Aidan stopped breathing.
Maggie leaned against his shoulder, and her fingers squeezed his as she looked at the image. “A girl,” she breathed. “Yourgirl, baby.”
Tonya said, “She’ll need a name. Be thinking of one.”
~*~
He hadn’t counted on it hurting this much. The ears, like the fingertips and the ends of the toes, were full of nerves, and the outer edge of his ear stung and pulsed and throbbed. It was making his whole head ache.
He’d had worse, of course he had. A man had taken his virginity at age twelve – and that didn’t count the things that had been done to him in the years preceding. But this still made him clench his teeth. Mostly because he knew there was more to come. Five-hundred grand wasn’t anything Ghost could go withdraw from the bank. And if he were in his president’s shoes, he wasn’t sure he’d roll over so easy.
He held onto the stone solidness of Ghost’s voice over the phone line earlier. “We’re getting you back, Kev. Understand?” And he held onto little Whitney Howard’s hand, like a shameless pussy, because she was small and sweet and she smelled like soft, feminine, comforting things, as her hair flicked through the bars and teased at his face.
“What’s it like?” she asked. “Being a Lean Dog.” And he knew she was seeking to distract him.
He was okay with that. Sitting up a little straighter, but not releasing her hand, he said, “Not that I can speak from experience, but I think it’s like being in one of those great big Italian families.”
“Yeah?” She laughed softly.
“Except nobody’s Italian. Not in Tennessee, anyway. Our New York chapter, yeah. But,” he said, refocusing, “it’s a brotherhood. We’ve got some of the old timers, and the legacies, who are related to the founders. Muscle and brains and the weird awkward ones.” His laugh was a little hollow. “The club is everything,” he said, sobering. “It’s the only thing I’ve got.”
“It sounds like a pretty good thing, though.”
It sort of did, when he laid it out like that. When he didn’t think too hard about where he was.
The outer door opened, up at the top of the concrete stairs.
They both froze. Tango imagined her stomach filled with dread the way his did.
“Get back from the bars,” he told her. When he let go of her hand, the cold air closed over his own. “We don’t want to look weak to them.”
She nodded and scooted toward the center of her cell.
When their captors arrived, they were both quiet and composed, cross-legged on the floor.
Bill the Faceless wasn’t with the two goons this time. That wasn’t a relief.
The two thugs bypassed Tango’s cell at a lazy stroll. Their eyes were on Whitney, and in an instant, the dread in his belly boiled up to become anger, burning back the haze of physical pain. The dogs had been let off the leash…and they’d decided they wanted to play.
One of them whistled, and the other laughed in an unmistakable way as they peered through the bars at Whitney.
“Baby, baby, baby,” one said to the other. “How old you think she is?”
“Betcha she can’t even drink yet,” Number Two responded, voice dark with intent. “Can ya, sweetheart? You even eighteen?”
Tango glanced over at Whitney, saw her wrap her arms around her knees and lift her chin, rebelliously silent.
“Don’t feel like talking?” One said. “Maybe I oughta come in there and see if your tongue’s working.”
Oh shit… Tango’s hands curled into fists.
“Twenty,” Whitney said. “I’m twenty.”
The thugs laughed.
“Just a little piece of veal,” One said.
The sound of the key grating into the lock of her cell door lifted the hair on the back of Tango’s neck. Whitney shot a frantic look toward him, eyes huge – pale blue eyes liquid with fright. It was a look that communicated everything: her terror, her innocence, her panic. Twenty, life only just beginning, and she was about to be violated unspeakably by her captors. It happened every day, all over the country, abuses carried out by sociopathic animals.
