Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (30 page)

This was them enjoying it.

Bibi sat down next to Trick as he’d started in on a second helping of lasagna. “You look happy, honey.”

“I am, Mama. You look happy, too.”

She smiled and surveyed the commotion at the table, everybody eating and talking, giving each other shit. “I am. I like it when things get like this. It’s a break we needed.”

A phone rang, and Trick looked to see Connor answering his. “Yeah…Hey, Muse.”

Muse and Fargo were out at a film shoot today, babysitting bikes the production had rented.

Everybody went on eating, but Trick, out of habit more than anything else, kept part of his attention on Connor’s call. If Muse was calling in the middle of the day, something could be up.

“Chill, brother. We’re on it. No sweat.” Connor ended the call and stood up. “Sid’s got a problem at the school. Muse is too far away. Deme, T.—I want you in.”

Sid worked as a social worker at an ‘alternative’ high school—a place where they shoved the kids who made too much trouble at regular schools. Demon and Trick both stood up. Before they could say anything, Bibi asked, “What kind of problem?”

“One of the kids went at her. Muse says she’s okay, but he’s fucking pissed—real fucking pissed. Screaming pissed.”

Muse wasn’t an emotional guy, so if he was that angry, then something was bad.

“The principal called him instead of law, so we’re gonna make sure Sid’s okay, and then we’re gonna put on a show for the little asswipe.”

“The
principal
is down with us handling it?” Trick gave Connor a look meant to say that he found that hard to believe.

Connor nodded. “I guess she’s a practical woman. Let’s ride.”

~oOo~

The three of them went into the school office. Before they could talk to the woman behind the counter, a heavyset, dark-skinned woman dressed in a forest green pantsuit came from the side and held out her hand.

“I’m Principal Bettina Alvarez. I assume you’re here on behalf of Mr. Musinski?”

As Connor shook her hand, Trick stifled a smile. Strange to hear Muse referred to in that way; stranger still that they were being greeted so formally by a high school principal, who had called them in to handle a teenager.

“Yeah,” Connor answered. “Is Sid okay? Where is she?”

“She went back to her office. He punched her, but she says she’s fine. Just a bruise. Nate is in my office.”

All three Horde reacted to the word ‘punched.’ But Connor calmly asked, “Nate’s the kid? What happened, exactly?”

Ms. Alvarez indicated that they should follow her, and she led them into a small conference room and closed the door. “I know this is highly unusual, but Nate is a brilliant boy who has a chance to break out of his family cycle. Sid and I decided that calling the Sheriff is only going to push him farther down the wrong path. We see it every day, and this boy, we can’t lose like that.

Demon spoke up. “So you want us to save the kid who beat our brother’s woman?”

“This is Sid’s idea. I agree with her. We’re asking you to make him see that there are greater consequences to his choices than suspension or a couple of nights in jail.”

“I’m still not getting this.” Demon looked to Connor, who turned back to Alvarez.

“We need to talk to Sid before we do anything.”

“I understand. Her office is down the hall.”

The SBC Alternative School was a typical, depressing urban school, in a financially deprived district, serving a population of students nobody cared about. Though the building was only about twenty years old, it bore deep scars from abuse by its students and neglect by its community.

Trick wondered what it was like to come to work every day in a place like this, as Sid did, and face such challenge. He wondered, too, what it was like to come to school here, where every wall told the story of how nobody gave a shit about you.

In those thoughts, he found some sympathy for the kid who’d punched one of their women.

Sid’s office had a dented metal door, its red paint scratched and faded. Connor knocked on the oblong of reinforced glass above the doorknob, and then waved when Sid saw him. They went in—and the story of neglect ended.

She had colorful curtains hanging over a barred window, and bright posters covered all the walls. Not the dumb ‘educational’ posters that teachers must get for free, because the same ones had been hanging in every classroom Trick could remember, but travel posters, and pop culture posters—music and movies and books. The chairs in front of her desk—there were two—were upholstered in bright red microsuede. The room was inviting and cheerful.

Sid stood as they came in. God, she was thin, maybe thinner than usual. Her long blonde hair was back in a ponytail. She dressed a lot like Juliana did for work, but with a bit less flair. Trick’s girls loved their accessories.

“Hey, guys. Thanks for this.” She gave each man a kiss and a quick hug. Demon grabbed her chin and turned her head. Her cheek was red, swelling slightly.

Sid tipped her head out of his hand. “I’m fine. Muse is having kittens, I know, and Bettina keeps saying I got punched. It was a slap. Just a fucking slap. No big deal.”

“Feels like we’re missing a piece here. It’s not like Muse to lose his cool, Sid.”

She smiled. “Yeah, Connor, I know. Things are…” She shook her head like she’d changed her mind about finishing that sentence. “Anyway. I promise—just a slap. Nate’s going through some bad shit at home, and it blew back on me a little.” With a determined point in the middle of one eyebrow, she looked at Demon. “You understand?”

Demon blushed hard and dropped his head. “Shit, Sid.”

She patted his arm. “Sorry, buddy. Needed to make my point. Now, this was my idea, so don’t make me regret it. If this kid ends up doing real time, he’s lost. And he’s a good kid. So I thought you could scare him straight.”

“Sweet Christ,” Connor grumbled. “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You want us to beat him, we’re your guys. Muse wants us to
beat
his ass. But we are not guidance counselors, Sid.
You
are.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t see me as strong. He needs to see muscle, that’ll get his attention—but I don’t want you to hurt him. Get help from the strongest source, right? That’s what Muse says all the time. You’re my strongmen. Go be strong. But do it with your
hearts
.”

