Nash: Great Wolves MC Page 11

  “I wanted to meet you tonight so I could explain,” she said.

  I put a hand up as my phone rang again. “Harper, I can’t do this. Not now. I need to trust you.” Jesus. What was I saying? How the fuck could I walk out that door? How the fuck could she have kept this from me?

  She swallowed and nodded. “You can.”

  I pressed my palm flat against the wall. “Don’t come to the club. Don’t … God. Don’t tell the kid anything. Not until … I have to …”

  “You have to go,” she said. “You have to make it safe for him.”

  I locked eyes with her. Pain swirled through me driven by grief for Ghost and the shock of seeing Wyatt. I couldn’t see Harper. My heart shredded. When my phone rang again I whipped it out and answered.

  “Go,” I said.

  “Nash, we need you back. There’s trouble at The Den.”

  I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut. I took the phone away from my ear and pressed my fist to my forehead. “I gotta do the thing with Paul at the morgue. I’ll be back right after. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t let anyone come or go until you hear from me.”

  I clicked off the phone and looked at Harper. Her eyes shone with fresh tears. I wanted to take her in my arms as much as I wanted to punch the damn wall again. For now, I just had to settle for goodbye.

  Walking away felt like my guts spilled out on the sidewalk.

  * * *

  I met Ghost’s cousin Paul, our private investigator, at the morgue. He stood stone-faced beside me as the coroner’s assistant stood at the side of a long window holding the blinds closed. At Paul’s nod, he flipped the blinds. Ghost lay on a slab in the next room, his skin just as white as his hair. He had a single exit wound just above his left eye. His hair covered the back of his head where the bullet went in.

  Paul fell apart. He staggered sideways and threw up into a waste basket the coroner’s assistant had nearby. Good thing. I wondered how many times it went like this. I’d only met Paul twice when Ghost brought him by the club. He was a few years older than we were, probably forty. He was nearly bald and had a beer belly. He wore a cheap brown suit with elbow patches. Ghost used to tease him about that. I reached over and slapped him on the back.

  “God. Was it quick?” Paul asked. The assistant, a kid probably twenty-five, blinked back. He looked into the room toward Ghost’s body.

  “Well, we’ll have to wait for the official results.”

  I made a slashing gesture across my throat. The kid stopped talking. “Paul, it was quick. He probably didn’t even know what hit him.” Paul sobbed and nodded.

  Yeah. Fucking right. Ghost was off his bike when it happened and from what I’d been able to learn, he was ten feet away from it lying face down in a ditch by the side of the road. Sure, he died quick, but he damn well knew the bullet was coming. I had more questions than answers, but for now, I had to get Paul the hell out of here and back to The Den.

  “Go home,” I told Paul when we got out to the parking lot. “Be with your aunt.” Ghost’s own parents were long gone. Paul was his first cousin. Their dads were brothers. They had one spinster aunt left between them and she treated them both like sons. Aunt Irene was probably a wreck. “We’ll take care of all the arrangements.”

  Paul nodded. I had to give him credit for not taking shit out on me. He knew what Ghost was. Chances were, he wouldn’t have been in that ditch if he didn’t wear the GWMC patch. But we didn’t know that for sure. As I shook Paul’s hand, he drew me close and sobbed against my shoulder. I gave him another pat on the back then broke. I wished I could do more for the guy, but Ghost was my concern now. One way or another, I’d get him justice.

  My damn head throbbed from all the shit that happened today. If I closed my eyes, I saw him lying on that slab. Then I saw Wyatt and Harper. It was too damn much to take in. So I had to focus on the one thing I could control. If my club was in danger, it fell on me to make it right no matter what the cost.

  King had everyone assembled around the bar. Paps was already pouring drafts like it was a regular Irish wake. I gave him a gesture telling him to lay off. We had to have clear heads for the next twenty-four hours. I took a seat at the end of the bar. King stood beside me. Puck and Gordo sat at one table. Shakes sat off to the side. That left Hammy. He paced in front of the bar tearing his hands through his hair.

