Page 136 of Long Way Down

Toly shrugged.

“But the situation here is a little bit different.”

“You can say what you mean,” Dixie said. “I’m not a kid, or an idiot. You can just tell me that if I’m sleeping with Pongo so I can arrest half your club, you’ll kill me.”

Just once, Pongo wished that all that fire he admired so much could be dimmed a fraction. “Dixie.”

“That’s the truth, right?” she pressed on, gaze fixed on Mav, voice undercut with a nervous vibrato. She stood up, suddenly – even Toly lifted his head, eyes a fraction wider than their usual slumberous half-mast – and hiked up the hem of her shirt, flashing lean stomach and her killer tits, still wearing her bra, thankfully. But it was a flimsy thing, all white lace, and couldn’t have hoped to conceal a mic and its wires. She turned a full revolution, then dropped the shirt and sat again. Her plate lay face-down on the floor, forgotten. “I’m not micced up, so let’s stop pretending and just say it. You’ll kill me and dump me in the goddamn river if I get any of you in trouble.”

Pongo could see her pulse throbbing in the side of her throat. She swayed against his shoulder, and he was afraid she might pass out.

“Where’s your phone?” Shepherd asked.

Pongo pitched forward so he could look at him around Dixie. “Fuck you, you’re not getting her phone.”

All the smirking, sneering amusement had left Shepherd’s face, and his expression had become the cold, flat, brick wall of the sergeant-at-arms. Knoxville’s Mercy Lécuyer got all the club-wide fanfare when it came to crazy, that Cajun croon and the tacklebox he carried. But each chapter had its own psycho, and Shepherd was New York’s. Toly had killed more people, and knew more ways to do it. But Shepherdenjoyedthe dirty work, and that was the kind of crazy that made Pongo’s blood run cold.

Shepherd leaned forward too, so they faced one another, the width of Dixie’s hips all that separated them; close enough for Pongo to see the flare of intent in the other man’s gaze. “You born yesterday?” he asked. “She could be recording us right now on it.” He sat back, and turned to Dixie. “Get it.”

“I saidfuck you,” Pongo snarled.

“Nate,” Mav said, a verbal restraint. His gaze softened a fraction when he turned to Dixie. “Where’s the phone, hon?”

Pongo heard the dry click of her throat as she swallowed. She nodded toward her bag, where it sat beside the coffee table. “In there.”

Shepherd shifted forward, sofa frame creaking –

But Toly moved faster. In a smooth glide, he was up, empty plate on the table, and he bent and snatched the satchel up neatly as he left the room. A bedroom door shut with a quietsnick.

Dixie’s shoulder pressed into Pongo’s as she breathed in short, open-mouthed pants. In and out, in and out. Her hands balled into fists on top of her thighs, knuckles white, joints popping. Pongo didn’t know if fear or fury was winning inside her, only that she was boiling, and she’d been through too much tonight. This wasn’t fair. He wanted to scream…

But this was the way things had to happen. This was his world, and if she wanted to stick around in it, she had to walk the gauntlet, first.

“Shep,” Maverick said. “Go make us some drinks.”

“I don’t–”

“Go.” Mav could look unforgiving when he wanted to, and he did so now.

Shepherd grumbled, but he got up and retreated into the kitchen.

Mav watched the doorway a moment, shaking his head. Then turned back to them. He tilted his head to the side, and he was still soft with Dixie, but not gentle. Warm, but not patronizing.

“Alright, we can be honest,” he said. “This is a big club, and it’s an old one. Over the years, when someone double-crossed it, they went missing and were never found. Do I need to spell that out, or…?”

“No.”

He nodded. “We have enemies. We aren’t pacifists: we believe in revenge. In sending a message. We’re not all felons, but we’ve all done things that could rack up multiple felonies if they saw the light of day.”

His mouth twitched, not a smile this time. “We’ll help an old lady carry her groceries, volunteer at a rec center, donate to a blood bank. We’ll obey traffic laws – mostly. Within reason. We don’t rob liquor stores, or mug anybody, or any of that little, petty, awful shit that makes so many ordinary people just plainbad, down deep.”

It was something that every chapter president Pongo had met or been in contact with shared: the hatred of the casual, everyday evil. If someone crossed the club, they’d put them in the ground. But it was the little things that inspired contempt: shoddy housekeeping, bad manners. Picking on the weak or the elderly; treating your city like your own personal whipping boy and trash can.

“We are not,” Maverick continued, “contrary to popular belief, anarchists. We don’t thrive off chaos. We are a society. A self-contained kingdom. We want to be left alone. We want to make our own rules, mete out our own justice; protect our own and hand down our own histories. We live outside the law because the law doesn’t exist to protect people like us; it protects the people at the top, and our founders made the decision a long time ago that we would not be preached to by scumbags and sycophants just because they dress flashier than us.”

Pongo was more than a little bit impressed.

Beside him, Dixie let out a tremulous breath, but her voice had firmed. She was realizing, he thought, hoped, that the conclusion of this speech was not an order for Shepherd to put a bullet between her eyes. She said, “I’m hunting way nastier game than the Lean Dogs.”