Finding Serenity (14 page)

“I tried calling, several times,” Mollie tells Declan and she notices how Autumn’s eyebrows lift in surprise, how her friend instantly covers that shock by squeezing her hand. “He’s been in solitary for a couple of weeks.” She answers Autumn’s unasked question with a quick shake of her head. “I don’t know why. The guards aren’t telling me anything.” Again, Autumn squeezes her hand and Mollie appreciates the gesture, appreciates more that there is no pity in her friend’s expression. “He should be out either tomorrow or Monday. When he is, I’ll speak to him. But I’m worried too. Something I don’t know about is going on here and it’s killing me that you guys have gotten caught in the middle of whatever this is. If anything happens to any of you…”

Autumn won’t let her finish that thought. She pulls Mollie into a hug, soothing, calming. “We’ll be fine, honey.” The redhead pulls back, gives her a smile that Mollie knows isn’t forced. “It’s going to be fine.”

Declan seems satisfied with that, nodding to Mollie and exchanging a glance with Vaughn that is polite, if not friendly. “In the meantime, I don’t think it would be wise for you to go back to your apartment. Not until the locks are changed again.”

“No.” Mollie wouldn’t waver on this point. She’d spent weeks waiting for the Super to handle the damage left by the burglary. She’s slept next to Layla, listening to her low snore, to the little whines Honey made as he slept between them. She wanted her own bed, her own space so she could relax, so she could sort out all the drama that had occurred in her own head without any interruptions.

“Mollie…” Autumn’s voice holds a warning, but Mollie knows she is not angry; she knows that her friend’s concern is only for her safety.

She cuts the redhead off with one nod. “I know what you’re going to say and I appreciate the concern. I do.” She stands, feeling like she needs to look at all of them to be heard. “My dad didn’t raise a coward and I’m not going to let some punk run me out of my home.” When Declan opens his mouth to protest, she waves him off. “There’s a 40 cal under my pillow and I know how to use it. I’ve got a bat under the cushions in my sofa and cans of mace in every drawer of my apartment. When I say I know how to take care of myself, that isn’t me making claims I can’t back up. I’m a biker’s kid. I didn’t spend my childhood selling Girl Scout cookies and playing with Barbies.”

“That may be, Mollie, but they got to you once before.” Mollie whips her head to Vaughn at his words, tamping down the instinct to lash out at him.

“I was caught off guard. There were two of them and I wasn’t prepared.” She lifts her chin, determined. “I am now.”

“Fine.” Declan’s frown tells Mollie that he isn’t pleased with her stubbornness. “But would you at least let us take you home? Maybe pick you up in the morning?” He walks in front of her and when he speaks, his voice is soft, cautious. “I’d feel a bit better if someone was with you.”

“I can stay,” Vaughn says and despite their brief interlude in the lobby, Mollie isn’t sure she wants to be alone with him. Not under the present circumstance.

“That’s not necessary.”

“Why are you being stubborn?” Vaughn asks.

Seeming to sense the looming fight, Declan cuts Vaughn off with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine. We’ll take care of her, mate. Don’t worry.” He looks back at Mollie. “The alumni’s security will be on campus in the morning. You try to get hold of your da and McShane and I will come round when you need to go somewhere. That alright with you?” Mollie doesn’t immediately answer, thinking that her friends are already in enough danger just by being with her. One look at Autumn, though, squashes any thoughts she might have about leaving town and putting space between them. “Fine. But I don’t want you disrupting your lives because of me.” Declan’s smile is wide and mirrors the one on Autumn’s face. They are impossibly smug when they get their way.

Whistling down the hall echoes and Joe enters the room, his mood decidedly improved. “Mollie, my love, how are you?” He moves around Vaughn to kiss her cheek.

“Can we go now?” Autumn asks her dad and he begins detailing the instructions he received from the doctors.

Mollie barely notices when Vaughn excuses himself from the room, but she catches the expression on Declan’s face and the way the Irishman stares at Vaughn as he lingers in the hall and pulls out his phone. His gaze meets hers and he stands at her side, his voice low, concerned.

“Be careful of that one, love.” He looks over his shoulder, eyes narrowed at Vaughn’s back before he returns his attention to Mollie. “Something tells me he’s keeping things to himself. I don’t like it.”

“Mississippi State Penitentiary. You are receiving a call from a convicted felon. Do you accept the call?”

“Yes.” Mollie thinks the guards love playing that message, as though she wouldn’t know who was calling her from “Parchman Farm.” From what she knows of them, they like to rub salt into gapping, festering wounds and treat the inmates worse than day laborers. “Daddy?”

“I’m here, Mimi. How’s my girl?”

Hearing his voice, though it is rough, gravely, is always a pleasure; it’s like she’d been holding something weighted, crushing on her shoulders until she heard “How’s my girl?” coming from the other line. Two seconds after hearing his voice, the weight wasn’t quite so heavy.

“I’m good. I miss you.”

“I miss you too, sugar. You okay?”

She wished she had the time to simply chat with him; tell him how beautiful the mountains were this time of year, how the sound of the lake running the length of the campus could still manage to ease her mind; how loudly Layla screamed when Donovan doused her as she lay sunbathing with ice water and flour; how sometimes she misses the sound of the porch swing moving in the wind at the Compound, the easy, constant drone of the chain holding the swing up singing to her like a lullaby. Most of all, she wants to tell him how she loved falling asleep to the sound of him playing his acoustic Gibson and the low, smooth melody of his tenor voice in the dark silence of her childhood home. But there isn’t time. There was never enough time, not when they spoke, not when she visited him.

