Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “What about this Holy Father guy?” Blue asked. “Ever heard of anything like that?”

  Cantrell straightened and folded his arms. He stood like a man who’d spent too many hours on his feet or in uncomfortable office chairs. “Religious fanatics, sure. We’ve dealt with cults and people who claimed they could talk to God – that God told them to do the crazy shit they did.”

  “Waco?” Candy asked.

  “Let’s not go there. But yeah, we’ve seen that sort of thing. But nothing turned up in the databases about someone calling himself the ‘Holy Father’ specifically.”

  “It’s not actually fanaticism,” Fox said, pulling out a chair and dropping into it. Cantrell frowned when he put his boots up on the edge of the table, but said nothing. “It’s a new, creative way to terrify people, and it’s been effective.”

  “What if it’s a pun?” Blue asked, and everyone turned to him. “Holy Father. And Luis said he wasn’t the boss, that his father was – maybe the Holy Father is his actual father.”

  “Maybe,” Candy said. “He seems like the kinda guy who would like a little word play to go along with his outlaw expansionism.”

  Cantrell snorted. “You say that like it’s an insult.”

  “What?”

  “Outlaw expansionism. Like that isn’t exactly what the Dogs have been doing since their conception.” His voice dripped contempt.

  Candy shot him a grin. “Yeah, but we’re a lot better at it.”

  “We make it look good, even,” Fox added.

  Cantrell shook his head, and cursed. “Right. So.” Glanced toward the maps on the board: one of Arizona, one of Texas, one of North America. “Where are they looking to expand?”

  Candy’s gaze flitted to the most familiar, most often-traveled points on the map, his own personal ports of call. They weren’t all necessarily the hubs of the rest of the world, or ordinary citizens, but they blazed like beacons for him. Albany, Richmond, Knoxville, Atlanta, Gulfport, Jackson, New Orleans, Amarillo, Los Angeles.

  “The last time around, they were breaking onto the American stage and just passing through. We got in the way, and so we duked it out. This time it’s personal: they don’t just want us out of the way, they want us wiped off the map. Literally.”

  Cantrell looked between Candy and the board. “Your chapter, or all of them?”

  Fox answered. “They’ll start here. If they succeed, they’ll move on to the other chapters.”

  “Can they succeed?”

  Candy’s gaze traced the interstate pathways from Amarillo to Knoxville. If Knoxville ever fell, that would be the thing that fractured the whole organization. Another chapter would take up the “mother” mantle, and the Lean Dogs would regroup, keep limping along.

  But it wouldn’t be the same. It would play out as a sign of major weakness; a crack in the armor. An unprecedented disaster that would shake the foundations of the outlaw world.

  He said, “No, they can’t.” But his belly squirmed with an anxiety that was, like the idea of such a loss, unprecedented.

  Forty-One

  “Damn, ain’t you cute?” The self-appointed leader of the Cali contingent made a dramatic show of sliding his sunglasses down his nose and looking over their rainbow-slicked lenses at Michelle, smirking. “I knew he got himself an old lady, but I didn’t know she was–”

  “Finish that sentence, Jackal,” Jenny said, breezing through the room with a legal pad, a pencil, and two cups of coffee. “I dare you.”

  “Aw, Jen, you’re no fun,” he complained, sitting back theatrically, head tipped all the way back. He was perched on the edge of the round table where Michelle was seated with her own pad and pencil, and a cup of tea, having invited himself over with a great amount of put-upon Cali surfer charm that she didn’t find at all charming.

  “Keep it up.” Jenny reached the mouth of the hallway and turned, her expression deadpan. “And you won’t be any fun for all the women you keep pretending want you.”

  “Ooh, yikes,” he said with a chuckle, pressing a hand to his heart. He stood, though, and moved away from the table. “Please tell me there’s gonna be women after we get this shit squared away. A party? Just a little one?” He held up thumb and forefinger.

  Jenny smiled sweetly. “That’s what she said.”

  The other Dogs in the room cackled.

