Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (26 page)

~oOo~

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Juliana lifted up onto her tiptoes and scanned the entrance to the visitor lot, biting her bottom lip. She couldn’t have looked more nervous.

“I need to know, honey. This is how I know.”

“I don’t want him to start a thing in front of Lucie.”

“I won’t let him.”

“If you get aggressive…”

“If I need to get physical, you’ll get Lucie out of here. But I won’t make the first move. Physical isn’t my first response. So take a breath, okay? I need to know that this is under control.”

“I wish you’d tell me what you did to think it might be ‘under control.’ What does that mean?”

He took her arm and made her turn and face him straight on. “Juliana. I will always tell you everything I can. If I won’t tell you, it’s because I can’t. Now I need you to trust me. I need to read this guy.”

“Fuck,” she sighed. She didn’t often use that word—or swear in general, other than the occasional ‘bullshit’ or something equally PG. Trick supposed that when your primary conversation partner was your four-year-old child, you got a little careful with your word choices. He constantly censored himself when Lucie was around—and wasn’t always successful.

“Hey.” He brought her to him for a hug. “Are we together?”

She nodded against his kutte. “Yeah.”

“Then this needs to be dealt with. Right?”

Another nod, another, “Yeah.”

They stood like that, wound together, until Trick saw the gold Lexus stopped on the street, waiting to make a left turn into the lot. He pushed Juliana back. “Okay. Let’s see how this goes.”

Time to get a read on whether Mark Stiles had been neutered.

His eyes already on Trick’s, he pulled into the disabled parking space—God, the guy was such a dick—and got out. The two men stared each other down for a few seconds. Trick held, waiting for Stiles to make the first move. And he did—he nodded and then turned away, slamming the driver’s door and walking around the back of his Lexus—as far away from Trick as he could get.

Juliana was already at Lucie’s door, but Stiles had locked it, and he didn’t hit his fob and unlock it until he was there himself to open it.

“Mami, hi! I made you a present!”

Stiles set Lucie on the ground, and Juliana picked her up and hugged her tightly. “You did? That’s so nice!”

“Yeah! We went to the clay place and I made a present. And Nikki, too—she helped me.”

“That sounds like fun,” Trick said, walking up to Juliana and Lucie. He watched Stiles, measured the way he took in his daughter, her mother, and her mother’s man in the Horde kutte.

Stiles was a very unhappy man, that was obvious. But he seemed meek.

Trick wondered at that. Could be a good sign. Could also be dangerous. Stiles beat on women, which made him a coward in Trick’s book. Cowards were cowed when confronted, but often pulled underhanded shit from a safe distance.

“Hi, Trick! I’m sorry, I didn’t make you a present. I only had time to make one, and I made it for Mami.”

He put his hand on her little back and rubbed. “That’s okay, muffin. I don’t need a present.”

He hadn’t intended to call her muffin—he hadn’t since they’d told him it was a family name and he wasn’t family—but it was useful in this moment. Only Stiles seemed to react. He’d noticed, but he said nothing. Interesting. Also interesting that Trick’s girls didn’t trouble themselves about it this time.

Lucie laughed sweetly. “Nobody
needs
presents, silly. It’s not a present if you need it.”

“Okay, Lulu. I have to go. I’ll talk to you Wednesday, okay?” Stiles leaned in—too close to Juliana for Trick’s taste, but she was holding their daughter—and kissed Lucie’s cheek. Lucie reached out an arm and hooked it around her father’s neck.

She really did love him. That was something; the guy couldn’t be entirely horrible.

“Bye, Papi!
Te quiero
!”

Stiles winced subtly, then smiled. “Love you, too. Be good.”

“I’m always good, Papi.”

“Yeah, you are.” Stiles kissed her cheek again. He handed Trick Lucie’s pack and a large, plain, pale green shopping bag, and then he turned, walked around the back of his Lexus, and got in.

Trick wasn’t sure he’d even checked to make sure they were clear of the SUV before he backed out and drove away.

