Calm & Storm (The Night Horde SoCal Book 6) Page 20

~oOo~

  They held Riley’s funeral at the Madrone United Church of Christ, not because Bart and Riley were regular churchgoers, but because the pastor of MUCC was a friend of the club, and the church sanctuary was capable of handling a large number of mourners. They’d needed it; Ronin estimated that several hundred people attended, most of them strangers to the Horde. Some woman who had spent a lot of time under a cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel had talked at length that morning with Bart, and then had taken charge of admitting people into the sanctuary.

  There was apparently a guest list. For a funeral. Ronin shook his head and kept far from the fray.

  The parking lot and street outside the church was packed full of expensive cars, and reporters with satellite vans, and obnoxious men with cameras. And law. They had San Bernardino County deputies everywhere, ostensibly for protection, since Riley had been killed in club violence. And Sheriff Montoya had pulled Hoosier aside early on for a private chat in a corner.

  There were men in plain, dark suits, too. Ronin took especial note of the suits. Those were Feds. Maybe with La Zorra dead, and her husband in the wind again, the Feds thought the season had opened on the Horde again.

  No one had heard from Vega since his wife and children had been murdered. Sherlock hadn’t been able to find out if he was still on the job. Or even alive. The man was a cipher.

  Ronin thought about all that law enforcement loitering outside Riley’s funeral, and he felt tired.

  Inside, as mourners were checked against the list and entered the sanctuary, a video of Riley played. It was easy to forget that Riley was a star. She’d been one of the club old ladies for a long time, and the way the members knew her was as Bart’s wife. They hosted cookouts. And lockdowns. Riley was just…Riley. But watching that video, seeing her not only as a wife, mother, friend, but also as an actress, a celebrity, walking the red carpet, accepting awards, Ronin was reminded—he thought all the club was reminded—that she had had another life, too.

  The Horde’s family and friends all sat clustered together in the rows behind Bart and his children, taking up less than a quarter of the full sanctuary space. Hoosier and Bibi, and Isaac and his old lady, shared the pew with the Elstads.

  Ronin sat with the younger Horde, the other single men, and he watched. He watched Bart’s grey stoicism, his attention to his children. His youngest boy, Deck, was only four and too young to understand. But Lexi and Ian knew, and they, too, were pale and stoic. Lexi was still in a wheelchair and had to be left just outside the pew, and Ronin thought that something about that, the way she was separated from her father by the carved end piece of the pew, even though he kept his arm over her shoulders, was especially sad.

  Three children without a mother. Two who would remember her and miss her. One who would forget her.

  A full, beautiful, innocent life snuffed out.

  And for what?

  ~oOo~

  Bart didn’t speak during the funeral, but several people did. Then the whole huge crowd—bikers, Hollywood people, deputies, reporters, paparazzi—convoyed to the cemetery.

  Lexi and Ian cried as their mother’s casket was lowered into the ground. Bart sat with Deck in his lap and barely moved.

  When it was over, he asked Lilli and Isaac to help him with the kids, and, without speaking to anyone else, or even looking around, he took his children and left his wife’s open grave.

  After that, there was an awkward moment of disorientation. Ronin recognized it as a lot of people all at once not knowing what to do. The conventions weren’t being followed; there was nowhere to go after the burial. No casserole buffet in somebody’s living room, no somber party in the clubhouse.

  Finally, the large group simply dispersed, and the bikers and their families headed toward the clubhouse. Bart might not be there, but they’d honor his loss anyway. Ronin had expected as much.

  But as the SoCal Horde walked toward their bikes, which were parked at the front of the line, Hoosier waved the men together. “We need the Keep first thing. Montoya had some things to say to me, and you all need to hear it.”

  Ronin felt tired. Right to his core.

  ~oOo~

  While their guests gathered in the Hall, the SoCal Horde sat around their table, again encased in weary silence. Bart’s seat was empty. Hoosier had called him, and they’d waited, but he hadn’t arrived.

  Ronin thought it was crazy to think that he might have. Not today.

  Hoosier cleared his throat. “Montoya is getting Fed heat. You see the heat, light, and focus Riley’s death has brought on us. He’s getting some of the afterglow, and he doesn’t like it.”

  “That means what?” Connor asked.

  “We’re losing him,” Trick offered and then looked to Hoosier. “Right?”

  “Losing, not lost. He wants to up his cut.” Montoya was on the Horde payroll. So were the Madrone mayor and the most important members of the city council—enough to maintain a majority in any vote. That was why, despite the years of escalating violence, the Horde moved with impunity through Madrone and all of San Bernardino County.

  Everybody had a price. Montoya’s had just gone up.

  “How much?” Connor asked.

  “Double.”

  Somebody at the table whistled.

  “We’ll negotiate, and we’ve got a solid nest egg,” Hoosier continued, “but if everybody else comes with their hands out, we’ll have a problem. As of now, with Dora dead and Zapata claiming her territory, we are out of that business. But we have a long road to the statute of limitations, if Montoya decides to grow a conscience.”

