Nolan: Return to Signal Bend

by Susan Fanetti

  “What?”

  “What about your ink, asshole? You still sporting club ink, or did you leave that at home, too?”

  Nolan’s crumbling heart sank. He hadn’t thought about his ink. Jesus, he couldn’t lose that. Havoc, Horde, the Mane—he would be nothing without it. But when they took his patch, they’d take that, too. He hadn’t remembered that until this moment.

  “They kill you, shithead, and they will check your ink. And then we’re at war.”

  “I’ll…I’ll…get it…blacked out.” His voice broke, and he dropped his head. He would not cry in this room. Absolutely not.

  Around him was nothing but silence, dense with shock. Nolan closed his eyes and waited for whatever came next.

  “Jesus, kid,” Len muttered. The tone of his voice had changed to something gentler. “Jesus. Look at me, Nolan.”

  Nolan looked up. The face he saw staring at him was one he loved. His brother. A little bit of a father, too. All of the older Horde had stepped in to fill the gaping hole Havoc had left in his life, Len most of all. They’d made him the man he was.

  Len had worn an eye patch since Havoc had been killed; Nolan couldn’t remember what his face looked like without it. Now, Len’s one brown eye was soft with compassion.

  “Keep your ink for now. But we can’t have your back on this. You understand that? We gotta do what we can to prevent getting pulled into a war. We have a lot of people to protect.”

  A tiny hope dawned dimly at the back of Nolan’s mind. They hadn’t given up on him, not completely. “I don’t want to pull you in. That’s why I left, why I left my kutte behind. I don’t want anybody else hurt.”

  “Okay. Nacto knows Manitoba. We’re gonna work out a plan to give you the best chance to get done what you need to get done. Then he’s goin’ back to Montana, and we’re goin’ back to Signal Bend. We’re goin’ home, and you’re on your own. If you make it home, your patch will get voted, don’t think it won’t. What you did, turning your back, going against the vote—it has consequences.”

  “I know.” Nolan swallowed down the thought like bitter medicine. “I know. I don’t have a choice.”

  “You do, brother. Come home now, and we’ll call it a long ride and get back to the way things should be. You have a choice.”

  “No. I don’t. Things aren’t the way they should be. Not yet.”

  Len let out a long, slow breath. “Alright, then. Let’s figure out how you do this without tearing everything apart.”

  ~oOo~

  As the afternoon sun started to dim behind the motel curtains, Nolan sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Okay. I got it.”

  He felt like the top of his head had been torn open and his brothers—they were still his brothers, at least so far—had dumped a thousand pounds of knowledge into it. The intel on Vega that Sherlock had gathered, the information about Manitoba that Nacto had shared, Tommy’s military advice for tracking and camo, and Len’s just…psycho fatherly interpretations of it all.

  “You sure?” Len asked now. “This is nothing like you’ve ever done before, brother. Especially not on your own. Take me through your next moves.”

  Nolan stood and stretched. He went to the cooler—recently refreshed by a run to the convenience mart down the road—and got another beer. He drank half of it down while he stared at the old-fashioned paper map they’d spread over one of the beds. They’d made notes in red marker all over that fucker by now, and it showed everything he needed to know.

  Unless he wanted to hang out with his thumb up his ass for weeks, he’d missed his chance to take David Vega down in Winnipeg. He was going to have to track him to his cabin and take him there.

  That was probably safer, anyway, with the best chance of getting this done without being tagged for it. From what Sherlock could tell—and, now Dom and Bart and Jonesy, the Montana IO, all agreed, because everybody with a Flaming Mane knew what he was doing—whoever was keeping Vega on their radar was doing it on a check-in basis only. He went to Winnipeg, checked in, did his monthly supply run, and went back to his hidey-hole, and his protection or guard or whatever stayed back.

  The IOs all agreed that Vega’s detail behaved like a setup in WITSEC. Witness Security. Government protection—but in Canada, where the Marshals had no jurisdiction. So maybe not WITSEC exactly, but an organization trained in the same ways. Vega was still in the shadows, under the control of an agency that didn’t operate by any law but its objective.

  So if Nolan got caught, it probably wouldn’t be arrest he’d have to worry about.

  None of that made the Horde any safer. Vega had been a DHS agent when he’d overseen the taking and torture of four Horde men, when he’d killed Havoc before their eyes, and then he’d moved to an agency with even fewer restrictions on what their agents could do in the service of their mission.

  Nolan finished his beer and recited the plan, leaning over between Len and Nacto so he could trace his thinking over the map. His finger stopped where the last road died out, and he was quiet. This was as far as they’d gotten, but he knew the rest.

  “That’s the snag,” Nacto nodded. “Twenty-five miles of rough terrain—dense woods and boulder plains—between the last road and Vega’s cabin. Vega flies in and out, but obviously you can’t do that. There’s a way in from the east, but it’s through more populated area. Brother, I only know one way to get you the rest of the way in and be all but certain you’re not seen, and it’s no easy way.”

