He’d felt a kinship with Trinity even before he’d learned they were actually kin … and they’d learned that bit of truth just in time. The connection between them had been powerful. They’d been halfway undressed and well on their way to enthusiastic, if unintentional, incest. If their mothers hadn’t interrupted, and immediately revealed the truth to avoid any chance of a second try … The memory made his stomach turn into an awkward knot, but not nearly as awkward as if the revelation had come a day later.
Jax didn’t like to think about it, and he was sure Trinity shared that reluctance. With the violence and chaos that had erupted around SAMCRO’s visit to Belfast, they hadn’t really had a chance to figure out what it meant to be brother and sister before Jax had to return to the States. He wondered if their awkwardness would prevent them from figuring that out now. Hoped it wouldn’t.
A low roar came from his left, and he looked over to see Opie riding up alongside him. Opie tilted his head, indicating something behind them. Jax cast a look back and spotted a silver BMW gliding along. He and Opie exchanged another silent communication. Was someone tailing them?
Jax slowed, letting Chibs, Joyce, and Thor pass him, and he took another glance backward to be certain of what he thought he’d seen. Sure enough, two men on bikes were following the BMW.
He saw an exit sign for Cheyenne Avenue, twisted the throttle, and blew past the others, signaling them to follow as he left the beltway. At the bottom of the exit ramp, he turned west, away from civilization instead of toward it. Opie and the rest followed him, but so had the BMW and the two assholes on motorcycles. He raced beneath the overpass and then skidded to a halt, propping the bike on its stand before taking cover. Then he drew his gun.
Opie, Thor, and Joyce did the same on the opposite side of the street. Thor moved up against the concrete foundation of the overpass, using the corner to shield himself.
Chibs skidded up beside Jax and jumped off his bike.
The BMW slowed as it rolled beneath the overpass, and the two men riding behind it throttled down. The car’s driver had seen them pull over—he couldn’t have missed it—and given their body language, the way they were taking cover, the way they all held their gun hands down at their sides, just out of sight, even an ordinary citizen would have known they were ready for a fight.
The BMW did not turn around, only rolled slowly until it stopped in the middle of the street, dead center in what would be the cross fire if bullets flew. The two guys on motorcycles—sleek red Kawasakis—halted fifty yards back, far enough that they could bolt if things turned ugly, report back to the boss.
The passenger window of the BMW slid down. In the darkness of the underpass, without even starlight to illuminate the face of the man inside, Jax could not make him out. A dome light inside the BMW clicked, and he flinched, surprised that the men inside would expose themselves like that.
The guy in the passenger seat was Viktor Krupin. He looked pale but fairly hearty considering he’d been shot in the shoulder a few hours earlier.
“Mr. Ashby,” Krupin said, his voice echoing against the concrete sides and roof of the underpass. The BMW purred, and the two Kawasakis growled quietly. “I would have thought the beating my boss gave you earlier would have discouraged you from breaking your agreement with us.”
Jax stared at him, thinking fast. Either Lagoshin had a way to track them or one of the Russians had been tailing them since the Orthodox church. Both options seemed unlikely.
“I haven’t broken any agreement,” he said, stepping out from behind his bike as he slid his gun back into his rear waistband. “And I figure if you’re up and riding around with that hole in your shoulder, it’d reflect badly on me if a couple of punches in the head kept me from doing the same.”
Krupin frowned. “You were to call me as soon as you had a lead on your sister’s location.”
Jax put up his hands. “That was the deal, but I don’t have shit. Just a string of names, people who might help narrow it all down for me. I didn’t see the point in boring you with that kinda thing. Figured once I had a location—”
“What do you have?” Krupin asked. He rested his elbow on the frame of the open window, deceivingly casual.
Jax’s whole body ached as he remembered the beating he’d received. “I’m not going to have you and Lagoshin going around beating the crap out of anyone who might have seen my sister. I want to find her, not scare her off … and I sure as hell don’t want you and Sokolov’s guys getting into a shooting match with her around.”
