Old Ghosts: Gypsy Riders MC (19 page)

“Thanks! Let’s go to my room,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along.

When Rosie showed me her room, she did so with pride.  The walls were painted a gorgeous lavender color and she had matching lavender lace curtains.   Her white daybed was covered in a pink flowered print comforter.  I noticed the two pictures on her nightstand, and walked over to look at them.

“This must be your mama,” I said to Rosie, as I looked at the photo.  “She was beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was, huh?”

She definitely was.  Her thick black curly hair framed her gorgeous, youthful face.  She had huge green eyes, and a pretty smile.  It was one of those smiles that was so sweet and genuine, you knew she had to be a really nice person.

I looked at the other picture, a snapshot of Mike and Rosie at Disneyland, both of them wearing mouse ears.

“This is wonderful!” I said, laughing.

“I know, I love that picture so much!” she said, laughing with me.  “Daddy was okay with wearing the ears, but it took some convincing to get him to take a photo with them on.”

“I bet!” I said, returning the pictures to her nightstand, and following behind her as she completed her tour of the house.  It smelled like the two of them.  I loved that about houses, how they often adopted the smell of the inhabitants.  Or, maybe it was the other way around.  Either way, their house smelled faintly of leather, crayons and lilac.  

I made Rosie breakfast as she fed lil’ Mike.  She was so sweet with him, and I smiled as she made sure to give him exactly the correct amount of food.

“Daddy says bulldogs can get fat really easily, and so we have to be very careful with how much we feed him,” she told me.

“He is a very affectionate dog, isn’t he?” I said, as I watched him rub his face against her leg before diving into his food bowl, sloppily consuming his food in a messy frenzy of saliva and snorting and slurping.

He finished quickly, his brown eyes pleading for more from Rosie.

“No, lil’ Mike! That’s all you get, boy.”  Rosie sat down on the kitchen floor, hugging and petting him.  He began licking her face, and her giggles filled the house.

It was weird being here without Mike.  Especially since it was the first time I had seen his home.  But I could see Rosie was very comfortable, and that made me happy.

“Reaper usually makes me pancakes,” she said, quietly petting lil’ Mike as I stirred the batter.  I felt terrible about Reaper.  Mike’s face had been filled with worry when I saw him at the clubhouse, and when he told me what the doctor said, I could feel him shaking.  I agreed with him that Rosie didn’t need to know about Reaper just yet, so when she mentioned him, I kept my voice calm.

“I bet they’re awesome!  Hopefully, these will be almost as good as his!”

She smiled up at me, her eyes curious.

“Do you like my Daddy?” she asked.

“Sure, I like him, honey.  Your Daddy is a very nice man.”    I wasn’t sure where this line of questioning was headed, but I was determined to tread lightly.

“I think he likes you, too,” she said quietly. “I’ve never seen him smile at anyone else that way.”

“Oh.”  I said, at once elated and yet at a total loss for words.

“It’s okay, though,” she said. “I like you too, Ms. Daisy.”

“Oh, honey,” I said, walking over to her and leaning down to hug her.  “I like you, too!  And I’ll tell you what, Rosie.  If we aren’t at school, you can just call me Daisy, okay?”

“Okay, cool.”  She jumped up and hugged me quickly before running down the hall to her room.  “I’m going to go play in my room, let me know when the pancakes are ready!”

In a flash, she was gone.  It was all so simple for kids.  Rosie didn’t seem to question why I was there, or how long I was going to be there.  She just accepted it.  And her acceptance made it all so easy.

It made me hopeful that if or when the time came to tell Rosie that she was going to be seeing a lot of me, she would be just fine with it. 

I was just putting the pancakes on the plates when I heard a soft thump outside.  When I saw lil’ Mike start to growl at the door, I put down the spatula and walked to the front door.  I peered out of the peephole, and saw nothing at all.  Slowly, holding back the growling bulldog with my foot, I opened the door.  Everything was calm and peaceful, only there was one thing missing.

Sonny.

I took three steps out the front door and froze when I saw his boots sticking out from around the corner.  He was lying in front of my truck, unmoving.  My first thought was Rosie, and I ran back in the house to find her.

I was two steps down the hall when I saw them.  I froze, my heart stopped in my chest.

Todd and Rosie were standing near the back door. A creepy smile was spread across his face, and he had one hand on Rosie’s shoulder and a gun in his other hand, pointed directly at her.

Lil’ Mike growled at my side, and I picked him up and held him in my arms to keep him from charging them.

“Hi, Daisy,” he said.

“Todd.”  I was stunned.  My mind raced as I tried to assess the situation.  My gun was still in the truck inside my backpack, entirely too far away to do me any good.

“It is so good to see you, Daisy,” he said.  The fact that he was touching Rosie made me sick to my stomach.  The first thing I needed to do was get her away from him.

“Rosie, come here, sweetie,” I whispered.  She didn’t look scared, but she looked confused.  I sighed with the tiniest bit of relief when he didn’t stop her from walking over to me.  I put my free arm around her, and stood slightly in front of her.

