Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) Page 15

  His smile was bigger. “Balzac.”

  She’d spent the better part of her day combing through case law, seeking precedents and technicalities that might save a family from being destroyed by deportation. She knew for a fact that he was right, that it was money and power that passed through loopholes, not need or merit.

  “It’s good. And you’re right. But the law recognizes you even if you don’t recognize it. What if you get caught in the web?”

  “I do what I can to get free, and if I can’t, then I stay still and deal.”

  “And the people who love you—they have to deal, too.”

  Trick took both her hands in his. “Yeah, they do. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.”

  Juliana looked down at their joined hands. He had beautiful hands. They were large and strong, the palms rough with work, the backs dark with ink, but they were graceful, too, with long fingers, and he used them like precision instruments rather than blunt objects. He often spoke with his hands, painting emphasis in the air. So many contradictions in him. Gentle and rough, thoughtful and physical. Strong and vulnerable.

  “I need to keep Lucie safe and happy. I need to give her a good life. She will always be my first priority.” She could feel him tensing as she spoke, but she held on to his hands. “She wants you here as much as I do, and she’s right: you’re a good people. But Mark can really hurt you. He has resources and powerful friends, and he’s vengeful and mean. I don’t want you hurt. I don’t know what we do now.”

  “He’s not the only enemy I’ve ever had, Jules. He’s not my only enemy right this minute. I’ll talk to my brothers. We know how to analyze threats and find ways to neutralize them.”

  ‘Neutralize’ sounded like a euphemism. “Lucie loves him so much. You can’t…can’t…” Unable to say ‘kill him’ out loud, she let the sentence die.

  “I understand. Just trust me. I’ll handle whatever threat he is to me or the Horde. But first, I’m going to make sure he backs off of you. Because he is not going to pin you down alone like that again. Ever.”

  It was easier not to be afraid when you weren’t alone. Juliana had Trick with her. In her corner. She felt safe and secure. This was what she wanted. For her and her daughter, all she’d ever wanted.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Got a minute, man?” Trick knocked on the frame of the open door to Sherlock’s office. While most of the other patches did two different kinds of work—the on-the-books jobs in the bike shop or with the entertainment support stuff they did, and the club stuff, where their roles were more militaristic—Sherlock’s work was basically the same for the shop or the club. He was their tech guy: the shop’s IT guy, running the hardware, software, and security systems that kept the shop running smoothly, and the club’s Intelligence Officer, doing the same work for the club, with the added responsibilities of hacking and gathering intel the club needed. He managed both websites, too, for the shop and the club.

  Trick needed the IO.

  “Yeah, T.” Sherlock pushed away from his setup and swiveled his chair. “What’s up?”

  The office was small and windowless and had probably been some kind of storage room before the club had bought the building. But it looked like something out of science fiction, with all of Sherlock’s hardware and gizmos. His house was even more bizarre.

  There was a cheap vinyl chair at the side of Sherlock’s desk. Trick sat down. “I need some help.” He hadn’t said anything about Juliana to anyone yet, not even Connor, and Sherlock would not have been his first confidant. Not that he didn’t trust him or consider him a friend as well as a brother. He did. Several of the Horde were of an age, within five years of each other, and they were all close: Trick, Connor, Sherlock, Lakota, Jesse. Demon was close in age, too, but he’d always held himself somewhat aloof. For reasons they’d all known and understood even before those reasons had been exposed in the middle of the Hall.

  So it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sherlock; it was more that he knew he was starting at the wrong place in the chain. He should have told Connor first. And Hoosier. But Sherlock had what he needed.

  “I need some intel. I’m seeing a woman—”

  “You, too? Fuck, the whole goddamn club is nesting. What the fuck?”

  “You’re seeing what’s-her-hame—Karen?”

  “Taryn. And I’m not seeing her. I’m fucking her.”

  Trick grinned and rolled his eyes. “Few times a week. At her house. And she’s got kids.”

  “She’s a great fuck. But I’m just going to her house and fucking her. End of story.” He huffed. “Anyway, what do you need? You looking for a stalker special—job, activities, financials, find out if she’s worth your trouble?” His brows drew in. “Or do I need to run a club check? You serious with her?”

  The club collected intel on new women who got close to a patch. One of their threat management strategies. “We’re serious. Yeah, I guess you should run a club check.” He hated that, but it was necessary. He’d tell her about it. “I need something else, though. More important.”

  Sherlock leaned back in his chair and waited for Trick to continue.

  “She has an ex. He’s a real son of a bitch. They have a little girl together. He doesn’t like me in the picture, and he’s making threats—on her and me and all of us. He does some kind of PI work for a law firm, so he’s got resources beyond the average asshole.”

  Sherlock had sat forward as Trick had spoken. Now he turned his chair back to his desk. “You need to go to Hooj with all this.”