“We can guarantee her safety,” Krupin said reasonably.
“No one can guarantee her safety,” Jax replied. “Not even me.” He pointed up the road toward the men on the Kawasakis. “I’m gonna figure out where she is. Then I’m gonna get her out before the shooting starts. You want to send those two guys with us as insurance, that’s fine. I figure they’re gonna follow us anyway. Something happens that you won’t like, your guys can take care of business for you.”
Krupin narrowed his eyes. Jax could practically feel him searching for duplicity. The son of a bitch knew things weren’t what they seemed, but it was clear Krupin also felt very confident in Lagoshin’s ability to terrorize people. And Jax had no doubt that sending the two bikers to babysit him had been the plan from the outset, or Krupin wouldn’t have brought thugs on motorcycles.
Someone in the car began to speak to him in Russian. Krupin snapped angrily at the man, then opened his door and stepped out. Jax saw the driver of the BMW drawing a gun. Across the street, Opie, Joyce, and Thor still had their weapons out, ready for things to turn bloody.
Krupin beckoned to the Kawasaki riders, and the two men spurred their bikes forward, riding up to stop directly behind the BMW. They wore helmets, but when they raised their visors, Jax could see that one had gray eyes and one a cold blue. Krupin introduced them as Ustin and Luka.
“You go with him,” Krupin told them. “When you know the sister’s location, report back to me.” He turned to Jax. “Once I hear from them, you will have one hour to get your sister to safety. One hour. If you are still there when we arrive, or if you warn Sokolov and his men, you will all die together.”
Jax nodded slowly. Krupin stared at him a moment. Then he climbed into the BMW and it pulled away, power window gliding up. Despite all the talk of murder, Krupin had treated the whole thing like a business meeting, and Jax thought maybe that was all any of it was to him. Business. Nothing personal.
The thought made Jax want more than ever to shoot him.
As the others remounted their bikes, glaring at Ustin and Luka, Jax walked over to Thor, who sat on his idling Harley, putting on his helmet.
“Head back to the Tombstone,” he said quietly. “Tell Rollie what’s going on. Tell him I may need backup and that I need your club on standby. Stay with him till you hear from me.”
The big man scratched at his red beard. “You don’t want me to just call him?”
“No. I don’t.”
“I guess you don’t want to tell me why.”
Jax hardened his gaze. After a second, Thor just nodded, buckled his helmet, and took off without speaking to any of the others. Jax watched him go and then turned to his Russian babysitters.
“Try to keep up,” he said, and then he started for his bike.
12
Trinity and Oleg had made love quietly, well aware of the proximity of his comrades. His brothers. After several nights of broken sleep and days of emotional exhaustion, she had curled into the comforting crook of his arm and fallen asleep listening to his heartbeat and trying to decipher the meaning of the tattoos on his chest.
In the small hours of the morning—she guessed it must be 2 a.m. or so—her eyes opened and she was suddenly, irritatingly awake. Some nights she woke with a jarring disorientation, a terrible sense of dislocation, but tonight she knew precisely where she was and why.
Really, the why was the only thing that mattered, and the answer was: Oleg.
&nb
sp; The hotel room’s window stood halfway open, letting in the cool night air. During the day the room baked, and even after dark it could remain muggy and stifling. Now, though, it was pleasant—almost chilly. If she let herself drift, just studied the stubble on Oleg’s jaw or the taut skin of his abdomen, she could almost forget the murder of Oscar Temple and the imminence of more bloodshed.
She caressed his chest, ran her fingers along the prominent lines of his rib cage. He shuddered in his sleep, edged slightly closer to her, and a small grunt came from deep inside him. Whatever Oleg had done, in slumber he looked innocent, his brow free from the troubled lines carved by life. It hurt her heart to think how much she loved him.
Why had she fallen for him, and so quickly?
She knew the answer, or at least part of it. She’d grown up thinking her father was a soldier named Duffy, who’d died in the service. Her real father was a man named John Teller, who’d died on the side of a California roadway. Trinity was still angry with her mother for keeping that secret. No matter what sort of man John Teller had been, she wished she had known him.
