Twenty-Three

“I want to wait for my vice president. That should be him pulling in now.” Walsh gestured toward the clubhouse door, and the roar of bike engines on the other side of it, with his water glass. He wasn’t hooked up to an IV drip anymore, and though he still had the shakes, he could keep food down, now, and was clear-headed, despite the fatigue.

Boomer materialized at his side and set down a sandwich on a plate. PB had even gone to his mom’s house without question, when he called her for help. He thought he could trust her with this – and if it turned out that trust was misplaced, he was willing to be the fall guy. He would confess up and down that everything she helped with was his idea, and his alone. “That we have time to find Remy, and handle Boyle, without the FBI watching.”

“Handle Boyle,” she repeated, carefully.

“You can be as involved, or uninvolved as you’d like to be,” he said, “but since you’ve helped me, I wanted to do you the courtesy of letting you know: shit’s about to get real. If you want to be able to claim ignorance, now’s the time to leave town.”

He turned for the door after that, feeling like an overdramatic douche for dropping a decree and then leaving, but also like he might have royally stepped in it. If Duet called HQ…if the lawwoman in her proved stronger than the human…or if turning her down back in February…

“Alex.” He paused with his hand on the knob, and looked back.

But she didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she was studying the flowers again. Just to the right of them, the TV was flashing professional headshots of Sawyer and Hames.

“You ever think…” she started, and then bit her lip, shook her head.

“What?”

She sighed – and then turned to face him; her eyes, when they met his, were those of a much older woman, tired, and world-weary, and hard at the edges with the sort of cynicism people tried and tried to deny, until it crashed over them all at once and they realized how little faith they had in the world. “You ever think you’ve spent years trying to do the right thing, and then realize you were helping people who do the wrong thing the whole time?”

“Lately? Every day.”

She nodded, and touched her bandage, an absent movement that made her flinch and put her hand back down. “The only two things I know about Boyle are that he’s a monster, and that he’s got it bad for your brother. I can’t help you find him. But I might be able to draw Fallon out of the shadows.”

He lifted his brows, delight a rare, bright sensation in his chest. “Yeah?”

“I might not know much about monsters, but I know men. All of them have a breaking point.”

~*~

“Are you sure about this?”

It was so unusual a question coming from Michael that Walsh paused and gave it due consideration. He was already seated at the head of the table, but hadn’t gotten comfortable: he didn’t figure it would be his chair for long.

Michael stood at the door, his back to it, one hand on the knob, ready to usher in their brothers.

Who might not consider Walsh their brother in about ten minutes.

Was he sure about this?

Other than Michael, he hadn’t yet told anyone about what he was about to say at church. Michael was a very good listener, but not the best advice-giver. That was probably part of the reason Walsh hadn’t tried to bring anyone else into his confidence. He wasn’t looking for anyone to take a side, here. He’d like to escape with his life, to live out his days with Emmie and Violet, in whatever shape those days would take once he’d lost the club’s support. But otherwise, he wasn’t picky. Michael had said he wouldn’t let anyone kill him; that was enough. It was clear, now, that he could not sit idly by in Knoxville, lying to his brothers, while New York and New Orleans decided the future of the club he’d dedicated himself to. He would play his part, and play it as well as the other Dogs would allow him to.

“I’m sure,” he said, and meant it. Felt calm, steady. “Let them in.”

Aidan was the first through the door, and he sat down beside Walsh, in his new chair, in his new role, his VP patches still shiny-white and clean-threaded on his chest.

It was Aidan who would react the strongest, and Aidan who Walsh felt was owed a pound of flesh for emotional trauma. If Aidan took a swing at him, he was going to sit still and let him take it.

The table filled faster than normal, the faces around it tense, cautious, curious. He didn’t like Roman’s expression, the way it was knowing; but it wouldn’t be Roman, he didn’t think, who flew into a rage when he learned about the deception. Who would besides Aidan, only time would tell.

Michael did a headcount, then closed the door, and took his seat.

Ratchet had his laptop, and folded his hands over its closed lid in a ready pose. “What’s the news, boss?”

“We saw the feds leave,” RJ said.

“The feds – those two and the team they brought, at least – won’t be a problem anymore. Agent Daniels spoke well of Alex’s friend Mike Chambers. They know that Hames and Sawyer are dead, and they were able to confirm that Boyle took Remy all on his own, without being under orders.”

“Officially, he’s suspended,” Aidan said. “And Daniels and Nowitzki aren’t worried about us anymore.”

“Even though they dug up somebody’s farm?”

“They left, didn’t they?” Walsh said. “We’ll be careful, and we’ll keep an ear to the ground, but as of right now, they aren’t our biggest concern.”

