Page 133 of Price of Angels

“I won’t tell anyone what you told me,” she assured, rooting the chicken down into the fragrant grease at the bottom of the skillet. “Don’t worry. His secret’s safe with me.”

Wynn’s voice was soft, and sorry, the gentle aging voice of the grandfather she’d never had. “And your secrets are safe with him, darlin’. But I think you already know that.”

She nodded, lips pressed together tight against the sob rising in her throat.

He retreated to the table and let her work in the silence she needed. By the time she’d added fresh milk and a bevy of spices, was shaking in dried parsley flakes, she was calmer. Less likely to burst into noisy tears.

She added the pasta and gave the dish one last toss with the tongs.

“It sure smells good,” Wynn said from the table.

“Let’s hope it tastes that way.” She forced herself to smile as she carried the steaming skillet to the table.

“Have I told you about the horse I got rid of yet?” he asked, and Holly felt the tension bleed out of the room. He was giving her a chance to change the subject, and she jumped on it.

“No. What happened?”

“Well, a meaner nag I ain’t sure I’ve ever known…”

In Michael’s old room, Holly looked at the framed photos again after dinner, more closely this time. Michael as a boy with the dogs. Michael as a teenager behind the wheel of a truck. Unsmiling and serious always. It many ways it was a relief to see it, because she understood that he was never closed-off and cold because of her, but because of something inside him. But it broke her heart for him, because he was so precious to her now, and she didn’t want to think about him hurting.

She found the photo she was looking for beside the closet door, in a cheap brown frame. She plucked it carefully off the wall and walked to the bed, sat and tilted the picture beneath the lamp so she could see it better.

There was Wynn, younger and thinner, but his cheerful face unmistakable. And scrawny little Michael, in the grips of boyhood. Alongside them, one pale hand on Michael’s shoulder, was a woman. A petite brunette. There was a plainness to her face, but the symmetry was near-perfect. Like Michael’s. This was his mother. She was in cutoffs and a knotted flannel shirt that revealed a physical delicacy.

She was beautiful. And unlike her son, she was smiling broadly.

Had Michael ever smiled like that? Had his face ever hurt from the stretching of a huge, sincere smile?

Holly didn’t know.

She didn’t even know if she’d get the chance to find out.

She set the photo on the nightstand and was swamped with the held-back awareness of what was happening. This wasn’t a vacation for her, it was a refuge, while Michael fought for the right to kill her family.

She shivered and slid beneath the covers. She closed her eyes, pressed her face into the pillow, and imagined it still smelled like Michael.

Twenty-Three

It had snowed during the night. A fluffy, sticking snow that clung to the grass and the naked limbs of trees. Roofs were coated in it, like smooth layers of cake icing.

The roads were wet, but clear of ice, and the precise formation of bikes kicked up a boiling white mist off the asphalt, a fog of water droplets that surrounded their helix of black Harleys, muffling and redistributing the roaring of tailpipes until it looked, from an outside perspective, like a long supple beast screaming down the highway, a low-slung black hound racing across the mists of the moor. Their namesake come to life, a shadow against a pure backdrop of white snow.

When they rode together as a club, in formation like this, citizens glanced up from their phones, their papers, their coffeehouse conversations, and they stared. They wondered. They feared a little. It made a man feel invincible, riding with his brothers in that way. Made him feel like part of an army, one deadly knuckle in a powerful fist.

This was the front they presented, as they crossed into Shaman’s property. Michael had never felt more a part of his club. And he’d never been the reason they were entering a dangerous situation. Regret tasted foul on the back of his tongue.

“A funeral home?” Aidan asked as they were all dismounting and ditching gloves and helmets.

“Yeah,” Ratchet said. “One of many properties. Apparently, he likes this one best.”

Ghost smirked up at the stone and plank façade of the two-story building before them. There was a deep portico with a brick-paved circular drive that ran beneath it. Thousands had been spent on landscaping and directional garden lighting that would illuminate the place dramatically after dark. Gold script on the sign proclaimed it Loving Embrace. The fleet of Lincoln hearses and limos were shining black and brand new, over at the opposite end of the parking lot.

“He thinks he’s funny,” Ghost said, surveying the funeral home. “Let’s hope we’re not part of the joke.”

Michael crammed his gloves in his back pocket, checked for the reassuring feel his gun at his waistband, and fell into step beside his president, his usual bodyguard slot. He saw Mercy’s tall shape from the corner of his eye, and for once was grateful for the giant Cajun’s presence. If they had to fight their way out of here, it would be him, and Walsh, and Mercy bearing the brunt of the counterattack.

Glass doors slid open soundlessly as they passed beneath the portico, welcoming them first into an airlock, and then a spacious lobby, pleasantly warm air falling across them like a blanket. The lobby was carpeted in a rose color, a wide mahogany desk set in a nook across from the doors, urns heaped with live flowers filling recesses, flanking the desk. This wasn’t one of those economic funeral homes. This one had ridiculous fringed drapes in all the windows and Corinthian columns at intervals down the width of the room.

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