A plate heavy with hashbrowns, sausage links, and fried eggs thumped down in front of Fox. "Getcha anything else, hon?" his waitress, a motherly sort whose nametag read BILLIE, asked.
"No, thank you. More coffee when you get a chance." He was using his Tennessee accent, preferring not to stick out as a Brit amidst the truckers and construction workers and harried mothers seated around him.
She bustled off with a "coming right up," and he cut into his eggs with his fork; runny yolks, just the way he liked.
He'd decided, after pocketing the note, the one that crinkled every time he shifted and brought the big, block letters flashing through his mind, that he would think better on a full stomach. He'd gone to Waffle House, and parked around the side, where his bike couldn't be seen from the road. A text from Walsh a few minutes ago had informed him that he, Shane, and the girls had gotten away from the farm safely, so, for the moment, he had nothing to worry about, aside from the prospect of meeting Marshall Hunter under the Gay Street Bridge that night.
He forked egg into his mouth, turned to look out the window – and spotted a familiar, nondescript blue truck parking at the curb just outside. The lights cut off, the doors opened, and it was Reese, surprisingly, who climbed from the driver's seat. Tenny got out of the passenger seat, sunglasses firmly in place, and tried to shut the door while Evan was opening the rear suicide door and scrambling out.
Fox sighed. He could guess why those three were out driving around. If the feds were headed for the clubhouse next, Ghost wouldn't want them, or their hardware, anywhere in sight. He didn't doubt the floorboards of the back seat were crammed with duffel bags.
They trooped into the restaurant, Reese in the lead, and he was the one who scanned the place, and spotted Fox. He didn't react, outwardly, save a slight lift of both brows.
Fox sighed again, and waved them over.
Tenny slid, grumbling, into the window seat on the opposite side of the booth, Reese taking the aisle beside him. Evan dropped down next to Fox.
Tenny pushed his shades up into his hair to reveal tired, bloodshot eyes. "What are you doing here?" he grumbled.
"Same as you, I expect." Fox reached for his coffee. "They'll have it hard enough there dealing with the suits without our sort cluttering up the works."
Tenny snorted and peered out the window.
"Our sort?" Evan asked.
"Hired killers." To Tenny, he said, "When the waitress comes by, do your American accent."
"I know that," Tenny snapped, but when Billie appeared, as if summoned, he dredged up a smile and a perfect drawl with which to order coffee and a greasy burger and fries.
Reese ordered a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich.
"None of you got waffles?" Evan asked when Billie was gone. "It's Waffle House."
"Protein provides better nutrition," Reese said.
"Yeah, asshole," Tenny said. "Mind your goddamn nutrition."
Fox clinked his fork against his plate to regain their attention. "Anyone show up at the clubhouse yet?" he asked, tone purposefully light. He didn't think anyone was listening in, but it didn't hurt to be cautious.
"Just that cop who's got a hard-on for Ghost," Tenny said dismissively, looking back out the window.
"Lieutenant Fielding," Reese explained. To Tenny, he said, "I didn't get the impression he wants to have sex with Ghost."
Tenny sighed, and slumped down to lean an elbow on the table, temple propped on his fist. "It's a figure of speech, you stupid tit," he murmured, without any heat.
"Oh." Reese reached over and attempted to smooth Tenny's rumpled hair for him. Tenny allowed it a moment, and then batted him away. Reese withdrew easily.
It was the most intimacy they'd ever displayed in front of him, and Fox felt like an interloper. A sideways glance at Evan proved he was slack-jawed, until he caught Fox's dark look and pulled himself together.
He cleared his throat. "Yeah, so, what's the deal with that Fielding guy?"
"Keep your voice down."
Softer: "He's a cop, but he's on our side? I never really got the whole story there."
If Fox were the sort of person who felt sorry for others, he might have spared a thought for poor Evan, who they'd brought in and set to scrubbing toilets and never really bothered to walk through club lore. He hadn't done so, at least. He'd hoped that Mercy would take him in-hand, just as he'd done with Reese, but Mercy had played Big Dog for Carter, and then Reese, and maybe three ducklings was one too many.
Maybe, he reflected with a touch of horror, everyone had thought it was his place, seeing as Evan was an assassin of sorts – though a bumbling one.
