Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (32 page)

“Thank you.”

Faith drank her first shot. “I thought you guys didn’t want kids.”

Sid sighed. “This wasn’t in the plan. It’s a long story. I went off pills because they were fucking with my mood, and then…you know. Got sloppy. But now that I am…”

The women all nodded sagely, even Juliana, who’d been watching this conversation from the sidelines, holding a shot of tequila and finding herself surprised and relieved that she had lost the attention of the room.

The moment made her feel more a part of the group, so she said, “Lucie wasn’t planned. At first, looking at the result on the stick, I thought my life was over. I thought it meant that I was trapped with her father and that all my dreams about my life were finished before I could start them. I even considered having an abortion. But she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Some things in my life are harder now, but I have her, and she makes it all okay.”

Veda was quiet, staring down at her shot glass. Then she sighed and tossed the tequila down her throat. She made a little face and muttered, “Fuck.” Riley put her hand on Veda’s shoulder.

That quiet communication told Juliana that Veda knew disappointment and maybe grief regarding children. “I’m sorry,” she told her and finally drank her tequila. The heat on the way down warmed and settled her tense muscles.

Veda smiled. “It’s okay. It’s just—J.R. and I have been trying for long time, and it’s just not happening. He won’t…” She stopped and waved the sentence away. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, sometimes it’s hard to hear about people getting accidentally knocked up.”

Riley poured more tequila. “I’ll get you a sparkling water, Sid.”

Sid stood up. “I’ll get it. Can I snag some snacks, too? My all-day-long sickness is finally over.”

“Go for it.”

As Sid headed to the kitchen and Riley sat down, Bibi handed Juliana back her refilled glass, then drank down another shot. “Okay, Juliana, darlin’. Let’s talk. What can we do?”

Juliana took a breath and took in the women seated around her. Bibi, by far the oldest and obviously in charge. She’d noticed that the men all called her ‘Mama,’ except her actual son, who called her ‘Mom.’ The women all called her by name, though.

Faith, who seemed closer to Bibi than the others in this close-knit group. Riley. Somehow Riley fit in, despite being famous and rich. And Veda. Juliana hadn’t seen enough of her or of Sid to have formulated an opinion, but they were obviously part of the sisterhood.

The women all seemed to understand each other, even though they seemed unique each in her own way, and even though their bonds among them were clearly different. Some were obviously more involved with the club than others. Juliana liked the idea that being with Trick didn’t necessarily mean being deep in the club. The club scared her. She tried to settle her mind about it, to tell herself that the club was Trick, and vice versa, but she didn’t believe it. She liked the guys, and the women, but she liked them outside of the club. At their pool party, and at the wedding—she liked that. They were good people. The way Connor had been in her apartment earlier—that was club. It was different.

She swallowed her shot and felt the warmth ooze into her belly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to ask because I don’t know what to say. I was making stuffed eggplant for dinner and then Trick was arrested and Lucie and I were packing and getting pushed into a van.” Saying that out loud broke a dam she’d erected to help her deal with the craziness of the night, and she was crying before she could stop herself. “I was just making eggplant!”

Bibi scooted over and pulled Juliana into her arms. “Shhh. I know, baby, I know. The boys are doin’ everythin’ they can to get Trick home. In the meantime, we’re all here for you. We’ll help every way we can. We’re a family. Trick loves you, and that makes you part of us.”

Juliana cried harder at that, and stopped fighting the tears. Bibi seemed willing to hold her and let her cry, so cry she did. After a minute or two, Riley’s hand was on her back, running lightly up and down. She had sat down at Juliana’s other side.

“You and Lucie will stay right here with us until this gets figured out.”

Sniffing, Juliana pulled herself together enough to sit up and turn to Riley. “Thank you, but we can’t. I have work and school. And Lucie’s dad has visitation this coming weekend. He’ll take me to court if I flake on that.”

“Let the men take care of all of it,” Veda said. “You have to trust them. If they want you here, it’s because you’re not safe out there. Staying safe is the most important thing.”

“I don’t trust them! I trust Trick! And he’s gone! Oh my God! I don’t understand!”

Juliana put her head in her hands and let fresh tears flood through her. Her life was falling apart, and only hours ago it had seemed on the road to perfect.

~oOo~

She didn’t sleep that night. The bed in the room she’d been given was luxuriously comfortable, but she was beset by fear and doubt, too much for rest. Not even tequila had brought her sleep. As soon as there was any light at all in the sky, she got up, pulled on a pair of yoga pants under Trick’s t-shirt, and went out into the house.

After she checked on Lucie and found her sleeping well, she padded down to the huge kitchen. Fargo and Keanu sat at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and talking.

They were there to guard the house, she knew. The other women had left at some point, and the rest of the Horde, too, she thought. But they’d left two behind to guard the house.

She had been fooling herself about what it would mean to make a family with an outlaw.
This
was what it really meant.

Fargo looked up. “Morning. You’re up early. You okay?”

“Yeah. Is there more coffee?”

“Sure. It’s fresh.” He nodded to the counter, and Juliana went to make herself a cup. She thought of the mug Lucie had made her a few weeks back, and she had to blink tears away.

“What are you doing up? I thought the womenfolk got you drunk last night.”

Juliana jumped at Connor’s voice. Apparently not all the Horde had left. Connor had become the locus of her fear—maybe simply because he had been the bearer of the news. Or because he’d been so angry and rough. Or all of it.

He looked tired, and he was dressed in the same clothes as last night. She wondered if he’d even gone to bed.

“I—I—” as he came up to her, a racing heart stopped up her words. But he simply bent down and kissed her cheek.

“It’s okay. I want to talk to you. Let me just get a cup, too, and we’ll go sit outside, okay?”

Still mute, she nodded and stepped out of his way.