Men were a puzzle she’d spent her whole life trying to solve. Most of the men she’d admired as a girl had disappointed her in one way or another. Some had been RIRA, which had seemed noble to her when she was too young to know any better, and others had been unreliable. Drunks or gamblers. Men who liked to keep their thoughts primitive and their emotions buried.
The boys she’d grown up with spent their time in pubs, making a joke of everything. If they treated a girl sweetly, it was only to rope her in. Once they had her pregnant and dependent, it was back to the pub with the same jokes and the same lads, a game of darts and a few pints of ale. Trinity had seen it happen far too many times.
In Oleg, she had found a man with a sense of adventure and a listless dissatisfaction with daily life that reflected her own. He wanted to go, and do, and act, and he wanted her at his side as a companion, not a conquest. Oleg had a brutal honesty that struck at the core of her. His life could be violent and bloody, and certainly dangerous, but he had never tried to hide that from her. From what Trinity could see, it had never even occurred to him that he should. This was a man she could respect … a man she could love.
Love had complicated the hell out of her life.
She slid her hand beneath the sheet, began to stroke the inside of his thigh. Using her fingernails, she scratched him gently, her pulse quickening.
“Mmm,” Oleg said, and he took a deep breath as he opened his eyes. “What are you doing, kotyonok?”
“I can’t sleep,” she whispered, heart full of him. Hand full of him.
“So because you cannot sleep, I cannot sleep either?”
Trinity grinned. “Are you complainin’?”
Oleg drew her toward him … drew her on top of him.
“Does this seem like complaint to you?”
* * *
Louis Drinkwater woke with a gun to his head. Jax stood beside his bed, mostly in shadows, and pressed the cool metal of the gun barrel to the man’s temple. He gave a nudge, then another, speaking in a low, clear voice.
“Wake up, asshole.”
Drinkwater blinked awake, scowling and wiping at the spittle on the corner of his mouth, like his maid or somebody had disturbed his sleep. It wasn’t until Jax repeated the words that the guy seemed to get it. The real estate agent froze, eyes wide and staring. His breath quickened into short, choppy gasps, almost as if he might break down sobbing. He glanced at Opie, who’d been wearing a pained grimace all through the evening’s ride, thanks to the stitches in his side. Opie bared his teeth like he might rip out the real estate agent’s throat.
“Oh, God, what do you want?” the man whined. “Take … take anything. Just … just…”
Jax took a step back, gun still aimed at Drinkwater’s skull. The sheets were soft—high thread count—and whoever had decorated the place had expensive tastes and a sterile soul. The house was a stucco minicastle complete with turret room, the home of a moderately wealthy man in a neighborhood of moderately wealthy people, not rich enough to have high fences or any significant security. Drinkwater had an alarm company sign in the front yard, but they’d been able to see the keypad through the back door; he was one of the fools who paid for the alarm system but only used it when he was away from the home, confident no one would dare enter while he was in residence.
Opie poked around the room, opening closet doors and drawers. The third drawer he opened, he chuckled softly to himself and reached inside to pull out a large purple vibrator. With a look of disgust, he dropped it on the floor.
“Who the fuck are you people?” Drinkwater moaned, either unnerved by Jax’s silence or gaining new confidence now that he was more awake.
“Quiet,” Jax said. He stepped forward and bumped the gun barrel against Drinkwater’s forehead, just to remind him of its weight. “One question.”
The man blinked. He was thin and olive-skinned with an accent Jax couldn’t identify and a thin little mustache that made him look like he’d just stepped off the set of a 1970s porn flick. In his mind, Jax found himself comparing Drinkwater to John Carney. He’d had a good feeling about Carney.
Not so, Louis Drinkwater. The decor alone told Jax what kind of prick he was dealing with. He had no good feelings for this guy.
Opie laughed softly, and Jax glanced over to see that he’d produced a massive black latex dildo from the drawer.