  Sherlock added, “Statute is five years for the Feds, six for the state.”

  “So he’s on our shriveling teat for that long. If anybody else comes in for a bigger suck, we’re screwed.”

  Fargo sat forward. “But you said La Zorra was working with the Feds, which means we’ve been working for them, too, all this time. Why would they go after us if we were working for them?”

  “Not how it works,” Sherlock answered. “Vega’s organization isn’t on the books. With his mission failed, even if he’s alive, he’s no help, and he’d been disavowed by official channels after the Perro fight.”

  “Okay, then, what about the other side? What if we work out with Zapata to take on his routes?” J.R. leaned back in his chair. “That’ll keep the money coming in.”

  Trick turned on him. “You want to go to Bart with the idea of working for the guy who sent the men who killed Riley and shot his kid? Who came after all our women and children?”

  Normally, J.R. came right back when somebody called him out. This time, though, he just shut up. His wife had been there, too.

  Hoosier answered, however. “I don’t think any of us want to work for him. And it would be for, not with. He’s not Dora—he won’t want a partnership. And she…I don’t know. I think what she was trying to do is fucking impressive. Fucking insane, but impressive. I respected the hell out of that broad. There’s no way it could have worked long term, but she did accomplish one thing: the trade Zapata took over is a mess. There’ll be no restoring those production sources for years. Prices have bottomed out. It’ll come back, but not for a long time. So even if we wanted to offer our labor as an olive branch, he’ll have nothing to run up the routes.”

  Sherlock sat forward and jumped in. “What he’s really got is a lot of fucking weaponry and mountains of money. She never got a chance to start her war, but she was ready for it. That’s what we’ve got to watch for: where he plans to point La Zorra’s rocket launchers.”

  Hoosier sighed. “You know what? I’m tired and sad. We have a house full of guests. I wanted to sit you down and tell you what I know, but let’s stew on this a minute and work out our next move later. For now, we’ve got a truce. Let’s take a breath, honor our dead, and regroup.”

  A somber, demoralized Horde left the Keep and were folded into the collective embrace of their family and friends. Ronin scanned the room and saw no place for himse
lf, so he walked straight through and headed to his solitary home.

  ~oOo~

  Ronin didn’t often get drunk these days; it had been years since he’d been what could have been called a ‘partier.’ But on the night of Riley’s funeral, sitting alone in his sparse house, thinking about all the hits and losses his life and family had taken of late, he must have hit the scotch pretty hard.

  That was the thought he had when he pressed the red button and let his phone, still in his hand, drop to his lap.

  He must have hit the scotch pretty hard. Because he’d just given Rainy his address and asked—begged, he thought he’d begged—her to come to him. Here, in his house. In Madrone.

  No. No—what had he been thinking? He called her back, and she answered right away.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Roe. I’m already in my car. You can’t make me un-know your address, and you’re too drunk to ride. You can’t escape me tonight. So you sit tight, and I will be there as soon as I can. I love you. I’ve been trying to say that for weeks, and you keep cutting me off. I love you, and you need me, and I’m coming.”

  She ended the call before he’d even opened his mouth.

  She was coming. Here, to his house. In the eye of the storm. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  So he poured himself another drink.

  ~oOo~

  When he stood to answer the door, he became certain that he truly had hit the scotch hard. He stopped and took a sidestep to steady himself, then went to the door and opened it, without even checking a window or the peephole.

  Fortunately, it was Rainy on his porch, looking beautiful in a pair of faded jeans, a stretched-out t-shirt, and very obviously no bra.

  But she shouldn’t have been there. She couldn’t be known to be connected to him, and for all he knew, Zapata had eyes everywhere. He had managed to assassinate La Zorra and her children. He had found the Horde women and children, too.

  “Rainy…”

  She put both hands on his chest and pushed, hard enough to knock him back on his unstable feet, and crossed his threshold. “You just shut up. I don’t want to hear about how you’re not safe, and I’m not safe, and your life is this horrible thing that’s going to kill us all. I don’t know what half of that means, anyway.” She stopped and laughed. “I can’t believe I just told you to shut up.”

  He opened his mouth without knowing what he would say, but she put her fingers over his lips.

  “I really do want you to shut up, though. I didn’t come to talk. We can talk tomorrow. Tonight, we’re just going to be close. I never knew a man who needed a hug like you need a hug tonight.”

  Before he could fully wonder what he’d said on the phone earlier, she grabbed the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it over her head. She stood there with her perfect, pale, freckled chest, her sweet, soft breasts, bared to him, and Ronin’s scotch-fogged brain gave up the fight to make words. He didn’t like words, anyway.

  He pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his own, shutting her words up, too. She kissed him back enthusiastically, her tongue pushing past his and into his mouth as her arms snaked over his shoulders and around his neck.

