The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) (16 page)

“He just left here with our camera feeds for the past week,” Ghost said of Fielding, scowling. “Jesus Christ.” His eyes flipped up to Walsh. “Who killed the old fucker?”

              “My guy at the lab,” Ratchet cut in, “says it was H. Nobody deals heroin ‘round here that we don’t know about it. So it’s no one in the underground.”

              “My guess is one of his lovely family members,” Walsh said, taking a hard slug off his Newcastle. He filled Ghost in on Amy’s proposition, much to the amusement of his brothers. “And then Em says the grandson’s a total prick.”

              “Em?” Ghost asked.

              “That’d be the little blonde, right?” Briscoe asked, grinning.

              “Totally hot,” RJ put in.

              Ghost made an inquiring face.

              “My barn manager. The one I kept on from Davis.”

              Ghost nodded. “And I’m assuming you’re fucking her?”

              “Dude, I would be,” RJ said.

              Walsh shrugged. “She’s a nice girl. We get on well.”

              Ghost smirked. “Which has gotta be you-speak for ‘I’m hitting that.’ Alright. Whatever. She’s got your back?”

              He hesitated a moment. Sex didn’t turn a staunch MC supporter out of a woman like that. But he wanted to trust her. He thought he could. “Yeah, she does.”

              “Good. You keep the heat off of us. Whatever happens with the investigation happens.” And there was more of that unquestioning trust. So precious and rare coming from Ghost Teague.

              The president then glanced over at Mercy. “You got yourself a peeper trap yet?”

              Walsh tuned them out. He was worried, and since he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that way, it was consuming him. He was being trusted to handle the Briar Hall situation, and while he could – that was starting to sound more and more difficult.

Sixteen

“What a big girl you’re getting to be.” And a squirmy one, too. The first time Lucy rolled over, Holly celebrated with exclamations, clapping, and a little dancing around the room. But by the two-hundredth time, while she was trying to diaper her, it was much less cute.

              Not that she was finding fault. She wasn’t sure there was anything more wonderful in the world than the tiny girl she’d made with Michael.

              Lucy stopped trying to roll over long enough for Holly to get the clean diaper secure, then decided she was done with that game, smiling and cooing up at her mother.

              Holly smiled back. “There, isn’t that better?” She scooped the baby up onto her shoulder and carried her out of the nursery, down the hall into the main part of the house. “How about lunch? Hmm?”

              Most days, Lucy was at the Dartmoor Trucking office with her, in her Pack’n Play, fawned over by customers and employees alike. Sometimes, she had Remy Lécuyer for company, when Ava was at school and Maggie couldn’t watch him. So Lucy was never starved for attention, but Holly loved her days off, when it was just her and her girl, waiting on Daddy to get home at five-thirty. Lucy lit up like Christmas when Michael picked her up every evening, and his mixed bag response of terror and adoration melted Holly’s insides.

              “What should I make for dinner, Luce?” Holly asked as they entered the kitchen. “That roast needs to get cooked before it goes…”

              There was a man standing on the back deck, visible through the glass insets in the door.

              “…bad.” Holly’s heart slammed into her ribs. “God,” she breathed, a hand going to the back of Lucy’s head on protective reflex, tucking the baby in tightly beneath her chin. “Oh, God.”

              He had flipped the tops off their rolling trash cans and was poking around in them.
Homeless
was her first thought, but then she looked more closely at him. Clean white sneakers, new jeans, a plain black t-shirt. Hair buzzed close to his head. He was young – younger than Michael at least – and tan, appeared to be in good health.

              So not homeless, which ratcheted her panic another notch. Had he been in search of a meal and a trash find, she would have felt sympathy. Now she felt like someone was stalking them. And that never went anywhere healthy.

              As if he’d sensed her presence, he froze, turned around, stared hard through the window panes. He was wearing sunglasses, but she could see the anger in his face; she knew that emotion too well to ever mistake it for anything else.