  “Behave, Jack,” Jenny said, and whisked away.

  He continued to chuckle, but Michelle thought she detected a nervous edge to the laughter, and he removed himself to the bar. The twins had never looked up, still watching a morning talk show at a faint volume over by the TV. She didn’t know why they were interested in business-casual makeovers for working moms, and wasn’t going to ask; was glad she and Axelle didn’t have an audience for this save Talis and Albie, the latter of whom was pretending to lounge two tables away, playing solitaire and stealing glances their way over his cards.

  Across the table from them, Benny fidgeted in his chair. Darla had washed his clothes, but he only had the one outfit, and none of the boys had volunteered to let him borrow one of theirs. He’d shaved, and showered, thanks to the hospitality kits that Jenny always kept stocked in each dorm room, but he looked tired, worn-thin, fretful. Like a man afraid that any breath might be his last – which was the truth.

  They’d agreed to divide and conquer when it came to interrogations. Eden and Jenny were camped out in a dorm in back, and Michelle and Axelle had this table in the common room. No one had challenged their ability or the appropriateness of letting them run the questioning, but the Dogs who’d stayed behind at the clubhouse were keyed up: listening, watchful, ready to intervene if they felt it necessary.

  From Michelle’s view, their witnesses were too terrified to try anything cute.

  “Alright, Benny,” Michelle said, penciling his name in at the top of her paper. “We just have a few questions, for clarifications.” Albie had been the one to knock sharply on his door, and tell him he was wanted for questioning, stone-faced, insistent. He wasn’t as inhumanly spooky as Fox, but Albie could inspire fear when he wanted to.

  “Questions,” Benny repeated. He wet his lips, his gaze pinging around the room, refusing to settle on her. He didn’t see her as a threat, she realized; thought she was just a woman and nothing to be worried about. His gaze sought Albie, and Talis, and Jackal, and Victor, and the twins. “Yeah. But. I already answered all those questions–”

  Michelle tapped her pencil on the table, drawing his attention. “Benny. Eyes on me.”

  “I mean, I–” He looked at her finally, and his brows went up. “Shit, you’re serious.”

  “Why would I not be serious?”

  “Because…” His gaze shifted over her, sizing her up in a way that left her skin crawling, but he wisely left the sentence unfinished. His throat jumped as he swallowed. “No reason. Um. You have questions?”

  “A few,” she said, briskly. “I want to talk to you about the night you were brought before the Holy Father and threatened.”

  “Oh.” His eyes widened, pupils contracting; his face paled. “I told Can–”

  “I don’t care about your trauma,” Michelle said. “I don’t want the whole story spun out in your own time. I have specific questions, and I expect specific answers. Is that clear?”

  “Sheesh,” Jackal said from the bar, a stage whisper followed by a low laugh.

  A darted glance proved that Albie was hiding a smile behind his cards.

  Benny swallowed again. “Yes, ma’am.”

  ~*~

  Over the years, Jenny had wondered if there was a woman who could convince Charlie Fox to settle down in a long-term, committed relationship. The idea had always seemed a little absurd. She’d enjoyed her own brief time with him, those few lonely nights tangled in the dark and secret. That had been about comfort. About wanting, and being afraid to want anyone she didn’t know, didn’t trust. He’d helped her as a fr
iend, and it had been fun – she still got a pleasant shiver sometimes when she remembered – but she’d never kidded herself about anything so foolish as being in love with him. She’d known what he was about, and she’d entered their arrangement with eyes wide open and heart carefully shielded.

  She’d never been able to imagine him with an old lady. Fox loved his family, though he wouldn’t admit it, and his club, and a stiff drink, and making himself useful. But he wasn’t warm. Wasn’t the kind of guy who offered flattery, or flowers. Who cared about birthdays, or anniversaries. He lacked all tenderness. Whenever she thought of him meeting a nice girl – a shy, pretty thing with a Texas drawl – and taking her to dinner, to the movies, bantering with her and drawing her out of her shell, she laughed. She thought of Colin, stupid, and charming, and insistent, pursuing her, making declarations and loving her in the sort of hat-in-hand, you-make-me-a-better-man way she’d only ever thought existed in movies, she knew that Fox would never be like that, not with anyone.