  “My next stop. He was on the phone when I came over. But I need to know where to find this guy, because he put hands on Juliana, and I’m going to make that stop.”

  “I need names and everything else you can tell me.”

  “Mark Stiles. Drives a gold Lexus GX. I don’t know what firm he works for. But he had everything on me—Army service, school records, how long I’ve had a patch. He got all that with nothing but my first name and my kutte.”

  “That’s a lot, T. Our kuttes are practically encyclopedias of any info we don’t have locked down. I mean, shit. Think of what’s right there on our website. Pictures, short bios. And you did that ‘What It Means’ thing, so there’s more about you than anybody.”

  Jesse, their PR officer, had been on a kick a while back, when they were just getting back into the outlaw life, to beef up their public persona. Sherlock had redesigned the website, they’d added a ‘shop’ with t-shirts and hats and shit like that, and Jesse had had the ‘brilliant’ idea that one of them should write an essay about why they were who they were. Trick had gotten that assignment. He’d done about a thousand romanticized words on what it meant to be a biker, glossing over the darker meanings. It was all very Easy Rider, but there was some disclosure in it, too. Not too much to breach his own privacy, but he’d found it impossible to write about what it meant and not write about what it meant to him.

  “You saying I shouldn’t be worried?”

  Striking the keys at wildfire speed, Sherlock shook his head. “Not at all. I’m already seeing that this guy could be trouble. He works at The Cape Group. That’s a monster firm. As an investigator, there’s no resource that he doesn’t have access to. I doubt he’s a hacker, but their IT guys are good, too. If he has one who’ll play loose with the rules—and it’s a law firm; they’re more outlaw than we are—then yeah, he could cause trouble. Our IT guy is better, though.” He grinned cockily. “Knowing they’re coming, I can lock them out. I don’t keep incriminating shit in the Cloud, anyway. It’s all offline.”

  “Okay, good. Good. I need the address of that law firm. And his home address, too.”

  Sherlock stopped typing and turned back to Trick. “What’s your plan?”

  “Persuade him of the folly of threatening Juliana. And I need you to try to find a way to keep him quiet indefinitely—a way that keeps him breathing, preferably.”

  “Juliana…that’s the chick you go for all the time at The Deck. Right?
The one who does the karaoke that turns your dick into a dowsing rod? I thought she’d kicked your ass to the side.”

  Trick grinned. “Fuck you, my brother. Things changed.”

  “I guess so.” Sherlock grinned back, then his face made a U-turn, and he frowned. “You know she works at Shepard & Grohl, right?”

  “Yeah, I know. So what?” Mel Sharpe, the club’s attorney, was a partner at Shepard & Grohl. “She works in a different division. And what’s it matter, anyway?”

  “It’s not that. Just be careful.” He tapped the screen. “Stiles used to work there, too. He’s probably got friends there. He could make things hard for her that way, if he wanted. So tread lightly. And talk to Hooj about all this. The last time one of us hooked up with a girl with family trouble, we ended up beefing with the Aztecs, and Hooj and Bibi both got hurt bad.”

  That thought had not escaped him. “I said I’m talking to Hooj next. Just get me the guy’s address.”

  “I got it.” He pulled a paper pad close and jotted down a few lines. “Go in cool, and don’t go alone, T. I know you’re chill, but women have a way of making ice cubes boil. So be careful.”

  “Advice about women from a man who’s been banging a woman three times a week on and off for like four years and doesn’t think he’s ‘seeing’ her. Yeah, that completes my day.”

  As Sherlock flipped him off, he turned his back and headed down the hallway to see if Hoosier was off the phone.

  ~oOo~

  Sherlock was wrong; Trick was not chill. Not about this. Since he’d sat on Juliana’s sofa the night before and heard her story of how Stiles had come up on her, dragged her alone into the elevator, trapped her, threatened her, insulted her—since then, he’d been very much not chill.

  He hadn’t stayed long. They’d talked, and then they’d made out for a while. But he’d been too tense to get into it, too tense even to stay and just be quiet with her for a while, as she’d wanted.

  Before he’d left, she’d let him go back and peek in on Lucie, sleeping under her canopy of stars, tucked into her star sheets, with her nightlight swirling stars around her walls and ceiling.

  Then he’d gone to his apartment and stayed awake most of the night, all the lights on, fending off the war that had followed his anger and bloodlust.

  No, he was not chill. His calm was an illusion.

  He knocked on Hoosier’s closed office door, and, hearing “Come in!” from within, he opened it. Hoosier and Connor were in there, Hoosier at his desk and Connor on the leather sofa against the far wall. Their expressions were serious. “Hey. Trouble?”

