Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) Read online

  He’d left them the morning before, feeling a strange emptiness as he’d walked out while the smell of pancake syrup was still in the air. He’d told her the truth: although he’d been worried about her, he’d had fun taking care of her and her little girl. He’d felt quiet and peaceful. And Lucie was a great kid.

  Since then, with Juliana obviously doing much better, he’d stayed away. There was some danger there for him, he could tell, and he was having a hard enough time keeping his head straight.

  While a woman like La Zorra held no interest for him, a woman like Juliana really did. In appearance, they had a lot of similarities—both beautiful Latinas with dark eyes, long dark hair, and olive skin—except that Juliana was tall, while Dora was petite.

  It wasn’t about appearance, however. Though he hadn’t spent a great deal of time with either woman, he understood that Dora Vega’s beauty was cold. She was socially proper and gracious, but she was ruthless and calculating, and that ice was visible. Trick wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she had traded her soul away for her power.

  Juliana’s beauty was warm and lively; it was soulful, and her personality shone through vividly. It wouldn’t necessarily be a stretch to say that Trick had a crush. And now that crush had extended to her daughter, who was a delight.

  But she had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in him. On Friday night and Saturday morning, he’d felt something that gave the lie to that assertion, but she’d been concussed, so he didn’t suppose he could consider any signs she might have given then to be reliable.

  And honestly, she was right not to be interested. Jesus, he’s blown a man’s head off last year—a man who’d done him no wrong, who’d done no wrong to anyone he cared about. A man who had small children who would now grow up without a father. He still did not fully understand why La Zorra had wanted Cartwright dead. She’d asserted that he was corrupt, but Trick had no evidence of that.

  She’d told the Horde to kill, the Horde had told him to kill, and he had killed.

  Juliana and her daughter deserved somebody better than that.

  All of that ran through his mind as he took a pieced wood box down from a top shelf of his bookcase and put the Glock in it. There was another light knock, and then Trick went to the door and opened it.

  Lucie was holding a little plant—one of those tiny Japanese trees. A bonsai, he thought they were called. She lifted it up like an offering and declared, “Hi, Trick! It’s a flower for thank you!”

  He grinned and took it from her. “Wow, that’s great! Thank you.”

  “You’re not s’poseda thank a thank you. That’s silly. You’re s’poseda say ‘you’re welcome’.” Lucie poked her head around the door frame. “Your house is backwards from our house. You were right.”

  Before she could walk right into Trick’s apartment, her mother pulled her back and held on. Juliana laughed shyly and met his eyes. “Sorry to just drop by, but we wanted to say thank you for helping us the other day. What you did—well, Lucie was really scared, and I obviously needed some help, and I’m not sure what would have happened if you weren’t there.”

  “I told you that no thanks were necessary. I’m glad I was there to help, too.”

  “You have a lot of books!” Lucie exclaimed, still straining to see inside. “Do you have Magic School Bus?”

  “I don’t think I do. You want to come in and check?”

  As Lucie yelled “Yeah!” Trick looked back up at Juliana and smiled.

  “I don’t know…” her brow furrowed subtly. But she let go of her daughter, who hurried into the room and right up to Trick’s extensive bookcase—which went from floor to ceiling and covered two walls of his living room. And was nearly full of books.

  Juliana followed her daughter, still looking hesitant and uncomfortable, and Trick closed the door. Setting the bonsai on the counter divider between the kitchen and the dining space, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

  She turned and smiled, and Trick’s eyes landed on that little dark dot above her mouth. “I’m better. Just a sore spot on my head, but otherwise, I feel good. Normal.”

  “That’s great. I’m glad to hear it.

  “Mami, look! The Hobbit! Like we have!” Lucie brought a book over, and Juliana crouched down to her daughter’s level.

  “Yes, like ours. Why don’t you put it back where you found it, though…” She faded out. As Trick watched, Juliana gaped in the direction of his living room. “You really do have a lot of books. Have you read them all?”

  “Most of them, yeah. I buy them faster than I can read them, so I can’t say I’ve read them all. Not yet. I read a lot, though, so I’ll get to them. It’s one of my favorite things to do.” Even books that pissed him off managed to give him some sense of fulfillment. He needed to keep his brain focused. Read, draw, build. Think about one thing at a time.

  Without saying more, Juliana handed The Hobbit back to Lucie, then stood up and walked over to the bookcases.

  For her part, Lucie ignored her mother’s suggestion to put the book back where she found it. Instead, she climbed up into his weird armchair and opened the book. She looked like she was reading. The Hobbit. Could she read? She’d told him she was going to be five in September, just a week past the deadline for kindergarten. He’d read to her on Friday night, from a kids’ reference book about astronomy, and she’d pointed out things on the pages, but he’d figured she was just familiar with the book. Could she be that familiar with this one? It wasn’t an illustrated edition.

