She turned back to Bennett with a polite smile. “Hi, Bennett.”
~oOo~
By the time they were seated at the table for dinner, Cory had made it plain to Bennett the Developer that she was not interested and that she was, in fact, already spoken for. Since she had not yet informed Linz or Alex of this fact, she’d realized that there was a can of worms hanging over that statement when she’d made it, but Bennett had been very convinced of his persuasive skills, and she’d run out of ways to deflect him without getting heated.
It was clear before the salad course was finished that he had told Alex, probably complaining that he’d been set up with an unavailable woman. The information had evidently annoyed both Alex and Lindsay, because right there at the table, surrounded by their posh friends who were strangers to Cory, Lindsay said, “So, Cory. I hear through the grapevine that there’s a new guy.” She looked out at the table with a sweet smile, affecting good humor. “I’m always the last to hear the juicy gossip.”
Cory swallowed her radicchio and took a drink of sparkling water. “Yeah, there is. We’ve been seeing each other a couple of months.”
Still wearing that smile, her voice just sharp enough to make sure Cory knew how fake that smile was, Linz said, “Well, do tell. What’s his name, what’s he do? Where’d you meet?”
Jesus. Even his name was a trouble starter. She opened her mouth, not sure whether she’d actually say ‘Havoc’ at this table, with these people, still trying to decide whether to cop out and say ‘Joe,’ even as her tongue was trying to figure out which sounds to make, when Nolan spoke up.
“His name is Havoc. He’s really cool. He owns the bar Mom works at. Actually, she manages it, now.”
Linz’s brow furrowed, but it was Alex who spoke up. “Havoc? What kind of—Jesus Christ, Cory. That bar is owned by the bikers, right? The Night Horde? The ones they did the movie about, with the death and the violence? Tell me you’re not…” He looked around the table and saw all their fancy friends watching avidly as this little family drama began to unfold.
Lindsay cut in, her voice now anxiously perky, “You know what, darling? I think we should carve the turkey. We can talk later.”
Nolan tossed his fork to his plate with a loud clatter. “No. Go ahead and say what you’re gonna say, Uncle Alex. Otherwise, you’ll just make dirty looks at Mom all through dinner. So just say it.”
Alex turned a dark look on Nolan, and Cory knew that Thanksgiving dinner at the Moore house was about to become gossip at their country club. “Watch how you talk to me, Nolan. I deserve your respect.”
“Fuck you, Uncle Alex. Why? Because you’re older than me? Because you’re rich? Well, fuck your money. You don’t treat me with respect. You don’t treat my mom with respect. Havoc does. Havoc treats us like we matter.”
“Nolan, no. Back down, kiddo.” Cory spoke quietly, her head and heart in a tumult. She wasn’t embarrassed; she didn’t care about all these strangers. But she was sad to see Nolan so worked up again, after months of calm.
He had a foul mouth when he was angry, but he’d never lost it in front of Vienna and Verona before. Now Linz gasped and got up, collecting her stunned daughters and taking them out of the room.
Alex threw his napkin on the table and stood. Nolan stood right up with him. “You insolent little ape. All we’ve done for you and your mother, and you mouth off like that? If it weren’t for me and your aunt, your mother would have had you living in a fucking shelter. Or on the streets! Why the fuck should I respect either of you? Sitting at my table disrespecting me.” He turned to Cory. “Get the fuck out. Take your foul spawn and get out of my house. Now.”
Cory nodded and looked at Nolan. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go.”
Nolan picked up the fancy china plate that still held half his salad and threw it against the wall.
~oOo~
They stopped at a Denny’s in Springfield and had something that passed for a Thanksgiving dinner. They didn’t talk much. Cory tried, but Nolan was shaking with anger, and she knew there was nothing she could do to help him but give him the space he needed. As they were putting their coats back on and she was putting down the money for dinner and a nice tip, Nolan put his hand on her arm.
“I’m really sorry, Mom. I fucked everything up again.”
