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

  “I don’t want to close out the neighbors. That’s important to me. I want regulars, with connections to the people who work here.”

  “Got an idea about that. How about we offer them like a special membership card or something like that? So they can come to the bar whenever they want?”

  Lorraine thought about that. She could see logistical problems, especially if someone abused it, but the idea had merit. Cameron had talent for the business part of owning this business. With experience, he could really make his name. “We should talk more about that when it’s quiet. But I like it.” She sighed and smoothed her chef’s coat. “Okay. I’m doing my turn.”

  Before she’d even gotten all the way through the swinging door, she knew something was wrong. The vibe was completely off. Everyone was talking, but the tone was strange—too low and consistent. And absolutely everyone was staring down at their phones and tablets.

  Lorraine abhorred electronic devices being used at her tables. For fifteen years or more, people had been sitting down, ordering, and eating with some kind of device attached to their person somehow. The servers abhorred it, too. Sometimes it was nearly impossible to get diners to place their orders because they were so wrapped up in whatever violently crucial bit of information they were sending or receiving. Hollywood people were the absolute worst.

  And online reviews! Right there at the table! The real jerks would, after making some outrageous demand, wave their phones or tablets around and threaten a retaliatory one-star review, as if their puny little finger hovered over the red button of the apocalypse.

  Lorraine was naturally mild-tempered and believed that all people, when they were their best selves, were good, compassionate souls.

  Except those people. Them, she hated.

  But the vibe in the restaurant wasn’t about Mythic or her; she could tell simply by the universally rapt attention of the room.

  Heather, one of her servers, saw her standing to the side of the door and walked over, hers eyes wide and her steps stilted.

  “What’s going on?” Lorraine asked as Heather got close.

  “It’s all over the news. Riley Chase is dead. She was shot in some shootout or something.”

  Lorraine’s first thought was that the news was sad, but it didn’t affect her unduly. It really was a testament to how Hollywood Mythic had become, though, that the news had taken over every table.

  “I was in a film with her a couple of years ago—The Map of Loss? She played a history teacher. I played one of her students, even had a couple of lines. It was the last film she did, actually.” Heather sniffed. “God! I guess it really was her last one!”

  She’d stopped listening to Heather. From where she stood, she had clear view of a diner’s tablet, and an image of the Night Horde patch was on the screen, in a box behind the perfectly coiffed head of the reporter. In a rush, connections formed for Lorraine. Riley Chase was married to one of the Night Horde SoCal. Which meant that she knew Ronin. She’d died in a shootout?

  Her heart kicking like a shod horse against her ribs, Lorraine abandoned Heather and pushed the door back into her kitchen. News had gotten back here, too. Most cooking had stopped. It didn’t matter; most eating had stopped, too.

  Cameron had his tablet in his hand. She hurried to his side, and he stood and pulled one of his earbuds out and handed it to her. She put it in her own ear, and, head to head, they watched the news report.

  Ms. Chase first rose to fame as the star of the cult-favorite series Hades High, which spawned an enthusiastic fandom that continues to be active to this day, years after the show left the air. Her most acclaimed work, however, was the film Signal Bend, which won several Academy Awards in 2015, including Best Picture. Ms. Chase was nominated for Best Actress but did not take home the Oscar.

  She met and married Bart Elstad, a member of the Night Horde Motorcycle Club, while working on Signal Bend. Their romance—the ideal of the girl next door and the bad boy—captivated the public’s imagination for their first years together. Then Ms. Chase eschewed her fame for a quiet life in the Inland Empire, making only three films and appearing in some guest and recurring roles on popular series, during the past decade.

  Despite its reputation as an outlaw biker gang, and its own Hollywood fame, the Night Horde has kept a low profile, known mainly in the Southland for its celebrated motorcycle customization shop, Virtuoso Cycles.

  But it now appears that that quiet reputation might have been a façade. Again, if you’re just joining us: Actress Riley Chase is reported to have perished last night near Laughlin, Nevada, the apparent victim of gang-related violence. Her daughter, Alexa Sophia Elstad, age ten, has reportedly been injured in the same incident, which is alleged to have resulted in a total of sixteen deaths and three people injured. More as this story develops.

  When the people at the news desk began a chit-chatty commentary on the sad event, Lorraine cast aside the earbud. Cameron did the same but let it play, resting the tablet in his lap.

  “Oh, God. Cam, sixteen deaths. That’s where he is—you know it as well as I do. He was in all that. He could be—oh, God!” Ronin’s complete silence for more than a week, which had had her frightened but for different reasons, now had her terrified.

  Cameron grabbed her hand. “Mom, we don’t know anything. Until we do, just chill.”

  “But how can we even find out? Nobody who knows him knows us!”

