Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) Read online

Connor poured himself a beer and sat back with a sigh, scanning the rest of the bar. A big group of cubicle-dwellers was on the karaoke machine, and a portly dude with glasses was massacring some kind of chick-bait ballad. Connor didn’t think the chicks would be biting.

  As it was occurring to him that the pickings were slim here on this midweek night, and he’d end up back at the clubhouse with a regular after all, a big group of guys walked by. He made them quick as firefighters; he’d seen a couple of them here before. His interest was a bit more than casual, because he’d faced the guy up front in the ring not long back. Connor didn’t lose often, but that guy had pulled some real MMA bullshit and about broke his leg.

  He wanted a rematch. Not tonight, but soon. So he watched while Mortal Kombat and his buddies walked by. When they pushed tables together, Connor saw that there were two women in the group, too. He hadn’t realized that there were chick firefighters anywhere local. But they were probably paramedics, actually. He couldn’t see a chick bashing in the door of a burning house.

  One of them caught his eye—or his ear, more like. She had a bawdy, husky laugh, and when he sought out its source, he was looking a fucking gorgeous firefighter. Long, wildly wavy dark hair and a raunchy smile. Not really his type, but nice to look at nonetheless. He wondered if chick firefighters were held to the kind of fitness standards the dudes were. That could be interesting.

  But Madison had come back from the restroom and was trying to get back on his lap. She smelled like puke and Altoids. He reached over and pulled a chair from the nearest table and sat her there. Then he kissed her cheek. Time to let her down gently. “Tell you what, beautiful,” he said at her ear. “I think we’ll do this another time.”

  She blinked blearily at him. “What?”

  Her Ugly Friend leaned in. “He means you’re sloppy drunk and it’s time to go home, Maddie. C’mon.”

  But Birthday Barbie didn’t like that idea. “Wait, what? You don’t want me?” Her mouth had some trouble forming the words but not the outrage.

  Connor put on a soothing smile. Young girls were insecure, no matter how pretty they were. So he lied smoothly, “I want you, puss. Just another time, when you’re on your feet better.”

  Her speech was suddenly perfectly clear. “You’re rejecting me? On my birthday? Oh, fuck you, Grandpa.” With that, she stood up and flounced off unstably, her Ugly Friend right with her, the others eventually getting up and encircling her.

  Connor watched her go, bemused. Grandpa? What the fuck? He was thirty-six years old. Grandpa? He turned and found his brothers staring at him. As soon as he met Lakota’s eyes, they all collapsed into a communal fit of hilarity that he most certainly did not share.

  Grandpa?

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Hey, Cordero—you with us?”

  Pilar blinked and turned toward the voice. “Where else would I be, fucktard?”

  “I thought maybe you were dreaming about running off to become a biker bitch, leaving all this glamour behind.” Kyle Moore swept his arms wide, encompassing their whole group.

  She flipped him off. “Nah, I was just wondering what the odds were you could take that guy again if you actually fought him clean.”

  In truth, she’d barely been thinking about the bikers at all. She’d noticed them; it was nearly impossible not to notice them. And she’d nearly sprained her eyeballs rolling them up at the sight of the big guy with the little blonde child oozing drunkenly all over him. They were all playing with a bunch of vapid little children—fuck, the one the big guy had was wearing a fucking tiara with flashing lights, which pretty much closed the case on her inability to make good life choices. And if Pilar had had to bet, most of those guys were closer to forty than they were to twenty.

  So yeah, she’d noticed. And the big guy was totally her type—short dark hair, full but trimmed beard over a nice face, good ink, broad shoulders, huge arms. He’d been in the ring with Moore just a couple of weeks ago, so she knew he was tall and built like a brick shithouse, too, with just the right amount of dark hair over his chest. Dude was all man, definitely. And hot as hell.

  Except for his obvious and ridiculous preference for girls half his age. He’d had a Bambi draped over him the night he’d fought Moore, too. That cut his hot points in just about half.

  But she’d stopped thinking about him or even seeing him a while ago. Where she’d been was on the freeway, at their last call. That had been a bitch. Four vehicle involvement, three dead on scene, five serious injuries. Nobody in those vehicles had walked away from the scene.

  One of the fatalities had been a four-year-old girl. Pilar had been the one to cut her body out of her mangled car seat. Her mother, who’d been driving one of the cars that had been sandwiched between the car that had been stopped short and the truck whose driver hadn’t noticed that traffic had stopped, had been conscious, and had screamed when Pilar had lifted the broken little body out of the crumpled wreck of a Honda Civic. The woman’s legs had been amputated below the knees, but until she saw her daughter’s body, she had barely moaned. She’d been focused on getting her little girl rescued, asking after her constantly, talking to her.

  Abbie. The little girl’s name was Abbie.

  Pilar could still hear that damn scream, and she knew she’d hear it in her sleep. Unless she went to bed really drunk and, with any luck, well fucked.