  I filled them in on what I could deduce from seeing Ghost. He was killed by a single bullet. “What do we know from the crime scene?” I asked.

  King shook his head. “Not much. One set of skid marks leading away but they can’t be sure that’s connected. Ghost’s bike was parked about not far from the ditch where they found him.”

  “We need to move, Nash. Now!” Hammy stopped pacing right in front of me. He punched one fist into his other palm.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “We will. But we gotta know what direction.”

  “What more do you fucking need to know? If this is the Brigands, we wipe them out once and for all.”

  Hammy got cheers from Puck and Gordo. Shakes was still too much of a wreck to form any opinion. He and Ghost had been tight. King stood stoic beside me and Paps just raised a brow as he wiped a beer mug with a towel.

  “You said the brick thrown into Dee’s window said ‘dead wolf’,” Hammy said. “What more proof do you need? That was the exact same shit they pulled six years ago.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And it tore this town apart. We lost two members and Brando—one of our goddamned own—is still doing time for assault because he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  King’s phone went off. I gave him a look. He lifted a finger and walked away from us to take the call. When he finished, and walked back, his expression was grave.

  “Shit,” I said. “Now what?”

  “Paps, turn on the TV.”

  Paps narrowed his eyes and reached for the remote control on the bar. He clicked on the flat screen. He had it tuned to the local station and the six o’clock news was on. The camera panned to a wide shot of City Hall. Protestors were lined up all along First Avenue calling for our heads on a spike. The crawl across the bottom of the screen read “Emerald Point Erupts in Gang Violence Once Again.”

  “This is bad, Nash,” Puck said. “This is real bad.”

  The camera zoomed in on Channel 3’s Tim Keegan. My heart sank as he started to talk into his mic. “Sources say the death of Great Wolves MC member Russell “Ghost” McGill could spark tensions between rival biker gangs the Red Brigands and the Great Wolves all over again. And as those who lived through the last club war recall, it’s the citizens of Emerald Point who always pay the price.”

  I grabbed the remote from Paps and switched it off. I’d seen enough. Gordo took his empty beer stein and smashed it against the wall.

  “That was my contact on city council who just called,” King said. “It’s bad and getting worse, Nash. Forget the expansion project, there’s rumbling that we’re going to have our liquor license pulled by the end of the week.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Paps said. “They can’t do that.”

  I ran my hand across my chin. None of this made any fucking sense. I pressed my thumb to my eye and tried to clear my head. On the bar next to me, Hammy rested his forearms on the counter. He was wound tight as a drum. We all were.

  “We can’t let this shit stand, Nash. You know what it means,” Hammy said.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t. That’s the whole point. We need more intel. What are we hearing from our contacts at the police department? Where’s Ghost’s phone?”

  King shrugged. “They’ve got it. Emerald Point PD called in the forensics guys from Tallahassee to dump it.”

  “Shit.” It would help me sort out a lot of shit if I had a heads up who Ghost was in contact with the hour or two before he went missing. “Anyone have any fucking clue what the hell he was doing out on Marlin Road? We don’t have businesses out there. No one we know lives there.”

  King shook
his head. “I’ll keep in touch with our guy at EPPD but it’s out of his hands. We’re in the dark.”

  “We are not in the fucking dark!” Hammy slammed his fist against the bar and stood up. He got in my face. “This is the Brigands, man.”

  I rose, slowly. I had about four inches on Hammy and used it, getting in his face. “You need to calm your shit down. Think, man. When’s the last time the Brigands picked somebody off like that in the middle of the road? Whenever they’ve come at us, or we came at them, it was out in the open. And the shit with Dre and his friends, that wasn’t the Brigands. That was outsiders trying to get a foothold down at the pier, pressing for weakness.”

  “We sit here with our thumbs up our asses, Nash … then we are weak!”

  I did a mental ten count. Tensions were running way too damn high in this room.