Mollie leans against the back of her sofa, the thick tufts of the cushions holding a perfect outline of her body. “I got an abscess. It’s getting worse.” She immediately falls into the coded language they’d invented when they needed to discuss things that nosey guards shouldn’t hear.

“That’s what I heard.”

“You did, huh?”

He takes a breath and Mollie doesn’t like the wheeze she hears in his inhale.

“You know I’ve got my eyes on you, Mimi. Don’t ever think that your Daddy ain’t looking out for you.”

“I know, Daddy. I know it.”

“Good. Now, tell me about this abscess. Is it just yours?”

“It is, but you know the girls. You know how they like their sweets. Lately, when they’ve been coming around, they wind up with a few abscesses of their own.”

He takes another labored breath, this time releasing a cough that sounds thick. “I’m gonna see about fixing this.”

“Daddy…”

“It’s okay, baby. I can get this straightened out.”

“How are you gonna do that?” He doesn’t speak and she knows it means someone in the MC will be showing up. “You got one of your own? One that maybe makes mine worse?”

“I might have one, but now is not the time to discuss what’s ailing me. I just want you to take care of yourself and your girls. I can help. In fact, I’m sending you something.”

Mollie closes her eyes, trying hard not to get worked up. She knows that sending her
something,
really means
someone
from her father’s club will soon be making an appearance. They were kind men, fiercely protective, but when they drove into town, they brought complications with them. Last time it happened when Mollie was sixteen and her mother’s domineering, meddlesome then-boyfriend decided he could take up the mantle of telling her what to do. When she broke curfew by twenty minutes, he locked her in her closet for two days. Layla managed to sneak in, to slip Mollie a cell that she used to contact her father. Then, hell broke loose in Cavanagh. Bloody, “I don’t know where your boyfriend ran off to” hell. Mollie didn’t like to think of what had
really
happened to him.

“The last time I had an abscess, you sent me that puppy. It pissed and shit all over the place, remember that?”

Her father’s chuckle is deep and she hears the faint sound of a full laugh that he lets die off. “Yeah, well, that’s because your mama is allergic. To every damn thing.”

Mollie smiles, knowing that her father means that her mother doesn’t like complications. She doesn’t like anyone who doesn’t conform and she especially doesn’t like anything that reminds her of her father. Mollie is a daily, constant reminder of the life her mother pretends she never lived.

“She doesn’t like mess, but this isn’t her problem.”

“I want you to go see her.” The humor is gone from his voice and Mollie worries that things have escalated. That had to be the case, or her father wouldn’t insist that she warn her mother. He knows how little they see each other and why Mollie made the conscious choice to stay away from the woman. “I want you to stay with her. In fact, it might be a good idea to give the package to your mama.”

“Daddy, you know that’s not going to work.”

“It will if you tell her how bad that abscess is, sugar.” His voice has grown deeper, the inflection somber enough to make Mollie’s heart stammer. “She’s your mama.”

“She’s Katie’s mama.”

He sighs. “I know, baby, but I want you to try to get her to help you take care of it. I want you to try real hard. If that abscess gets infected…” He doesn’t finish his thought, but she knows what he’s trying to say. He couldn’t bear it if something happened to Mollie. He’s said that many, many times over the years.

“It won’t. I can take care of it.”

“You can, I’m sure, but I’d feel better once that package heads your way. And Mimi?”

“Yes sir?”

“Don’t try to throw it out.” That’s code for ‘don’t be a brat and get mad and kick the guy out.’ “You’re not a kid anymore and I really don’t have say so over what you do, but for me, please, you hold onto that package until I tell you. You hear me?”

He wouldn’t let this go, no matter how hard Mollie tried to reason with him. She did, after all, get her stubbornness from him. Whoever he was sending would take direction from her father, no matter how angry or frustrated she got. Mollie knew that was inevitable. They would shadow her like a stalker. They would make her daily routine difficult and she knew they’d try to limit the time she spent with her friends.
That
wouldn’t be fun to explain. Her father wanted her camping out at her mother’s place, supposedly secure behind the walls of the gated community. But there was no way in hell her mother would ever agree to some crusty biker defiling her pristine home.

“When are you sending it?” She needed to prepare, to try her best to soften her mother up to the idea of another biker invading their lives.

“Should be there now, actually.”

That was unexpected. Her father had never sent anyone in without a warning. That he’d already had the package delivered, told her that things were worse than she thought. Mollie moves her hair around her pinky, nervous about how disruptive her life would soon become and she was just about to tell her father that she needed time, but then three knocks beat on her door and she knows it’s already too late. But when she looks through the peep hole and sees Vaughn standing there, duffle bag held firm in his large fist, a quick lick of dread and suspicion flashes into her mind.

“What are you doing here?” she asks him, opening the door and holding a hand over the mouthpiece of her cell.

She doesn’t like how wide his smile is, how that smug smile is the only expression he carries on his face. “Tell your Dad I’m here.”

Mollie feels the thick wad of alarm bunch down her breath. “What?”

Vaughn steps across the threshold and shuts the door behind him. “Tell Malone his package has arrived.”

Mollie Malone’s temper is a fuse slowly burning before the impending explosion. Vaughn can see it in the way her eyes have narrowed so small that minute wrinkles have formed at the corners. Her temper has become a powder keg and each look he gives her only fuels the fire.