  It was why they were all here, and why they were all rowdy. There was a kind of mania coming off a call like that. When it happened in the middle of the watch, you could work through it in the station with your crew and be okay by the time you went out into the world in your street clothes again. But her platoon had been working their thirty-six watch, and the alarm had come in a couple of hours before the end.

  Working a job like this required the ability to control your empathy. You had to care deeply and then stop caring, or turn it way down, anyway, when the call was done. Pilar figured cops and soldiers had to do the same thing—you saw some bad shit in a job like this, and if you couldn’t turn off the screen, then your brain would play the Bad Shit Greatest Hits all the damn time.

  But some calls wouldn’t turn off. Calls like tonight’s. Then you found a way to work it out. Booze and sex was how Pilar did it—same with everybody at The Deck with her tonight. The rest of the platoon had either gone home to their families or off to commune with their personal Jesus or whatever they needed to do. But these guys, they were her inner circle—all of them single, all of them on the young side, all of them a little bit wild. They hadn’t even needed to say out loud that they were all headed straight for The Deck for their fix of booze for sure, and sex hopefully.

  But not with each other. God, no. Gross. You did NOT want to fuck around with a firefighter from your own station. Jesus, you were practically married to everybody anyway.

  Moore rebutted her claim about the way he’d fought the hot, shallow biker. “I fought him clean. Not my fault the asshole fights like The Thing. No finesse at all, just those boulders he calls hands.”

  He was right—dude had big hands. Broad and thick without being fat. Strong hands that had blackened Moore up right good, before Moore had put him down. She focused more keenly on the table of bikers and saw Miss Tiara flouncing off with her friends. The biker watched her go, then his buddies started laughing, and he flipped them off.

  Aw, poor honey had gotten turned down by a drunk baby bimbo. He got up and headed toward the nearest bar.

  Pilar looked around. “Hey—we need refills. Anybody up for a round of tequila? Patrón?”

  Stephanie Perez laughed. “Oh, no. Cordero’s locked on. Who’s the target?” She scanned the room and lit on the biker. “Oh, looky there. Hunting for bear tonight, I see.”

  “Eat me, Perez,” Pilar answered.

  “Fuck, don’t tease. Perez and Cordero goin’ down on each other? I’d pay real money to see that.” At Eric White’s statement, the men all turned toward the two women and nodded.

  “You don’t hav
e the kind of money you’d need, White. You’ll just have to jack off to the pictures in your sick head.”

  “Oh, I do, I do.”

  Being a woman in a firehouse had its challenges. Pilar was the only female firefighter in San Bernardino County, and she loved the work. There were female paramedics, like Perez, but Pilar rode an engine. She had the respect of her platoon and most of her station, but she’d had to scrap like crazy to get it.

  She’d had to figure out a way to be one of the guys and also let the sexual innuendo shit roll off her back. They were always making some kind of comment like the one White had just made. She knew it wouldn’t go past that kind of verbal playing around, and she also knew how to stop it if it did.

  Early on, while she was still in the academy, she’d learned that if she made an issue of it at all, what she was doing more than anything else was drawing attention to her difference. So she played along. And frankly, it didn’t bother her. She’d been raised by a strong woman in a profoundly sexist world. She knew the game.

  She lived with these guys. For a huge chunk of her life, she ate with them, worked with them, worked out with them, chilled out with them. She slept with them. Yeah, the women’s bunks were separated by a partial wall, and they had a little one-stall, one-shower bathroom of their own, but that was the full extent of their privacy. They had all seen everybody in all their skin. She knew they looked. But hey, she looked, too, and she didn’t bother to be any more subtle about it than they were.

  The best way, she’d learned, to stop being judged by her body was to stop giving a fuck what they saw of it. It sounded backward, maybe, but it made sense to Pilar: if she didn’t care, then she didn’t draw attention, and after a while skin was just skin.

  It was probably some kind of feminist cardinal sin, but she didn’t much care about feminism. It wasn’t that she didn’t agree with it; she totally did. She just saw it as a political movement, and all political movements were bullshit, as far as Pilar was concerned. Nothing ever changed up that high. The only change she had any control over was her own. So she didn’t worry about what was going on with the politicians. She just did her damn thing, and woe to anyone who tried to get in her way.

  Instead of a protest sign, she carried a fucking Halligan.

  “I’m going for shots.” She stood up.

  “We won’t wait up.” That was Pete Guzman, the oldest and quietest of their group.

  White stood up, almost knocking his chair back. “Hold up, hold up.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a condom packet. “Always be safe, muffin. We love you!”

  Pilar laughed and snatched it out of his hand. She always had a condom with her, but she’d take a free one when it was offered. Unless…“Oh, fuck, this is one of those flavored things, isn’t it?”

  “Tropical,” he smirked.

  She tossed it back. “Gross. They’re sticky. And they taste and smell like fruit marinated in gasoline.”

  “No one’s ever complained to me.”

  “Maybe if you were bigger, they’d notice.”

  On Perez’s comment and the roar that followed it, Pilar smirked at White, then turned her back on her friends and headed toward the bar.

