Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (46 page)

In that instant Bridget
knew:
Toby Cary.

She knew. She knew it was
him, but she had to be sure. “Honey? Can you tell me your name, please? I want
to help.”

He was breathing fast,
crying. Whatever was happening was right outside his hiding spot, now, and the
yelling of the adults had mutated into wordless, frightened screaming.

Desperate, Bridget said,
“Toby? Is that you, Toby?”

Something hard hit the
door and the boy cried out.

“Toby,” said Bridget,
trying desperately to keep her voice down. “Toby, please, tell me if it’s you!”

A woman screamed, and the
call cut off.

Bridget stood at the
counter with tears in her eyes for a good thirty seconds, listening to the dead
air of the phone at her ear, before her brain caught up with what had happened.
She frantically brought up the number and tried to call it back, tried to get
Toby or whoever it was to pick up and answer her. But she could only sob
helplessly and listen to the line as it rang and rang. 

~ FIVE ~

Ghost

Ghost whistled quietly as he switched off his bike and
gazed up at the façade of The Academy of Il Santo della Florentina. The private
school was at the end of a long, twisting road up one of the prettier green
hills in the section of LeBeau that Ghost rarely had reason to visit. It wasn’t
like white collar bankers were out hiring the MC for jobs, and Ghost wasn’t
sure he owned a pair of pants that weren’t jeans, let alone anything as fancy
as what some of the dudes in this part of town were wearing.

He got more weird looks
riding his bike through these streets than he did walking through Shadyside.
Even the fluffy white cotton balls that rich people somehow mistook for dogs
yapped wildly anytime he came within view. LeBeau, as a whole, was a pretty
little place to live; this section of town took it to the extreme. Eyeing some
of the storefronts and residences, Ghost decided he wasn’t a fan of a lot of
the modern architecture the new money was bringing in.

But this school, now
this
was beauty. Someone with very old money had converted a Catholic mission from
the 1800s into a private academy for students in the primary grades, and they
were smart enough to do as little renovation to the original structure as
possible. Looming at the end of a bright white walkway was the main entrance,
once the façade of the chapel itself. A great archway curved over the door, and
cut out of the blazing tan sandstone within it, a geometric shape that reminded
Ghost of the way the Star of Bethlehem always looked in Christmas nativity
displays, with its compass-like points and round, inner glow. The door was
flanked by two domed towers that still held rusty, ornate iron crosses at their
peaks. A stone fountain as old as the mission sat off to one side of the
walkway, surrounded by a horseshoe bed of colorful desert wildflowers.

The rest of the academy
fanned out villa-style from the main chapel, terracotta-shingled roofs baking
in the sun. Around the perimeter, a sturdy, modern chain-link fence had been
built. The heavy wooden doors at the entrance looked original, and were still
flanked by statues of some old, bald saints in big, ugly robes. Stacked against
the clear blue sky, the building was pure old-world charm.

When he had prodded Sid
for information about Bridget, Sid had told him that she was a teacher. It
wasn’t the usual occupation of his conquests, but that hadn’t worried Ghost a
bit. He was great with kids for some reason—because the universe was a giant
joke, he assumed. It took Sid a couple of minutes to remember the name of the
school, and that was only after Ghost pulled out his smart phone and started
searching. Once they found it, he couldn’t blame the old timer for forgetting
it. It was a damn mouthful. Even the tasteful, modern sign hanging above the
front entrance looked like it was struggling to keep the whole thing up there.

“Fuck,” he said to
himself. “This place is the goddamn Ritz.”

He was hesitating. Maybe
Jase was right. If Bridget was working here, maybe she was out of his league.

He shook his head. Ghost
had never felt nervous about approaching a woman, and he wasn’t sure it was
nerves he felt now… it couldn’t be. Maybe he was just hungry. It had to be
that. What had he eaten today? He huffed his own breath for a clue and was
revolted at the smell that came wafting back at him. Quickly he dug into his
saddlebags until he found a container of months-old mints, and chewed five of
them.

“She’s just a woman,” he
told himself. “A beautiful Valkyrie next to which all women pale in comparison…
oh, fuck, get a hold of yourself, man.”

With a shake of his head,
he climbed off his bike and began to walk toward the school. The closer he got,
the less sure he was that he would be able to just walk inside and find her.
Every car he passed in the parking lot was a luxury model; rich people did not
tend to fuck around when rough-looking hooligans invaded their space.

Instead, Ghost beelined
toward the chain-link fence. A motley throng of kids were running around the
recess yard. They all wore matching uniforms, traditional Catholic school garb
that didn’t seem to inhibit the insanity of childhood released into the wild.
Kids climbed all over bright-colored gym equipment and played games that, from
a distance, looked like complete nonsense. Ghost shielded his eyes and tried to
see if he could spot Bridget out there with them.

“You’re not supposed to
hang around schools, you know. You look creepy.”

The voice piped up from
beneath him very suddenly. Ghost looked down to find a skinny little kid
squinting up at him, using the cape of his Batman action figure to shield half
his face from the sun. He was pale and weak-looking, uniform clean of dirt, his
hair so soft and freshly cut that he looked like he should be in some catalog
playing with a room full of expensive toys no reasonable parent would ever buy.
He looked up at Ghost curiously.

“Oh, really, smart guy?”
said Ghost. “Well, you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, so I guess we’re
both idiots.”

The kid laughed; it was a
tight, closed-lipped thing that told Ghost it was probably something he didn’t
do very often. Ghost bent down to his eye-level through the chain-link fence.

“How come you’re not
playing soccer?” Ghost gestured to the loud match at the other end of the
school yard.

The boy shrugged. “I don’t
really like sports.”

“Eh, me either. Too many
rules. What’s your name?”

“Toby.”