              Then he flashed her a brilliant smile that was not even a little sincere, and stepped in close, until his nose almost touched the window. “Good afternoon!” He was shouting to be heard through the glass. “Ma’am, I’m with Knoxville PD, and we’ve gotten reports of strange activity in your neighborhood. Have you seen anyone who’s out of place? Heard anything unusual?”

             
Yeah, you
she thought, frowning. “You’re police?” she called back, and Lucy started to fuss. “Where’s your badge?”

              He gave her an over the top regretful face. “I’m afraid I’m off-duty and it’s in the car. Do you mind if I step in and we have a word?”

              “Yes.” She kicked her chin up. “I do mind. And my husband would too.”

              He stared at her, perplexed. For a moment, the anger caught hold of his blunt features again, but then he put the fake charm back on. “Okay, well, thank you anyway.”

              Her breathing didn’t return to normal until he was out of sight, and then her heart was running like a jackrabbit.

              Michael answered on the second ring, voice gruff and low, like he was glad she’d called, but was never going to be one of those guys who made a big deal about it. “Hi, baby.”

              She took a deep breath. “Michael, I think I just met our peeping tom.”

Seventeen

Years after the fact, Walsh could look back on that day with Rita and know that the outcome had been for the best. At thirty-nine, he could say with confidence that a life attached to her in any way would have been nothing but miserable. Anyone related to her, who carried her DNA, would have been poisoned from conception. Just as well a life hadn’t been allowed to grow to fruition. It was better all around that they’d never become a family.

              But at nineteen, fresh from his banishment from the track, holding onto nothing save the ghost of the life he’d tried to make for himself in Brighton, Rita’s betrayal had been one of those tidal shifts in his history. Gramps was dead, and Gram had moved to London to be with Mum, where she could be cared for. It had been just him, all alone in Brighton, pretending he wasn’t a street rat and that exercise riding and stall-mucking was somehow better than the urban heritage he wanted to deny. After all, he hadn’t been alone, not really – he’d had Rita.

              If he opened up his mental file cabinet and pulled out that day, he could see it in aching detail. Could smell the ammonia stink of horse piss and the mold of the straw bedding. He could hear Rita’s footfalls coming down the barn aisle:
rat-tat-rat-tat
.

              His heart had leapt for a moment, just a moment, before she came into sight and the sheer cold wall that her face had become told him what he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“I had it taken care of,”
she said. Just like that. Like it was a carpet stain, or a shirt that needed mending, rather than a baby in her belly.
“I can’t be having a baby by the likes of you,”
she’d said. Because her father was a partial owner of one of the horses, and he was just the hired help.

              With one quick trip to the clinic, she’d had his future stripped out of her womb.

              How did a man grow tender with a woman after that?

              Walsh closed his eyes a moment, cleared the memory, and opened them again to see the road unfurling ahead through the lenses of his sunglasses. He didn’t know why he was thinking about Rita now, when there were so many things on his plate.

              He didn’t want it to be because of Emmie. He couldn’t afford to go there with her. He wasn’t Ghost, wasn’t Mercy, wasn’t Michael – wasn’t the sort of man who magnetized a woman to his side. He lacked their magic.

              He shoved it all away.

              The scene he arrived upon at Briar Hall wasn’t a welcome one. Cars jammed the parking pad and a knot of people stood in the threshold of the double doors. Lots of movement, arms waving. When he killed the engine, he heard the shouting, and he leapt off his bike, fighting the impulse to reach for the gun in his waistband. It was knee-jerk, but liable to get him arrested in polite society.

              All of Richards’ kids were present, all red-faced and furious. At the center of the group, Manny Richards held his youngest sister Amy back, while Amy gesticulated, raved, cried, screamed…at Emmie. Emmie, who was ashen-faced, eyes glittering with unshed tears. Fred had stepped in front of her, and little skinny Becca had a stall fork in her hands like she meant to use it on someone. But Emmie was staring at Amy, and she was devastated by whatever was coming out of the woman’s mouth.

