They hadn’t met as a full table in a couple of weeks. In quiet times, they only had a scheduled business meeting once a month. The brothers knew their roles and had their schedules, and Isaac and Show dealt with adjustments on a case-by-case basis. But the quiet times were ending, and it was time to clue everybody in officially to what they’d all come to learn informally.
He explained about Ellis’s pressure on Will Keller to sell, and he described Will’s new hostility to Isaac. Everybody knew that Isaac and Will were friends from way back, so they understood that Will shutting Isaac down was a very bad sign.
Len spoke up. He was only a couple of years older than Isaac and Will, and he and Will had played on the church baseball team together for years. They were friends, too. “I’ll give him a run. Been awhile since I had the boat out. I’ll see if he wants to take a cooler and a couple of poles.”
Isaac nodded. “Len, it’s crucial, brother, that Will holds out. He needs to know we got his back. And he needs to know there’s more at stake here than money. He needs to be sure of that.” Len nodded.
Isaac looked around the room, the faces of his brothers reflected in the gleaming, dark surface of the table he’d made with his own two hands. The wood was a special import and had been expensive. He was proud of the work—lustrous wood pieced precisely together, the seams all but invisible, with a turned braid forming an oblong center. The table was surrounded by red leather chairs. The rest of the room was typical biker bullshit—plaques and trophies, framed photographs and carved platitudes. But the table was class.
He faced his brothers around that table and cleared his throat. “Look. The hard truth here is we’re getting dragged into a war. Hell, we’re the main enemy, looks like. This is more than the Northsiders gettin’ chippy. This is about big time money. I am doing what I can to get backup, bringing Dandy and Becker on board, meeting with Kenyon tomorrow. Dandy and Becker are gonna want something from us, cuz they’re not keen on bringing this down on them. I explained that if we fall they’re next, but I’m thinking we’re gonna need to break off some of our piece, share it with them. Show and I are working those details out, and we’ll bring it to you when we have a plan. For now, we need to focus on the town. Ellis is making some noise already. With Kenyon coming to us, my bet is things are about to get a lot louder. We need to keep everybody here steady.”
CJ spoke up. The oldest active member, he had a long club memory. “Sounds like you’re thinking this is gonna be like ’87 again.”
Isaac had been fourteen in 1987. He knew it mainly from stories, but he knew that what was about to happen was nothing like it. “No, man. ’87 was nothin’ but a turf war. Horde took the Dusty Riders down. Bloody, but brief. What’s coming is big money, connected money, on a bulldozer. Ellis is looking to turn Signal Bend into his company town, cooking meth on a mass scale. And he’s looking to flatten the Horde to do it. This won’t be a turf war. It’ll be a fucking extermination.”
The room was thick with quiet as the Horde contemplated the weight of Isaac’s words. He’d sounded hopeless. He was feeling hopeless. But he had to give them hope. “Let’s focus on what we know, what we can do. If we stand strong, we can fight this back. We just need the town behind us. Everything as normal, but we up our presence. You’re in town, you’re in your kutte. And you’re carrying. No exceptions. We protect our people.”
Havoc shook his head. “Can’t while we’re workin’, boss.” A club with day jobs outside had its complications, definitely.
“Keep ‘em close, then. And I’ll talk to Don. Any other concerns?” The table was quiet. “Okay, I’ll know more after the sit down with Kenyon tomorrow.” Isaac gaveled the meeting to a close and stood.
Show asked, “You want to talk about tomorrow’s meet?”
“Later. I have something I need to deal with first.” Isaac slapped Show on the arm and left the clubhouse. He needed to see Lilli now.
~oOo~
When he got to her place, she was walking toward the garage, apparently on her way somewhere. She looked surprised to see him pulling up, and not what one might call thrilled. She pulled her phone out and looked at it; no, he hadn’t called first.
She stayed where she stood as he parked the bike and dismounted. “Baby, we have to talk.”
“You didn’t call.”
“No. Lilli, are you after Ray Hobson?”
