Calm & Storm (The Night Horde SoCal Book 6) Read online

  The Conclusion of the Night Horde SoCal Series

  CALM & STORM

  The Night Horde SoCal Series

  Book Six

  also includes

  HOME & SAFE

  The Series Epilogue Novella

  Susan Fanetti

  THE FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

  Calm & Storm © 2015 Susan Fanetti

  All rights reserved

  Home & Safe © 2015 Susan Fanetti

  All rights reserved

  Susan Fanetti has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ALSO BY SUSAN FANETTI

  The Night Horde SoCal Series:

  (MC Romance)

  Strength & Courage, Book 1

  Shadow & Soul, Book 2

  Today & Tomorrow, Book 2.5

  Fire & Dark, Book 3

  Dream & Dare, Book 3.5

  Knife & Flesh, Book 4

  Rest & Trust, Book 5

  The Pagano Family Series:

  (Family Saga)

  Footsteps, Book 1

  Touch, Book 2

  Rooted, Book 3

  Deep, Book 4

  The Signal Bend Series:

  (The first Night Horde series)

  (MC Romance)

  Move the Sun, Book 1

  Behold the Stars, Book 2

  Into the Storm, Book 3

  Alone on Earth, Book 4

  In Dark Woods, Book 4.5

  All the Sky, Book 5

  Show the Fire, Book 6

  Leave a Trail, Book 7

  To Amy, Kim, Irene, and TeriLyn,

  for your tireless and enthusiastic support and encouragement.

  Thank you—so much.

  And to the Freaks, always. For everything.

  There are some things you learn best in calm,

  and some in storm.

  ~Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

  FOREWORD

  The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

  ~Khalil Gibran

  Those of you who’ve read the Signal Bend series probably remember the last time I felt it necessary to include a foreword in one of my books.

  Those of you who’ve read my muse’s musings on my blog know that Lola (that’s what I call my muse) and I love our characters too much to freeze them in time and not allow them rich lives beyond the ends of their own books. But living comes with sorrows as well as joys, and in my very core I believe the sentiment expressed, above, by Khalil Gibran. It is because we know sorrow that we can know joy, because we know pain that we can know pleasure. A true life—a good, full life—contains the full complement of emotions. To me, the real beauty of a person, real or fictional, is in their strength when life is hard and full of sorrow, how they persevere and find a way to fill that carved space with joy. And the real power of a family is how they come together in hard times, even when those hard times threaten to break them apart.

  When I call my books “romances,” I commit to adhering to the tenets of that genre—which means that my lead couples are together and in a good place at the ends of their books. But I make no promises about what life might have in store for them after that, when they become secondary characters in another couple’s story.

  Calm & Storm is a romance. With the exception of Today & Tomorrow, each book in the Night Horde SoCal series has been a romance, and the series itself ends in an optimistic place, for the club and for the characters. There is joy and fulfillment. There is love. There is hope for a bright future.

  But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t sorrow along the way.

  If you’re up for it, then, join me one more time on a ride with the Night Horde SoCal.

  Susan

  CHAPTER ONE

  A man who wielded a gun had given his power over to the weapon.

  Ronin preferred a blade, an extension of his own body, his own power. There was less room—and less opportunity—for error. To fight with a blade was to become intimate with one’s opponent. To be a part of the moment and to feel the transaction of energy and force.

  A man who wielded a blade kept his power and knew its impact. Felt it in his own body and took charge of that force.

  Ronin was adept at firearms; he’d been infantry in the early days of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom,’ and he’d grown up hunting with both bow and rifle. But he had since learned—and understood—the myriad dangers inherent in separating the thing that killed from the man who aimed it.

  Now, unless he had no other choice, he fought with blades. On a day like today, when he and his Horde brothers had been ambushed on their way back from a hand-off, he fought with only short blades, the ten-inch tantōs he kept strapped to his thighs.

  His brothers didn’t understand how he could feel sufficiently armed with only those blades. They didn’t understand that a man with his finger on a trigger had given over not only his power but his faith to the tiny projectile that would leave the thing in his hands.

  Most men wielding guns believed in guns like some men believed in a god. And that made them vulnerable.

  None of these thoughts were in Ronin’s head as he rolled under an enemy’s aim and rose to his feet, close enough to the man to embrace him.

  Or to sink a tantō into his chest, upward from his solar plexus and into his heart. The man’s brown eyes widened, and the Mossberg 930 fell heavily from his hands. Ronin kicked it away as he pulled the blade from the man’s chest.