~oOo~

While Lucie unpacked her bag in her room, Trick helped Juliana start dinner. The coffee mug Lucie had painted with purple and blue stars and swirls—her present to her mother—was already washed and hanging at the top of Juliana’s mug tree.

“Did you learn what you needed to learn?” Using an eight-inch chef’s knife, she expertly chopped vegetables as she spoke.

He smashed garlic into oil in her big cast-iron skillet. “I had to see how he reacted to me.”

“He’s pissed, Trick. That’s how he reacted.”

“I know. I saw. But he wasn’t aggressive.”

“You think that means you’ve backed him down?”

He’d just dumped pinto beans into the skillet. Leaving them on the stove, he leaned back against the counter at her side. “You tell me. Have I?”

Stopping with the knife in midair, she sighed. “I don’t know. It’s not how he is with me. With me, he’s threatening and snide, literally in my face. I’ve never seen him face off with a strong man before.”

“Okay.” He went back to the stove and started seasoning the beans. He didn’t have a clear read on Stiles, either. “Well, he knows where we stand, and he knows that we’re together. I’ll keep an eye out. I’m gonna ask to put one of our guys on you, until we’re sure he’s handled.”

As he’d expected, she gave him an incredulous, contrary look, and he laid his hand over her arm—the one with a knife on the end of it. “Relax. Just somebody watching out for you. You’ll barely know they’re around. We’re taking care of each other, right? So let me do this.”

After a long, obviously thoughtful pause, she nodded—and then immediately shook her head. “Not on me. On Lucie. If he does anything, he’ll take Lucie. I think he’s done all he wants to do to me.”

Trick chuckled without any humor at all. “I doubt that. I’ll see if I can get somebody on you both.”

As she resumed chopping, she made a similarly humorless noise. “Funny that it’s my life and not yours that’s the big problem.”

He didn’t answer. She had no idea how big a problem his life could be.

~oOo~

Lakota handed Jesse his envelope and then sat down. As always, Trick set his aside and watched while his brothers dealt with their own. Jesse counted. J.R. counted. Keanu. Fargo. Diaz opened his and sneered at his contents, which he’d done every payout since his divorce.

Even Muse counted, this time. Trick didn’t think Muse had counted his take in a long time, years maybe. He focused on Muse’s hands for a second, wondering if there was a change somewhere.

“That’s it for the financials,” Hoosier said. “Bart’s got an update on our standing business, and we need to make a decision about bringing Jerry up for a vote.”

Bart leaned his elbows on the counter. “All the runs are smooth, the protection work and La Zorra runs both. The La Zorra routes seem really stable. The right people are paid off, everything’s running like clockwork. So much so that she’s looking to add a route headed northward, and she’s called Eight Ball for more guns. The Tulsa Bulls are heading to California in the next couple of weeks.

“Sounds like new business,” Connor said. He and Cordero had been gone on a short honeymoon, and they’d been incommunicado, so he was a step behind.

“Their new business, not ours. The new route won’t split off until we hand off the product, and if they come to terms on the guns, it won’t change our involvement there. Same pick-ups, same drop-offs.”

Trick didn’t think any of it sounded that simple. “But moving more product, which is a steeper downside if we get hung up. And why the hell does she need more guns? Is she planning an actual war? I thought her big victory was bringing peace to her business.”

Hoosier and Bart both gave Trick the same long look, and Trick grew wary. They knew something. Nearly a week had passed since Connor and Cordero’s wedding and Trick’s strange encounter with Dora. He’d been at work all week, but he hadn’t heard anything about it. Connor had been gone until a couple of hours before the Keep. The week had been quiet.

“If it’s not our work, then it’s not our business,” Jesse chimed in.

“That’s bullshit, Jess,” Connor replied. “We lose track of the game if we’re not paying attention to what else the other players are doing. Dora gets cagier every time we talk to her. If she wants more guns and is looking to move even more product east, then she’s got a plan. This is not a woman who does anything half-assed.”