  Nolan nodded. He knew it, too. He turned a smile on Nacto.

  “No sweat, man. I’ll walk it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Iris rinsed the lunch dishes and arranged them in the dishwasher. After she wiped the counters clean, she went back to the table in the breakfast nook and sat with her mother.

  Her mom was working in a puzzle book, and she didn’t look up from the page while Iris sat quietly and stared out onto the tidily landscaped back yard and the golf course beyond it. It was a pretty yard, with wide swaths of green accented with beds of colorful flowers. The landscaping crew had been by that morning, and the grass still showed the careful patterns of the mower.

  The patio was red brick. A black, wrought iron bench sat on it, against the wall of the house, but there was no other furniture, no grill, no sign that anyone used the yard. Because no one ever did. Ray might as well have had the pretty scene painted on the windows.

  “Mom, can we talk?” She had to try again. Ray was due home in a week, without another trip planned for a while, and the thought of being in the house with him for any length of time had Iris’s muscles bound in knots.

  Her mom set her pencil down. “That depends. Are you going to call me names again?”

  “I’ve never called you names.”

  “You called me weak. You said I was greedy.”

  “I didn’t. I said that I didn’t understand how having nice things was worth losing yourself.” Iris reached over and laid her hand over her mother’s, whose other hand was still set in a hard cast and resting in a sling. “Let me tell Daddy. The club will be here today and get you cleared out of here.”

  Taking her hand away, her mother struggled back from the table in a wheelchair she couldn’t manage on her own, not with one hand. Iris didn’t get up to help, not yet.

  “Don’t you dare tell your father anything about my life. This is not his business, and that club has never done anything to me but harm. They sure wouldn’t help me now.”

  “That’s not true, and I think you know it. Daddy would be here right away if he knew you needed help, and they’d all come. I know you blame the Horde—”

  “Of course I blame that club—what happened is their fault!” She sighed heavily, demonstrating an attempt to calm down, and gave Iris a tight, patient smile. “I’m glad you don’t remember, sweetheart, but because you don’t remember, you can’t have anything to say about it. I do remember, and I’m telling you your father as good as killed Daisy himself. Everything that happened that day is on him
. I am much better off now than I was then. Ray is a much better man than your father.”

  Iris clenched her hands together. What her mom had just said was a common refrain when they had a fight like this—whether they were fighting about Iris wanting to spend time with her dad, or about the things Ray did. Any time and any way that a comparison between the men came up, her mom found a way to insist that Ray was better. Which was just an outright lie. It had to be.

  Her mother wasn’t stupid; she had to know which one of these men was the bad man, and it wasn’t the one with the criminal record.

  Iris had grown used to her mother blaming her father for what had happened to Daisy and all of them; she barely even heard the words anymore. But she would never get used to her comparing him to Ray and finding her stepfather more worthy. That wasn’t merely wrong—it was dishonest.

  “He could have killed you this time.”

  Her mom rolled her eyes as though all her still-healing broken bones and bruises were nothing but minor inconveniences. “Don’t be dramatic. You know full well he rarely touches me in anger. This was an accident.”

  “Spiral fractures don’t happen in accidents.”

  “Apparently, they do.” Her mom worked her way back to the table and leaned in, obviously angry. “Iris, I am your mother and a grown woman. I’m not stupid, and I’m not crazy. I like the life I have. There is no way on this earth that I am willingly going back to twelve-hour shifts and juggling bills. And I don’t think a girl who’s chosen a life among murderers and drug dealers has any right to judge my choice.”

  Her mom had signed a prenup that would leave her with practically nothing if she initiated a divorce. It was, in Iris’s mind, Ray’s perfect control mechanism.

  She sighed and decided that her mom was right. They had each made their choices. Maybe now those choices would finally create a chasm between them that was too large to cross.

  “I don’t want to be here long after Ray is back. I hate him. You need to hire a nurse.”

  “You know he won’t allow strangers in the house.”

  No, he wouldn’t. He hired a crew to maintain the outside, but few people were allowed within the sanctum, not even as employees. This huge house, with all its bathrooms and bedrooms, its fancy trims and finishes—Iris, Rose, and their mother had been tasked with keeping it all. Since Rose and Iris had moved out, their mom did it on her own.

  It was like some kind of upside-down Cinderella story, where Cinderella marries the prince and then finds out her stepmother was actually the better deal.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say something like Then I guess that’s part of your choice, isn’t it? and just pack up and leave her mom sitting in her wheelchair when Ray got back. But she knew that asshole would simply go about his business and leave his wife to flounder, unable even to get on the toilet yet without help.

  “You need to call Rose, then, and get her here as soon she gets back in the country. Because I am not staying a second longer than I have to.” Rose had been ambivalent to Iris’s requests, but she’d fold if their mom asked directly.

  “Rose is busy. I don’t want to cause her trouble with her work.”

