Page 97 of The Wild Charge

He settled on, “You feeling better?”

“Better than you,” Reese said, immediately, and Tenny cracked an unseen smile in the dark. Okay, yeah: that was more like it.

“What happened tonight? Where did you go?” Which mental paths had led him quick and efficient to that back corner where he’d stood rooted, frozen, and thoughtless?

He heard Reese lie back down beside him, bedclothes shifting and mattress giving beneath the weight of his head on the neighboring pillow. He was quiet a long beat; Tenny couldhearhim thinking, the way he was trying to put his flashing thoughts into comprehensive language. It had been weeks since he’d struggled like that.

Finally, he said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

“You didn’t…want to? Did you?”

“No.” That was a relief. “But it was…it was like, after a while, after Roman brought us here. I didn’t think about him anymore. I had – I had all the skills he taught me. But I didn’t remember him. I did, actually, but…”

“No, I get it.” There came a time – and it was also this time, these past months, for Tenny – when the people who’d molded you, who’d confined and ordered you, stopped being the little voices in the back of your head. You could go whole days without ever thinking about their existence. “It felt like it was just you, right? That you had all these skills, and they wereyours, and not anything someone had drilled into you.”

Reese’s exhale sounded relieved. “Yeah. That. I forgot about him – and then he was there. And he works for our enemies.”

“Yeah.” Fat chance of going back to sleep now. Tenny rolled onto his side, curled an arm around Reese’s tiny waist, and smashed his face into the side of his pec. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Reese’s hand landed between his shoulder blades. “Yeah.”

Reese drifted off first, breaths evening out, and that steady rush of inhale and exhale dragged Tenny back under, too.

~*~

Ghost was getting very good at not sleeping.

“Too good,” Maggie said at five-thirty the next morning, folding and packing clothes for Ash into the bag that sat open on their bed. Her hair was air-drying from the shower, curling wildly on the shoulders of her flannel shirt. “You don’t sleep, and you chain-smoke – don’t think I don’t smell it on you, you ain’t slick – and you drink nothing but coffee and whiskey. You’re gonna have a coronary, babe.”

He frowned at his reflection in the dressing table mirror. Did he shave? Nah. There were razors at the clubhouse if he felt like it. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said, frowning, as he turned to lean back against the dresser and face her, “except for the media shitshow that’s about to go down.”

She cocked her head to areally?angle, hands landing on her hips. “And I guess nobody ever had a stress-and-bad-diet-induced heart attack?”

He lifted his shirt to flash his flat stomach. “What bad diet?”

Maggie threw up her hands. “I can’t with you this early.” She breezed out of the room to go get the baby.

Fifteen minutes later they were on the road, the house locked up tight, both their bags in the trunk of Maggie’s car. He followed along on his bike, three guns hiding under his cut, and one down his boot, scanning the dark streets for any sign of a threat. Lights were on in house windows as Knoxville came awake and readied for work; garbage trucks trundled along on their routes, and a few early commuters shared the road with them, but mostly it was quiet: shop fronts dark, parking lots empty.

Breath held. Waiting.

A news van sat in front of the emergency entrance to the hospital, and he cringed hard as they passed. He had no doubt that there were currently fingers flying over computer keyboards, and had been all night, as every local and state station prepared the day’s damning stories.

An unmarked blue Charger sat perched at the mouth of the clubhouse drive when they pulled up, just outside the locked gates. Boomer waited inside the gate, fiddling with the keys, head snatching toward the approaching rumble of Ghost’s bike.

The suit-clad figure sitting on the car’s brush guard, hands jammed in his pockets, face weary and lined, was Vince Fielding.

Ghost let out a deep, deep sigh as he swung off his bike and walked up to meet him.

“Let Mags through,” he told Boomer, who nodded and unclasped the padlock. “We’ll be down in a minute.” He watched the Caddy slip through the gap between the gates and head down to the clubhouse, where all the windows were lit and Ava’s truck was already parked out front. Good.

Then he turned to Vince. “If you’re here to give me shit, it’s too damn early for–”

“I came to warn you,” Vince said, cutting him off. “The feds are on their way.”

~*~

There was a fair bit of grumbling from those who’d overindulged the night before – Tenny kept saying “fuck you” quietly under his breath, but drank the coffee Reese pressed on him – but Fox managed to get the whole house up, dressed, and out the door by six.

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