  “Mom! I’ll call Mac, ask her to see if Billy can help, okay?” Billy was Mac’s brother—and a cop.

  Lorraine nodded, staring at the screen of her son’s tablet, which was showing a Riley Chase montage.

  Had Ronin died with her? How long before she knew?

  ~oOo~

  She had her answer late that night, when her phone rang and roused her blearily from a medication-assisted sleep. She flailed for the offending device and answered without opening her eyes, feeling thick and dull. “Hello.”

  “Rainy.”

  The sound of his voice cut through the thickest of her Valium fog, and she sat up and opened her eyes. The room rocked, and she dropped a leg off the side of the bed and planted her foot on the floor to stop it. “Roe! Thank God! Are you hurt? Are you okay? Where are you? I was so scared!”

  “I know it made the news. I’m not hurt.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does! I need to see you. Please, Roe.”

  “No. It’s not safe. I have to stay away.”

  “For how long?”

  He didn’t answer, but Lorraine knew the truth in his reticence, and her chest cramped.

  “Ronin, no. We have a new chance, remember? You’re in. You told me you were in.”

  Her pulse roared in her ear and masked his continued silence.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “I love you, Rainy. My hippie chick. Always have.”

  Not for the first time, he ended the call before she could tell him the same.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The quiet in the Keep lay heavily on the men around the table. Almost three weeks had passed since Riley’s death. Trick had healed. The Prospect, Stuff, was home, recuperating. Lexi was home, too, now. Her leg was in a cast and she was getting around in a wheelchair, but she’d be out of that soon enough.

  Bart was back at the table for the first time. He’d aged at least a decade in these three weeks. Ronin studied his drawn, dull face, the dark marks like bruises under his eyes. He’d grown a beard for the first time in Ronin’s memory; it had come in grey.

  He’d come into the clubhouse minutes before the meeting, walked through the Hall and straight into the Keep, and sat in his chair, never speaking or acknowledging anyone. He’d sat and waited as the rest of the patches filed in after him and took their seats.

  As was his custom, Ronin settled in to watch and listen. He rarely spoke at the table except to vote; he never saw any point in reiterating what someone else had already said, and since he was
slow to speak in any event, someone almost always said something close enough to his own opinion to render his input redundant.

  Hoosier didn’t officially open the meeting. He simply cleared his throat and began to speak. “I want to keep this short as we can. We got word from Zapata. Looks like he’s agreed to peace talks.”

  “Looks like?” Muse asked.

  “The exact message was ‘Bury your movie star. Then we talk.’”

  Bart flinched, his fist clenching, but he said nothing.

  Trick shook his head. “Smells bad. We’ve been on defense for weeks. Why peace now?”

  “My guess?” Sherlock answered, “The media attention is too hot. We’ve got the world on our doorstep again, and Zapata doesn’t like it. Plus, action is getting hot below the border. His alliance is starting to lose focus now that they took the Queen down. They all want their own pies again. He needs to start getting his house in order. Peace with us frees him up to focus on problems closer to home.”

  “At any rate, it looks like he’ll back off and let us lay Riley to rest properly, so we’ll proceed with her funeral as planned.” Hoosier turned to Bart. “You good with that, brother?”

  For several dense, uncomfortable seconds, Bart didn’t respond. Then, as if he’d arrived from a far distance, he turned to Hoosier and nodded. Once.

  Hoosier regarded his VP, and Ronin saw his hand move slightly toward Bart, just a twitch, as if he’d thought to offer comfort and then realized it wouldn’t be welcome. “Okay. The swarm of paparazzi assholes is going to be ten times thicker for her funeral than it’s been these last weeks, and we’re going to have a lot of people not used to our ways in our clubhouse after.”

  “No.” Bart’s voice cracked in the middle of that small word.

  “Bart?” Connor frowned and cocked his head.

  “No wake. I’m burying her and going home with my kids.”

  The table considered that in silence. Finally, Hoosier said, “We’ve got brothers and family coming in to pay their respects, Bart. Isaac’ll be here.”

  Bart nodded. “No wake.”

  After another moment of quiet consideration, Hoosier nodded. “Okay. What you want.”

  “Are we done?” Bart pushed his chair away from the table.

  “No. Hold.” Hoosier’s eyes moved around the table, starting with Bart, meeting every member’s gaze and holding it for a beat. “I love you all. You are my family.” He struck his chest. “I’m alive…because of my family’s support. Support and love—that’s what we’ve always had here, in this room and outside it. This is a good family. But it’s broken. I’m to blame for that. I don’t know just when we…started to lose hold of each other, but I know I should’ve seen it sooner. And I know I made it worse. I was wrong to withhold any information I had. It was my call to hold back that…David Vega was in the game and Dora had us leading their scheme to end drugs in Mexico.”

  “The officers voted, Prez. It’s on all of us,” Sherlock cut in.

