Chapter 7 – Ghost #2
Doesn’t matter, he doesn’t answer me the way I want to hear. I kick him in the nuts hard this time and as he groans and sinks to the ground, I reach into my jacket for the 9mm Hellcat micro-compact pistol I didn’t think I would ever get to use.
“I’m sure I will when I meet my maker. But right now, you’re the one who touched my girl, so it looks like you’re next in line.”
“You’re breaking the law,” he groans, clearly trying to fight back tears. He might not be there yet, but I don’t want to get into the bad habit of thinking ill of the dead. He didn’t seem so weak when he had his hands wrapped around the neck of a much smaller woman.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask him. Gabby scrambles to her feet and I feel her body moving slowly behind mine,
Quietly, I reach for her with my free hand and make sure she doesn’t run away and tempt this man’s baser instincts by provoking him to run. People can be foolish when they get jumpy.
“I work for the government. I have rights.”
“The right to choke a woman?”
“You bikers are fucked,” he says. “You hear me? You kill me, you’re going to spend the rest of your fucking life in prison. The feds are onto you. We’re onto you.”
“That doesn’t worry me.”
It doesn’t worry me, but I will certainly pass that information on to Ethan Shaw and the head of the Murray crime family in Boston.
Both of them will have several concerns about a low-level attack dog having any information about us.
But does it matter what this guy knows if he doesn’t give it up?
He’s more of a risk to us alive. And I don’t care. I would have done it just for her.
My finger hovers around the trigger. I give myself a beat to reconsider, but as if guided by a darker, more primal force, I gently tug on the trigger and shoot Gabby’s assailant in the chest.
The next few minutes feels like it happens fast. If the gun weren’t so loud, I would have heard Gabby’s scream.
Instead, I feel it shooting up my arm as her body vibrates with terror and the force of it escaping from her lungs.
There are sirens all around me already, and I’m counting on the bar scene being so fucked up and crazy that nobody hears this gunshot.
It’s a big gamble to take on a murder. But he had his hands around Gabby’s neck. He would have hurt her.
I shoot him again, aiming directly for the heart.
I’m sure the little Hellcat does it. That thing packs a more powerful punch than you would expect.
Gabby tries to slip her hand out of mine, but I grip it tighter.
Her body presses against mine and I feel her face resting against my cut.
She’s hiding her face. I feel a pang of guilt at taking this innocence from her.
She’s probably never seen somebody die before. Fuck, she’s probably never kissed or held hands with a killer. Blood spurts at first, but then seeps as the man who touched her slides his body to the ground. His blood soaks the wall and flows from him into a puddle.
This is going to be a huge mess to clean up.
I step back as my ears ring. I should have covered them and told Gabby to cover hers.
She clutches my cut, shaking terribly as I pull her away from the dead body.
I try to peel her away from me to look her in the eye, but she clutches me tighter and refuses to move her face.
I have to grab her cheeks with force to pry her off me and when I look into her eyes, I know I changed everything in both of our lives in a way that I had no right to do.
Is this why Tylee hates me? Because my life is always going to be a fucking mess like this?
My mouth is dry as I try to find the words to mouth to Gabby that I know she won’t be able to hear.
I’ll make myself clear without words, but I want to at least try communicating with her so that she knows not to be afraid.
We have to go. I try to get her to follow me, so she won’t move. Trauma. I’ve fucked her up.
“Will you let me carry you?” I whisper as I hold her body close to mine and try to get her to calm down with physical closeness. I feel calm. I won’t when Ethan chews me out for what I just did but for now, I feel good that I sent this guy to sleep.
She trembles and I pretend that she nods.
I scoop her up and she doesn’t fight, so I take that to be as much agreement as I’m going to get from her right now.
We have to go the long way to where I parked my bike.
I’m too paranoid to park close to where I drink anymore.
I’d rather stumble a few blocks to my ride.
When she realizes I’ll have to walk a few minutes, Gabby holds onto me to make the ride more comfortable.
At least she hasn’t passed out yet. We get to my bike – a forest green Indian Scout with a small dent on the back from a little parking while drinking mistake.
