The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) Read online

“You did awesome today,” Emmie told Kelsey, grinning, and held up her hand for the girl’s firm high-five smack.

  “That was so fun!” Kelsey bounced on the toes of her little black paddock boots. “Can we jump the big one next time?”

  “Maybe the time after that.” Emmie shot Kelsey’s mom a covert wink, and the woman nodded in relieved thanks.

  As mother and daughter headed for the entrance, side-by-side past and present versions of one another, Emmie felt the old stab of longing. Where was her mother these days? Where had the last Christmas card come from? Fresno?

  Would her mom come to her funeral after the Lean Dogs killed her? Or, more likely, there would be no funeral, because she’d be in that pasture next door. God, how many bodies were there?

  “You’re good with the little ones,” Walsh said behind her, startling her.

  She spun, forcing a blank expression to cover her surprise.

  He was wearing this awful faded short-sleeve button-up shirt that made him look extra farmer-ish. But it clung to him, and his hair was messy, and he needed to shave – and her stomach pulsed with heat as she imagined putting her hands on him.

  She couldn’t do that, though, because he had used her and then threatened her.

  “Kids are easier to teach than adults,” she said stiffly. “They listen better. Not that you have any experience with kids, though, I’m guessing.”

  He shrugged. “I like kids. Lots of the guys have ‘em.”

  “Oh? You mean the lumberjack? Or the Godfather back there?” She nodded toward the house.

  Walsh smiled. “Both of them, actually. The Godfather’s the lumberjack’s father-in-law.”

  “So?”

  “Sooo,” he said slowly, wincing to himself as he walked toward her, “it’s all a big family, the club.”

  “It’s going to kill me,” she said. “I don’t need to know anything else about it.”

  “Well, actually you might.”

  It felt good to be stubborn, gave her the only satisfaction she could have at this point to stand still and let him come to her, looking uncertain and awkward. “Why?”

  “Because you need to join it.”

  She took a deep breath and choked on air, half-coughing and half-laughing.

  He thumped her on the back. “You okay?”

  “Hell no,” she gasped, stepping back from him. “Join it? What the hell does that mean? I’m getting press-ganged into your freaking biker club?”

  “No, nothin’ like that. Women can’t be in the club.”

  “Oh, what a fucking relief!”

  “Em, calm down–”

  “Like hell!”

  “I’m trying to help you, okay? I’m trying to keep you safe.” The low rough urgency in his voice gave her pause, forced her to quiet and collect herself a little.

  “And whose fault is it that I’m not safe?” she asked.

  “Mine. All mine, I know that, love, I do.”

  “Stop calling me love. I’m nothing but a pawn to you, so don’t pretend otherwise.”

  His head reared back like she’d slapped him.

  “What do you mean by join the family?”

  “The club is a family,” he repeated. “It looks after its own. If you were a part of it – a loyal part of it, mind – you’d be protected, looked after, included. You’d be trusted, and kept safe. You’d be” – be dampened his lips, leaned in close to her, eyes bright – “you’d be a part of something. You’d have something besides a bloody barn full of horses.”

  “Poor little me,” she said quietly. “Nothing but some horses.”

  “That’s not what I mean–”

  “It’s exactly what you mean, you said so last night. The only reason I’m not a threat to your club is ‘cause I’m so pathetic and have no life.”

  “Em–”

  “But that’s okay, because you’re going to give me a family and a better life, right? Pray tell, Walsh, how do I go about joining your little family? Do I have to fill out paperwork? Or is it a tattoo situation?”

  He drew himself up so he seemed taller than normal, took a big, steadying breath. “You become my old lady. You marry me.”

  ~*~

  If only women were as simple as businesses. When it came to a bar, a garage, a strip club, hell, even a horse farm, he could run the numbers, calculate profit, account for risk, and come up with an airtight plan in a matter of minutes.

  But women were complicated, subtle, and so much stronger than men always wanted to give them credit. They could swallow hurt whole and let it eat them from the inside out in a way none of his brothers ever could. And when they fought, their claws were sharper.

