Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1)

by Fanetti, Susan

  Covered in blood, Sid opened the door. And let chaos in.

  Shouting, guns drawn, coming in the back and the front, law converged on them. Muse was tackled to the floor before he could get to Cliff, and his arms were brutally yanked behind his back while a service-issue shoe held his head down.

  ~oOo~

  When Bibi came through the ER doors, Muse, who’d been staring in that direction for hours, stood and went right to her.

  “How is she, Mama? What did he do to her?”

  Bibi hooked her arm around his and walked him back to his brothers. They’d all shown up at the hospital.

  “She’s gonna be okay. Most of the blood was his. She has a concussion, and that scar on her cheek broke back open, so that’s stitched again. Her face is damn swollen, but that’s the worst of it.” She gave Muse a significant look. “He didn’t…finish what he started, honey. She didn’t go through that.”

  “Thank Christ.”

  She patted his arm. “They’re finishin’ up some stuff, and then they’re gonna release her. I want you to come to our house. We got plenty of room, and you can’t take her back to that house.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. It was still a crime scene. Thankfully, Sid had talked enough to the deputies to get him out of cuffs. She hadn’t given them a lot of details, but what she’d told them was enough that they hadn’t been arrested.

  And he knew that the name of the man who’d come at her was Kevin Green. Who’d hurt her once already, and who’d threatened her repeatedly—more than Muse had been aware. He’d had weeks to figure out who this guy was and end the threat, and he hadn’t been able to get it done. He’d let her down.

  But all she’d’ve had to fucking do was fucking tell him his motherfucking name.

  Rage and guilt were turning his gut into lye.

  “Will she talk to me, you think?”

  Bibi nodded. “She ain’t mad at you, honey. She’s just…nervy. They’re givin’ her some pills to ease her some, but you gotta give her time. What she just went through…I don’t think you can understand.”

  “You said he didn’t—”

  She turned him, creating a space of privacy between them and his brothers. “Rape ain’t just penetration, Muse. In some ways that’s the least of it. The pain and humiliation and powerlessness—that’s the worst of it. And she got all that in spades. So you give her some goddamn time, you hear?”

  Realizing that Bibi must have been through something similar to be able to speak in that way, Muse nodded.

  She smiled and pulled him down to kiss his cheek. “Good boy. How’s Cliffie?”

  “Deme’s with him at the vet. He’s gonna be okay.” He’d been heavily drugged. Apparently, Green had been an animal lover, so he had let Cliff live. Also apparently, he’d been casing Sid for a while. He’d come prepared.

  And he’d had help. Dinny, who’d let himself get too far behind Sid, had been run off the road in a hit and run and was upstairs in this hospital, still unconscious. No way that was a coincidence.

  “Good! I’m glad. Bring him to our house, too. I love a full house, and Tucker’ll love havin’ Cliff there. Thanksgivin’s in a couple days, anyway. Maybe all the commotion’ll help Sid.”

  Muse didn’t know if it would. He wasn’t sure how she handled fresh trauma. He knew she’d been unsettled and afraid after the first time Green had hurt her. But she’d been determined not to do things any differently. He suspected she’d be determined again, once her head was clear.

  “Her folks know about all this?”

  Muse shook his head. “If she wants ‘em to know, she’ll tell ‘em.”

  “They’re gonna see her Thursday, right? And meet you.”

  “That’s the plan, yeah. I don’t know if she’ll be up to it now.”

  Bibi sucked on her lip, obviously thinking. “Okay. Well, that’s a mess. But one thing at a time. Let me go back there and collect her—you get all these guys on their way. She’s not gonna want to be surrounded by the whole damn club tonight.”

  He bent down and hugged her. “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Family, honey. S’what we do.” She patted his cheek and then went to give Hoosier a kiss and say a couple of words. Then she went back through the swinging ER doors.

  ~oOo~

  Muse knocked on the guestroom door, and after a second, Sid opened it. Fuck, she looked bad. She was cleaned up now, but all washing Green’s blood off of her had seemed to do was show how really badly he’d actually hurt her. Her left eye was swollen completely shut, and that whole side of her face was mottled red and purple. Her left cheek was stitched again—that scar would now be distinct. She had a small cut on the other side of her forehead; that was closed with two butterfly bandages. Her throat was ringed with bruising, and her chin had several nasty scratches.

  He lifted his hand to her face, but dropped it when she flinched away. “Can I sit with you?”

  She nodded and stepped back, and he came into the room and closed the door. She was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of pink sweatpants, from Bibi. Bibi had more curves than Sid, so the clothes sagged on her a little.

  “I’m okay, Muse.” She spoke quietly, turned away from him as she walked to the bed and sat down.

  He followed and sat at her side. “No, hon. You’re definitely not okay. Don’t try to put up a front. Not with me.”

  She looked down at her lap and said nothing.