  His mind empty of everything but the moment, when he heard Connor yell, “Roe!” he instinctively dropped to a deep crouch and spun toward the SAA’s voice, just as a bullet hit the van about three feet over him—where his chest had been a half-second before.

  That bullet wouldn’t have killed him, but it would have neutralized him for several minutes at least. He was wearing a vest; it slowed him down and affected his mobility, but not enough to tip the scales away from the precaution. If he were fighting men with martial arts training, that would have been one thing, but the men they fought had put all of their power and faith into the firearms in their hands. Their reflexes were slow, and their accuracy went to hell the moment motion—theirs or their target’s—entered the equation.

  Undertrained and overarmed. That described every enemy soldier since this war had gone hot, and it explained why the Horde were yet whole and unvanquished.

  Ronin charged the man who’d fired at him, ducking his aim and striking down on his wrist with a tantō. The blade, viciously sharp, sank deep, into the bone, and Ronin pulled it clear, allowing his momentum to spin him fully around and sinking his other blade low into the man’s abdomen. He pulled upward, feeling the steel slice through his enemy’s inner workings.

  The wielder of a blade felt the full impact on his target. It was impossible to be innocent of the damage one caused. Ronin felt each death he caused, felt it in his own body.

  As the man fell, the world around Ronin went quiet. He wiped his blades on the jean-clad legs of his l
ast target and slid them into their sheaths. Tonight, at home, he would clean them carefully.

  “Call out!” Connor yelled, and the other men on this run called their names. Even Ronin, within eyeshot of Connor, called, so that those out of sight would know. They were in deep woods, and the sightlines were poor.

  Besides Connor and Ronin, there were three other Horde to account for.

  “Ronin!” Nearest to Connor, Ronin called out first.

  “Muse!”

  “Fargo!”

  Silence. Connor met Ronin’s eyes, and they both looked out into the trees. Connor yelled, “Diaz! Call out!”

  “Yeah,” a voice came, sounding weak and wet, from the brush. “I’m hit.”

  They raced into the brush, all four men converging, and found Diaz against a redwood, holding his neck. His dark olive skin had already gone an ashy shade, and his hands were washed red with flowing blood. About six feet away was the body of another of Emilio Zapata’s disposable men.

  Diaz made a sound like a rough laugh. “Got the fucker. But I think he got me, too.”

  Connor was on his knees at Diaz’s side. “No way, brother. You’re too mean to die. Let me see.” He pulled Diaz’s hands away, and blood pumped more freely. Connor looked up and met Muse’s eyes, and Muse knelt at Diaz’s other side.

  Ronin knew what was being silently said; he could see for himself. The bullet had hit about two inches above Diaz’s vest. His carotid was severed. They were in the woods, almost a mile off any kind of real road, fifty miles from any kind of medical help.

  Diaz was already dead. He simply hadn’t given in to it yet.

  He grabbed Connor’s hand. “It’s cool, bruh. Just get word to Ingrid for me, okay? Just let her know.” Ingrid was Diaz’s ex-wife. They’d broken up ugly almost two years before.

  “Jesus fuck, man. No!” Connor pushed hard with both hands on Diaz’s neck, but it was too late. As soon as the bullet had passed through his neck, out here in the woods, Diaz’s fate had been sealed.

  “Let her know. Con, please.” His voice had weakened to something less than a whisper.

  Connor didn’t let up the pressure on their brother’s neck, but he nodded. “Yeah, man. Of course.”

  With that, Antonio Diaz closed his eyes and died.

  Connor stayed where he was even after fresh blood no longer pushed through his fingers. Finally, Muse put his hand over Connor’s. “He’s gone, brother.”

  Surging to his feet, Connor turned and leapt over Diaz’s body, going right for Fargo. He grabbed the young patch by his neck and threw him to the ground. “You shithead! You did this! You stupid fucking maggot! What the fuck were you thinking!” He punctuated every question with a blow of his massive, be-ringed fist into Fargo’s head until Ronin and Muse finally pulled him away.

  Ronin let Connor go, leaving him to Muse, and went to Fargo. The kid was fucked up, but he was able to stand. Whether he’d be able to ride, they’d have to sort out later. They had more pressing problems.

  “I’m sorry!” Fargo wept through his swelling, broken face. “I’m so fucking sorry!”

  From his seat on the ground, where Muse had tackled him, Connor said, “Sorry doesn’t do shit, does it?”

  It was Fargo’s fault. They’d handed off a truck to the Eureka charter of the Brazen Bulls and were on their way home. Everything had been uneventful—which was more exception than rule these days—and they’d been riding southward in loose formation, Fargo pulling up the rear.