“What?” Drinkwater asked. “What do you want to know?”
“You’re helping some Russians stay out of sight,” Jax said. “Tell me where.”
Drinkwater flinched, wet his lips with his tongue, and gave a nervous laugh. “Russian? You think you’re living in some spy movie?”
Opie stepped forward, swung hard, and cracked the skinny guy across the face with the dildo, hard enough to split his lip and make blood spurt from his nose. The thing was huge and heavy and Opie was strong. Drinkwater groaned and reached for his nightstand, missed a handhold and slipped out of bed, falling to the gleaming hardwood in a tangle of sheets. Opie hit him again and the dildo came back streaked with blood. When Drinkwater spit a gob of scarlet onto the floor, a broken bit of tooth came with it.
Jax crouched beside him. “I’m not a patient man. You tell me where you’ve got the Russians stashed, and we’ll make it look like your place was broken into. My friend here is gonna duct-tape you to a chair. If the Bratva—or anyone else—figures out you told us where they are, you’ll be able to say you were beaten and your life was threatened. I’d say your chances of them not killing you are fifty-fifty. But if you don’t tell me right now, you got zero chance of surviving the night.”
Drinkwater tried to rise, put his hand on the bed to lever himself up. Opie brought the massive dildo down on his forearm nearly hard enough to break bone. The guy crumpled to the ground again, tears springing to his eyes.
“You’re a businessman, Louis,” Jax said. “You can do the math here even better than we can.” He shook the gun in his hand to draw the Realtor’s attention to it. “I could count to ten if you need some drama or whatever.”
Clutching his bruised forearm, blood trickling from his nose, the man stared at Jax and Opie with an expression of such horror that it stripped all the pretense away from him. Even the world’s biggest asshole had been a kid once, and Jax figured he was seeing the stripped-down face of young Louis.
Opie let the heavy latex cock dangle in his hand. “Ugly way to die, Louis,” Opie said. “Skull caved in with your own damn dildo.”
Drinkwater looked at Opie. “When you duct-tape me … I have a deviated septum. If you cover my mouth completely, I won’t be able to get enough air. You’ll suffocate me.”
Opie shrugged. “I’ll use an old-school gag. A rag or something. You can breathe around it, but it should keep you quiet for a while.”
The little man nodded enthusiastically. “Okay, okay.” He rose slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. “They’re at the
Wonderland Hotel. Place is abandoned, up for sale. I’ll give you the address, but you’ve gotta promise to let me use the toilet before you duct-tape me. Could be my daughter who finds me—she comes by for lunch sometimes. I don’t want to piss my pants.”
Jax hesitated, thinking the guy might make a break for it or try to get to his phone. But Opie would be keeping an eye on him.
“Address,” he said.
Drinkwater gave it up. Opie dropped the dildo, wiping his right hand on his jeans, then gestured for the Realtor to walk ahead of him to the bathroom.
Jax went into the kitchen, pulled out a chair, then waited until Drinkwater emerged and told him where to find the duct tape. Every house had a roll, even moderately wealthy shitheads. Opie taped the guy to the chair, wrists and ankles bound tightly enough that he could not possibly escape, and then went back into the bedroom for a minute.
“What was that about?” Jax asked when he came out.
Opie shrugged. “Guy’s daughter might come by. I put his dick collection back in the drawer.”
Jax shook his head, stifling a laugh. Opie gagged Drinkwater, and they left, the Realtor sighing sadly before slumping in the chair as much as the duct tape would allow.
They left the stucco castle by the back door. Joyce and Chibs waited there with their two Russian babysitters. The two Bratva pricks had wanted to come inside, but Jax had refused to allow it. Drinkwater would be more reluctant to give up the location if he knew for sure that he was sentencing his Russian buddies to death. At least that was what Jax had told them, and with the tension between the Kawasaki Russians and Jax’s guys, they wisely declined to argue.
“Well?” blue-eyed Ustin demanded when Jax and Opie came out the back door.
Sons of Anarchy Bratva Page 13
