“Oh.”
“Please tell me someone besides me has noticed that he is very not okay.”
A pause. And then Ava let out a deep breath. “Yeah,” she said, softly. “He’s…he’s good at hiding it. Covering it, I guess. Usually. I don’t know if he’s been unhappy all along, and just stopped trying to keep us from noticing, or if maybe it’s been a long, slow slide into it.” Another pause, and shame touched her voice. “I’ve been busy with the kids, and work, and helping Mom, and…listen to me making excuses. There is no excuse. I should be checking up on him better.”
“He was better tonight,” Leah said, her annoyance evaporating; replaced by a gentle sort of sadness. “He said he was helping coach the high school quarterback.”
“He is?”
“Yeah. He said he’s really enjoying it. Being back into football like that again. You should have seen the way he was smiling.”
“Kinda dazzling, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t seen that smile in a long time.” She gave a low, considering hum. “I don’t think he ever wanted to be a Dog. I nudged him that direction.”
“It’s not your fault. Nobody sticks out their prospect year if they want to leave, right?”
“Right.” But Ava didn’t sound convinced. “Tell you what: I’ll have a dinner. Aidan and Sam, Tango and Whitney. Carter. Oh, and you should come, too.”
“To your couples party?”
“Not a party, a dinner, and not just couples. You said he was happier with you, so, you can come and make him happy.” She laughed. “God, I just heard how that sounds, and it’sbad. But. Just come. It’s not a couples thing. It’s family, and you’re family.”
Leah smiled to herself. “Okay. What can I bring?”
Eighteen
Doves burst from the rafters overhead, the sudden working of their wings loud as clapping hands in the dank stillness of the old mill. Dust and feathers and old tatters of cobwebs showered down from above.
Ghost side-stepped the falling debris, moving in closer to the triangle spray-painted on the wall. “There was nothing else?” He touched the paint with his fingertips; dry, soaked deep into the wood. It could have been weeks or months old, though the color retained its brightness. “Nothing else out of place?”
“Not that I could find,” Eden said behind him. Ghostlikedher. She reminded him of his own girls; the way she was practical, and smart, and didn’t fuck around with important stuff. “But I didn’t go wading out through the tall grass.”
“The kids’ll find it, if it’s there.” He’d sent Reese and Tenny out into the unkempt fields behind the building, told them to search for anything relevant to the crime at hand.
He nodded toward the tag. “What’s your take?”
Her boots – sensible, but rebellious Docs – scuffed over the dirt floor as she came to stand beside him. “It’s a triangle,” she said. “Generic in that sense. An easy shape to try for someone unused to using spray paint.”
“Fox said he thought it was meant to be the yield sign.” That’s the way it read to him; that was what had jumped out the moment he’d laid eyes on it.Yield. Maggie called him paranoid, but he’d been in the club long enough to know that sometimes the wildest option was the truest.
He glanced over to get a read on Eden’s expression.
She was frowning, arms crossed, one thumb tap-tap-tapping in the crook of her leather-clad elbow. “Part of me thinks that’s exactly what it is. But another part of me thinks disappearing Allie Henderson is really convoluted as far as sending a message to the club goes.” She turned toward him, brows lifting. “It’s an obscure message, at best.”
He nodded and glanced back toward the triangle.Yield. It would be a rare, strong individual to challenge the club this way. And someone more devious and insidious than the enemies they’d faced in the past.
Like Luis Cantrell, an unhelpful voice chimed in the back of his head. He’d never met him, hadn’t seen him for himself, but he trusted Candy. Trusted that if Candy was properly spooked, and insistent that an enemy would strike again, then itwouldhappen.
“Ghost,” Fox said, behind them, in the threshold. They turned. “You’ll want to see this.”
~*~
Reese had found it. Snagged on a serrated stalk of seed-heavy grass, blowing in the wind like a pennant. A shirt. A girl’s shirt. Size small. An airy, embroidered bit of white cotton and silk. A three-quarter sleeve and a belled hem. Like something a girl would wear to a party, under a light jacket.
Ghost stood just beyond its reach, as it rippled and pulled at the stalk to which it was affixed. He couldn’t see any blood, but that didn’t mean anything. Looking at the sheer fabric, he would have guessed she wore another shirt under it.
