thoughtfully at his cigarette the whole time, his frown polite. Ernest James was nothing if not unflappable. “Okay,” he said when Ghost was done.
Right now, Ghost wasn’t looking for unflappable – he wanted righteous outrage. “Okay?” he repeated.
“Seems to me we’ve got to be more careful about who we sell to in the near future.”
“What?”
“No more selling to idiots who wanna shoot us. I’ll take it up with Duane.”
“No, you…” Ghost took a deep breath through his nose. “You’re missing my point. I don’t think what happened was a coincidence.”
James exhaled a long stream of smoke through his lips, expression becoming guarded. “What do you mean?”
His eyes were calm, unreadable, his face wind and sunburned. He stared at Ghost, silently asking.
And Ghost…couldn’t voice his suspicions. Not when they were just suspicions. Shit, what was he doing? James was the VP, and he’d always shrugged off Duane’s unsavory behavior. He thought the best of everyone. He was, in his own grizzled way, naïve.
Ghost couldn’t ask for his help, not yet.
He swallowed hard. “You know what, nevermind.”
~*~
The thing was, the thing that made him feel weak and that he hated himself for, he feltalone. Stranded on an island, oceans between himself and his brothers. Most of the time they didn’t feel like brothers at all; Collier was his best friend, yes, always had been, but there was no sense of comradery to be found with the others. And even with Collier, Ghost had the sense the guy was just trying not to cause a disturbance.
The Knoxville chapter of the Lean Dogs MC was by no means a democracy. Or a brotherhood. Or much of anything, really, except a sad old dump poised by the river out of which they dealt enough drugs to kill the whole Knoxville High graduating class.
And so he felt alone.
He chalked his preoccupation with Maggie up to said loneliness. And he told himself he wasn’t going to have anything else to do with her. But of course…that wasn’t true.
~*~
Maggie would have liked to say the whole incident started innocently enough, but that wouldn’t be true. There were few innocent elements of this clusterfuck.
It started with a call from Darlene Cleveland three houses down, whose daughter, Stephanie, was in Maggie’s cotillion classes. The two girls knew each other in passing – “Nice jacket,” Stephanie had said of Maggie’s too-big, borrowed number, smile cruel – but weren’t friends. A situation Darlene wanted to rectify, for reasons Maggie still didn’t understand.
“The girls are going for manis and pedis tomorrow,” Denise said, hand cupped around the mouthpiece of the phone, “and then Mrs. Cleveland is making dinner for everyone. You should go.” Her gaze let it be known that this was not a suggestion. “It’ll be good for you to spend time around girls who share your interests.”Of your social station, she meant.
On a different occasion, Maggie would have refused. But in light of the car, and the grounding, and her repeated transgression of being in Ghost’s presence, she could do nothing but comply.
“Okay.”
The next afternoon, she drove the Monte Carlo to the Clevelands’ house and parked on the curb, walked up the driveway to the knot of waiting girls.
Stephanie always wore her blonde hair in a sleek twist during cotillion events, but at school, and now, she wore it loose to her shoulders, a fluffed-up bob that framed her severe cheekbones. She had legs for days, a perfectly flat stomach, and slender, model-worthy arms. Maggie thought she looked thirty instead of sixteen, in her miniskirt, wide-necked sweater, and heels. Her friends – Kelly, Maureen, and Sonja – were similarly dressed, but not half as elegant.
They turned as a unit when Maggie approached, their conversation coming to an abrupt halt.
Stephanie’s smile was all teeth, no lips. “Hey, Maggie Lowe.” She said it almost like a catcall.
Maggie resisted the urge to smooth her shirt. She knew she looked nice, if not as nice as the others. “Hey.”