“What is?” Roman asked, and it sounded more like a prod than a question. Walsh met his gaze, saw his lifted tawny brows, and withheld the urge to shoot him the bird.

Instead, he took a sip of water, lit a cigarette, and said, “There’s something I need to tell all of you. Something…”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d groped for words. The last time he’d stalled out.

He’d even practiced. In his head. And, a half-hour ago, on the phone with Emmie.

With her, he’d let the shakiness bleed into his voice. Let it crack, and skip; let her hear, not by choice, but out of necessity, because the gentle sound of her voice an ocean away threatened to smash him to pieces, and he found that though he could control the words, he couldn’t control the way they left his lips. Ghost decided it was best to go north with Fox in secret. He wanted the feds to think he was out of the game, so that Abacus would think he was gone, and hopefully never see him coming.

When he tried to say that now, the words got jammed up in his throat, and he had to take another swallow of water.

“You okay?” Aidan asked beside him, and, yes, he looked so much like Ghost it was startling these days, but his eyes had always been, and still were, far kinder than Ghost’s. A natural sweetness that no amount of hardship had snuffed.

Walsh set his glass down with a thump, and the vise of tension around his throat loosened. “Yeah. I’m okay.” For now. He looked at Aidan, and then swept his gaze slowly around the table. “I have something to tell all of you, and you’re not going to believe me at first, and when you do, you’re gonna be mad as hell, and you’ll probably want to strip my patches right here and now. That’s your right. But I need to say it, and I need to say all of it. After that, you can vote on what to do about me.”

Rottie said, “What to do about you ?” He looked baffled, and more than a little worried.

“Yeah.”

I don’t think it’s going to go as badly as you think , Emmie had said on the phone earlier. They’ll be upset, and angry, yes, but they love you, and they love Ghost, and this is a special circumstance. You didn’t have a choice.

He hadn’t, really, with regards to Ghost leaving. But he could have chosen to tell the truth from the start. He was telling it now.

“It’s true that we learned Boyle had hired someone to kill Ghost, and it’s true that it was Big Jonny. Big Jonny really is dead. But Ghost isn’t.”

He held up a hand, a reminder that he needed to get all of it out first, before they started shouting, but no one looked on the verge of doing that. There were some blinks, some bugged eyes – but there were some sharply-traded glances, too. Flat mouths, and subtle nods, like yeah, we already knew that .

“He wanted,” Walsh continued, “to go to Virginia with Fox and handle the Abacus threat directly, and he didn’t want them to know he was coming. He wanted the FBI to be focused on Knoxville, and he wanted them to think we were dealing with a crisis. That we were weak, and too caught up in our own storm to be worried about them. The idea was to give him a chance to find some answers in Quantico, and for Mercy to get a head start in New Orleans

“But,” he pressed on, hand still raised for silence, “not everyone stuck to the plan.” Here he glanced down the table at Albie, who gave him the faintest nod, his expression encouraging. “When Ghost decided to send the women and children to London, Ava and Maggie roped Reese and Tenny into helping them get off the plane, and the four of them headed for New Orleans to join the search for Remy.”

He heard a few hissed breaths, and one muttered curse. The creaks of chairs and the lighting of cigarettes, but no one interrupted. He chose to take that as a good sign, whether or not it actually was.

“Alex and Colin headed that way, too, and they joined up with the others. When I spoke with Tenny last night, he said they’d rendezvoused with Mercy and his boys, and they’re all working together, now.

“The rest of the old ladies are, in fact, in London, and they helped conceal Ava and Maggie’s escape for as long as they could so no one here would try to stop them leaving.

“Ghost and Fox are responsible for Deborah Sawyer, and, in a roundabout way, Director Hames, though it was a sniper who pulled the trigger on him. Ian got a phone call from a man claiming to be the founder and director of Abacus. He wants a meeting. Ian took the jet to Viriginia, picked up Ghost and Fox, and now they’re headed to New York.

“That’s it, then. That’s where everyone stands.” When he was done, he let out a slow, unsteady breath, chest hollowed out, relief prickling cool and welcome across his skin. He’d said it. It sat on the table like a steaming, fresh-butchered body, and it was up to the rest of them to take what they would from it, and decide how furious they wanted to be.

Looks passed back and forth, side to side, but it was Roman who finally broke the silence. “Man. What an asshole. Ghost, I mean,” he clarified, when heads turned his direction. “Does he not get that we lie for a living? He couldn’t say, ‘oh, hey, by the way, I’m gonna play dead for a while. Maybe go along with that ‘cause I’m your president and I said so.’ Un-fucking-believable.” But his headshake, and the wry twist of his mouth said he believed every word, and wasn’t surprised in the least.