She pulled her boy into her arms. He really was getting tall—she thought he might be pushing six feet already. “No, kiddo. It’s okay. Maybe not the best place to say all that to him, but I love you for defending me. Whether I deserved it or not.”
“You deserved it, Mom. You’re so much better than he is.”
“I love you, little cub. You going to be okay?”
He nodded.
~oOo~
Havoc’s Thanksgiving hadn’t been so wonderful either, and he’d come to her late, after she and Nolan were in bed, pretty drunk, angry, and silent, and then he’d gotten more drunk, morose, and silent. And then he’d passed out with his head in her lap. She sat up in bed, propped on her pillows, and watched him. He hadn’t talked about what had set him off so hard—he’d hardly said ten words—but he’d been surprisingly vulnerable, seeking comfort from her in a way he never had, a way she hadn’t thought him capable of.
Late that night, while Havoc slept, she heard Nolan leave the house. It was cold, and later than usual for one of his nighttime roams—which he hadn’t taken for several weeks—but she let him go. She understood. She sat up, her hand on Havoc’s sleeping back, and waited for her boy to come home, but she understood why he needed to go.
~oOo~
She’d dozed off, sitting up against the headboard. It was early dawn when she woke, the light in the room a soft grey. Havoc was still asleep, now on his stomach at her side, snoring.
Cory eased out of bed and tiptoed out of the room. When she got to the kitchen, she looked across the living room and saw Nolan’s door open. Her heart picking up speed, she hurried over and looked in.
He wasn’t there. It was after six o’clock.
He’d been gone four hours. In the cold of a late-November night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Hav. I need you. I need you.”
Havoc came awake immediately, on edge and not sure why. He rolled from his stomach and realized Cory was standing next to the bed, her hand on his shoulder. His head was screaming at him—he’d hit the Jack hard last night and had almost gotten himself into all manner of trouble—but through the painful, bleary haze of hangover, he saw that she looked wrong. Upset. Calm, but upset.
“What’s up?”
“Nolan’s not home. He went out last night, and he’s still not back.”
Now he sat up and rubbed his hand over his face, pushing away the fog and pain. “Went out where? When?”
“Around two. I was awake, but I didn’t go out there. I figured he needed to do his nightwalker thing after yesterday. But that was more than four hours ago, and it’s below freezing out there. I’m worried.”
He was up and getting dressed as she talked. Fuck, though, he was unsteady on his pegs. He needed caffeine. “You call him?”
“His phone is on his desk. Hav, he’s never been out this long. He’s hurt, I know it. Hurt or…” her voice broke and she sucked in a harsh breath.
“Hey, easy.” He pulled her close, but she was stiff in his arms and clearly didn’t want it. He released her and grabbed his burner out of his jeans. As he was about to dial, the rest of her words sank into his thick, sore head. “What do you mean, after yesterday? What happened yesterday?”
“He and my brother-in-law fought, and Alex threw us out. We had Thanksgiving at Denny’s.”
“Fuck, honey. Why didn’t you reach out to me?”
She shrugged. “You were with your family, and we were okay. But Nolan had some trouble calming down. Like he does. Hav, I don’t want to hash that out. I need to find my kid.”
“Okay, I’m on it.” He dialed.
“Who are you calling?”
“The
clubhouse, see if he’s there.” He reached a groggy Dom. Nolan wasn’t at the clubhouse; Dom hadn’t seen him.
Havoc hung up and dialed again. Before she could ask, he said, “Isaac. Gotta bring the club in on this.”
“Why?”
But Isaac was answering, so Havoc put his hand up. “Boss, it’s Hav. Maybe got a problem. Cory’s boy went out walking around two this morning and isn’t home yet. Not at the clubhouse.”
Isaac was wide awake immediately. “Reason to think he’s hurt?”
“Walking in the middle of a cold night, four hours gone. Kid always comes home, never gone this long.”
“Anybody outside of town know you’re connected to them?”
“No.” Except that wasn’t true. He’d told one other person. “Only Bart. And, I guess, probably his old lady.” But Bart would never put innocents in jeopardy. Certainly not innocents connected to people he cared about.