INTERLUDE: 2010
“Alright boys, don’t make me pull over.”
Goldman snorted. “Hey, he started it, Major.”
Lilli shook her head and amped the tunes. She liked some Rancid when she flew a mission. This was a big one, bringing her squad into a firefight, already engaged. Lilli was flying in a backup squad, called in when the estimates for enemy combatants on the scene had turned out to be grossly miscalculated. The mission was serious and deadly, but the atmosphere in the cabin was not. Everybody knew they were headed into fire and might not come back. The adrenaline in the cabin was so thick it had smell and taste. The troops were giddy with it and acting goofy. That was just how things worked. When danger was looming, soldiers often got rowdy. They’d be plenty serious when they were in the thick of it. Now, though, the gunners, pilots, and crew chief were the only ones fully down to business.
It wasn’t her squad, not entirely—or at least not completely, not the way she thought of it; injuries on another squad and a couple of troops rotating out recently had shuffled the squad rosters. Three of the men she thought of as hers were on the ground now, engaged in the firefight already: Miller, Okada, and Scarpone.
Actually, she thought of them all as hers, her family, almost everyone on base. But she had become very close with the men who flew with her consistently, and things felt fractured since the roster shift.
She had a brand new co-pilot, too. Captain Mendez, with whom she’d flown for two rotations, had taken his out and gone home. Now she had a shiny new Chief Warrant Officer at her right, Bill Newell, fresh out of training and looking terrified. Everything felt slightly off for Lilli, but she shoved her unsettled feeling aside and focused.
“Your music SUCKS, sir!” Lopez yelled over the lyrics to “Time Bomb” and the roar of the rotors. Her guys knew she hated “ma’am”; they all called her “sir.” It had at first raised some eyebrows with Command, but it was an approved term of address.
She laughed. “Fuck you, Lopez. Fine—you wanna pick, be my guest.”
His eyes went wide; she never turned over control of the tunage. “I need me some Angus!”
“Christ, you’re such a cliché.” She rolled her eyes and put “Highway to Hell” up instead. The men all reacted favorably, hooting and shouting. No class, no taste.
Just then, the cyclic got gummy, and Donna shimmied hard, rolling slightly to the left. What the fuck? The men shouted their surprise, and in her periphery, she saw Lopez give her a look of sharp concern. Newell looked shocked. Great. Fucking noob.
“We’re cool, boys. Donna just got some gum on her shoe.” But it happened again, and this time the copter tipped more violently. A copter wasn’t a plane. Off its axis, it didn’t roll and resettle. It crashed. Period.
Lilli was calm. She was not someone who panicked. “Mr. Newell, take your cyclic. You clear?”
The kid swallowed hard and put his hands around the stick. What skin Lilli could see on him was running sweat, and Lilli was fair certain it was flop sweat, not heat sweat. God DAMMIT. The kid was going to choke. She turned off the tunes.
“Hey, be cool, Newell. Just need to know if you’re feeling a fight in the cyclic, too. If you’re not, you’re going to take over, but we’re all right here with you.”
Newell maneuvered, and Donna rocked hard, losing noticeable altitude. Now the cabin was quiet but for the sounds of the engine. Everybody was paying attention to what was going on up front.
“Was that you or Donna dancing, bud?”
“I—I don’t know, ma’am. Sir. I think I feel something.”
Lilli carefully
reached over and manipulated the co-pilot cyclic. She felt the same catch. It wasn’t the stick, then, it was something deeper. In the engine itself. Donna wasn’t taking anyone to the front today. She called it in.
The response from Command was terse and direct. “Negative. Squad on the ground is overrun. Get those troops forward, Major.”
She had fourteen men on her ride. She gave it another couple of tries, but Big Donna was getting angrier every time. She barely reclaimed control the last time, and a few of the men actually screamed as the rotors skipped and the engine coughed. “No can do, Colonel. Donna won’t fly. Putting her down.”
“That’s a NEGATIVE, Major. Those troops are needed now!”