  “Can you read that, Lucie?”

  “Not all the words. Some words are bigger than me. But look,” and she began to read, in a slow, careful cadence, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the end of worms and an oozy smell…” she stopped and beamed a proud smile at him.

  “That’s great, muffin. Really great.” He was stunned, in fact. She was even smarter than he’d thought.

  “Thank you. Mami says you shouldn’t call me muffin because that’s a thing that family would say and you’re not family. You can call me Lucie, though.”

  His feelings were hurt by that more than he cared to admit to himself or anyone else. But he smiled and gave Lucie a wink, then stood up. “Lucie it is, then.” She went back to reading, aloud but in a quieter voice, and Trick turned his attention to her mother, who at least had the grace to seem embarrassed by the name thing.

  “Sorry, it’s just—it felt odd, you having a nickname for my kid. You just met her a couple of days ago.”

  Still feeling hurt—and insulted, in fact—Trick shrugged. “It’s okay. She wouldn’t tell me her name at first, so I just filled in with that. You taught her to be careful with strangers, but not afraid. That’s smart.”

  Now it was Juliana’s turn to shrug. “I don’t want her to go through life afraid. Being afraid gives your power to other people.”

  The way she’d said that, with a stubborn edge, told Trick that she herself had been afraid, and she was trying to train herself not to be. He let his hurt feelings go and smiled at her, crossing the room to her side. “I think you’re right.”

  “Some of these are in…is that Greek?” Changing the subject, she slid a book off the shelf and opened it. It was a paperback edition of the Iliad.

  “Yeah. My dad was Greek. His father still lives there. My grandpa doesn’t speak English too well, so I’m working on my Greek. What you’ve got there is the Iliad.”

  She turned and looked up at him, her dark, dark eyes wide with wry surprise. It was expressions like that that made him want to kiss her. He could see her intelligence, and it turned him on. “You’re teaching yourself Greek with Homer? Isn’t that jumping in the deep end?”

  He laughed. “I haven’t read that one yet. It’s a goal. I’m more at the ‘How are you? I am fine. Today I bought a loaf of bread at the market’ level.” He was understating his fluency, but that was his way. He’d always been more comfortable downplaying what he
could do. But he wasn’t ready to read Homer in Greek yet, that was true.

  She slid the book back into its slot on the shelf and then turned to him with a small, tight smile he couldn’t quite make out. He cocked his head, interested. “What?”

  “Did I ruin your only shirt?” She cast her eyes downward, and Trick realized that he was bare-chested.

  “God. No. I’ll, uh—just a minute. Sorry.” He turned and went back to his room, snagging a shirt off the pile of laundered but unfolded clothes he’d dropped on his bed. Connor had shown up before he could put them away, and then he’d been too much in his head to remember that the chore was unfinished. Trick liked to keep his home military clean.

  While he was pulling the white t-shirt over his head, he heard, “Don’t apologize. We barged in on you.” Juliana had followed him back. “Holy crap, you have more books back here.”

  He had a low, long case at the end of his bed, and the nightstands on either side were bookcases, too. “Yeah. I told you, I like to read.”

  She picked a loose book up off his dresser: Being and Time. “You like to read Heidegger?”

  He did, in fact. Reading about constructions of truth and meaning gave him ways to think about the world and to try to make himself right with it. “You know Heidegger?”

  “I just finished a class in Contemporary Philosophy. We read ‘The Origin of the Work of Art.’ It gave me a headache. So much wordplay.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it wordplay. I think it’s more that he’s trying to dislodge meaning. I love that one. The idea that we create truth in art rather than just reflect it—I really get that. You’re in school?”

  “You sound like my professor. And yeah, at Cal State. Majoring in political science and minoring in ‘law and philosophy’.”

  He laughed. His art history degree seemed like a lark in comparison. “That’s pretty intense.”

  “It is. I want to get into law school, though, so I can’t take the easy way out. It’s taking me forever, especially since Lucie. I can only take a couple of classes a semester.”

  Law school. Philosophy. All of it while she raised a child. Oh, and she was a talented singer, too. The more he knew, the more he liked.

  “Mami, my tummy says it’s dinner time,” Lucie called from the living room.

  “Okay, mija, I’m coming.” She smiled at Trick. “I guess that’s my cue. Thank you again for everything. I hope the plant is okay. Lucie wanted to get you a flower like we got her babysitter, and then she decided that flowers were too girly, so she picked that. I don’t know anything about them, but there’s a tag with instructions, I think.”