Isaac clearly agreed; he didn’t chew on that information at all. “Okay. We’ll get everybody on it. We’ll meet at her place. Call Badge, I’ll call Show. Everybody there in twenty.”
When they ended the call, Cory was staring at him, her eyes suspicious. “Why did he ask who knew you were with us?”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised.
“Isaac’s voice carries. Why? Do you think somebody hurt Nolan because of you?”
His throbbing head was now twisting, too, thinking about everything that had happened to people the Horde cared about. Lilli. Show’s first wife. Show’s kid. Fuck, even Riley had gotten a little taste of it once. Their loved ones were always paying for the shit the Horde was in the middle of. But they weren’t in the middle of any shit now. They’d done one weed run. One. And it had gone right on plan. Their enemies list was shorter than it had been in years.
“No. No. He’s not hurt. He probably got turned around in the woods. We’ll find him and you can feed him some chicken soup or whatever, and everything will be fine.”
“Why would he ask that? Why would somebody hurt Nolan?”
“Nobody would. Not because of me.” He hoped that was true. Fuck, he hoped that was true. “Or any other reason. Get dressed. Warm clothes, good walking boots. Think about where he could be, so we have some places to start.”
She stared at him for another long, intense pause, and then she went to her closet. He called Badger, and then he finished getting dressed himself.
When he went out to the kitchen, Cory was making coffee. Good. He needed to kick this fucking hangover to the curb.
Thanksgiving at his folks’ had been fine. Or it had been exactly what it always was. His family, being his family. But he’d sat there and looked around the table at his parents and his sister, and his whole life in that house had crowded into his head. It hadn’t been a bad life. Or he’d never thought of it as a bad life. Not while he was in it. Not until recently, watching Cory and Nolan, being with them, seeing what they had even when they had so little. Feeling what he felt about them both, how he felt when he was with them. It was rewriting everything he thought about his own life, his own family. His own self.
And resentment and anger had begun to stoke a fire in his gut. He’d heard his father’s few brusque words, and had seen the way even at Thanksgiving he’d barely looked up from his plate, and had no longer seen the man his mother wanted him to see—a taciturn, no-nonsense man who believed his job as a father was to raise up strong people. Instead he’d seen a man who had just enough love for one person—his wife—and begrudged anything she gave anyone else, even his children.
He’d looked at his mother, and the gleam on his image of her had been tarnished by his sudden, late, understanding of what it meant that she had let him get beaten. She had never been under threat of reprisals, had she intervened. Only Havoc had ever felt the bite of the man’s belt buckle. Or the sting of the old buggy whip. Or the burn of the knotted rope. Don Mariano did not hit women. Ever. And, to the extent he was capable of it, he doted on his wife. But she’d let her son get beaten, usually to bruising, often to blood, and she’d cleaned him up and patted his shoulder and sent him on with the admonition to be better, Joe, be better. Be a good boy.
He’d looked at his beautiful sister, never struck by either parent, and saw a defective girl whose bright smile and easy laugh covered for her total inability to make any kind of life on her own. Their parents had worked a different kind of mischief on her, keeping her down in more passive ways. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t get a teaching job. She couldn’t make anything happen in her life. She couldn’t connect with people any better than Havoc could. Worse than he could, actually. He had the Horde, and now he had Cory and Nolan. She had no one but the people at that table.
And then he’d looked inward, and understood how deeply fucked up he was. How terrified—fucking terrified—he was of what was happening between him and Cory, what it meant. Realization had dawned that he loved her. He loved them both. It was the thing he hadn’t understood, that had vexed him so much. Love. He hadn’t even fucking recognized it.
For a brief moment, that rising sun of understanding had felt good. Knowing how he felt, naming it. Knowing with a striking clarity what he wanted. He’d felt excited and powerful, sitting there while his mother dished out a wide slice of pecan pie for him. Nearly bouncing in his seat at the thought of seeing Cory later in the evening.