He fortified himself with a big bite of hashbrowns and a long swallow of coffee. "Fielding's always been a bit – lenient with the Dogs. He's an annoying sod, but he's smart enough to know that the Dogs do their part in keeping the city stable. Also: Ghost caught him in a compromising position and more or less owns him, now. If Ghost went running to the press, forget losing his badge, he'd be in prison."
"Ah," Evan said, calm, but his eyes widened.
How a sniper was still so naïve about the way of the world, Fox would never know.
Billie arrived with the boys' food, and it was silent save eating for a while. For all that Tenny still looked half-dead, he tucked into his burger with determination: not enthusiasm, but an operative's determination to refuel his body.
He checked the time on his phone. "We'll give them a few hours," he decided.
Which meant he had a few hours to decide if he wanted to tell Ghost about the note in his pocket.
~*~
Fielding was in uniform, so when Maddox knocked and stepped into Ghost's office, his gaze went right to Vince seated in the chair across from Ghost's desk, and his face paled. "Shit."
"Shut the door and sit down," Ghost said. "We don't have long."
He hesitated a beat, though, expression stricken.
He was dressed in jeans and boots and a ratty flannel shirt, and his face wasn't so remarkable that Vince would have remembered it even if he'd seen him before, which he hadn't.
"Sit the fuck down," Ghost barked, and Maddox dropped down into the chair beside Fielding.
Vince gave him a cursory once-over before turning to Ghost. "This is him?"
"Yeah. Doesn't look like much, does he?"
The chair was an old overly ornate, velvet-seated affair Maggie had found at an estate sale, and Maddox gripped its arms with white knuckles, scared as a horse about to bolt. His voice was firm, though, when he said, "What's going on? Are you collecting law enforcement?"
"Maybe," Ghost said with a shrug, and lit a fresh cigarette – his third of the morning; sorry, Mags. "Your friends are coming," he said, without preamble. "They're at the crime scene now, and Fielding says they'll be headed this way next."
Maddox looked between then, frowning. "Crime scene?"
"There was a drive-by at Smokey's Restaurant last night," Fielding said. "Civilians were killed. A half-dozen are in the hospital."
"Jesus." His gaze snapped back and forth, back and forth, searching their faces. "Who? Why? Club rivalry shit?"
"No," Ghost said. "This was someone connected to Abacus sending a message, and making us look like assholes in the process."
He tipped his head toward Fielding. "He knows about Abacus?"
"Yeah, try to keep up."
"Keep up? No one's told me shit!"
"That's 'cause Vince is someone we can trust, but I don't know shit about you."
Belatedly, Ghost realized his mistake, when Fielding's brows shot up in surprise. He'd never said a kind word about him before, much less expressed his trust in the man. Vince's mouth twitched, and Ghost thought he'd suppressed a smile. Shit.
Taking pity on Maddox, he added, "One of our guys was meeting with one of Luis's contacts last night at Smokey's. The drive-by happened, and now the feds are in town investigating it. They could show up here any minute."
Maddox's brows scaled his forehead. "The FBI?"
"I said your friends, didn't I?"
For the first time, his face relaxed a bit, and the jaded, run-down factory worker he'd been forced to become bled through to the fore. "They're not my friends. They're nobody's friends."
"I think we can all three agree on that," Fielding said, sitting back with his arms folded.
"Why are you telling me about it?" Maddox asked.
Ghost gestured toward him. "You may not be one anymore, but you're the only suit we know. Why would they already be down here? Why would the FBI be on the scene here before the Tennessee Bureau boys even got to it? Local PD hasn't even held a presser yet, and we've got the feds beating down our door? Why are they reacting so quickly?"
Maddox's expression went grim. "It's just like in Amarillo: they had advance warning."
"They're working with these Abacus people?" Vince asked.
"They have to be," Ghost said. "That's the only explanation. And you're here" – he aimed the end of a pen at Maddox – "to help us expose them."
Maddox swallowed, throat bobbing. "That's a tall order."
"There's no other kind in my house."
Someone rapped at the door, and Deacon stuck his head in, energy fractious and palpable from across the office. "We got black SUVs, boss. Ten of them."
Ghost nodded. "Alright, we're ready. Go pick up a broom or something, look busy. When they knock, let them in, be polite. If they're nasty, help Ava and Whitney get the kids outside and down to the nursery, got it?"