Dublin had his thick arms folded over his chest, and shot Walsh a narrow look. “And you knew about it, huh? The whole time? Was it fun pretending to be president for a few days?”

“Of course it wasn’t!” Albie snapped, leaning forward, finger stabbing through the air toward Dublin. “Look at the man: he spent all of yesterday hooked to an IV drip. He almost gave himself alcohol poisoning. He’s been more upset than if Ghost were actually dead.”

“You’re just defending him because he’s your brother,” RJ sneered.

Rottie looked wounded. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, so he could look down the length of it at Walsh, and raised his voice to be heard above the argument that gained heat and volume as Albie bit back at RJ’s barbs. “Why didn’t he tell us? Did he think we couldn’t pretend he was dead?”

He didn’t think Aidan could pretend , Walsh thought, and finally steeled himself, and turned to gauge the man himself.

Aidan’s gaze was already fixed on Walsh, and didn’t change when Walsh made eye contact. His expression was terribly vacant, the way it had been out in the parking lot, and then again in the office, the day Walsh broke the news of Ghost’s “death” to him. He knew that the others – Ghost especially – tended to discount Aidan’s mental acuity. They took flippant remarks and displays of a shallow nature at face value: they assumed Aidan didn’t think all that much, and even when he did, not deeply. But Walsh had spent too long with horses to be dismissive of withdrawal. Sometimes a horse really was dumb as a post…but not most of the time. And not Aidan. Aidan who stared at him with eyes dark and shielded, a wall thrown up between what he’d been told, and the way it was ricocheting through his brain like a bullet glancing off steel.

“Aidan,” he said, quietly.

He blinked at the sound of his name, and braced his hands on the edge of the table, pushed himself back so his shoulders pressed into the chair. “Be quiet,” he said, in a normal tone of voice, and Walsh thought at first Aidan was speaking to him. But then Aidan turned his head, and shouted, “Shut up!” to the table at large.

It was not a petulant, reactive scream, but a command, and everyone fell abruptly silent.

Aidan sat tall, hands still braced on the table, and he looked like a vice president, in tight control of himself, surveying them all disdainfully. A look that carried through in his voice, forceful and dampening. “Do any of you think there was a win here for Walsh? You all know my dad, you know how he works, how he thinks.” He gestured across the table at Michael. “He was so paranoid when Holly first showed up, he was willing to let her sickass family take her back if he thought they were a threat to the club.”

Oh shit , Walsh thought, because of all the scenarios he’d run in his mind, this hadn’t been one of them.

Aidan continued: “He sent Mercy back to NOLA when he found out he knocked Ava up. He threatened not to send her to college if Mercy didn’t leave! And then, when it suited him, he had Mercy come back to Knoxville, and tried to say they couldn’t be together!” Aidan slapped the table at the end of that sentence, and more looks were traded, these tight, wary…and full of remembrance. Brothers kept their heads down and didn’t get involved in the romantic lives of the others, but they’d all borne witness to these two dramas: Ghost’s callous ruling on Holly, his bloodless forbiddance of Mercy’s dog-loyal love for Ava.

“Maggie – his own wife,” Aidan said, “ran off to New Orleans without telling him. What does that tell you? What was Walsh supposed to do? His president gave him an order. If he disobeyed it, he would have been a disloyal vice president. But by following it, now he’s a disloyal brother. I’d love to know what any of you would have done in his position.

“What would you have done, RJ? Huh? Would you have told us all right away? Been the bigger man? And I don’t want a buncha bullshit,” Aidan said, when RJ started to respond. “’Cause you ain’t ever been in charge of anything in your life, and for good reason.

“What about you, old man?” he said, turning to Hound. “You got something real wise to say? You wanna start bitching about the good old days?”

Hound pursed his lips, and made an indignant face, but said nothing.

“Nobody at this table has ever run this club, nobody but Walsh, and my dad, who isn’t at this table, because he made a stupid fucking selfish decision not to be here…” He sighed. “Because he thought risking his own life in secret was better than all of us…” Here he faltered, teeth clicking together, throat working as he swallowed.

“He is an asshole,” he said, with a dip of his head toward Roman. “You’re right. He always has been. This is just one in a long line of asshole things he’s done.

“But don’t point the finger at Walsh. He’s following orders, and it almost killed him.” He dared someone to argue with a look, and then turned to Walsh. Beneath the impressive vice-presidential veneer of acceptance, his eyes had gone wild at the edges. “My question is, why tell us now?”