  So she was wildly curious about his relationship with Eden.

  “Alright, then,” Eden said pleasantly, settling on the footlocker at the end of the bed beside Jenny. She accepted her coffee with murmured thanks and took a long sip.

  Gwen was across from them, in the room’s only chair, looking like every kind of mess. Hair unwashed and greasy, face pallid, eyelids twitching in a show of exhaustion and nerves.

  “Let’s get started, shall we?” Eden said.

  Gwen gnawed at a thumbnail and stared at them, a flat, prey-animal glance, and said nothing.

  “We need some more information about the Chupacabras,” Eden continued. Jenny didn’t know her well, but the brightness of her voice was in total contrast to her demeanor an hour ago in the sanctuary. Then, she’d been cool, professional, no-nonsense. She wasn’t exactly saccharine now, but Jenny had grown up in the club; she knew a front when she saw one, even a good one.

  She had all these questions. Michelle had told her that Eden was former MI6, and that she’d met Fox years ago, in London, when a case had brushed up against the Dogs. Law enforcement falling for the lawless: that was hot.

  But was it love? Had Fox lain with her, their heads on the same pillow, and whispered those three words? Had Eden said them, and not gotten an answer? Had she expected an answer? Did she love him, truly, or was it just a tidy, convenient arrangement?

  Eden had left a business behind and moved to Knoxville. That wasn’t tidy or convenient.

  Whether or not they loved each other in the vocal, obvious, mushy way that most people did, Jenny could see the way they made for a good match. There were no stars in Eden’s eyes, no trace of longing on her expression when she looked at Fox. She’d always had trouble imagining him settling down – and she guessed he hadn’t. He’d found a partner, one more like him than most.

  “Gwen,” Eden said, “you told me about the trucking companies you used, but you only had one pick-up address: Dr. Gilliard’s place outside the city.”

  Gwen held still a moment, her gaze shifting back and forth between them. Then she nodded. “That’s the only pickup address that was ever on the manifestos.”

  “Right. But was there another one?”

  “I dunno. Not one they told me about.”

  “Was anyone else doing any secretary work for them?”

  “I dunno.”

  Jenny glanced over, and Eden sent her a look of barest frustration.

  Her voice stayed bright, though. “When we talked before, you told me about the night you discovered the Chupacabras were doing business at Sandoval’s. Can you elaborate on that?”

  More thumbnail chewing, and another darted glance.

  Jenny said, “They work on commercial vehicles there, right? So the mechanics were all in on it. A truck rolled in loaded down with cocaine, and the guys took it out of the wheel wells, or wherever, and then passed it along to local dealers. Right?”

  Gwen’s eyes bugged. Her hand fell to her lap. “I don’t–”

  “Either Sandoval and all his guys joined the cartel,” Jenny continued, “or they were working for them. Helping them fence product. My bet’s on the second one, and if you didn’t actually know about it, you wouldn’t look so damn scared right now.”

  “And if you did know about it, and wanted to be well away from the cartel,” Eden said, picking up the thread, “you would confess all you know and be done with it. Why are you hedging?”

  “I…” Gwen said, hedging. She glanced toward the door, a furtive look over her shoulder.

  An alarm pulsed to life in the back of Jenny’s mind, a chime of something’s wrong, something’s wrong. She could hear the whoops, could smell the smoke, but she didn’t know the source of the fire – not yet.

  “Eden,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” Eden said, not bright now, but grim. “Gwen,” she said, sharply, a crisp snap that brought the girl’s head around. “You need to understand that things will go badly for you if you’re less than honest with us.”

  Jenny could see the way fear spiked, the flutter of lashes, the throb of the girl’s pulse in her throat, but she pressed her lips together until they whitened, and said nothing.

  “Do you think they’ll take you back?” Eden said. “After you’ve been here with us? Why would you even want to go back?”