  “I didn’t think it was that funny,” he said dryly, propping a shoulder against the rough outer wall of the barn.

  After he’d made his big suggestion, she’d blinked at him a few times, and then burst into hysterical, pealing laughter. She’d laughed until she couldn’t breathe, and he’d steered her outside, around the corner where Fred or Becca wouldn’t walk up on them.

  She gasped and fanned her face, tipping it back to the sky as she blinked at the tears her fit had brought on. “Oh my God.” Her voice was hoarse as the last few chuckles died away. “It was possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Lord.” She cleared her throat, dabbed her eyes, and glanced over at him, smile fading.

  “Marry you,” she said. “You actually think I’m going to marry you?”

  No, he thought. Why would anyone ever want to do that?

  But he said, “It’s the best option.”

  Her brows lifted, but it was a limp gesture. The emotional upheaval had tired her.

  “If you’re my wife, the police can’t question you about me. Can’t compel you to answer, anyway, and can’t take your testimony all that seriously.”

  “It’s the best option for keeping you guys out of jail.”

  He gritted his teeth. “It’s…ah, Christ, woman, can’t you see it? It’s best for you. If the cops can’t get to you, Ghost won’t want to. You marrying me is a show of good faith with the club, yeah? They’ll trust you more. If it comes down to it, they’ll protect you. I’m thinking about you, Emmie, and just you right now. No one will bother you, on either side of the law, if you’re my old lady.”

  She grew quiet and stared at him a long moment. He wondered what she was seeing in him, what she was looking for. “Was this your plan all along? When you bought the farm? Marry me and trap me?”

  Shit, he hadn’t even anticipated she’d go there. “No. Not at all, I swear.”

  Her small smile was sad. “You know, the worst part is, I want to believe that. Because the very worst part is, before last night, I was starting to think that…well, it doesn’t matter. Because now we’re here, and…yeah.” She let her head tip back so it rested against the wall. “What if” – she sucked at the inside of her cheek and it plucked her mouth at a pretty angle – “what if I didn’t want the barn to be the only thing I ever had? What if I wanted a husband and kids?”

  He smiled grimly. “Well, you’d get one of those things, at least.”

  “A real husband. One who loves me.”

  It was like there was a fist in his chest, gripping his lungs. “Well…if you meet someone, down the line…we can get divorced.”

  She glanced away from him, and her hair fell down off her shoulder, hiding her face from him. When she spoke, he could hear the tears in her voice. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  He wanted to touch her, put his arms around her. But he knew he was the last source of comfort for her right now.

  “No. I’m sorry, you don’t.”

  Twenty-One

  There were sheets. And then there were these sheets, Egyptian cotton with an astronomical thread-count. I have to stop this, he told himself, the same words that filled his mind each morning he woke in this bed. In the early days it had been a scream. Now it was a whisper, a faint kiss of a thought.

  Behind him, the lush, cream, perfect s
heets rustled – even the sounds they made were expensive – and a hand landed on his back. One slender fingertip traced the knobs of his vertebrae, bump-bump-bump down to the small of his back.

  “I have to go,” Tango said into his pillow.

  “You said that twenty minutes ago.”

  He had, but then Ian had said, “Do you really?” and as it always did, the sound of that voice had made it impossible to crawl out of bed. Because here, wrapped in Egyptian cotton, time was reversed, and he was Kevin again, and that cultured, English-accented voice was the only voice he could associate with pleasure, all others bringing pain, so much awful pain. Because before he was Tango the Lean Dog, before Jasmine and the other groupies, and the girls stuffing panties in his cut pockets at parties, he’d been Kev the dancing boy, raped every night of his life, made to dance for his owner. And the only respite had been the kidnapped English boy with the gentle hands and whispered endearments.

  But he couldn’t keep coming here, not for any reason.

  He sat up suddenly, head spinning as his eyes adjusted to the dim room. The sun wasn’t up yet, and he wanted to be well away from here by then. His brothers could never know. Never.