  A lone biker had pulled onto the road behind them and run Fargo onto the shoulder, nearly into the rocky cliff face, unseating him. Then the rider had turned and ridden back the way he’d come.

  Fargo had remounted and hied off after him, and the other four Horde, all of them seeing the bright neon sign over the scene that flashed ‘TRAP,’ hadn’t been able to call him back.

  Never leave a man behind. They’d gone after him, knowing that they were riding into trouble. That they had been expecting the ambush they got was the only reason there weren’t five dead Horde instead of one.

  Fargo shouldn’t have been on this run at all. He was a good brother—he was thoughtful and smart under normal circumstances—but he was young, and he had trouble managing the adrenaline that came with their work these days. But Demon was home with his family, recently increased by a one-week-old baby boy.

  This particular run had been the site of a lot of trouble over the past months, and they manned a large crew for it now. Clearly, Ronin thought, they’d have been better running a smaller crew of four experienced men.

  But Fargo wasn’t going to get experience if all they ever asked him to do was watch the women.

  “I’m so fucking sorry,” Fargo moaned again, still weeping.

  “Shut the fuck up.” Connor stood. “We gotta clean up this goddamn mess. And we need to get Diaz and his bike home.”

  Muse got out his phone. “I’ll call the Bulls, ask ‘em to send down their truck.”

  Nodding, Connor turned to Fargo. “Quit your sniveling, you piece of shit. Get to fucking work.”

  He stormed off. Ronin watched as Connor stomped to the widest redwood. Sensing what the SAA was about to do, Ronin headed in that direction.

  Connor yelled—a furious, agonized roar—and punched the tree. Again and again he punched. Ronin walked up behind him and put his hands on Connor’s shoulders.

  “Connor.”

  Ronin had been watching Connor for the past several months. Something was wrong; he could sense that truth, but he couldn’t see anything out of place, except the change in the SAA. Even that, though, was a change in demeanor rather than behavior. His votes were the same, predictably in line with his father, their President. His leadership on runs was the same. But he was angry. Connor was not a man normally motivated by anger.

  Ronin had learned a long time ago that anger had no value. It was a cancer, and the things people thought would kill it—revenge, retribution, ‘justice’—nourished it instead. The only cure for anger was excision. Cut it out, discard it, leave it behind. Anger didn’t give a man power. It sapped it from him.

  When Ronin’s hands landed on his shoulders, Connor stopped attacking the tree. He dropped to a squat and put his hands—still coated in Diaz’s blood and now his own, too—over his head.

  “Jesus fuck, Roe. It’s all going to shit.”

  Ronin thought that was true. He’d earned his first patch long ago, in the Spokane charter of their old club. He’d moved to Southern California when Hoosier had invited him to join the Night Horde and assured him that their new club would be strictly straight work.

  And it had been, at first.

  Not even four years later, they’d teamed with another drug cartel. Now, five years after that, they were up to their elbows in blood again. It wasn’t the same; he trusted his leadership now more than he had in the club before. But it wasn’t different, either. Same fights, same enemies, same war, same blood. Same death.

  Ronin was a loyal man. When he loved, he loved for life. He loved his club, his brothers, so—although he had not wanted it, had not voted for it—he had gone side by side with them into this morass.

  But he was tired.

  He put his hand on Connor’s shoulder again. “Connor. Let’s tend to our brother.”

  ~oOo~

  The men sat quietly around the table. Both Demon and Sherlock had welcomed newborn sons into their lives within the past week, but the club’s celebration had been cut short.

  Hoosier stared at his rings. “Ingrid isn’t coming back. She doesn’t want any part of his funeral, or anything from him or us.”

  “Fucking bitch,” J.R. snarled.

  “No use burning energy in that direction, J.R. We all know they had a rocky road. I say we’re better off not needing to worry about taking care of her. Diaz gets a full burial. We’ll have people in from across the country. It’ll take a couple of weeks to get it all together. Charlie Davis is taking care of him until we’re ready.”

/>   “I’m so sorry,” Fargo muttered. His face was a mottled, swollen mess, but only his nose was broken.

  “Son,” Hoosier sighed. “You’ve said that enough. The words don’t mean shit anymore. You learn from your mistake, you keep that brain in gear every second you’re on a job, and you don’t fucking let it happen again. We got no room for mistakes in this life. Mistakes get people killed. You throw those damn words on the table again, and a beatdown will be the least of your problems.”

  Fargo nodded and dropped his head.

  “That goes for everyone at this table. Look on every job like it’s life or death. Could well be. Vests on, guards up, weapons at the ready. We are fighting a war, brothers.”