Page 340 of Devil’s Disciples

“You ever meet Him?” I asked. “That George fella?”

“Ghost mentioned him a few times, but I never met him, no.”

“In case you didn’t catch it in that letter, he left him half of his money. Let me tell you what. Half’s a whole hell of a lot.”

“If Abby left him that house, I’m guessing she left him a sizeable sum of money, too. She made millions. Maybe tens of millions.”

I raised my brows.

He raised his. “More?”

“Yep.”

“Good for her,” he said. “Good for you, too. I guess.”

His gaze went blank for a moment. He looked up. “Don’t know that I’d tell the rest of the fellas that you got any money. Definitely don’t say how much. Might cause some—”

“Hadn’t planned on it,” I said. “Knew you wouldn’t give a fuck, though.”

Baker didn’t care about money. He gave away most of what he earned. He was a modern-day Robin Hood, of sorts. Some of the other fellas weren’t as disconnected from their earnings. Cash, for instance, had one concern with the club’s business: when am I going to get my money? The rest of the fellas landed somewhere between Baker and Cash.

He tidied his desk. “Did you tell your parents about Ghost?”

“Fuck no!” I seethed. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Sorry I mentioned it,” he said. “Didn’t know if something like this warranted patching things up.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me something like that.”

He shrugged. “You know how Ghost was about it. It always bothered him that you couldn’t forgive them. You were young. Hot-headed. We all were when we were young. It never was that big of a deal to him—”

It was a big deal to me. Enough of a big deal that I walked away and never looked back. “It comes down to respect. You know how I am about that. We’re done talking about it. End. Of. Discussion.”

He resituated the items on his desk that he’d rearranged moments before. Tidying up did for him what planting flowers did for me. After watching him for a moment, I broke the awkward silence.

“You find it funny that Ghost left that much money to a guy we didn’t even know?” I asked. “Some fella he met in a diner? Seems to me the last six months or so of his life was lived in secrecy.”

“I think him leaving that guy half his savings is a pretty solid endorsement of who that guy is,” he replied. “Ghost wasn’t secretive about everything, though. He’d been talking to me about some things. He was getting ready to propose to Abby when she died. He told me that much.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

He picked up the letter, and then put it right back down. “I think he was talking to me because of when I proposed to Andy. He was curious about timeframes and what was acceptable.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You an authority on relationships, now?”

“Guess so.”

“Got another one for you,” I said.

“Another what?”

“I don’t know. Story, I guess.”

He leaned away from the desk and relaxed in his chair. “I’m listening.”

“So, when I went to deliver the car yesterday, guess who’s sitting in there eating a double cheeseburger?”

“You want me to guess?”