  In a single brief flash of awareness, the haze of the night burned off and left him sick and shaking, hating himself, hating – a little bit – the club.

  He heard Ian sit up behind him, felt his slender hands on his shoulders, thumbs finding the two precise knots of tension at the back of his neck. Ian’s lips at his ear, his long hair falling forward and landing against his back like silk. Heard the soft clink of teeth against one of his earrings.

  Tango closed his eyes. “No. I’m leaving.”

  “Suit yourself, darling.” Ian pulled back with a deep, dramatic sigh.

  Tango hated the way dizziness grabbed at him when he stood – too much cognac last night – but he forced it down, gathered his clothes up off the floor, the grungy jeans and t-shirt like refuse against the plush smoke-colored carpet. Everything about him was like a stain against this new life of Ian’s.

  Well, it was the life Ian had been born to, and in which he would have remained, had he not been snatched from his bed as a child.

  Life seemed doomed to preordained cycles that way. Tango was born to shit, and now he had, appropriately, shit.

  He dressed quickly, facing the wall. He couldn’t look at Ian until he was fully clothed, too raw and exposed in nothing but his inked up skin.

  When there was nothing else to do, he took a deep breath, and finally turned toward the bed.

  Ian sat propped against the headboard, the sheets around his waist, his exposed torso a work of slender marble-carved art that belonged in a ballet museum somewhere. His heavy auburn hair fell in sleek sheets down his shoulders, like he hadn’t slept on it. There was a true sadness in his face, his pale eyes large and soft.

  “I don’t like it when you leave,” he said quietly, and it was the true Ian shining through the shell of Shaman, the version of the man who’d once loved Kevin. Perhaps still did.

  “But I have to,” Tango said, because that’s all there was to say.

  Ian nodded. “Come tell me goodbye.”

  He crossed to the bed and leaned down to brace his hands on it. Lifted his face when Ian captured it between his hands. A kiss he knew better than any other, that tasted of childhood trauma and first love and shattered dreams. A punishment, a promise, and a poison.

  ~*~

  Holy fucking shit. Hello, big break, I’m Harlan. Nice to finally fucking meet you.

  Six-ten a.m. and here came Kevin Estes out of the swanky high rise complex he’d been parking his bike in front of for weeks. He’d done it over and over and over again, arriving after nightfall, leaving before dawn, there for what could only be a sexual liaison. Harlan had assumed some rich bitch had decided to take a walk on the wild side.

  That was true, but the rich bitch in question – not of the female variety.

  This morning, as Harlan watched slumped behind the wheel of his department issue Explorer, Estes stepped off the elevator into the parking garage like normal. But then someone had come out after him.

  A man.

  A man with long flashing hair and a Hefner dressing robe. Tall and thin, he’d caught Estes by the wrist and turned him, and there had been nothing of the victim about Estes as he’d gone into the other man’s arms and they’d kissed.

  Fucking kissed.

  The guy with the long hair finally let the biker go, and as he turned back toward the elevator, Harlan got a good look at his face.

  Holy shit number two. This guy’s picture was on the corkboard back at HQ, a rising star among the underground players who called himself Shaman, and who was so far untouchable. All the women in the office thought he was dreamy, with his sharp features and his long hair and his fancy suits.

  Ha! Like he’d give a shit what any of them thought.

  Harlan had been in a frenzy to get his long range camera in his hands, snapping picture after picture.

  This was his ticket. This was gold!

  It had begun in Georgia, an open-and-shut, easy-as-pie case of milking intel out of a pampered brat before finally putting the little shit away and moving on to the bigger fish he’d given up in his confession. But the Georgia chapter of the Lean Dogs had fucked all that up. And where had that gotten him? Nothing but a demotion, and a year skulking around the office until he finally convinced the higher-ups that he could be trusted with a new informant, a new assignment, and another go at bagging a big one – this time, the Lean Dogs. It hadn’t had anything to do with revenge. No, of course not. He wasn’t petty like that.

