“Ava.” Mercy’s voice tore her from the awful dream, slammed her back into the bed in the dark dorm room.
She gasped, shoving up on her elbow, willing the phantom pain, the images away.
“Hey.” His hand was on her hip, rubbing slow circles through the blankets. “You alright?”
She sat up, wiping at her eyes. They were sore, her whole face puffy and swollen from crying earlier; she felt her pulse throbbing in her cheeks and temples and eyelids. “I…what’s going on?”
She blinked and saw the faint panel of light coming in through the open door from the hall. Someone stood framed in silhouette in the threshold. Mercy sat on the side of the bed, hand still on her hip, just a hulking shape in the dark.
He reached up and pushed her hair back off her face, swept her cheek with his thumb. “It’s three in the morning,” he said, voice as gentle as his touch. “I’ve been out hunting with Hound and Rottie.”
She drew in a deep breath.
“We thought you might want to see them, before…” He didn’t have to say the rest. Before he went to work on them.
It was her father in the doorway, his voice floating toward them. “Just if you want to, Ava. You don’t have to.”
Adrenaline flooded through her veins and she was wide awake in an instant. “I want to,” she said, squaring up her shoulders. It felt like someone else possessed her body, someone certain and ferocious. “Let me get dressed.”
“Right,” Ghost said, and stepped back.
Mercy patted her leg and then went to join him, flipping on the lights and closing the door on his way out.
She tossed back the covers and was amazed how clear-headed and sure-footed she was. Her breathing was regular, her pulse slow.
She pulled on her socks, jeans and boots, pulled her jacket on over Mercy’s t-shirt and zipped it closed over top of the running black dog silkscreened on the front.
Ghost and Mercy were holding up opposite sides of the hall when she stepped out, hands in their pockets, both drawn and visibly tired, both electrified from the inside out by the promise of justice. Whatever animosity still lingered between them about her, it had been shelved indefinitely; they were galvanized and brought together by this singular purpose.
“How’d you find them so fast?” she asked as they shoved away from the walls.
Ghost led the way; Mercy fell into step beside her.
“Hound and Rottie can find anyone. They were together, freaking out because you had the phone,” Ghost said.
In the common room, Carter lay asleep on one of the sofas. Someone, most likely Maggie, had thrown a blanket over him. Maggie, still dressed, sat at the bar with a tumbler of whiskey, legs crossed, beautiful even while exhausted.
Ava shared a look with her mother as she passed through the room, a silent give and take of support for one another. Then she was following Dad out into the utter blackness of predawn.
The air was cool and clean-smelling, the usual taint of river pushed down by the sharp cut of clouds and sky and slumbering autumn grass. It was too dark and too early for the fog to have set in, the usual rolling-in of thick low banks of it off the water. The stars had all winked out. Only the security lamps on the Dartmoor lot evidenced life.
Ghost led them into the dark office of the bike shop, pausing at the door that connected to the garage bays, turning to give her a measuring look through the gloom. Faint light filtered through the front windows, making him look sharp and ageless.
“Ready?”
She understood the things he didn’t say: that he shouldn’t be doing this; that this was club business now, and she had no right to it; that he felt like a shitty father for inviting her to step into more pain; but that this was a way he was trying to make up for all those other shitty-father things he’d done. He was giving her a chance to gain some closure, because that was the only way he knew how to love her.
Mercy’s hand landed at the small of her back, supportive and reassuring.
“Yes,” she said, voice steady. “I’m ready.”
Inside the working area of the garage, all customer bikes had been removed, each half-finished project shoved to the side and draped with oil cloth. The benches and tool chests had been lined up along the back wall. The roll-top doors were cinched tight, their narrow, rectangular windows covered with garbage bags and duct tape. In the middle of the cleared center bay, two plastic lawn chairs had been set up, side-by-side, right over the drain in the concrete floor. And there were Ronnie and Mason, in rumpled clothes, duct-taped hand and foot to the chairs, strips of the silver tape over their mouths. Ronnie had a very obviously broken nose, its shape distorted, the skin purple and broken, nostrils crusted with blood.
Walsh stood with one foot braced against the wall, a yellow legal pad in one hand, pen lodged behind his ear. He’d be taking notes for Mercy, a record of everything the cousins had to reveal to them.
Walsh gave her a small nod of greeting as she stepped into the bay.
Ghost moved to stand against the closed doors.