  Hoosier rejected that notion with a shake of his head. “I pushed you.” He turned to his son. “I strong-armed you into going along with me, and I was wrong. I should have had…more faith in all of you, and I’m sorry. But brothers, please. Let’s find our way back. If it means me…taking a different seat at this table, then put up a new name, and I won’t fight it. I’ve been sitting here for a long time, and I am old and tired. You all know my head’s not as sharp as it used to be. Maybe it’s time for…fresher eyes than mine up front.”

  Another ponderous stretch of silence, and then Connor said, “We shouldn’t do anything until we’re clear of Zapata or at least get through that meet and see how it plays. No big changes. It’s more important right now to look tight than to be tight.”

  Though the room stayed quiet, Connor’s remarks had stirred all the men. The change in the room was palpable, and Ronin turned his thoughtful gaze on the SAA.

  For weeks, months even, Connor had been rocky—angry and out of sorts, clearly at odds with his father. But for years before that, for his entire life, he had been firmly in his father’s corner. When Hoosier was away from the table, recovering from a traumatic brain injury, with no clear indication that he’d ever be strong enough to return, Connor had been the most emphatic proponent for maintaining the status quo. There hadn’t been any truly serious discussion of setting Hoosier aside, anyway, not even outside the Keep, but Connor hadn’t even allowed the topic to surface inside it.

  Now, by not outright rejecting Hoosier’s suggestion that it was time for a change in leadership, Connor was in effect endorsing it. And that was a seismic shift for the club.

  Ronin considered that. Was it time for a change? He thought it had been a terrible breach to keep the truth about La Zorra from most of the club, but he didn’t believe that Hoosier had made this mistake out of self-interest. People made mistakes. Yet this one might well be part of the reason the Horde had been burying so many of their own lately.

  Then he realized that his consideration felt academic. Rhetorical. Not personal—and it should have felt personal. The question of who should lead their family had been raised, and Ronin felt disconnected from the answer.

  He didn’t really care.

  If the other men at the table felt as he did, then this brotherhood was already beyond repair.

  ~oOo~

  Two days before Riley’s funeral, a large contingent of the Missouri Horde arrived, several of them with their old ladies. They braved the gauntlet of camera-wielding vultures around the clubhouse and came to offer their condolences and support.

  And this time, for the first time, Isaac Lunden was among them.

  Ronin had never met Isaac, or Len Wahlberg, who was also present. Both had arrived with their old ladies. Showdown had his old lady, too. Badger, the club President, arrived alone, leaving his old lady at home, possibly in charge of a lot of Horde children while their parents were away. Double A, Nolan, and Dom had all arrived solo as well.

  It was getting to be a regular thing, hosting the mother charter in the SoCal clubhouse. This time, though, Isaac, Show, and Len all stayed at Bart’s with their women.

  Despite the solemnity of the occasion, there was an air of reunion in the clubhouse when all the friends and brothers of the Night Horde SoCal had arrived. Horde from Montana and friends from other clubs came in strong numbers to help Bart mourn, and they were all glad to see each other, even as they were saddened by the reason. Isaac and Len, who’d done a long stretch of hard time to save the Horde from the last cartel relationship to go awry, were men of the hour. Ronin was glad to see that they weren’t comfortable wearing that mantle.

  Standing against the wall in the crowded Hall on the night before the funeral, Ronin studied Isaac. He was an imposing figure—taller than any man Ronin thought he’d ever met, even taller than Showdown, and massively broad-shouldered. He thought Isaac was close to his own age, about mid-fifties, and he wore it pretty well. But it wasn’t Isaac’s appearance that made people turn in his direction, in Ronin’s opinion. There was something else. Power. He wasn’t the leader of the Night Horde any longer, but he was a natural leader. He drew people to him.

  Ronin had a lot of respect for a man like that, who had that power and knew how to use it without rolling over the people around him.

  Hoosier had that quality, too. Or had, at least, until recently. Connor had it as well.

  Bart did an hour, at most, in the Hall that night, sitting with Isaac, Badger, Len, and Show. He was more animated with those Missouri men than he’d been with his SoCal brothers since Riley’s death.

  And then, when Ronin next looked, Bart was simply gone.

  Seeing no reason to stay, either, Ronin departed soon after. He went home to his solitary house. He tended his plants. He cleaned and sharpened his blades. He meditated.

  He thought about calling Rainy, felt the pull to hear her voice, maybe to feel her touch. But he didn’t call.

  She’d been right. He couldn’t live two li
ves, and he couldn’t bring her into this one. It was the only one he knew. Thus, he couldn’t have her. Or his son, for that matter. He carried death with him wherever he went, and he couldn’t bring that to them.

  So he sat alone in his house and drank scotch until he thought he might sleep.