  “Sid. What can I do?”

  She shook her head. Muse knew he should leave her alone. If Bibi were in the room with them, she’d probably slap him for what he was about to do, but he had no choice. He couldn’t just sit here and let her build a wall between them, and it felt like she was doing exactly that.

  So he reached out and cupped her face. When she tried to pull away, he put his other hand on the other side of her head—gently, not wanting to hurt her, but not allowing her to get free, either. He made her turn and look at him, her one working eye wide and suspicious. He held her and stared hard at her.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.”

  With a shake of his head, he leaned forward and put his forehead to hers. “I love you.”

  Her shoulders began to shake. And then she began to cry. Muse scooted as close to her as he could get and folded her into his arms. When she clutched at his hoodie and pulled him even closer, he knew that she would, they would, indeed be okay.

  He held her while she cried, and then, when she was spent, he held her while she settled. Against his damp chest, with a sniffle that told him she was recovering, she asked, “How’s Cliff?”

  “They’re keeping him overnight, just to make sure, but he’s awake and doing fine. Just got a lot of rest today is all. And a package of bologna.”

  Earlier, Demon had texted Muse a photo of Cliff, awake and alert, being loved on by a pretty vet assistant. Muse’s tearful relief at knowing his buddy was okay had been overwhelming, and he’d needed a minute in the bathroom to get ahold of himself.

  Now, Demon was back here, sitting in the living room talking with Hoosier and Connor. Bibi was in the kitchen making coffee and snacks. It was nearly four in the morning, and the only person in the house who was asleep was Tucker.

  “I’m glad he didn’t get too hurt. And Dinny’s going to be okay, right?”

  “He’s banged up, but yeah. He’ll be okay.” Muse wanted to know who had helped Green. That name, he’d find soon.

  “I’m sorry about all of this.” Her words were muffled by his hoodie.

  “What? Hon, you got nothing to be sorry for.”

  Her answer surprised him. “I should have told you his name.”

  Yes. That was true. He’d been thinking that all night—that she should have told him, that he should have tried harder to find out, that Dinny should have stayed closer, that he shouldn’t have trusted her safety to a fucking hangaround—careening wildly from crushing guilt to maddening frustr
ation to explosive rage.

  Now, though, with her soft concession, he couldn’t agree with her. “I know why you didn’t.” And that was the truth. Putting Muse in the position to kill had been too much for her to contemplate. She was too new to this world to contemplate it. Or she had been, anyway.

  And kill he would have, because Kevin Green had been a bad guy. Not just an outlaw. Fuck, not just a woman-beater or a rapist. But a very bad guy. Now that they had his name, it had taken minutes for Bart to run him. He’d been a thug for the Berdoo Kings, a notoriously violent street gang that had ruled the county twenty years ago. They’d been busted down to near-insignificance when a turf war had coincided with a crackdown and most of their leadership had ended up dead or inside.

  Green’s rap sheet made Demon’s look like a bedtime story. And women were his favorite victims. He’d been excommunicated from his gang several years earlier. They didn’t yet know why, but there were few reasons a member would be excomm’d and not killed outright. If Muse had to bet, he’d say Green’s extracurricular violence had been pulling too much heat on a gang trying to get back on its feet.

  And that fucker had a wife and three kids. Women could be really fucking stupid.

  Muse assumed that Sid had known some of what they’d found out—his criminal record and his affiliation, at least—but if she had known it all, she would have been more careful. He had to believe she wouldn’t have been going blithely through her days knowing what kind of threat Green had really posed. Green’s old lady was an idiot, but his was not.

  She unwound herself from him and sat back. “I thought I could handle myself. I thought I knew what to do, that I knew how not to let that happen again. But I didn’t know anything.”

  Her hands were slack in her lap. They were bruised, too. He reached over and picked one up, being as gentle as he knew how to be. She let him, watching as he pulled her hand to his thigh and held it there. “Sid, you fought him. You tore him up. He was a huge guy. I don’t think I could have overtaken him on my own, and I’m twice your size and been fighting for thirty years.”

  “I let him get into the house. I let him hurt Cliff. I let him…” Her sentence faded out. “I’m so stupid. I thought I was strong, but I needed to be rescued.”

  “We all need to be rescued sometimes, hon. You rescued me. I just returned the favor.”

  She looked up. “What?”

  “When Carrie passed. That night after we buried her was…empty for me. If you hadn’t held me where I was, I don’t know where I’d’ve ended up.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “I think it is. And if it’s not, then you saved me more. I was fighting myself. How weak is that?”

  When she only shook her head, without looking up, Muse lifted her chin and put an arm around her again. “He can’t hurt you again, Sid. And you did that. You ended him. You doin’ okay with that?”

  He would have died anyway, but there was no question that Sid’s shot had ended him first. She had killed a man. The first kill was a burden. For somebody like Sid, it was probably a heavy one.