~oOo~

In Bettina Alvarez’s office, they found a big African American kid—over six feet, probably close to three hundred pounds. Nate Jackson. When they walked in, his eyes bugged out, and he jumped to his feet, ready to fight. He hadn’t been warned that the Horde was coming for him. He’d been expecting deputies, and he hadn’t been unnerved by that.

The Horde, however, obviously scared him.

He was nineteen, the principal had told them outside her office, and a junior. He’d been held back three times, and he was likely to age out before he could graduate. He had a history of destructive outbursts. His mother was in prison; his father was unknown. He lived with an aunt and her five kids. A poster child for failure.

But his tested IQ was 158.

It was Demon who talked to him most. Connor and Trick stood back, arms crossed, angry faces in place. Trick listened to Demon and watched Nate very slowly lose his defensive posture.

And Trick understood something ridiculous about himself. He’d been
envious
of Demon, a man whose childhood had been rife with horrific abuse. He’d envied him not for that but for the way the mental health issues he suffered because of it had manifested themselves. In their world, Demon’s violent outbursts made sense. They made him stronger. Trick’s self-flagellation and panic attacks, while perhaps more socially acceptable in the normal world, were weakness where he lived.

And Demon wasn’t at fault for his troubles; he hadn’t invited his demons in. Trick was; he had.

He’d been aware of the contrast, and his envy, for a while. But standing in this principal’s office, seeing Demon connect with a struggling kid, Trick understood the ridiculousness of it. Nobody ever invited their demons in. They were invaders, not guests. And living angry was no easier than living anxious. It was all pain, turned one way or another.

Maybe men like them
did
make decent guidance counselors, for people on a certain kind of path.

~oOo~

Neither Sid nor Principal Alvarez had probably intended the result of the Horde’s intervention with Nate Jackson; Trick was certain it didn’t count as being ‘scared straight.’ At any rate, a couple of days afterward, they had an overage, overlarge high school student lurking around the shop. At nineteen, he was old enough to start hanging around, but he was still in high school, and that fact seemed to have the Horde giving him a wary eye.

That, and the fact that Muse still wanted to rearrange his body parts. But Muse wasn’t around the shop much, and Nate made sure not to be around Muse at all.

Sid had been right about him, though: he wasn’t a bad kid. Around the Horde, at least, he was respectful and quiet. At the shop, he watched them work, asking questions that suggested a genuine interest, and possibly an acuity for mechanics.

Trick hated to have people hovering over him during a build, and he would not tolerate chatter. He sucked as a teacher, at least where bikes were concerned. But he wasn’t building the way Demon or any of the others were. They modified what already existed. He started from scratch. They improved; he created. To do that, he needed to be elsewhere in his mind than the shop.

He didn’t need quiet; he could shut out all the noise around him and focus—another gift of his Army days. Snipers were teamed with spotters because their focus was necessarily far away from their own zone, and they needed someone to watch out.

But that focus didn’t work as well when there was someone directly attempting to draw it to them with pestering questions and comments.

A commission had come in from the East Coast a week or so before; some financier guy Trick had never heard of who wanted an art bike for his collection. His only preference instruction had been ‘mean and futuristic.’ That was best case: a commission that let his mind roam freely. He’d pulled some of his more fantastical sketches and submitted them. Now he was building something truly weird and wonderful.

He was deep in the zone one afternoon, sitting on the stool at his station, fashioning small parts. The shop was full, everyone working at capacity, and he’d locked his mind down hard, closing all that noise off. So it took him a few seconds to understand that the shop had gone quiet. By the time he turned off his torch and pushed his goggles onto the top of his head, Connor had arrived at his side.

Connor’s expression rioted with bad things: anger, worry, shock. “What?” Trick asked.

“We got four Feds in the showroom. T, they want you.”

He could see that Connor had prepared for him to break down in some way, but that wasn’t how it worked with him. In times of real danger and crisis, the soldier won out over the sufferer. His insides became stone, and he stood up, giving Connor a curt nod. “Okay.”

His friend blinked. “Dad’s already on it. He called Mel before he came out to the showroom.” The club’s attorney was a partner at Juliana’s firm. “They won’t say what they want with you.”

Trick could see in Connor’s eyes that he knew just as well as Trick himself did what the Feds wanted with him. Allen Cartwright’s murder was more than a year old, but the case had not been closed. They’d finally wended their way to him.

He also knew that if he had screwed up the hit—if any of them had screwed up any part, if law had concrete, material evidence—then Trick would have been picked up long ago. This wasn’t about evidence. This was about information.

Connor knew it, too. “We’re on it, T. Hang tight. We’re on it.”

“Okay.” He released the band he’d used to tie his hair back while he’d been welding, he dropped his goggles on his table, and he walked through the shop to the showroom. All the Horde who’d been working stood, practically at attention, all angry and resolute. Nate stood next to Demon, his eyes wide.

They all followed behind Trick and Connor.

Four male Feds stood near the reception desk with Hoosier and Bart, their jackets open and their holsters unsnapped. They were expecting trouble, but unless they started it, trouble wouldn’t happen. Not here.

As Trick approached them, the older and larger of the four stepped forward, his badge out. Department of Homeland Security.

“Patrick Stavros?”

“Yes.”

“We need you to come with us.”

“Why?”

“We have questions involving your whereabouts on the afternoon of Thursday, August 8
^th
of last year.”

The date of the Cartwright hit. “You can ask your questions here.”

“We need to ask them at our office.”

He knew how he wanted to answer, that he would not go anywhere with them willingly, but he spared a quick glance at Hoosier, whose head moved slightly from side to side. Trick met the lead Fed’s eyes again. “I’m sorry, no.”

“It isn’t a request.”