. I set her down and she stands up, wrapping her arms around her body and staring at the ground.
It must be the shock of what she’s seen.
I fucking killed a guy in front of her. Of course it fucked her up.
No wonder Tylee thinks I’m a bad father.
“I have to call someone,” I say to Gabby. “Don’t move. I promise everything will be okay.”
She looks up at me with wide, dark brown eyes. She doesn’t question me. There’s a strange, implicit trust.
“Do you have your phone?” I ask her. She nods and reaches for it. Good. The phones have a hypnotic effect on both of us. I’m just happy that she’ll be distracted while I call Ethan. He picks up after two rings.
“Where the fuck are you?” Ethan Shaw snarls.
Other people might have asked if I was okay, but Ethan has the manners of a fucking grizzly bear, hence his club name.
“I’m fine. I was… helping someone.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Well, you don’t have fucking time for that.”
“I know,” I answer. “I shot somebody.”
“FFFFUCK!”
Ethan nearly blows out my eardrum. I have to hold my phone away from my ear while he curses me out and calls me every name under the sun.
“Tell me you have a good fucking reason for this.”
“He had his hands around this woman’s neck.”
“Was it his old lady?”
“Would that make a difference?”
“Where’s the body?”
“On the street.”
“ARE YOU FUCKING OUT OF YOUR MIND ISAAC?!”
He sounds like Wyatt. Every single one of the Shaw boys is downright insufferable when they’re dry from gambling. I stick my tongue into the corner of my mouth to stop myself from escalating the situation. You live with Tylee long enough, your taste for violent altercations dries right up.
“I had to get her out of there. She was shaken up.”
“Enough to go to the fucking cops?” Ethan doesn’t bother hiding the fact that Gabby’s well-being is nowhere near any of his priorities.
Money, keeping our asses out of trouble, that’s about all he cares about.
Since he got his own wife and family, the man has a strange idea of loyalty.
I’ve had to put my pride aside from the club once or twice.
But I can’t answer his question just from looking at Gabby. She might not be the type to squeal, but she’s a stranger. Do I really want to take that chance and get my ass locked up when I could never see my kids again?
I don’t want to let her go.
“I don’t know what she’s thinking.”
Ethan grunts furiously. “Were you at the Irish bar? Mulligans?”
“Yes.”
“The Murrays are heading over there. Chitto’s in town handling a personal errand for Wyatt, so he’s not doing anything except getting into trouble. I’ll send him down too.”
Oske’s brother has been tagging along with the club whenever he can’t find work that he prefers.
There’s no part of him that enjoys staying up all night or carrying messages and weapons all over the country.
He’s a pain in the ass, immature, smokes too much…
not a bad kid, but a fucking mess. I’d rather have someone calm handling a problem this big.
Unfortunately, the coolest cucumber on this side of the Missouri River might be Zebulon Blackwood.
Not the gambler I’m on the phone with, that’s for fucking sure.
“Is Zeb back yet?”
“I don’t fucking know, Isaac,” Ethan snarls, almost losing his temper on the spot. “Just take the woman out of town and get ready for Darragh Murray to ass fuck you with the bill for clean up. And paying off cops. And whatever else he decides to charge us for this massive fuck up.
Ethan pauses expectantly. He wants an apology that I’m not willing to give.
There’s no point in saying sorry if you don’t mean it and I would ruthlessly murder that man all over again in any world where I watched him wrap his hands around Gabby’s neck.
I still haven’t examined her properly for bruises.
“I can afford the bill.”
“Yeah. I fucking hope so,” Ethan says, surprising me by calming down instead of getting riled up by my comment about the bill. “I should have called you earlier and stopped all this from happening in the first place.”
“I don’t think anyone could have stopped this.”
Ethan makes a noise like there’s something stuck in his throat.
“I have news about Tylee.”
Oh fuck.
“And what do you mean nobody could have stopped it?”
“We shouldn’t talk on the phone about that,” I mutter.
“Right,” he says. “Or about Tylee. Bring the girl to my place before you skip town.”
“She might not like that.”
“I don’t care,” Ethan says. “Get her ass on the back of a bike and bring her to my house. Now.”