  “Mom, I have a job I need to get back to.”

  She scoffed. “You work on Main Street. It’s hardly the same.”

  Iris shoved her chair back and got up from the table. Without another word, she left the kitchen and went upstairs to her room.

  “Iris! Iris!”

  Her mom would have to figure out how to maneuver her wheelchair with one hand.

  ~oOo~

  Having her mom home from the hospital made everything extra hard on everybody. With the wheelchair, she could only be on the first floor. Iris had had to rearrange some furniture to make a path for the chair to move around most of that level, and she had set up the so-called ‘guest suite’ as her mom’s room until stairs could be part of her life again.

  Her mom needed help with almost everything. The door into the guest bath wasn’t wide enough for the chair, so Iris had to help her wash and get to the toilet and dress and, well, everything. Her mom hated it, and feeling helpless and weak made her snappish and sometimes just mean about it all.

  Iris wasn’t exactly a fan of the situation, either.

  And then Ray had come home.

  He’d only been there for a few days, but they had been a special kind of horror. He hadn’t done anything in particular, nothing Iris could have described to anyone who didn’t know what life in that house was like and have them understand why it was so hard, but he had hated the upset of the way things were supposed to be, and he was always at his cruelest when things weren’t as he thought they should be.

  When Ray was unhappy, it was impossible not to be anxious around him. Though her mother had been honest when she’d asserted that he didn’t often do physical harm to her, and though he’d never touched Iris or her sister, one never knew when he would do something like stalk into the kitchen and destroy the meal being prepared because he didn’t like the smell of it, or throw away all of her mom’s clothes because he’d told her not to wear yellow and she’d worn a blouse with a yellow stripe, or whatever. He didn’t have to make his manicured hands into fists to terrorize his household.

  Iris remembered one day while she was in high school—Rose had been in college by then. It was spring, and she was wearing a pair of red capris and a little white cotton blouse. She’d started coloring her hair, and it was fiery red. Her boobs were already significant, and it had become clear that she was going to be the plain-Jane sister. She’d been going through a pin-up style phase, trying to find a way to stop hating her body.

  She had been planning to go out for the afternoon with friends. It must have been a Saturday. A boy she liked was going to be in the group, and she’d primped.

  Just as she’d been getting ready to go, Ray had called out from his den and told her to make him some tomato and cheese sandwiches.

  He’d been prickly all day; he didn’t like it when she went out with friends. He didn’t like her having friends, but he hadn’t expressly forbidden it, as long as they didn’t come to the house. Iris thought that her mom had won a point somehow. Where Rose and she were concerned, Ray was more careful about how he exerted control.

  But he didn’t like it.

  Iris clearly recalled standing at the counter and making his sandwiches: big juicy tomatoes, sliced thick, mozzarella cheese, and this basil-mayonnaise blend that Ray liked. He always wanted multi-grain bread, but they had run out. All that had been left was the whole-wheat that her mother preferred. It looked about the same, Iris thought it tasted about the same, and she was in a hurry. So she’d made his sandwiches, four of them, with the whole-wheat bread.

  Ray had come into the kitchen as she was preparing to plate his meal. He’d seen the bread, come to the counter, and, standing right next to her, he’d pounded his fists into the sandwiches until there was nothing but flat, torn bits of basil-y bread, tomato, and cheese everywhere. Including all over Iris’s face, hair, and clothes.

  Then he’d washed his hands, said, calm as could be, “Clean the kitchen before you go,” and walked out of the room.

  Ray might never have touched Iris, but she was afraid of him nonetheless.

  So, now, while she played nursemaid to her mother, she had been ecstatic to learn that he was going all the way to South America for some international meeting. But he was about to be back again, and she wanted away from this house and out of Little Rock.

  Into all that stress, Nolan had added his own ‘addiction.’ By the time she’d been in Little Rock about a week, he’d been laying the pressure on her with a trowel, and after three weeks, talking to him had become nothing but guilt and stress. He was angry that she’d left so quickly, he was angry that she couldn’t tell him when she would be back, and she knew—she could see it in the way he looked at her through the screen of her laptop—that he was deciding, or had already decided, that she couldn’t be trusted to st
ay with him.

  It was too much pressure. She wanted to save him, but she couldn’t be everything to him. She didn’t need to be—he had a robust, loving family in the Night Horde. He had his mom and brother, his club, his work, and his town. But he seemed blind to that good in his life. He’d put all of his need in her basket, and she couldn’t carry that load on her own.

  In the space of the day or two after their last talk, Iris had figured out a way to fix everything. She called her sister and told her that she was leaving in a week, the day after Ray got back, regardless of the situation. By then, she would have been away from her life for a month. It was Rose’s goddamn turn. When Rose hemmed and hawed in response to Iris’s declaration, Iris had said that what Rose did was up to Rose, and what their mom did was up to their mom, and what she did was up to her—and she was going home.