She knew full well they were needed. She knew full well what they would all likely lose by not carrying out her mission. But her mission had already failed, and she wouldn’t risk these men, too. “Sorry, sir. Mechanical failure. Putting her down. Need new transport.”
~oOo~
Within ten minutes, another copter was on the scene, but they were too late. The squad on the ground was wiped out. All of them—Okada, Scarpone, Miller, and the rest, KIA.
Lilli had disobeyed a direct order. She’d done it to save her squad, but she was relieved of flight duty as soon as she hit camp, pending investigation. Captain Ray Hobson, the senior pilot but for Lilli, was put in charge of the investigation. Hobson had never stopped gunning for her—in fact, he’d recently gotten much worse. He’d been passed over for promotion to Major, a promotion Lilli had gotten below the zone. Hobson had one more go, next year. If he was passed over again, he’d be forced out of the service.
Lilli knew his being in charge of the investigation made things even dicier for her, but she didn’t care. She’d let a whole squad of men—friends of hers, brothers—die violently, their bodies desecrated. She’d done it to save another whole squad, but it didn’t ease the loss. And she’d lost more. She’d lost Colonel Corbett’s respect. She’d lost the respect of everyone on base. The men who’d been flying with her, most of them understood. But not all of them. Some had been livid that she hadn’t pushed on.
Everyone was questioned. She had no idea what the men with her had said; she had no intention of asking. For her part, she’d told the truth. She went easy on Newell, who’d been no help to her at all, but he was green. She’d been shaky on her first mission, too, and she hadn’t been headed to a firefight.
Lilli pushed her papers and waited for the investigation report. For the most part, she kept to herself. For the most part, everyone left her to herself.
The investigation turned up no mechanical faults. Nothing. The cyclic was smooth. Everything worked as it should. Lilli read the report three times and then went straight to Chief Pettijohn, who glared at her as she approached. He saluted, and then nodded curtly. “Ma’am.”
“Chief, is this right? No fight in the cyclic?”
“Checked it myself, Major. Donna’s healthy as a horse. No failure.” He turned back to his work.
Lilli didn’t know what to think. She knew there’d been a bad—a potentially catastrophic—failure. She’d never have landed and disobeyed an order otherwise. She knew it. But Chief was good. He was thorough. And he’d once been on her side.
Had she fucked up? Had she gotten men killed?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dumbstruck, Lilli didn’t answer Isaac right away. He knew Hobson? How did she not know that? She briefly considered lying, but decided against it—and it was too late anyway. Isaac’s question had caught her flat-footed, so she’d already given the answer away, simply by standing there, stunned.
But Jesus, she couldn’t tell him. And if he knew Hobson, fuck. Would he try to get in her way? She didn’t know what to do. Normally, she thought quickly on her feet, adapted to the situation before her. But now, her brain just . . . skipped. Without answering, she turned and headed back toward the house. She had no idea why she did that—it wasn’t like there was any chance at all that Isaac was going to turn around and ride away, or let the subject drop. She wasn’t avoiding anything. And yet, it took a force of will to keep her legs from speeding into a run.
She was panicking. She didn’t panic. Ever.
Sure enough, she heard him coming up behind her, and he grabbed her arm—not roughly, but firmly. He stepped up to face her and grabbed her other arm as well. “Lilli, no fucking way. We are talking this out. The secret ends now.”
She fought him. More than anything else, that was a testament to her panic. She broke his hold with a violent swing of her arms, then hit him hard in the chest with the heels of her hands. Winded, he fell back a few steps, and she bolted, thinking to get into the house and lock him out.
None of what she was doing made any fucking sense. Running would not get her clear of this problem. Running was making it worse. But her body would not listen to her brain. She heard him coming up behind her, surprisingly fast, and she felt his hands reaching just before they grabbed her. She spun as he got hold, and they went down, Isaac landing hard on top of her. They were face to face, on the ground, both of them winded.
“What the fuck, Lilli?”
