Page 32 of Fearless

Bonita crossed herself and muttered a prayer in Spanish as the gurney was loaded into the back.

Ava didn’t care that she was twenty-two and a college grad, she was grateful for her mother’s arm across her shoulders. On her other side, Leah shivered visibly, her arms banded across her middle.

“That’s it,” Leah said. “This is the last of these damn parties I come to.”

“Is he still alive?” Ronnie asked.

The back doors of the ambulance closed and the paramedic not attending Andre rushed around to climb behind the wheel. The sirens cut on as the engine started.

“Yes,” Maggie answered him. “Barely.”

“Inside,” Ghost said in a low growl that carried across the crowd. “Now.”

“I’ll go to the hospital,” a suckup hangaround offered. “I’ll call when I know something.”

“I should go too,” Collier said, and Ava felt her throat constrict. Andre had been Collier’s prospect, back before he’d been patched.

Ghost sighed, but nodded. He still wore his VP patch; they hadn’t had a chance to vote him in as president yet.

“Welcome home, Ava,” Maggie said, squeezing her shoulders.

“He…he just disappeared! I don’t know where he w-went. He just…juststabbedAndre, and then he was gone!”

Ghost sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How did you not see the guy?”

The blonde with the boots who’d been hand-jobbing Andre pre-stabbing was on a sofa in the common room, another groupie hovering over her, rubbing her back, murmuring soothing clichés and offering her sips of beer. “It was dark!” she protested. “And he was so fast.”

“And you were so drunk,” Ghost muttered. He turned to Hound, who stood beside his protégé. “See if there’s a trail. Take the dog.” He twitched a humorless smile and gestured toward Ares, who stood alert and curious. “The real one.”

Rottie whistled and the shepherd went to him, allowing his leather leash to be clipped into place.

“I’ll go,” Michael said. He slid his two favored guns – matte black Glocks – into his shoulder holster, under his cut, his face expressionless and somehow wicked.

Mercy waited, wondering…and then Ghost turned to him. “Want me to tag along?” he asked.

Ghost, already acting like a president, even if they hadn’t had the chance for the vote yet, nodded, as James stood to the side and let it happen. “Yeah. They may need some muscle.”

Mercy’s Colt M1911 was already at his hip, tucked inside his jeans. It had been on him in the dorm earlier when he’d had his hands on Ava. It was with him always, a fixture, like the Ruger 10/22 had been all those years ago in the swamp. “Right.” He nodded, and turned to Hound, swamped with a heavy sense of déjà vu. “Ready when you are.”

The four of them returned to the scene of the crime. At the water’s edge, in the place where Andre’s body had left drag marks in the silt, Rottie snapped his fingers as he squatted down, drawing Ares’s attention to the ground.

“Smell anything?” he encouraged. “Come on, buddy.”

Hound produced a flashlight and scanned the ground. “No tracks. Whoever it was stayed in the grass.”

Ares snuffled a long moment at Andre’s blood on the sand, then began to move, sniffing in wide arcs back and forth. He wasn’t a tracking dog, but he knew his people, and was fiercely territorial when it came to strangers.

Suddenly, the shepherd growled. He lifted his head, inhaled deeply, and strained at his leash, wanting to go down the riverbank.

Rottie followed, his grip on the leash bringing out the veins and tendons in his wrist, and they all followed the dog. Ares went a hundred yards downriver, then went rigid, staring off across the water; he let out a trio of sharp, angry barks, and Rottie patted him on the head. “Good boy.”

“A boat,” Hound said, passing the flashlight’s beam over the shoreline. “Something small.” They could all see where its narrow prow had been run aground. Two deep boot impressions marked the place where the assailant had leapt back in and shoved away from land.

Michael pulled out his cellphone. “Bring the boat down,” he said to whoever answered, and hung up again.

Mercy set off at a walk, paralleling the water, eyes trained on the opposite bank, for all that he could see of the vast stretch of black night and deep shadows, the soft glinting of the river.

“Hey, wait for the boat,” Michael called to his back.

---