              Walsh didn’t need to hear the words to know what was happening, but they assaulted him anyway.

              “…you killed him!” Amy screamed. “You always wanted this farm for yourself. You and your boyfriend. Your little fuckbuddy! You killed my dad. You
killed him
!”

              Oh hell no. This wasn’t going to go on. His farm, his woman.

             
His woman?

              Walsh gave his shrillest, loudest whistle, and all heads came his direction. “Oi, cut the shit, the lot of you,” he said. He didn’t demand explanations, because he didn’t want them. “All of you” – he gestured to the Richards – “get the hell off my property ‘fore I have you arrested.”

              Wouldn’t Fielding love that? An outlaw calling the cops.

              Amy rounded on him. “You!” she screamed. Mascara and snot poured down her face. “You and that stupid little bitch killed my dad!”

              Her son stepped around her, bowed up with aggression. “Fuck you!” he yelled. A vein leapt in his forehead. “Foreign prick, fuck you, I’ll kill you!”

              “That’s original.”

              “Walsh,” Emmie said, and his heart grabbed, the way she looked at him like she was worried about him, the withheld tears.

              Walsh refocused, trained his gaze on Brett Richards and his bloodshot eyes. Drug user, he thought. Hmm…and Richards was killed with H? Wonder where that came from.

              “Kill me,” he said calmly, “and you’ll have an army of men on top of you. This ain’t a bar parking lot fight, mate. Recognize that you’ve lost, and move on. Yeah?”

              Brett lunged forward, but Manny caught him, whispered something in his ear, frowning harshly.

              “Yes,” Walsh continued, “if you could all just leave, that’d be brilliant.”

              There was a lot of mumbling, fussing, and arguing, but en masse, the group headed toward their vehicles.

              “This isn’t over,” Manny said ominously. He thought it was ominous anyway.

              Walsh didn’t react, waiting stone-faced until all their vehicles had headed down the driveway.

              His three employees sagged with obvious relief.

              “Oh my God,” Becca said. “Those assholes think Em killed Mr. Richards. I mean, seriously.” She snorted. “If anybody did, it was Brett.”

              Emmie turned toward her working student like she meant to chastise her, but didn’t follow through. She swallowed hard, eyes still glimmering.

              “Fred,” Walsh said, “are the horses all put away for the evening?”

              “
Sí
.”

              “And the lessons all over?”

              “
Sí
,
Se
ño
r
.”

              “Good. I’ll you see you tomorrow.”

              And then his eyes were only for Emmie as he stepped toward her. “Come on, love,” he said quietly, sliding an arm across her shoulders. “Ignore it. Just put it out of your head.”

~*~

Easier said than done. Emmie put the wineglass to her lips, saluted her drunken father in her head, and drank deep.

              “Why the hell’d you drink gin last night when you had a decent white up here?” Walsh asked, filling his own glass.

              “’Cause liquor is quicker,” she said, shaking her head. “And because I’m doomed to my DNA,” she muttered.

              He cocked his head, staring at her in that penetrating way that left her frightened and turned on at the same time. “You think that?”

              “You don’t?”

              He made a considering face. “If I did, I’d have about nine kids by now.”

              “You’re one of nine?”

              “Half-brothers and sisters, all.”

              “Ah.” She felt a quick stab of sympathy for him. “I always thought being an only child was the worst. Maybe it’s not?”

              “Definitely not.” He set the wine down on the small café table between them with a soft thump. “They aren’t all bad. Some I get on with. But knowing my father’s a useless piece of shit? Not the best feeling.”

              “I’ll drink to that.”

              The wine went down her throat with a crisp kick and a warm afterburn in her stomach. Worlds better than gin, but it left her soft and sensitive. Gin could dull the pain, but wine could make it worse, if she let it.

              Walsh had lingered down at the barn after the Richards mess was swept out onto the road, undeterred by Fred and Becca’s questioning looks and raised eyebrows. Emmie had known where the night would end up, and wasn’t going to fight it. When they were alone, she’d said, “Come on up,” and here they were in her loft, the smell of frozen pizza beginning to waft over from the oven.