“Hi, Toby. I’m Ghost.” He
wiggled his fingers awkwardly through the holes in the fence, and Toby took
them with a giggle and shook them.

“Your name’s Ghost?” said
Toby.

“Yeah, my parents were
really into Scooby-Doo.”

Toby didn’t seem like he
got that one. Instead he pointed and said, “Is that your motorcycle?”

“Hell yeah, it is. Her
name’s Barbara.”

“Do you get to ride it
every day?”

“Sure do. Even some days I
probably shouldn’t, because of the weather and whatnot, but like I always say,
YOLO.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, some
cool-looking kids were saying it. I figured you could tell me what it meant.”

Toby laughed. “Well, it
sounds stupid.”

“You might be onto
something there, bud. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know a teacher named Bridget
Dawson, would you?”

Toby’s eyes lit up and he
took a big breath. “That’s my teacher! Miss Dawson!”

Ghost smiled. “Toby, I
sure am glad it was you who decided to risk his precious little life by coming
up to the fence to talk to a leather-clad stranger. You’re obviously my lucky
charm.”

Toby seemed like he
enjoyed hearing that. “Do you know Miss Dawson?”

“I’m friends with her
grandpa.”

“Oh, she told us he fought
in the war!”

“He sure did. I’ll have to
tell you some of his stories sometime. They’re pretty brutal.”

“I get in trouble if I
play war games. My dad broke my Call of Duty disc.” This last part came out
pained.

Ghost didn’t like hearing
that, and not just because he firmly believed every kid should grow up hearing
war stories and playing war games. He pointed at the Batman doll. “Hey, I have
a duty you and the Dark Knight can call for me.”

“What?” Toby laughed.

“One sec,” said Ghost. He
stood up and pulled his tiny notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his cut
and, leaning precariously on the chain-link fence, he penned a note for Bridget
asking her to meet him outside by the fountain. He folded it up and handed it
through the fence to Toby.

“Take this in to Miss
Dawson for me real quick, while recess is still on. Can you do that?”

Toby took the note in a
tight hand and smiled. He nodded. “Yeah!” Immediately he turned and ran on
heavy feet for the school, clutching Batman in his elbow.

“Toby, wait!” Ghost
hollered after him.

Toby came to a sliding
halt and turned. Ghost stretched his fingers through the fence again, only this
time, a twenty-dollar bill was stuck between them. Toby jogged back up to the
fence and took it from him with a curious gaze.

“Don’t ever do a job
without asking what’s in it for you, first,” said Ghost. “Now, off you go!” He
made a whip-cracking sound and Toby was off again, both the note and the money
crushed tightly in his fist. Ghost watched him wheel around kids jumping rope
and playing with giant rubber balls before he disappeared inside the massive
building.

With that done, Ghost took
quick steps back toward the front entrance of the Academy. He tried to sit
casually on the edge of the fountain so he would look cool when Bridget came
out, but the edge was way too tiny, and he decided he wouldn’t look very cool
if he fell the fuck in. Instead, he thrust his hands into the soft patch of
wildflowers around the fountain and pulled out a grip of tiny pink and orange
blooms attached to their stems—as well as their roots, and some clods of dirt.

Ghost was eyeballing the
ugly ends of the bouquet when he heard the heavy front wooden doors open. He
whirled quickly with the flowers held up. Bridget stood by the closed doors,
her arms folded, an almost bewildered smirk on her face. She wore tight black
pants and a scoop-neck white shirt that made Ghost salivate. Her shiny blonde
hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail, revealing big, blue gems on her
earlobes. His favorite part had to be the black leather boots pulled up to her
knees, ready to climb on the back of his bike and ride away with him.

That disapproving look on
her face drove Ghost insane. He smiled mischievously at her, and it only made
her smirk tighter. Already he could feel his dick getting hard at the thought
of kissing those angry, beautiful lips.

“I should have you
arrested,” she said.

Ghost held the flowers out
further. “I can think of a way to get me into handcuffs that’s
way
more
fun.”

Bridget scoffed and rolled
her eyes, but the smile on her face was genuine. She walked toward him, arms
still crossed, her boots clacking on the old cobblestone. Whatever resistance
she might have felt toward Ghost seemed like it was slowly, surely melting
away. After all, she could have ignored the note. But here she was, smirking at
his jokes, coming close enough that he could smell her lilac and jasmine body
wash.

She stood in front of him
and raised an eyebrow. “And you’re enlisting my hapless students on your quest
to get to that fun, huh?”

“Hey, Toby came up to me,”
he said. “And he got paid for his work. I’m not a monster.”

Her eyebrows rose. “That
is surprisingly decent of you,” she said.

“
Surprisingly
?
Ouch,” he said, grasping his chest in mock pain. “I haven’t even had a chance
to prove how indecent I am yet. Can’t we have our honeymoon phase first, where
the magic of my sexual prowess makes you ignore all my flaws for a while?”

Bridget flushed, and there
was a sparkle in her eye when she met his that sent a wave of lust rushing
through Ghost’s nerves. That she still wanted to resist him only made it worse.
“I don’t think it’s possible for you to be
that
good at sex.”

Ghost stepped forward just
a bit. Bridget didn’t retreat; in fact, the look in her eyes was curious.
Asking what he was going to do about it. Ghost leaned over until his lips
hovered right above her ear, close enough that he could imaging he could almost
hear the quickened beat of her pulse.  “But you’re just
dying
to find
out if I am, aren’t you?” he whispered.

For a split second,
Bridget closed her eyes as she inhaled sharply. Her skin flushed again, and she
licked her lips as Ghost pulled back and leaned over her face. She opened her
eyes and looked at him. Her glare was trying to be angry, but in her eyes was
pure, unadulterated lust.