Page 7 of American Hellhound
The lump in her throat swelled to something unmanageable, and tears burned her eyes when Ghost didn’t slow, came right up close and pulled her into his arms. He cupped the back of her head and cuddled her in under his chin.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, voice rough with emotion this time. “I just want you to be happy and safe, baby, you know that. Everything else we can figure out.”
Maggie released a deep, shaky breath against his throat, blinking back tears.
“We managed not to fuck up the first two too bad, what’s one more, right?”
“You know who’s going to make relentless fun of you about this, don’t you?”
He thought about it a minute, then said, “Ah, shit.”
Maggie laughed and it eased the tension she’d been carrying all evening. They’d be okay. That’s what they did: whatever was happening, whatever the risks, whatever the obstacles, they pushed through. And they lived, and they loved each other.
Three
Ghost didn’t get much sleep. If any. He wasn’t sure he ought to count the hour he drifted in limbo, unsure if the light behind his eyes was real or imagined. He was alert and full of useless nervous energy at five, a good hour before the alarm was set to go off. He watched the clock, the glowing numbers moving so slowly, and listened to Maggie breathe beside him. He felt her warmth, but they weren’t touching, her back maybe an inch from his elbow.
He wondered if he rolled over and put his arm around her if he could feel the baby already, the first slight shift in her body.
No, he decided. She didn’t look any different; too soon to feel anything.
He stared at the dark ceiling and marveled at his own inability to cope. Years ago, when Maggie told him she was pregnant with Ava, the news had hit him full in the face like Mercy’s sledgehammer. He’d stood silent, gaping, unable to wrap his brain around all the ways in which he wassucha stupid asshole for knocking up a teenager.
His Uncle Duane’s voice echoed inside his head:You’ve got to get your shit together, boy. He’d been right…about that, at least. The year before he met Maggie had been an ugly one, and it hadn’t been anyone’s fault but his own. He wasn’t sure he’d ever explained it to Mags properly, not then and certainly not now, even though he had a chance to do it all over again. He hadn’t been angry about the baby, no, never. And he’d certainly never been angry at Maggie or blamed her for anything. Instead, he’d been angry with himself, and his own reckless stupidity.
He thought the same thing now that he had then: why hadn’t he taken any steps to prevent this? Why hadn’t he been careful? Why hadn’t he been adult enough to have a freaking conversation about it, for God’s sakes?
The ugly truth of his behavior toward Aidan was this: he had always been just like his son. It ran in the family or some shit. He’d never been Duane’s perfect soldier. No, that had been…
He sat up so fast he thought he might pass out.
Maggie shifted. “Mmm?” she mumbled, still half-asleep.
His heartbeat throbbed in his ears, and his face, and all down his arms, strangely absent from his chest. For a moment of shaking clarity, he couldn’t breathe, could only thinkyes, him. It had to be him.But then he sucked in a breath and it all seemed stupid.
“Nothing,” he told Maggie. “Go back to sleep, baby.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t hear and resettled.
Ghost wasn’t going back to sleep, though.
He slid out of bed, ignoring the cracks of protests of his ankles and knees. Fuck getting older, just fuck it. He walked to his closet and eased open the door, spun the dial on his gun safe and eased it open with a well-oiled click. The box he wanted was on the top shelf, next to his ammo boxes. He pulled it down and took it to the kitchen.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the bright overhead light, then he took another minute to start the coffee machine. Finally, settled at the table in boxers and a t-shirt, he flipped the top off the old box and started flicking through the contents. Photos. Hundreds of them, pre-digital camera, all developed and organized neatly by year, their negatives stowed behind each dividing tab.
He flipped all the way back to when he was twenty-seven, back to when Duane was president, and he was just a regular member and not an officer. Right after Olivia left him – and left him with Aidan. Back to when the best, brightest, most promising young member was Roman Mayer.
He closed his eyes and tried to recall the photo from the precinct, the man with the hood and the knife who’d killed the dog. He’d been tall and strong-looking, but that was all he could tell. Nothing about his posture or his clothes had given him any clues. Only the message: he wanted Ghost dead.
Roman had reason to want him dead, once. But that had been a long, long time ago. Since then, new enemies had come and gone. New tragedies had unfolded. After all that, could this really be Roman? Coming out of left field, without warning?
“No,” he said to himself, and slammed the lid back down on the box.
The coffee maker beeped and he got up to answer its call.
~*~
Maggie shuffled through her morning routine, nursing sips of Sprite and nibbling at exactly three Club crackers – Ghost counted them. His gut tightened in sympathetic guilt every time she pressed her knuckles to her lips and took a moment to compose herself.