Emmie had asked the same thing, as gently as she’d asked everything else, as though she had sensed his fragility and had made an effort to handle him oh so carefully for fear he’d crack beyond repair. Ordinarily, he would have found it patronizing, but with T-minus thirty minutes before he addressed his club, he’d only wished she was there with him in person, small fingers working through the thatch of his hair to rub circles into his scalp, teasing at the tension headache there.

He'd known the answer, had felt its pressure like a boil building beneath the skin, but it hadn’t come to a head, hadn’t formed fully, coherently in his mind, until he’d told Emmie.

“Because now that the feds have backed off of us, I’m tired of sitting around here being useless. I see the wisdom in holding down the fort…but nothing about what’s been happening is wise, or normal, or even understandable. Our women and children are in London, and there’s nothing here to keep safe except a bunch of empty buildings.”

It was more than that, and they all knew it. It was their city to protect, their reputation, their legacy. But what sort of legacy was it going to be if a little boy died in New Orleans, and half the club lost their lives or their minds trying to get him back?

“I’m not really the president, and going forward, I might not be anything, depending on how the voting shakes out. So I’m not going to give orders. You can stay here if you want, or you can hand over your cut and walk away, or you can…make up your own mind. About what to do next. Ghost is in New York.” He pushed back his chair, and stood, and his legs were steadier, stronger, than he’d hoped. “I’m going to New Orleans.”

Then he turned, walked to the door, opened it, and walked through it.

His heart was beating like a high school drumline, but the steadiness persisted. He’d come to a decision, and it was the correct one. Whatever happened afterward, he was sure of his decision to go south.

He heard footfalls behind him – but not the slow, ground-covering gait he’d expected from Michael. No, these were quick, almost running.

He reached the bar, and turned.

And his face exploded with pain.

A bright, hot, numbing shock of it along the left edge of his jaw, and Walsh had time to be grateful that whoever it wasn’t hadn’t aimed for the eye, and risked knocking him out. Then the momentum of the blow carried him sideways, he tripped, knocked over a stool, and would have hit the floor if he hadn’t fetched up against the bar. He caught himself with a hand braced on the smooth wood surface, and reached to touch his struck face with the other, ready for a second hit.

But it was only the one, and as the seconds ticked by, the first cold numbness of the strike warmed, and then flared hot, and the pain crackled in electric arcs along all the affected nerves. The skin was already swelling, tight and hot to the touch, but a quick probe with his tongue proved none of his teeth were loose, and he hadn’t bitten the inside of his cheek. He was going to have one hell of a bruise, but it wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

Anyone in the chapel could have chased him out and hit him, and any of them would have been justified. But when he turned his head, he of course found Aidan standing there.

But it was an Aidan who still looked as vice-presidential as he had in the chapel, save the working and flexing of his right hand. The knuckles were red where he’d struck Walsh, and the way he flattened and then cracked them looked like it hurt.

“You can hit me again, if you want,” Walsh said. “I won’t try to stop you.”

“I will.” That was Michael, sliding in between them, seemingly out of nowhere. “You had your hit. That’s the only one.”

Aidan tipped his head back so he looked down his nose at Michael, and snorted. “Down, boy. I’m not gonna do anything.” He tried to step around him, and Michael stepped with him. “Seriously? Dude, I’m done.” He held up his empty hands. “And I’m your VP, so, like, fucking stand down because I told you to.”

Michael didn’t move, and Walsh knew exactly how chilling his unblinking stare was.

“Ah. I get it.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Dad’s not dead, which means Walsh isn’t prez, which means I’m nothing, huh? Just some stupid sucker who made an ass of himself, right?” The authority bled out of his voice, and he sounded tired and defeated.

Michael stepped aside, and Aidan came to the bar beside Walsh, leaned over, and plucked up a bottle of Jim Beam, the closest in reach. When he had it, he settled onto a stool, and took a slug straight out of the bottle.

Walsh didn’t sense a threat radiating off of him, so he climbed onto the neighboring stool.

Michael walked around behind the bar and started filling a clean towel with ice from the cooler.

“Thanks,” Walsh murmured, when he passed it over, and pressed it to his flaming-hot jaw.

Michael nodded, but didn’t retreat. Leaned back against the cooler and settled in to wait, gaze trained on Aidan. Loyal, despite everything.

Aidan took another swig, capped the bottle, and put it back. “Are you really going to New Orleans?”

“Yeah. Want to come?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

Walsh nodded, and, inwardly, felt the first stirrings of hope. To Michael, he said, “See which of your dogs your uncle can spare.”

“Just trackers?”

Walsh considered. Thought of Boyle, of Big Jonny, of a man in a wig calling “fillette” through the Lécuyer back door. “A catch dog, too. One way or another, Boyle’s not getting out of the swamp alive.”