  He did not want them to leave; he liked the way he felt around them: calm. Really calm, not just on the surface, but in deep. Remembering the call he’d been about to make when they’d knocked, he said, “I was just getting ready to order some dinner when you came over. Care to join me? There’s a Thai place down Kendall that delivers. They’re good, with a lot of different stuff on their menu. Lots of vegetarian.”

  “Are you a vegetarian?” Her tone was surprised. He got that a lot.

  “I am. You?”

  “No,” she laughed. “I like meat. We both do.”

  “They have plenty of meat on the menu, too. Does Lucie like Thai?” Kids probably didn’t like Thai. “We could do pizza instead.”

  “Lucie will eat anything. So will I.” She tilted her head and gave him that wry look again. “You’re a vegetarian biker who reads Heidegger and speaks Greek?”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m a freak. I get that a lot.”

  “No, you’re not. It’s not freaky. It’s…interesting.”

  Well, he liked the thought that she found him interesting.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They walked back out to Trick’s living room, where Lucie was still sitting with his edition of The Hobbit, showing off her reading skills.

  “Hey, mija.” When Lucie stopped reading and looked up at her, Juliana asked, “Trick wants to know if we want to have dinner here with him. What do you think?”

  Unsurprisingly, Lucie offered up a bright, enthusiastic smile. “Yeah!” Her little girl had a serious crush on the shaggy-haired biker.

  Trick had come up alongside Juliana, and now he asked, “Excellent! Pizza or Thai food? Do you know about Thai food?”

  Lucie closed the book and gave Trick a dramatically patient consideration, complete with a little sigh. “Of course I know Thai food, silly. And we had pizza yesterday. If you have the same dinner two times in a row you’ll get bored and then you won’t like food you like anymore. Right, Mami?”

  “Right, Lulu.” Juliana turned to Trick and raised her eyebrow at him. She couldn’t help but be proud of her girl.

  Trick laughed and said what she’d been thinking. “You’re a smart girl, Lucie.”

  “Thank you. I want chicken Satay and Thai rice, please.”

  “I’m on it.” As he turned and went to his impressive bookcase, he asked Juliana, “How about you?”

  “I’ll share with Lucie.” Just then, it occurred to her that she’d brought only her keys and the little plant with her up to Trick’s apartment. She didn’t have any way of paying their share of the meal. “I need to run down and get my wallet quick. Can Lucie stay here with you for a couple of minutes?”

  His phone in his hand, he looked up at her. “I’ve got no problem keeping an eye on Lucie, but you don’t need your wallet. Dinner’s my treat.”

  This couldn’t be anything like a date. “No, Trick. We came up here to thank you for helping us, not to cost you money.”

  A shadow crossed his face and then was gone, but Juliana knew that she’d hurt his feelings, and it wasn’t the first time since they’d come up here that she had. She was playing with fire here. “It’s my treat,” he repeated, his voice taking on the ghost of an edge. “Do you want anything else? I’m getting pad Thai and Panang curry.”

  “Nothing else, thanks,” she conceded.

  He nodded and resumed the call. Before he put the phone to his ear, he smiled and said, “You can get the next one.”

  While Trick ordered, Juliana considered him. She’d liked him since he first introduced himself, the night of last year’s Karaoke Idol. He was smart and quiet, a lot different from his friends—one of whom had competed in the Idol against her. Trick himself had gotten up on stage during his friend’s performance, so Juliana had been surprised that, one on one, he hadn’t seemed like a party-hard type.

  Since that night, she’d seen him a few times at The Deck, just about every time she went there. She wasn’t a club-hopper; she rarely went out. But she liked to sing, so, every now and then, she’d go with a couple of girlfriends to The Deck, which had the best karaoke setup around. Trick and his friends were there, or came in, almost every time—they were clearly regulars.

  Trick always made a point to come up and talk to her. He’d come on pretty heavy at first, but when she’d told him flat-out that she wasn’t interested, he stopped trying. Just like that. He hadn’t tried to change her mind at all. But he still came over whenever he saw her, to say hi and talk for a few minutes. Maybe in that way, he’d been trying to change her mind.

  Maybe in that way, he had been.

  She was interested; from the first time he’d smiled at her, she’d been interested. Getting to know him hadn’t abated her interest, and the depth of knowledge she was getting in the past few days—how he was with Lucie; how he’d taken care of them both, without any motive but a sense that it was the right thing to do; his books; his tidy apartment…how he looked with his shirt off; his beautiful tattoos, which were even on his legs—what she wanted to do was throw herself at him. And she knew he’d welcome it.