  “And where were you?” Hammy said. King moved beside me. “No. I mean it. Everybody in this room knows your head’s been elsewhere, Prez. Ever since that slut from Pirate Louis’s old place waved her tits in your face.”

  Red rage clouded my vision. I grabbed Hammy and drove his head down until his cheek pressed against the bar. He spat and tried to fight me off. I kept an arm bar across his back and got in his face.

  “I said, you need to calm your shit. You got a problem with the way I run things, then you call a vote. That goes for all of you. We are in a critical fucking time right now. We are gonna get justice for Ghost, but we’re not going to be stupid about it.” I pushed off Hammy and sat back on my bar stool. When he straightened himself, King puffed out his chest and put a hand on Hammy’s shoulder. Hammy’s nostrils flared and he straightened his cut, but sat down.

  “Nash is right,” Shakes said. “Look at what’s happened already.”

  “This doesn’t smell right,” I said. “I think somebody just wants to make it look like the Brigands were behind this. Jesus, if it really was … there’s no provocation. We haven’t had dealings with them or turf wars in over five years. Their numbers are down. Our man at ATF has been hinting for months they’re on a watch list. How the fuck would it make any damn sense for them to pick off Ghost right now?”

  “Because they said they would,” Hammy said. “And you know it. When we called a truce last time, you know damn well their prez was only biding his time. He said the next time, we wouldn’t see it coming.”

  “Fine, Hammy. Then explain it. How does offing Ghost get them anything? Think with your head, man, not your heart. You can’t tell me that the way Ghost bought it is the way they do business. And look what’s happened. This got the whole town riled up against us in less than twenty-four hours. We’re under siege. I’m not denying that. But until we know who the real enemy is, we’re going to sit tight. Anyone got a problem with that, we’ll take it to a vote right now. So let’s get after it. This is my club. You wanna run it different, then you vote me out right now.”

  Hammy stood. He glared at me and squared his shoulders. He looked around the room. To a man, they shook their heads and looked away. King stepped forward and put his hand on Hammy’s shoulder again. He clenched his jaw, but didn’t say another word. He sat down hard and asked Paps to pour him another beer.

  King gave me a silent nod. In the span of twenty-four hours, I’d lost a club brother, found out I had a son, and fought off a civil fucking war. At this rate, I wasn’t sure I’d even be alive in the next twenty-four hours.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Harper

  * * *

  In the days that followed, I watched Nash’s life unfold in grim detail from my television screen. The local news covered Ghost McGill’s funeral showing FBI agents encamped at a distance at the cemetery snapping pictures with wide-angle camera lenses. Nash’s grief-stricken face cut me to my core as he tried to hide behind his aviator sunglasses. He stood beside Ghost’s family such as it was. The reporter said Ghost had only a surviving aunt and a cousin. The cousin was a portly, middle-aged man who stood red-faced and crying next to Nash. The aunt had to be in her eighties. She stood rod straight and calm while her surviving nephew fell apart. God, I didn’t want to be her. I could never let myself be her.

  “Mama, is that your friend?” Wyatt caught me watching one evening before I could click off the power button fast enough. He didn’t understand what he saw, the gleaming silver bodies of the Harleys parked along the road drew his attention more than anything else.

  For her part, my mother kept silent. She’d heard enough of my conversation with Nash to know we’d had no contact and no plans for any in the near future. It gutted me. Even Wyatt seemed quieter than usual. He couldn’t know. At five he was far too young to understand. But ever since he ran into Nash in his very own home, Wyatt lost a little of his adorable zippiness. I did my best to pretend everything was normal, and maybe that was the problem. Wyatt was smarter than that. He tuned in when Gam didn’t feel well and he tuned in when his mother didn’t smile.

  By contrast, the mood at the mayor’s office was gleeful exuberance. For a week now, I’d had to cross a line of protestors with bullhorns calling for the mayor to evict Nash and the Great Wolves from The Wolf Den. Thankfully, he had no power to do that as Nash owned the land outright. It didn’t mean Mayor Dodge didn’t have other avenues to cause trouble for the club. Just this morning, he’d laid a project on my desk that made my blood run cold.