She fought to out from under him, but he was determined, strong, and probably 100 pounds heavier than she. He grabbed her wrists and forced them to the ground on either side of her head. There was a fire in his eyes that bode an entirely different kind of passion from the kind he usually had for her. He was enraged.
“Why are you fighting me? Did you fucking know Hobson is connected to the Horde? Is that why the secrets?”
She didn’t know why she was fighting. She didn’t know why she couldn’t stop, but she was still trying to find a way to get free of him. Focused on that, she didn’t answer his question. He yanked her arms roughly over her head and manacled both wrists in one of his large, rough hands. With his other hand, he grabbed her jaw. She could feel the tension of his anger in his fingers digging into her cheek. “Lilli, goddammit. You talk to me. Did you know?”
“No! I didn’t know!” His hold on her face slackened instantly, and he let her arms go. Just like that, he believed her. She pushed on his shoulders, but he still wouldn’t move off of her.
“Fuck, Sport. Fuck. We have to talk. You see that, right?”
The familiar pressure of Isaac’s body on hers was beginning to calm her, and her brain kicked back into gear. She could feel the jangly edge of the panic receding, and she realized that it had fed itself. She took a breath, as deep as she could with his weight on her chest, and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” He pushed back to his knees and then stood and held his hand for her. She took it, and he pulled her up and then to his chest, folding her in his arms. Surprised, she didn’t return his embrace at first, but she could feel the calm in his body. Responding to it, she relaxed against him and clutched his kutte in her hands.
He kissed her temple. “No lies, baby. It’s time to come clean. Fuck the risk. Looks like our lines are gettin’ tangled up. We gotta try to get them straight.”
Lilli’s brain was turning fast, trying to catch up and recover from her freakout. If Hobson was one of Isaac’s brothers, then this was a fucking calamity. He was right. Everything had to be out in the open between them. Her head still pressed to his chest, tucked into his kutte, she nodded.
“That’s my girl.” He shrugged back from her and raised her head. “I love you. Let’s work this out.”
She nodded again and took his hand. Time to sit down and talk.
When they got inside, she went straight to the kitchen and got them each a beer. She glanced at the digital clock on the range: 12:15pm. Good enough. She considered getting the tequila out instead, but she didn’t think getting drunk would improve the situation much. At least not yet.
Isaac was already sitting on the couch, his kutte off and folded over the back of an armchair. He’d sat in a corner, his arm stretched over the back of the couch. Lilli handed him a beer and sat facing him, kicking
off her shoes and tucking one leg under her ass.
He took a long swallow from his bottle and said, “Tell me why you’re gunnin’ for Ray.”
Not yet. She shook her head. A hard look crossed Isaac’s eyes, and he opened his mouth to protest, but she put her hand up. “You first. I’m sure my story is longer. Is he one of the Horde?”
“Not a patch. A patch’s brother. Wyatt. I don’t think you met him yet.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Not exactly. I know why he’s gone and about when he’ll be back. But you’re not gettin’ that until I hear your story. Talk, Sport.”
What Lilli heard first and foremost was that Hobson was still local. She didn’t have to leave. That lightened her heart so dramatically that for a brief second she almost forgot that her plan to kill the cocksucker had just had an enormous wrench thrown in it. What would she do if Isaac and the Night Horde got in her way?
Fight one fire at a time. She told Isaac the story of the day she disobeyed a direct order, the day a whole squad was wiped out and she was blamed for it.
He never interrupted her, and she never stopped until the story was told. Her beer had gone warm in her hand. She told it the way she’d told it to Colonel Corbett on the day it happened, the way she told it to the review board, which ruled to discharge her, allowing her the dignity of an honorable discharge and retaining her rank only to keep a lid on the story. They didn’t want cable news to get wind of the hotshot female combat pilot who lost her nerve.
She told it flat, without emotion. She had to. The emotion was too big, even now, to let loose.
When she’d got that far, she stopped and drained her warm beer. She knew she wasn’t done, but the rest was something she hadn’t told to anyone who wasn’t part of this mission. And now she was about to break that seal.
Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) Page 16