“What are you doing here, Todd?” I said.  Growling, lil’ Mike struggled to get away from my grip.

“Now is that any kind of a greeting, sweetheart?  After all this time?  I’ve missed you so much, Daisy.”

“What do you want, Todd?” I asked. Surely, he didn’t expect me to possibly maintain any sense of politeness? His demeanor was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, not to mention that there was a man unconscious outside.  No, there was no way Todd was here for polite conversation.

I had to get Rosie out of here. I had to get to my gun somehow.  The fact that I had a kitchen full of knives dawned on me as well.

“What do I want?” Todd said, as he began casually strolling around the living room.  He put his gun in the waistband of his slacks, and began picking up pictures as he went along, looking at them as if he were a guest for dinner.

I knew then that I couldn’t make any sudden movements.  I couldn’t take a risk of Rosie getting hurt.

“Who are you?” Rosie asked, leaning into me and putting her arms around my legs as she stood beside me.

“Who am I?” Todd asked, turning to face us.  He walked over and bent his knees, crouching down to look into Rosie’s eyes.  “I’m Todd, honey. And you’re Rosie, right?  You’re in the second grade, am I right?”

My skin crawled.  I didn’t want him anywhere near Rosie, let alone know anything about her.  I cringed thinking about what else he knew about her.

Rosie nodded, taking a step away from him, and hiding behind me slightly.  Kids could smell evil even better than adults.

“Todd, I want you to leave.” 

He stood up and took a step towards me, standing so close to me I could smell him, but just out of the dog’s reach. The scent of his familiar aftershave sickened me.  I raised my chin defiantly.

“Leave.”  I said firmly.

“Oh, Daisy,” he said, smiling at me.  “I’m nowhere near ready to go just yet.”

“What do you want, Todd?”  

He leaned in so close I could smell his breath this time, and it took all my willpower not to vomit on him.  The fear.  The hate.  The anger.  All of these things, mixed with the pure disdain that I felt for him, churned up inside me and I had never felt sicker in my life as his lips began moving mere millimeters from mine.

“I want you, Daisy. You’re mine. God told me so. I’m not leaving without you, my love.”

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

I sat outside the clubhouse door with Demon, watching the smoke of his cigarette float up into the sky.  Sam had been working on Reaper for hours and there was still no change in his condition. I was ravaged with equal parts of fear, guilt and rage.  I took a long draw off of Demon’s cigarette, and poured a shot of whiskey down my throat.  

I was hoping to fight off the demons inside of me, but today they were winning.

“Do you think he’s gonna make it, boss?” Demon asked.  I knew I wasn’t the only one worried. It never ceased to surprise us when one of us got hurt.  We went around like we were some kind of band of invincible beasts, like nothing could penetrate us, like we were fucking untouchable or something.

Days like this rattled us.  It reminded us that we were mortal.  A fact most of us spent our days trying desperately to deny.  But our bloody comrade was doing his damnedest to prove us all wrong.  

“Of course he’s going to be okay,” I said, a little too gruffly, before grabbing the bottle and walking away into my office.  I just wouldn’t accept any other outcome.

My phone rang and I groaned when I saw it was Kelly.  I wouldn’t have answered it at all, but I had a feeling she might have some hint of what the word on the street was about the shit that went down at the hanger.

“Hey Mike,” she said, her voice instantly making me snarl.

“What’s up, Kelly?”

“Just checking in.  Thought you might know something about a bloody airplane hanger we found outside of the airport.”  So she didn’t know much, after all.  “We found a whole bunch of blood, and no bodies, except one.”

“Just one, huh?”

“Yeah, our mutual friend, Jackson Sullivan. Thought you might know what happened?”

“Nope.” I was pretty sure she was just shooting in the dark.  If she had anything concrete to tie us to the scene, she would have said so right away.

“Word on the street is there were a lot of bikers in that area.  Cretins.  And I did hear last week that you were supposed to be doing a job for Sullivan.”

“Cretins, huh?  Well, then it sounds like you’re barking up the wrong tree to me. The Gypsy Riders decided not to take that job.”  Taking the van instead of our bikes to the job was a good idea. 

“Yeah, I guess.  I just thought you might have heard some chatter about it.”

“Nope, not a word, sorry.”

“That’s alright.  How’s Rosie doing?”

I hated hearing my daughter’s name roll off this bitch’s tongue. Every time she said it, it sounded like a threat to me.

“She’s great.”  I wanted off the phone. She obviously had no information for me, and was completely useless to me.

“So, Mike.  When do I get to spend some time with you again?”

“You mean when do you get to blackmail me again?”  I asked.  I remembered the photos in my desk and smiled at the fact that I wouldn’t ever have to touch her again.  It felt good to have my power back, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m busy, Kelly.  I got a lot of shit going on right now.  Maybe some other time?”  I wasn’t in the mood to unleash my newly gained knowledge of her secrets just yet.

“Yeah, yeah…but don’t wait too long, Mike.  I like your cock.”

She hung up without another word, and I rolled my eyes as I put my phone on the desk.  I was so sick of her bullshit.