  “Not…trouble,” Hoosier answered. “But we could use…you. You got anything…after…after…afternoon?” He slammed his fist on his desk. “This afternoon?”

  “I’m still sketching, and no commissions in right now. I talked to that producer that Donovan knows this morning. I thought he was looking for a build. Turns out he’s doing a documentary about Harleys and just wanted my talking head on camera.”

  “You doin’ it?” Connor asked.

  “Nah. Not interested. Anyway, I’m free. What’s up?”

  Hoosier nodded at his son. Sometimes he had more trouble speaking than others. When he had to work to hard to find words, he’d hand off the job of explaining to Connor or Bart. So Trick turned back to Connor.

  “Dora”—Trick sighed and took a step back—“easy, T. This isn’t about you. She wants the casinos. She’s looking to pull Ferguson in and wants us to make first contact. We’re going up the mountain this afternoon to sit down.”

  “She owns all the drug trade for the whole western half of the country. She’s got Russian guns coming to her as fast as she can open her arms—and she’s supposed to be reigning over a historic peace in Mexico, so why the fuck she needs all that metal is a mystery. Now she wants the casinos? Why?”

  “Casinos…full of…of…shit.” Hoosier cleared his throat and took a breath. “Vice. Full of vice. Lot of…money in it. Sorry. Tired.”

  “No sweat, Prez. She’s not going to be happy until she rules the world, is she?” In response, the Elliott men chuckled sourly, in perfect stereo. “You’re not taking this to the table?”

  “Job’s not ours. We’re just envoys. Dad told her we wouldn’t work with Ferguson again, not after that double-cross a few years back. But we’ll bring her offer to him.”

  Trick looked over at Hoosier. He was struggling today, and had just said he was tired. Bart, Diaz, Muse, J.R., and Keanu were on a La Zorra run to NorCal, so the club was at half capacity. The President couldn’t stay back. “Sorry to ask, Hooj, but are you up to that?”

  Hoosier’s eyes narrowed with offense and anger, but then that smoothed away. “Connor’ll…talk. I’m there…to be pretty.”

  They all laughed. Then Connor said, “We need to go in eyes open. Last time we pulled into the People of the Pines, we got shot at. We’re not meeting at the casino this time, but we still want a presence. Jesse’s still out of range. So we’ll leave Jerry, Stuff, and Titus in the shop, but we want everybody we can get riding up there.”

  Again, Trick looked at their President. He looked strong—skinnier than he’d been, and scarred, but strong. But when his speech was weak, the impression to the casual observer was that his mind was weak. It wasn’t—he was nearly as sharp as he’d ever been, except for some minor short-term memory trouble—but Trick wondered at the impression a silent or stuttering Hoosier would leave on Wade Ferguson. It was well known that Hoosier had been grievously hurt and suffered severe brain trauma.

  But he said none of that. It wasn’t his call if Hoosier wanted to ride point on his trike.

  “Yeah, okay. Can I have a minute before we head out, though? I got something I need to tell you.”

  “Trouble?” Hoosier asked.

  “I don’t think it’s big trouble.”

  “Sit. Talk.” Hoosier gestured toward the empty side of the sofa, and Trick sat and talked.

  ~oOo~

  Hoosier, Connor, Trick, Demon, Lakota, Ronin, and Fargo rode up Big Bear Mountain that afternoon, Connor and Hoosier in the lead. Hoosier grumbled every time he mounted and fired up that trike, but it had gotten him on the road and back to the head of the table, even while he was still recovering.

  Riding with his brothers encapsulated all the reasons Trick loved to be Horde: the sense of brotherhood, of freedom, of purpose, the sense that they were together with each other and apart from all the rest. There was no feeling like riding a clear road, getting real speed, but Trick loved to be in traffic, too, splitting lanes, speeding past the complacent, complicit masses, all the people content to be still and be told.

  He hadn’t been a rebel until he’d been made a killer of innocents. Sitting that first night in the stockade, his hands still raw and bleeding from the beating he’d laid on his CO, confronting what had felt then like a certainty that he would be in his forties before he again had anything like freedom, Trick had known no remorse for his supposed crime, but he’d been racked with guilt for the consequences of his obedience. And he’d understood that power was always to be mistrusted, that the only laws or rules that mattered were those that came from within, that sat right on one’s own soul.

  It was a potent realization, but it had taken him a long time to build a worldview from it. First, he’d come home and discovered that he was out of sync with everyone around him. War had changed him fundamentally, and his memories were like hostile viruses in his head.

  He’d gone to Cali Classics Custom Cycles, the old club’s bike shop on La Cienega Boulevard, because one of the men in his group at the VA had talked about how riding his bike cleared his head, had closed his eyes and waxed rhapsodic about the feeling of riding with the wind in his face. Trick had wanted that feeling.