Page 291 of Fearless

Ghost smiled.

Fifty-Three

Eight weeks since the day of the crash on a New Orleans bayou road. Mercy had endured a second, successful surgery. Mayor Stephens and his cousin, William Archer, had been arrested. Slowly, through a diligent marketing campaign and an insistent charm, the club was gaining back the lost favor of the city. Knoxville was quiet, normal, untroubled. Football season was in full swing and out of town fans came in droves to cheer on the Vols, the scandals of before trampled down into the soft earth where they belonged.

Ava slid a spatula beneath each cookie on the pan with care, passing the warm chocolate-chip discs onto a waiting plate, not damaging one of them. Finished, she pulled off her oven mitts with a satisfied smile. This cooking business wasn’t so bad after all. If she kept this up, she’d be able to contribute to Christmas dinner.

When they were all arranged to her liking, she set the plate on the breakfast bar and went to the fridge for a Coke. She and Mercy had that in common: Why chase cookies with milk when you could rot your teeth a little more with a soda?

Her hand was on the fridge door when she heard the knock. She pulled back, startled. It was two o’clock on a Wednesday. Who the hell could that be?

There was a .38 in the ceramic canister beside the flour. Her eyes went there first, as a reassurance, before going to the back door and what she could see through its window.

A man stood on the back step, a young man with dark, close-cropped hair and one of those faces too-wide in the jaw for her liking. He had a bad case of football-player face.

Ava folded her arms and stared him down. “Can I help you?” she called through the window.

He pressed a badge to the glass. “Harlan Grey, FBI, Miss Teague. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Grey: the name Maggie had passed along to her with an eye roll. The same agent Layla Hammond had warned her about in a phone conversation they’d shared a week or so before. “Him?” Layla had said with a laugh when Ava asked about him. “Yeah, he was down here for a while. He was looking into that operation our boys” – both their respective husbands – “took care of in London. Incompetent fool,” she’d averred. “One of my dad’s employees cracked him over the head with a cast iron skillet and he missed the whole thing. I think he got demoted. Apparently, he’s looking to bag himself a Dog or two and get back on his boss’s good list.

“Don’t worry about him,” she’d said. “You could have him chewed up and spit out before he ever knew what hit him.”

Ava felt warm and bolstered at the memory of the conversation. She disengaged the locks and invited Grey in with a casual sweep of her hand. “I guess I have a few minutes. I made cookies, if you want one.”

“No, thanks.” He surveyed the kitchen as she shut the door, like he was searching for something that would pop out and screamoutlawat him. A brick of coke, a bloody knife, an AK with the serial number filed off, a dead hooker. The usual. He turned back to her finally, patting his flat stomach, his athlete’s face creasing in an insincere, jock-boy smile. “I try to limit my carb intake.”

She shrugged. “More for us, then.” She picked one up and broke off a bite with her fingers, popped it in her mouth. She almost smiled, pleased that her efforts had been fruitful. “Which reminds me,” she said, leaning back against the counter and propping one foot back against the lower cabinet face in an effort to look casual. “I need to check on my hubby. So it’d be great if we could make this fast.” Small, tight smile for effect, as she nibbled cookie.

He gave her another of his fake smiles. “Your husband. That’s right. It’s Mrs. …I’m sorry, how do you pronounce his last name?”

“Lécuyer.”

“That’s right. Congratulations.”

She stared at him. It was an old move she’d used on Aidan, growing up, and always managed to annoy him. She hoped it would work on the agent.

He was better-trained than her brother. “He had a motorcycle accident, didn’t he? In fact, you were with him, weren’t you?”

Her shoulder throbbed in remembrance. She’d come out of her sling two weeks before, but was using her exercise ball at intervals throughout the day, squeezing it, lifting it over her head, strengthening the joint.

She nodded. “I wasn’t hurt as badly.”

He lifted his brows. “And that happened in New Orleans?”

“Agent Grey,” she said with a nasty smile, “I’m not some poor dumb twenty-two-year-old. If you know anything about my family, you know how they raised me. Can we please get to whatever it is you want to ask me about?”

That set him back a step. His smile was more of a grimace, and the appreciative gleam in his eyes was tainted with anger. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “since you’re in such a hurry” – quick eye roll – “I won’t worry about being a gentleman. I’m trying to find Ronnie Archer, Mrs. …Ava,” he corrected, unable to manage the French. “And I think you know where I can find him.”

She lifted her brows. “Collier Hershel confessed to killing Ronnie. He’s been arrested for it.”

His ugly smile returned. “Right. Collier killed your ex-boyfriend. That sounds logical to me.”

She set her half-eaten cookie aside. “Okay, if you want the truth, I have to warn you that it’s not very flattering to me.”

His eyes brightened.

“You see,” she said, sighing, “Ronnie had his good points. He was a nice guy, really. But I…” She studied her feet, the little dot pattern on her blue socks. “Breaking up with Mercy was…it was like amputating a limb. Not to be melodramatic, but I didn’t really recover. It wasn’t fair to Ronnie to date him, when I wasn’t able to commit to him. I held on for a while. I guess I thought that if, given enough time…”

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