Mugs of fresh coffee in hand, they went out to the terraced patio overlooking a large, beautiful swimming pool. The vast yard was peace personified. The sun had just peeked up over the lowest eastward mountains, and the morning was quiet and cool. Connor led her to an arrangement of upholstered patio furniture.

As soon as he sat, he said, “I was an asshole last night, and I’m sorry. I’m worried about Trick. The situation is fucked up, and it took me a while to get level. I can be a real dick, I know. But I’ll try to help you get right with this. As right as there is to get.”

Juliana nodded and sipped her coffee. “I don’t know what to ask. I know you won’t tell me anything. Trick never tells me anything.”

“No. There’s a lot that’s better for you not to know. And it’s not my place to tell you what your old man won’t. But you can ask whatever you want. I just might not answer.”

“Where is he? What is he charged with?”

“DHS took him. Homeland Security. I’d guess he’s in L.A., at least right now, but we don’t know. Our lawyer is on it, but the Feds aren’t being helpful. And he hasn’t been charged yet with anything. We want him to be. If they charge him, then that starts a process we can deal with. Until they charge him, I’m not sure we can even find him.”

She frowned; that didn’t sound right at all. “Habeas corpus applies. They’ve got to charge him.”

“I forgot—you know this shit. Okay.” He leaned forward. “Then listen to what I said:
DHS has him
.”

It was early, she hadn’t slept, and she was freaked out—all likely reasons Juliana hadn’t picked up on it right away. When she did, she almost dropped her mug. “You think they’re holding him as a
terrorist
? What the hell? What did he do?”

Connor’s only answer was a shake of his head: not a question he’d entertain.

“Oh, my God. Connor—there are so many loopholes in terrorism jurisprudence that the whole system is a sieve. There is no due process. They can keep him indefinitely without charge. They don’t have to give him access to a lawyer. They don’t have to give him visitation. They don’t have to fucking give him
anything
. EVER.”

“I know. We’re working every angle we can. He doesn’t have a record. We have some powerful friends. We’re doing what we can. First, we’ve got to find him.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” She set her mug down and put her face in her hands. “Oh, Trick, God.”

They sat quietly together, while Juliana ignored Connor and processed the information she’d just gotten. DHS had had vast latitude since its inception after 9-11. There had been moves to curb its power over the years, but after a deadly attack on Disney World a few years earlier, on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the WTC, the Powers That Be had taken its leash off completely.

She might never see Trick again. If they moved him out of the country, to a facility in a place with even looser human rights laws, he could be tortured for the rest of his life. Even if he stayed stateside, the conditions for terrorism suspects were grim.

Terrorism
. Trick? She didn’t understand. They had the wrong guy.

“Juliana, we have to talk about some practical shit, too.”

She dropped her hands and focused on Trick’s friend. “We do. I can’t stay here forever. I can’t sit at Riley and Bart’s pool while my life, and my daughter’s life, collapses around us.”

“I know. If this goes on too long, then we’ll figure something out. But for now, we need you here and out of sight. I’m going to handle your ex today. The visitation thing won’t be a problem. Mel will see to it that you don’t lose your job. I’m sorry about school, but that’s out of the question.”

“What do you mean, handle my ex?”

His expression didn’t change. “I mean do what I need to do so that he doesn’t cause trouble. I hope I mean have a talk. But I will do what I need to do to keep him quiet.”

The way these men talked about the option of killing someone—which was what Connor was saying without saying—disturbed her. Trick did it, too. What disturbed her more was how used to it she’d become already. “Lucie loves him.”

“That’s great. Doesn’t matter, though. Your safety and hers. Trick. The club. That’s what matters. Period.”

“Somebody would really hurt me, or Lucie, because Trick got arrested?”

“Because Trick knows things, yes. The Feds will try to get him to flip on bigger players. He won’t, but some people we deal with could be badly hurt if he did, and they don’t have the trust in him that we do. They’d go for you first because you’re the most valuable target.”

An exhaustion so pronounced it needed a new word to define it overtook Juliana. “This is not…this can’t be my life.”

“It is. And don’t get any fancy ideas about leaving him and going back to what you had before. There’s no going back. This is your life now. You’re known as his. Leaving him doesn’t end the risk. The point of no return was the wedding, when everybody we know saw you together.” His serious expression deepened and went dark. He leaned forward again. “Plus, you hurt him while he’s going through this shit, and I will figure out a way to pay that back.”

As much as Connor had been scaring her since last night, that threat was strangely reassuring. She was glad he was so protective of Trick. “I don’t want to leave him. I want him with us. But I’m scared.”

“I know. We’re gonna fix this. Trust us.”

“Everybody keeps saying that—
trust us
. But I don’t understand ninety percent of anything that’s going on. How am I supposed to trust anything?”

“That’s what trust is, Juliana.”

~oOo~

Six weeks. Almost seven. A lifetime.

In that time, Juliana and Lucie never left Bart and Riley’s house. And in that time, nobody told her anything except that they were ‘working on it.’

She’d had to withdraw from her classes. And she’d taken unpaid leave from work. Emily had been angry but had not denied her the leave or the ability to return. The Horde had handled that in some way, as Connor had promised. They’d been paying her bills, too.

Connor had been right, as well, about handling Mark. She wasn’t sure how he’d managed it, what leverage they had on him that kept him so meek, but he came three separate times to the Elstads’ and spent the day with Lucie, and with Juliana, that way. On those days, the house was full of Horde. More than the two always present, different men at different times.

The house and grounds were such a wonder that it took Lucie weeks to get bored. She’d started asking questions early, wanting to see Trick, wanting to go to school, wanting to go out and do things. But for the first month, Juliana had easily deflected all of them. They were staying with the Elstads while they waited for Trick, who was away for work.