  As he felt her body against his, around his, Ronin knew she was right. He needed a hug. Breaking their kiss, he shifted and tucked his head to her shoulder and simply held on, holding her so tightly he could feel her chest swell with every intake of breath.

  He was so tired. He hadn’t known weariness like this in decades.

  She held him, leaning her head against his, and they stood a few feet inside his front door and were simply close.

  “Where’s your bed, baby?” she whispered against his ear. He sighed at the word ‘baby,’ feeling twenty-five years spin away, and suddenly he was a young man with his future in mind. A future he meant to spend with a high-spirited little redheaded hippie who called him baby.

  A simple man, a simple future. A beautiful woman and a lifetime love. He wanted that time, that life, back.

  The loss of it drove another sigh from his chest.

  “Roe?”

  “I don’t want to live without you anymore.”

  “And you won’t.” She took his head in her hands and lifted it from her shoulder. Her green eyes pinned him in place as much as her firm hands did. “New chance. You and me. The rest of our lives. No matter what.”

  It was what he wanted, so he nodded.

  Smiling sweetly, she lifted onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. So soft.

  “Where’s your bed?”

  He dropped his hands to her hips and lifted her off the floor. She squealed and threw her arms, and then her legs, around him, and he carried her to his bed. He’d never had a woman in this room, this bed. He’d not shared his own bed with a woman since the last time Rainy had spread the gleaming fire of her hair over his pillow. He’d used the clubhouse when he’d needed physical companionship, and he’d stuck to established club girls.

  The scotch still had his feet on rollers, and, while he’d gotten her to the bed with only a couple of caroms off the hallway walls, his dismount was shaky, and he ended up dropping her from his standing height onto his mattress and then falling on top of her. Her breath left her with an oof.

  “Sorry,” he muttered and pushed back to his feet.

  She merely smiled and shimmied out of her jeans and underwear. He noticed that she was barefoot—had she come into the house barefoot? He couldn’t recall. But now he stood and watched her jeans ease down her freckled legs and over her freckled feet, with their toes tipped in dark blue polish. The polish sparkled, like stars.

  His cock throbbed heavily. He wasn’t too drunk for that.

  “Roe,” she murmured, and put her hands over her mound, her fingers sliding through her neat ginger bush. He knew the taste of her, and thinking of it now, watching her fingers wander through her folds and come back glistening with her wet, he felt his mouth flood.

  “Rainy,” he croaked.

  “You’re overdressed, baby.”

  Coming back to himself, he yanked his black beater over his head and rid himself of his jeans as quickly as he could. He was barefoot, too, but he had been; he didn’t wear shoes in his house.

  She spread her legs wide, and he knelt between them, holding his cock steady. This was no time for foreplay; his need was complete and more than he could master. He picked up her ass in one hand and fed himself into her with the other, his eyes fixed on her expression as he filled her up.

  When he was seated deep, he leaned over her and flexed his hips, slowly—once, twice. She grabbed his face and pulled him to her for a kiss. Their lips met, and he pulled her hand away and held it down on the mattress, linking their fingers. Then, kissing her ravenously, he let himself take what he needed, rocketing into her over and over until his legs and back ached and she screamed into his mouth as her climax broke over her.

  He tore his mouth from hers with a groan and let go of his own finish, driving deep one last time and going rigid as painful, electric pleasure radiated outward through his body.

  After an eternity, it was over, and Ronin could see again. He looked down at Rainy’s damp, flushed, stunned face. So beautiful. So familiar. So his.

  He didn’t want to live without her.

  But his life had no place for her.

  Unwilling to confront that dilemma while he was inside her, feeling overwhelmed by need and love, he closed his eyes, and his mind, and let himself rest on her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In the morning, with Ronin sleeping deeply, sprawled on his belly beside her, breathing in the occasional drunken snore, Lorraine leaned over and kissed his muscled back and slid out of bed.

  She felt excited and furtive, like she had a captured chance to see inside the mind of her inscrutable lover, who was so much like the man she’d known and yet so different, too.

  Her own t-shirt was still out in his living room, so she snagged his black beater from the pale wood floor and pulled it over her h
ead. Then she dug her panties out of her jeans and stepped into them.

  His bedroom was sparsely furnished without seeming to be. A blonde oak platform bed, dressed in white linens, a matching blonde oak tall bureau, and a simple beige armchair made up all the furnishings, and the white walls were bare of any decoration. Morning sun glowed through simple white panels that ran floor to ceiling over his windows and double French doors that led out into his back yard.

  The room was large, with lots of empty space, and should have felt cold, but it didn’t. What Ronin had forgone in furnishings and art, he’d replaced with life. Four large potted plants sat clustered in glazed pots in a corner. A bonsai tree had pride of place in the center of his bureau. And the windows and French doors, when she pulled the light curtains back, showed a dazzlingly peaceful landscape.