  Still no response.

  “Maybe you don’t want to,” Jenny said, “but you think you have to.”

  Gwen’s lips parted, and she sucked in a breath. Bingo.

  ~*~

  “I don’t…I mean…it was like I said before. I woke up, and it was dark, and there was that Father guy in the hood–”

  Michelle waved him silent. “Yes. But I’m more interested in your role with the cartel.”

  He frowned. “My role?”

  “Yes.” She consulted her notes, though she’d already memorized them, wanting him to think she wasn’t all caught up. If he wanted to think she was useless because she was a woman, she might as well lean into it. “The aim of their intimidation routine was to get you selling for the cartel, right?”

  “Right.” Tone guarded. She had to put him at ease; loosen his tongue. Benny was a talker; get him in the right frame of mind, and the words would flow like water down a steep hill.

  “Where were you selling?”

  He gave her a dubious look.

  She channeled Fox and flashed her widest, falsest smile, one that Benny believed, if the lessening of tension across his shoulders was any indication. “It’s not like we’re cops, Benny. Come on. Just between us friends. I’m trying to put together the cartel’s big picture.” She gestured to her pad, which she’d carefully tilted up, its carboard back resting on the edge of the table, so he couldn’t see what she wrote.

  He coughed a humorless little laugh – but was trying, smiling back. His shoulders went down another fraction. “If you figure it out, let me know. Shit knows what those guys are up to, you know?”

  She laughed in turn, pleased that, though it was forced, it sounded almost real. She was rusty, but not so rusty as to be an embarrassment to the family name.

  Such as it was.

  “No shit,” she said, letting her chuckle taper off naturally. “I know you went through this with Candy, but these boys are all hopeless. If I don’t put it all down on paper in some kind of order, they won’t remember jack shit. So this is just housekeeping.”

  His shoulders went down again. “Surprised they don’t make a prospect do it.”

  “No offense to Nickel, but would you trust a prospect with something important?”

  Another laugh from him, this one truer. He slouched back in his chair, and she had him; she could feel it. “Shit no.”

  “Right? Okay, so walk me through it. Just what you’re willing to tell me.”

  ~*~

  “Gwen.” Eden’s tone shifted down into grave-serious-adult-in-the-room. “It’s important that you be honest and open with us.”

  “I have been,” Gwen sna
pped, looking sorry that she had afterward.

  “I’d like to believe that,” Eden said. “You seemed truthful when you confessed to me at the hospital.”

  “I was.”

  “We know you’re scared,” Jenny said, aiming for warm. The back of her neck was crawling, though, anxiety ticking up another notch every time Gwen looked toward the door. “And that’s okay. But we’re just trying to help – you, and everyone else the cartel is hurting.”

  “You told me about the girl Luis was showing off to the guys at Sandoval’s,” Eden said. “That she was lying still, and letting him undress her. She was drugged?”

  Gwen fidgeted, like she was trying to force her legs even closer together; making herself smaller, Jenny though, shrinking down into the tiniest possible space. “Maybe. Probably. I thought she was.”

  “The Chupacabras are selling more than drugs, aren’t they?” Eden asked. “That girl wasn’t a hanger-on or Luis’s girlfriend, was she? A flash man like him would have had a date dripping in jewels.”

  A shrug. Another darted look at the door.

  “I believe the woman you saw was one he then sold,” Eden continued; she was starting to sound impatient. “We know the cocaine is being shipped in crates – we saw that for ourselves – but he’d have to get more creative to move scores of people across the border and then disseminate them through the country.”

  Gwen went back to chewing her thumbnail, gaze feverish, half-wild.

  Eden tapped her pencil on the edge of the pad. Each light tap caused Gwen’s lashes to flicker, a tiny flinch.

  “You were the one arranging the shipping,” Eden continued. “What were the trucks picking up besides crates?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It was only crates?”

  A jerky nod.

  “They aren’t air tight,” Jenny said. “If they were all” – she swallowed, a wave of nausea washing through her – “jammed up tight…”