Page 104 of The Wild Charge

“Not if they’re trying to paint you as the shooter,” Fielding reasoned. “Public violence against the Dogs at this point would run counter to their goal.”

“Right.” The safe came open with a deep click and thump. “They won’t do anything publicly violent, no. But a light kidnapping isn’t out of the question.”

“Hm,” Vince agreed.

Though a gun safe, this particular safe wasn’t full of guns, but other valuables. Ghost clicked through the hangers, checking sizes, found what he was looking for, and drew it out. He closed the safe, and turned to throw the bundle of black leather at Maddox’s head.

He caught it, and shook it out, puzzled. A fresh cut, marked with only a PROSPECT bottom rocker.

“If you don’t want anyone looking at you too closely, put that on,” Ghost urged. “Today, you’re one of us.”

~*~

Ash had gotten fussy when Maggie tried to leave him behind at the clubhouse with Ava, which wasn’t normal. He was always glad to go to his big sister, or big brother; happy to take Remy’s hand and toddle along with his big nephew. But today, amidst the hustle of a clubhouse trying to look normal, rather than on DEFCON Two, he’d picked up on the urgency and clung to Maggie’s pants leg, until she’d finally scooped him up – he was getting too heavy for this, honestly – and toted him with her to the office, where she pushed up the blinds and booted up the computer and put on coffee just as she would on an ordinary work day.

Coffee she couldn’t drink because it wasfarfrom an ordinary day.

She sat in her computer chair, undrunk coffee going cold beside the computer whose screen she woke every so often with a shift of the mouse. She had a good view through the window of the clubhouse gate, and Ash sitting warm and solid in her lap.

“Mama,” he kept saying. “Mama, scawy.”

“It’s a little bit scary, baby,” she said, smoothing his short, dark curls, so much like Ghost and Aidan’s. “But we’ll be alright.”

As if her words had conjured them, early sunlight winked off tinted windows, and in they came through the gate. A whole fleet of unmarked black Suburbans. Through the windshields, she could see the drivers wore suits, and dark sunglasses.

The feds were here.

Her belly clenched tight, and she bounced her knees to jostle Ash, and find an outlet for the quiet panic that gripped her. She fired off a warning text to Ava, as their enemy glided in, a whole murder of black crows searching for a carcass on which to feast. She sent up a quick prayer, and wondered, idly, if God listened to outlaws.

Probably, she reasoned. What had Jesus been if not an outlaw himself?

~*~

When Ghost walked into the common room, the bottom dropped out of his stomach. It wasn’t Deacon, butAvasquaring off from a suited agent, while others poured around them and into the room. She had one hand on her hip, her shoulders back, meeting the man’s cold gaze unflinching. In her knee-high hiking boots and her flannel shirt, she looked so much like her mother in that moment: a fierce lioness standing between her pride and an outside threat. But all Ghost could think about were her three babies, over on the couch with Whitney, and the horror that would be watching their mother get handcuffed for smart-mouthing a federal agent.

He forced himself to walk calmly across the room, past agents with lanyards and white gloves filtering through the tables, moving behind the bar. He drew up beside Ava and put an arm around her shoulders, a move which drew the agent’s attention immediately. A quick glance at his lanyard named him as Patrick Jansen.

“Agent Jansen, how can I help you this morning?”

His gaze flicked down to touch Ghost’s presidential patch, and slid slowly back up, taking his measure, his eyes flat and unreadable. “You in charge here?”

“I am. Would you like to tell me why your people are stampeding through my clubhouse?”

“Agent Jansen,” Ava said, all bristled up like a cat, voice knife-sharp, “was just saying that they have a warrant to search the premises, but he won’t let me see it.”

Jansen flashed her a brief, tight smile. “No worries, Mrs. Lécuyer.”

Ava’s face remained firm, but Ghost felt her shoulders twitch beneath his arm. She hadn’t offered her name, Ghost realized with a lurch, but he knew it anyway. Knew her bysight. He thought of a night years ago, a seventeen-year-old kid with her head down and her knuckles bloody, sent out of the precinct to wait on the front steps with Mercy, while Ghost and Maggie tried to convince the cops to drop the charges for decking another student. Her mug shot was still floating around that precinct, somewhere; was findable on some sort of computer database.

“I assure you,” Jansen continued, “that everything is above board.”

Ghost tightened his arm, pulling Ava in closer to his side. “I’m sure it is.” It was an effort not to snarl at the man. “But I’d like to see the warrant, too.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Jansen patted his breast pocket. “But we’re going to need to search the entire house. Be sure to keep your people out of our way.” He stepped around them, calling orders to his men.

Ghost shared a look with Ava, who finally allowed herself a shaky exhale, brown eyes big and worried.

He touched her face, briefly. “It’s fine, hon. It’s just a search. Nothing for them to find, and nothing we haven’t seen before.”

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