This wasn’t the sort of conversation Vince wanted to have in an IHOP parking lot. He reached to lay a hand on Mason Stephens’ arm. “Why don’t we sit in my cruiser–”
“Don’t you fucking interrupt me when I’m talking,” Stephens growled. He jerked his arm away, before Vince could make contact.
The mayor of Knoxville was in a…regrettable…state. He’d jerked his tie loose and ruined his carefully brushed hair passing his hands through it countless times. A vein stood out in his forehead, his cheeks flushed.
“I just don’t think,” Vince said, “this is something you want to talk about out in the open.”
“Fuck you,” he fumed. “This isn’t a discussion. This is an order. You find my son and his cousin. You find them, or I’ll have your damn badge.”
Vince took a steadying breath. “Sir, I understand that you’re upset and worried.” Before he could get interrupted again, he said, “But it’s like I already told you. I can’t file a missing persons report for them until they’ve been missing for three days.”
“You can if I order you to.”
“Mr. Stephens, you have to understand that young men in their twenties go off and do stupid shit. They get wasted and shack up with strange girls, and they make spur-of-the-moment trips to Vegas. I’m sure Mason and Ronnie will turn up.”
Stephens started to explode again, and then gathered himself, with visible effort. He pressed both hands over his face a moment, breathing through his fingers.
Elderly patrons moved in and out of the restaurant, coupons for free pancakes clenched in gnarled hands. A knot of stay-at-home mothers wheeled strollers up to the door, all of them chattering about the latest episode ofThe Bachelor.
Stephens lowered his hands and said, “I trust Agent Grey told you that my cousin Ronnie was a confidential informant for the FBI.”
Vince felt his brows go up. He’d suspected Mason, not the meek, well-groomed boy he’d met at Dartmoor the other day. It made sense, though, now that he thought about it. He was frowning before he could understand his emotional reaction to the news. “He wasn’t really the girl’s boyfriend. He was a plant, to feed information to the FBI.”
Stephens nodded and made a dismissive gesture.
“Even if you hate the Dogs, that girl Ava’s never done anything to anybody. She’s an innocent.”
“Innocent? Was she innocent when she put my boy in the hospital?”
“Ava Teague got beat to hell that night. If she’d been my daughter, I would have congratulated her for what happened to Mason.”
Stephens closed the distance between them with two vicious strides, face flushing a deep red. “That little bitch is one ofthem. She almost killed Mason, and now he and Ronnie are missing? That’s the Dogs, and you know it is. They found out, somehow, that Ronnie was reporting on her. And…” He trailed off, face anguished as he considered the very real possibility that Mason and Ronnie were already dead. “You find those boys,” he whispered, pleading now. “You find them, and I’ll hang all those fucking bikers from the lampposts down Main Street when you do.”
As Stephens turned away, Vince said, “I can’t arrest anyone just because you have a gut feeling.”
The look Stephens threw over his shoulder was murderous. “Don’t get comfy in that office of yours. You won’t have it long.”
Handmade signs sunk in the grass on wooden stakes flanked the streets of downtown Knoxville. Anti-Dog, all of them, demands that the club pull out of town, be sent to jail; one even depicted stick figures in cuts being shoved off a sheer cliff by a bulldozer. When Ghost stopped at a red light, and a woman pushing a stroller across the intersection passed in front of him, she shot him the bird. Classy broad.
He felt the city’s fear, censure, even contempt, all the way through downtown.
The James house sat on its quiet corner, tidy and colorful. There was a company taking care of the lawn these days, with James’s hip such a problem. If times were less hectic with the club, Ghost would have been sending prospects to mow the yard and trim the hedges.
Bonita answered the doorbell like she’d been expecting him, nodding to herself and urging him into the house with a wave as she led the way. “Si, he is wondering why all this hatred in town.” She threw him a look over her shoulder as they walked. “I am wondering too, Ghost. This is not right.”
Ghost sighed. “Yeah, well…” She wasn’t getting anything more out of him than that.
She tossed her hair in a way that told him she was quietly angry when they reached the threshold of the three-season porch. “There,” she said. “Something to drink?”
“No, thanks. I won’t be here long.”
Her heels clacked loudly across the tile as she retreated.
James was cozied up in a wide arm chair, a blanket across his lap even though it was almost seventy degrees. He looked thin, veined, wrinkled. He looked old, decades older than he had the last time he’d worn his cut.
Ghost felt instant guilt. It was the club that had been keeping him going. Without it, he was going to slowly waste away in this chair, watchingThe Price is Rightand eating Fritos.
“El presidente,” James greeted with a smile. “How’re you liking the view from the head of the table?”