  The big biker had turned at her friends’ commotion, so he was looking her way when she approached. He smiled the kind of smile that said he was used to girls melting at the sight of it.

  It was a pretty melty smile, in fact. He had a really good face, and that smile showed straight white teeth surrounded by good lips and a nice dark beard. But Pilar looked past him and leaned on the bar at his side. “Hey, Bill. Round of shots—seven. Patrón Silver.”

  “You got it.” The bartender nodded and turned to the shelves at the back.

  “Make it eight,” said a gruff voice at her side. Excellent voice. Those hot points were climbing back up.

  She turned. “You think I’m buying you a shot? I don’t even know you.”

  “I think I’m buying you seven shots and me one. And I’m Connor. Now you know me.”

  Bill pushed a row of shots toward her. As she dug into her pocket, her new friend Connor handed a fold of bills over the bar. “Keep it,” he said, and Bill nodded his thanks.

  As Bill counted the money and nodded, Pilar did a quick bit of math and realized Connor had tipped really well. Another point in the hot column. Unless he’d only done it to impress her—then again, she was impressed, so it had worked. But she liked to make a guy work for his play. He clearly had this whole seduction shtick going on; he’d have to get innovative if he wanted to move up from the JV jiggle squad to the A team.

  After she pushed a shot glass toward him, she began corralling the other seven. She’d done her time in the food service industry, so getting seven full shots over to the table would be no big deal.

  He laid his hand on her forearm. Yep. Really good hand. “Wait. Do yours with me.”

  “Why would I? I’m drinking with my friends.”

  “Because it was my treat. And you haven’t told me your name.”

  “That’s not a treat, if you’re looking for something back. That’s just payment in advance.” Oh, this was fun.

  He thought so, too. That sex smile widened and showed real interest. “You’re a smartass.”

  “It’s been said.”

  “Well, now. That’s interesting. It’s been said about me, too.”

  Before she could answer, she was jostled from behind, and Perez and Ron Reyes were there, collecting six shot glasses.

  “Thanks, man,” Reyes said to Connor, who dipped his head in a nod.

  “Don’t break him,” Perez said to Pilar, plenty loud enough for Connor to hear. “He’s too pretty to scuff up.”

  “Assholes!” Pilar called after them both.

  When they were alone again, Connor picked up one of the remaining two glasses and tapped it to the other one, miming a toast. “We had an audience. Looks like they planned our night.”

  She looked past him at his table of buddies, who were all watching as if they had money on the outcome. They might, for all that. Nodding in their direction, she said, “Bigger audience than you think.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, they’re assholes, too.” Turning back to her, he lifted his glass again. “Like to know your name before they marry us off.”

  “Pilar. I’m Pilar.”

  “I like it. I don’t think I’ve ever known a Pilar before.”

  She shrugged.

  They did their shots. Pilar swallowed hers first, and as she set the glass down, she asked, “So, we gonna fuck, then?”

  Coughing and fighting to swallow, he finally sputtered, “Jesus, girl!” He waved his empty glass at Bill and gestured for two more shots. “That’s abrupt, don’t you think?”

  “Look. I’m not trawling for Mr. Right. I had a shit day. I need tequila and sex. Tequila’s been taken care of—and thank you for that. You’re hot. I’m horny, and I figure you are, too. Little Miss Tiara rubbed around on your lap for twenty minutes and then scampered off.” The next round had arrived, and she picked one up and knocked it back. “I guess if you were into that bimbo, then maybe I’m not your type. But I know things she can’t even spell. I’ll fuck your brains out and send you on about your life. You in or not?”

  He’d started to grin about halfway through her speech. After he tossed his own shot back, he said, “You were checking me out.”

  “Don’t be obnoxious about it. You’re hot. You are my type. So, yeah. I ogled.”

  “I feel so violated.”

  “Will you feel better if we go back to the storeroom and fuck against the beer cases?”

  “It’s a start. But Troy’ll have a shit fit.”

  “Troy loves me. C’mon. Let’s go, big guy.” She grabbed his hand and led him to the farthest reaches of the bar.

  Damn, he had good hands.

  ~oOo~

  The Deck storeroom was a perfect place for a quick fuck, and Pilar had taken a few guys back here. The hot ones who
m she had no history with. She didn’t want to take some random guy home with her, and she sure as hell didn’t want to go to some random guy’s place. She’d been on calls that were the aftermath of that kind of stupid.

  Troy had a soft spot for the protect-and-serve types and made a point to get to know those who frequented his establishment, so when he’d come back here once or twice while Pilar was mid-squelch with somebody, he’d just nodded and gone on about his errand.

  The storeroom was a semi-private space in a very public place. Safety and convenience. Perfect.

  But not, you know, romantic. It was a huge, chilly space, lit with rows of industrial fluorescent lights suspended on long poles from a ceiling which must have been at least thirty feet high. Rows of metal shelving held canned food, boxes of paper supplies, and whatever else an enormous bar like this needed to keep in stock. One wall held a row of deep freezes. She’d fucked on those a couple of times.