Bart nodded. “Con’s right. We’re looking into it—carefully. For now, nothing changes for us, except our weights are greater and our payout is bigger.”

“How much payout do we all need?” The table went quiet, and all the men turned to Ronin, who almost never said anything in the Keep beyond the syllable he needed to make a vote.

“Roe? Something…on your mind?” Hoosier leaned in. Ronin sat opposite him, at the far end of the table.

“Speaking for myself, I can’t spend the money I have. Can’t put any more in the bank. I’m digging holes in my garden and burying boxes of money. Why are we doing all of this? We started up again because we thought we had to or die out. But what’s the end game? I didn’t want this outlaw life again, but now I’m in it, and I’m in it. You know I don’t back down from what the club needs. The vote was square back then, and I’m standing by it. I’m in this. But we’re taking on risk, more all the time, high-profile risk, and I don’t see the upside except more holes in my garden.”

Nobody spoke. Trick thought that speech was probably the most words Ronin Drago had strung together at one time in all the years he’d known him.

It was Jesse who finally answered him. “You don’t need your cut, Roe, we can fold it into the pot for the rest of us.”

Ronin turned a perfectly impassive face to Jesse and simply stared. There was no obvious threat, no sneer, not even any heat in his eyes. But Trick felt a chill, and Jesse dropped his eyes to the table.

“Shut your hole, Jess.” Hoosier pulled on his beard. Though it was a little thinner on the scarred side of his face than it used to be, and it had gone pure white, his beard had come back in well and was growing long again. “Ronin makes good points. But brother, you know…how this life goes. Once we’re in…it always spreads.…This is greedy work. …And we work with people who…who…never have enough. But…trust me, Roe. We’re payin’ attention.”

Ronin nodded and said no more. There wasn’t more to say. Such was the conundrum of this life: it was a vortex, a constant pull deeper into the dark. Any way out would be painful and possibly devastating.

Trick hadn’t voted to go outlaw, either, and that was the reason why. He’d known they’d end up deep in the muck—and he suspected that some of his brothers who’d voted yes had done so because they’d missed the muck. That made him wary.

He had yet to spend a cent of the money he’d earned from their La Zorra work. He knew exactly how much he had spread in safe deposit boxes all over San Bernardino County, tucked in hidden compartments in his furniture, locked in his safe.

Enough to start a whole new life almost anywhere in the world. But he didn’t want that money. It was dangerous—dangerous to earn, to have, to spend. The last thing he wanted was to become dependent on money he earned by killing without a certainty of its rightness.

~oOo~

Connor put his hand on Trick’s shoulder and sat down on the stool next to him. The Friday party was getting started but hadn’t hit its full momentum yet. Trick planned to be out and home with Juliana and Lucie before it did.

“We need to talk, T.”

Trick nodded. “Something’s up with Jesse. He’s been off for a while now.” Jesse had all but stomped out of the Keep and straight out of the clubhouse as soon as Hoosier’s gavel hit the table. Lakota, Jerry’s sponsor, had said he didn’t think Jerry was ready for a vote, and the club had voted not to bring in any new Prospect as long as they had one. Which meant that Jesse’s pet, Titus, wasn’t elevating past hangaround, not for the foreseeable future.

The club didn’t need to grow right now. They were handling their business at the size they were, and J.R. had a point—more bodies at the table meant smaller cuts. For Trick’s part, he had no interest in giving anybody a reason to feel like they needed more in their envelopes, and Ronin’s stunning speech seemed to have given even the counters some pause.

“Yeah.” Connor didn’t say more than that one word on the matter, but Trick turned and squinted at him anyway, trying to see into his eyes. His friend kept his mouth shut outside the Keep and didn’t talk club business in groups. Not even to Trick. He didn’t like side talk about things that affected everyone.

But Trick knew him well, and in that one syllable he’d heard an essay. In his inflection of that syllable, Connor had told him that the leadership was looking at Jesse. Trick guessed that Sherlock was looking for something.