  But that idiot Ronnie, and that even dumber idiot Mason – those two had ghosted on him, and had he been able to pin it on the Dogs? No. That would have been just too easy.

  “Stick to paperwork,” his supervisor had told him. And that had been it. His career as a field agent had been toast, thanks to two blown assignments, and one motorcycle club.

  No. Fuck that. He wasn’t going out like that.

  His surveillance had begun on accident; he’d ended up behind one of the leather-wearing losers on the interstate, and just followed him into town, watched him go home, parked across the street for a bit.

  Then it had hit him: if he could catch them in something criminal, he’d have the hard evidence he needed.

  His therapist would have called it “obsessive behavior.” His therapist was full of shit, though.

  So far, he’d watched a lot of cooking, TV-watching, and fucking through curtains and the gaps in blinds. The fucking he didn’t mind so much – some of these chicks were hot – but he was getting nowhere with his case. His unassigned case. His personal case.

  He liked to think of it as a crusade.

  But finally – finally – he had something.

  Everyone knew MCs didn’t allow gay members to fly the colors.

  That’s what you called leverage.

  Twenty-Two

  It was hard to beat a full-color sunset, the sun sliding like melted sherbet down over the burnished tree tops, fading into cricket whispers and the fast rustle of night things. Especially in the summer, when it was a salute to the day that had passed. It tasted like expensive wine and smelled like the faint crackled edges of autumn. But if something could beat it, it was a sunrise.

  Emmie had been waiting for this one almost an hour, hands shoved in the pockets of her hoodie, head tipped back against the barn wall. She was sitting in the damp grass and didn’t care that her shorts were soaked clean through to her ass. This was the best spot, and she needed a sunrise, desperately.

  Her breath plumed like smoke, and she knew summer had passed the halfway point, that it would be cold soon. Would that make it easier or harder to pretend to be someone’s wife? Someone’s biker old lady? Harder, she thought. Too much time trapped indoors together.

  The first rosy glow ignited along the tree line like a gas burner turning on, and she pushed the unpleasant thoughts
from her mind. Just the sunrise, for now. Plenty of time to contemplate the ruin of her life later.

  She was on her feet and halfway through feeding the horses when Fred and Becca arrived; she gave them smiles and waves, forced herself to act normal. Walsh stayed away, thank God – probably getting that marriage license he’d said they needed.

  Jesus.

  She had evening lessons that day, so the morning was blissfully quiet. She dragged a saddle stand to the center of the aisle, turned on the radio, and lost herself in the mindless, soothing process of cleaning and then waxing tack.

  She wasn’t sure how long it was before the sound of a throat clearing startled her.

  A young woman stood on the other side of the saddle rack, wearing a simple navy column of a summer dress that showed off a distinct baby bump. She was brunette, slender-faced, pretty. She held a child on her hip that was somewhere between a baby and a toddler.

  Emmie’s professional side kicked in. “Hi.” She stood from her stool, wiped the beeswax off her hands onto the sides of her breeches. “Can I help you?” She glanced down at her hands, winced, and decided a shake was a lost cause.

  “Are you Emmie?” the brunette asked, and Emmie was instantly suspicious.

  “I am.”

  The girl smiled at her, and there was something too old about the gesture. It was in her eyes, a dark flash like she knew so many things. “You met my husband recently. Mercy.” She held a hand up above her head. “Real tall and long hair.”

  “Ah.” Emmie’s heart pulsed in a sequence of anxious beats. “Yeah. I guess you’d call it ‘met.’ ” Or was detained by, either way.

  “He’s kinda hard to miss.” The girl smiled again. “I’m Ava. And this is Remy,” she said of the baby. “Merc said maybe we could come by and pet the horses.”

  “Ah…” Technically, she wasn’t doing anything critical. The student saddle she was working on could wait a few minutes. It was the idea of doing something for the club, even something as small as showing a wife and her terribly cute dark-eyed baby a few of the horses, that set her teeth on edge. She felt so, so helpless in all this. A little protest couldn’t hurt her too much, could it?