              “It’s nice,” he’d told her.

              “You’ve seen it before,” she’d said, and he’d ducked his head in acknowledgement.

              “You know these assholes better than I do,” he said, slumping down against the back of the chair. “How far are they gonna take things?”

              “They’re mostly talk. The kids anyway. Davis was the bulldog. None of those five have ever had to take care of anyone or anything, so chances are slim they’ll push much further.”

              “Good. We don’t have to talk about them, then.”

              “Isn’t that what you said last night?” she asked, grin tugging at her lips, warmth tugging even harder in the pit of her stomach.

              His golden brows lifted. “You want to do things differently than we did last night?” A tiny hint of a smirk sent her pulse skyward.

              “Depends on what you mean by
differently
.”

              The oven timer chose that moment to go off with a loud droning buzz. The last thing she wanted was to get up and walk away from the table – more like crawl across it to get in his lap. But the touch of his eyes on her body made her regret it a little less.

              It hadn’t ever been like this for her, this mutual, mature attraction. The patience in him, the way he could eat and drink with her and talk about things, all the while he was simmering on low, ready to get his hands on her – that turned her on more than
anything
ever had.

              She cut the pizza and carried the plates back to the table, let him top off her wine. When she was settled, blowing on her slice of pepperoni to cool it, he said, “Can I ask you something?”

              “Sure.”

              His face grew serious, the sexual gleam leaving his eyes, replaced with something that looked raw in the low light. “Where will you go,” he said carefully, “when you’re done here?”

              “Um…to the dishwasher, I guess. To put the plates in it.”

              “No, I mean: when you’re done with Briar Hall, when you move on, where then?”

              The question hit her like a fist. “Why would I be done with it?”

              He made a face that said
come on
. “You’re young, you’re talented – aren’t you trying to get in with some big name trainer? Set up your own barn? Get married?”

              “I…” Her bite of pizza felt lodged in her throat. The anxiety that always accompanied such questions turned her hands clammy, tightened her chest.

              “I’m not saying you ought to do those things, love,” Walsh said. “It’s just, in my experience, good things don’t stick around very long. So I’m wondering if you’ve got plans. If you’re planning on leaving me.” He smiled, but it was false and sad.

              She set her pizza down, heart pounding. “And I better jump on those good things before they go away?”

              His voice grew softer, gentler. “No, pet.
You
are the good thing.”

              She couldn’t breathe. She lurched to her feet, paced away from the table. When she turned around, Walsh was watching her with that appraising look of his. The words tumbled out of her, lubed up by the wine.

              “I was supposed to go to Florida,” Emmie said. “All the good dressage trainers winter in Florida or California. I was going to go work for an Olympian, ride his horses, get myself a sponsor.” She shook her head, pain prickling her skin at the memory. “I applied to be a working student with four different trainers. Sent resumes, videos. Even rode in person for one of them. You know what they said? They said I didn’t have ‘it.’ I didn’t have the ‘wow factor.’ ‘She’s a good rider,’ they said, but I wasn’t ever going to be anything ‘special.’ And what the hell does that mean, huh? ‘It’?”

              He shook his head. “No idea.”

              “Amy was my only reference – I’ve ridden here all my life, never worked anywhere else, thinking
loyalty
would count for something. And you know what? Loyalty isn’t shit, because now Amy hates me, won’t give me a good recommendation, and I wasted my whole life on a family that’s accusing me of killing one of them.” She shut her eyes against the tears and they pressed hard at the lids.

              “Loyalty counts.”

              “No, it doesn’t.” She sighed deeply, years’ worth of devotion and incredibly hard work scraping against her lungs. She dropped back into her chair. “And marriage?” She snorted. “Men don’t like me. Men don’t want me.”

              “I do.”

              God, his face, with its intensity and sincerity, the blue of his eyes in the dim light. The tears came back, blurring her vision.