He nodded and withdrew.
"Kids?" Maddox asked, incredulous.
Ghost stood. "We're under lockdown. That means all the families are on the property. If these assholes are willing to hit a restaurant," he moved to the safe behind his desk and spun the dial, "they won't think twice about hitting one of our houses."
"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 was far from 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, but Ava squaring 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 by sight. 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."
Mentally, though, he was calculating the size of the hole Michael would need to dig to fit Jansen's body.
~*~
Fox sent the boys off on their own to prowl the city and lay low. He entrusted Reese as the leader, in this instance, telling him to keep the other two from making any sort of scene.
"I'm right here, shithead," Tenny grumbled.
But they offered no further argument, and Fox felt mostly sure they wouldn't do anything too visible or stupid.
For his own part, he went searching. He rode into the industrial, unsavory parts of the city, past warehouses and derelict old businesses whose signage had flaked away into obscurity. He walked across cracked concrete, and snapped photos with his phone; ran his hands through the seed tops of waist-high weeds and climbed up to peek into old dumpsters. He found an abandoned row of train cars on a bit of disconnected track, crows calling ominously from the pines as he levered himself up inside them – but the dust was old, and thick, and there were no signs of human passage.
He'd known from the start he wouldn't find anything, but he kept at it, well into the afternoon, and all the while, the back of his neck tingled with the knowledge that he was being watched. Someone, probably one of Hunter's boys, was following him.
Which probably meant another one was tailing Tenny and Reese.
It's what he would have done, if the roles were reversed.
When the shadows grew long, he went to the clubhouse, finally, and found that the feds had gone...and left a mess in their wake.
The common room had been tossed, couch cushions slit open, stuffing pulled out. Every liquor and soda and beer bottle in the whole place had been lined up on top of the bar, and the doors of the cabinets beneath thrown open, napkins, and cups, and limes spilled across the floorboards. He winced, imagining the dorms: the ruined mattresses and dumped drawers of every dresser and wardrobe.
Deacon came skidding into the room from the back hall, expression outraged. "One of those fuckers nicked my cherry-flavored lube!" he exclaimed to Boomer, who responded with, "Dude, not cool."
Fox only got a few steps inside before Walsh stepped neatly in front of him, lit cigarette dangling off his lip, expression glacial. "Where have you been?"
"Out getting tailed," Fox said, direct. Walsh had clearly expected a bit of snark, because his brows went up in surprise. "Where's Ghost? We need to talk."
He was in his office, wound up like a top, drinking coffee so heavily spiked Fox could smell the whiskey in it when he crossed the threshold. His hair, the natural curl usually tamed with a bit of gel, stood up from countless passes of agitated fingers. He had a reprimand on his tongue for Fox, along with the information that the women and children had all convened down at the nursery, well away from the scene.
His demeanor changed, though, when Fox pulled the note from his pocket and offered it over.
Fox knew a moment's panic, just one low pulse of it deep in his gut, when he relinquished it. He was a lone wolf; he didn't share ops; he had never found himself in a situation he couldn't get out of.
But he had patched into the Tennessee chapter, and this was his president, and, all things given, he couldn't be a lone wolf all the time; he had to be a Dog, on occasion, and Dogs didn't hide things from one another. Not big things like this.
He told Ghost – and Walsh, standing beside him – what he knew.
Ghost fingered the crumpled edge of the paper, frowning. "Reese's last name is Hunter."
"I know. I don't know if there's blood relation there, or he gave Reese his name for simplicity's sake. Either way, we're dealing with someone who turns boys into killing machines very efficiently."
"Then I don't want Reese involved in this." He tapped the note. "Probably not Tenny, either, if they're..." He lifted his brows, asking.
"Yeah, no, they're a set at this point."
"You're not going alone," Walsh said, firmly. "That's out of the question."
"I agree," Ghost said, before Fox could say something smart, a warning look daring the two of them to start arguing. "We'll come up with something." To Fox, he said, "I'm assuming you've already got most of an idea?"
"I'm pretty sure one of the little buggers has been following me all day." He grinned. "Might as well use that to our advantage." He turned his smile on Walsh, who, a beat later, frowned.
"Why do I have the feeling I'm not going to like this?"
"Oh, don't worry. You won't."