And then he’d looked around the table again and understood something else. This was his training ground for family, this defective home that had fucked him up something awful. He didn’t want to be his father. He didn’t know how to be in a family and be right in it. He was wrong, and it was too late for him to learn to be right.
That was the thought that had stuck, and he’d left after pie and gone straight to the clubhouse, intent on drinking, intent on staying away from Cory. Debbie had come in when he was decently into his second bottle, and he’d gotten her all the way to his room and buck naked before he’d thought twice about what he was doing. It had been her tramp stamp. She’d been kneeling on his bed, in a position with which they were both familiar, the ink across her lower back right in front of him—a butterfly, with swirly lines on either side—and he’d thought of Cory’s, those two birds on a branch.
He’d sent Debbie away and had ridden to the little mobile home. Too drunk to ride, but he got there. He’d known he was being weak and wrong and that he should stay away, but he couldn’t.
She had Jack for him in the kitchen, so he’d kept drinking. He didn’t remember much more, until she was shaking him awake, with news that Nolan was missing.
When Cory finished making the coffee, she grabbed her keys off their little hook and went to the coat closet in the living room and pulled out her down coat. As she was pushing her arms into the sleeves, Havoc asked, “What’re you doing?”
“I’m going out. It’s stupid to be standing here waiting. He could be hurt. He probably is.” She turned and headed for the front door.
He moved fast to cut her off, taking hold of her arm. “No, Cory. You wait. You don’t go out alone. When everybody gets here, we’ll make a plan, cover ground in pairs. Nobody alone.”
She jerked her arm out of his hand. “Nolan’s alone. And why do we have to pair up?”
“We don’t know what happened. There might be more risk.”
Her first reaction was confusion, but then her eyes narrowed into the same suspicion she’d had in the bedroom. “You do think this is about the club. That somebody hurt him on purpose because of you.”
Fuck, that hurt so bad, and not only because there was truth in it. “No. There’s nothing. No reason someone would come after him. But we have to be smart, even so. You are not alone today. Period.”
She slapped him. “I swear to God, if you got him hurt, I will kill you. I will. And I am going out right now to look for my son. Without him, I am alone.”
There was too much in his head. Too much noise and pain and worry and…and fear. Too much. He grabbed her and slammed
her into the wall. She lost her breath with a startled cry.
“I will fucking knock you unconscious and tie you the fuck down, and I am not exaggerating. You are not leaving on your own. This isn’t a negotiation. You do what I say and fucking wait.”
She stilled, and he could tell that he’d won. But something had changed in her eyes, in the way she saw him. He could see it, and he could feel it. But he couldn’t think about it or try to fix it, not now.
As he eased his grip on her arms, the thunderous roar of Harleys approached, growing louder. Hav went out into the front yard to see Isaac and Show in the lead, Lilli and Shannon in Lilli’s SUV, and Len trailing. As they were pulling in, Dom, Omen, Mikey, and Badger, all coming from the clubhouse, came over a rise in the road together.
~oOo~
They worked efficiently, plotting out a range for each group to cover. Isaac wanted Cory to stay at the house in case Nolan came back, but she shot the shit out of that idea. She called Bonnie over instead.
Cory was so calm. Calm was probably the wrong word. Stoic was better. She was stoic. Like she had shut everything down but the parts she needed to find Nolan. She would not let Havoc touch her, flinching away from even the slightest brush of his hand. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her.
They went out, at radii around the house, on foot, as Nolan had been, with a plan to regroup in two hours. They kept in touch by cell phone, and the day was cold but clear, so the reception was good, until a couple of the groups—including Havoc and Cory—got deeper into the woods.
Twice, Havoc had tried to say something encouraging or comforting. Cory had simply raised her hand to cut him off. So they searched, the only words between them suggestions to check a pile of leaves or a deadfall. And Nolan’s name. Until they were hoarse.
Nothing. Not even a sign of him.
When it was time to go back for the status check, Havoc thought he was going to have to knock her out, after all. She didn’t yell or even fight. She just ignored him. She wouldn’t go. Not until he threatened to carry her bodily.
All the Sky (Signal Bend Series) Page 20