  But she surprised him again. “Yeah. I think that’s the only reason I feel like I am going to be okay. That I didn’t just give up when you got there. I held on. I aimed and fired. And that fucker is dead. I don’t feel bad about that at all.” She paused, and he could see a thought occurring to her. “Do you think the Sheriff’s office is done with me?”

  Hoosier had talked to the Sheriff at the hospital, so Muse had an answer for her. “It’s still an open case, but that’s a formality. Green’s history with them is long, and he’s on record threatening you. He was in your house, and he obviously hurt you. Once you cleared me, they had the story of what went down. They’ll take their samples and write their report and call it a closed case. Montoya says the house will probably be released late tomorrow—or, today, I guess.”

  “I can’t go back there. Not with—not like—the blood. I can’t…”

  She was getting agitated, and Muse held her more tightly. “Easy, hon. Next time you see that house, it’ll look like it did when you left for work yesterday morning, I promise. Meantime, we’ll stay here for a couple of days, and we can go to mine if it gets to be too much here.”

  She nodded, and they were quiet for a few minutes. Then, with her head again on his chest, she said, “My parents are going to flip. My father might literally have a stroke.”

  “What do you want to do about that? We can spend all of Thanksgiving right here. Bibi won’t mind at all.”

  She sat up again, pushing back from him a little. “No. I can’t cancel. That’ll just cause a bigger thing. I’d have to tell them why, and then they’d be here. If I tried to lie and give them some other kind of excuse, they’d still be here, sure I was hiding something from them. They might be divorced, but when it comes to me, they’re still like a tag team.”

  With a serious look in her one good eye, she continued, “They’ll think you did this. I have to tell them the truth, because my mother will see the way I look and she will dig deep first thing Monday morning, no matter what I say. But first, they’re all going to think you beat the shit out of me—and that I let you. It’s going to suck. I understand if you don’t want to go.”

  “That pisses me off. I’m not fuckin’ leaving you on your own, and if you don’t know that, you better know it now.”

  “Sorry.” She smiled a little. “Okay. We’ll take on the family together.”

  “Damn straight we will.” He held her close again. “You ready to try to sleep?”

  With a little nod, she got up from the bed and pulled on his hands until he, too, stood. While she turned down the bed, he toed off his boots, and pulled his hoodie over his head. He stopped there, wearing a beater and his jeans and socks. He didn’t wear underwear, and he wasn’t sure how she would feel about him being naked with her.

  She shimmied out of the sweatpants and climbed into bed. Seeing him standing there like a dolt, his hoodie in his hand, she cocked her head. “Muse?”

  “You want me to leave my jeans on?”

  He had no word to describe her look. Touched was the closest he could think of. “I love you.”

  “I love you, hon.” He smiled. “Still not sure what to wear to bed, though.”

  “I’m not afraid of you. I can’t…do anything. I need to get my head straight before I can do that again. But I’m not afraid of you. Come to bed like you always do.”

  He stripped naked and slid in at her side. She nestled on his chest, and he held her.

  “Hey—today’s your birthday.”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  “I ruined it.” She tried to sit up, but he held her where she was. “I’m so sorry. I was going to make you a cheesecake. You said you like cheesecake. Maybe Bibi will help me later.”

  “Hush, hon.” He kissed her head. “You didn’t ruin anything. You’re with me, so it’s still the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Davis opened the front door as Muse and Sid were still coming up the walk. His welcoming smile shifted when he got a load of Sid’s face. She knew it was bad—in some ways, it was worse now, after a couple of days, than when it had happened. Probably she should have warned her family about it, and she’d considered doing so, but she hadn’t been able to figure out what she’d say. At least, this way, she could respond to their reaction and maybe find the right words then.

  “Jesus, Sid! What happened?!” Davis gave Muse a dark look, colored with suspicion and caution both.

  Muse grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. She stepped up onto the low front porch, and Davis kissed the cheek that wasn’t bruised. “I’m okay, Davis. I only want to tell the story once, though. Are they both inside?”

  Because Sid’s father had few friends and no other family in the U.S., Davis and her mother had always invited him to spend holidays with them, and he always came. It gave an odd, stilted vibe to every holiday event, and her father, who still th
ought of Sid’s mother as his wife, was especially awkward in the home she shared with her husband, but Sid had to admit that it was one of the nicer things her mother did. Her father would have sat alone in his condo otherwise, or he and Sid would have had a sad little vegetarian meal on their own. And Davis was very cool with it. Sid wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it had been his idea in the first place.

  Her stepfather, who was younger than Muse, nodded. “Your father’s on the terrace. He and Claude had a thing about the sweet potatoes. Anita put marshmallows on them, I guess.” He turned to Muse and held out his hand, still looking like he was face to face with Charles Manson. “Davis Townley.”