  “By the end of the day,” he said, answering my unvoiced question. “Run this down for me, Harper. I want to know every legal angle we can pursue to strip those thugs of their liquor license and rezone the land that club sits on. I may not be able to take it away from them, but I can make it so the only thing they can legally do there is sit with their thumbs up their asses.”

  I bit my lip. “There’s been no evidence of criminal activity, sir,” I said. “Russell McGill wasn’t even anywhere near club property when he was … when he passed away. The police don’t even have a solid lead as to who might have done him harm.”

  Dodge smiled and leaned over my desk with his hands spread wide. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Harper. This is legal research. Original thought isn’t required. Just tell me what the law is. For the first time since I took office, I’ve got city council on my side about that club. As they go, so goes the zoning board. I just need a hook. Do you understand? Can you handle it? Or do I need to start finding someone else to do your job? How’s your mother’s new doctor working out?”

  A chill speared through me. I’d never discussed my mother with Dodge. Not once. And yet he kept throwing little bombs at me like that one.

  “Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Thanks for asking.” Since the day the mayor made his first innuendo about my relationship with Nash, I’d been quietly looking for another job. So far, none paid as well as this one with the same level of benefits. At least, there wasn’t anything anywhere along the Emerald Coast. Sooner rather than later, I’d need to decide how important it was for me to stay put. For now, I’d survived by keeping my head down and doing the research he asked me for.

  “Good. I’m sure she’s a nice lady, your mother.”

  I grabbed a stack of file folders from the top of my desk and straightened them. Mayor Dodge smiled then straightened, rising to his full height. “By the end of the day, Harper. I want a definitive answer I can take to city council first thing tomorrow morning so your work needs to be airtight.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, resisting the urge to give him a sarcastic salute. Instead, I plastered on a smile and waited for him to turn on his heel and leave. To make myself feel better, I raised my two middle fingers to his retreating back.

  God, I wanted to call Nash. He’d stayed true to his word and hadn’t reached out to me once since that night at the condo. It felt like the two halves of myself had split. One side of me missed him so much it hurt. He was grieving and wounded, both because of what happened to Ghost and what he’d learned about Wyatt. He had to feel like every part of his life was in chaos again and I hated any part I played
in causing it. But the other half of me went into self-preservation mode. I meant what I said to the mayor about the status of the investigation into Ghost’s murder. It wasn’t fair to draw and quarter GWMC members without hard evidence. Except the same instincts I had to protect Wyatt burned strong within me. This might have just been some random act of violence, but even Nash knew it went deeper than that. Where the club went, danger followed. As much as I cared for Nash, I couldn’t … I wouldn’t expose my sweet son to that.

  So I did the only thing I could do right now. I did my job. It was the best way I had to protect Wyatt from what might come. I couldn’t trust that whatever Nash planned wouldn’t end in bloodshed. God, I’d seen enough of that where he was concerned with my own eyes. Still, something didn’t feel right about the glee Mayor Dodge took in the club’s downfall. On paper, it made no sense. Despite their past dealings and reputation, The Den brought in big business to Emerald Point. The expansion Nash sought would bring in new jobs and help revitalize the east end of town. More businesses would come in bringing more tourist dollars and economic stability this mayor campaigned on. So whatever beef Dodge had with Nash, it had to be personal. Except neither of them would tell me anything about what it was.

  At the end of the day, dread gripped me, making it hard to breathe. The mayor spent the day locked in meetings with various members of city council. None of that could bode well for Nash. Each one left City Hall grim-faced as they pushed through the gauntlet of protestors outside. I knocked on the mayor’s office door with my research in hand.

  “It won’t be easy,” I said, trying to keep the triumphant tone out of my voice. “In fact, it’ll be mostly impossible.”

  Dodge laughed and kicked his feet up on the desk. Chris was standing beside him holding his tablet. He pursed his lips and looked at me as if he’d just bit down on a rotted lemon.