“You saw the damage to Opie’s truck,” Bobby said. “Juice is figuring out the repairs, making sure the guys know—”
The Chapel’s door opened, and Juice ducked his head in. He gave the same shy, apologetic smile that seemed a fixture on his face and slipped inside, closing the door behind him.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing a hand over the bristle of his buzz-cropped Mohawk and the tattoos on either side of it.
To Clay’s left, Jax straightened up and nodded at Juice. “Sit down.”
Clay cast a sidelong glance at Jax, saying nothing. The boy had been feeling his oats lately, developing the swagger of a man who thought he ought to be holding the gavel instead of wearing the vice president patch. But Clay had calmed things down between him and Jax after they’d gotten out of Stockton, made a side deal that would ease Jax’s way out the door when the time came, and had paved the way for SAMCRO to get into business with the Galindo cartel. The kid would be out of his way soon enough.
Still, Clay didn’t want Jax getting too comfortable giving orders.
“All right, let’s figure this shit out,” Clay said.
He gripped the gavel, clenching his jaw at the stabbing pain in his arthritic hand, and banged on the table to bring the meeting to order. All eyes were on him, and he took a moment to survey the club members seated around the room. Jax and the sergeant-at-arms, Tig Traeger. Bobby and the Scottish-born Chibs Telford. Opie and Juice. Happy and Kozik, both of whom had patched back in from other charters. Miles, who’d been patched in as a full member while half of the club had been in Stockton.
Opposite Clay, at the far end of the table, sat Piney Winston. One of the three living member of the First Nine, Piney had cofounded SAMCRO with John Teller and had been the one who’d sponsored Clay at the beginning. Now the old man sat with his oxygen tubes up his nose and his watery eyes and gazed at Clay with seemingly constant doubt and disapproval.
Jax getting cocky was something Clay figured he could deal with … but Piney had started to become a problem.
“Short and sweet, now,” Clay said. “Jax?”
The VP glanced around the table. “You’ve all heard parts of this already. Me and Opie were on our way back from the cabin. Humvee hit us from behind. A truck boxed us in, drove us off the road. One look at Opie’s truck should give you an idea how that went.”
“You’re still breathing, Jackie,” Chibs said. “That’s a piece of luck.”
“Any landing you can walk away from, right?” Kozik added.
Tig leaned over the table, eyes narrowed. “We’re talking about Russians, yeah? Looking for payback for us taking out Putlova and his girlfriends?”
Opie gave a nod. “What we figured. They wanted us alive, though. At least long enough to bring us to whoever gave them the order.”
“We didn’t play along,” Jax said. “The shooting started, and then the other Russians showed up.”
“What other Russians?” Piney rasped. He’d been frowning from the moment the gavel had gone down, but for once Clay didn’t blame him. Opie could take care of himself, but no father wanted to hear about Russian Mafia shooting at his son.
Jax and Opie told the rest of the story, trading off details. There wasn’t much to tell. A couple of minutes later, the table fell silent for several seconds, until Jax turned expectantly to Clay. Exactly what Clay had been waiting for—that moment when Jax acknowledged who held the gavel.
“This stays at the table,” Clay said. “I know you all thought we’d settled our Russian problem for a while. So did I. Now it looks like the Russians may be having a turf war.”
“Do we bring Galindo up to speed?” Jax asked, scratching thoughtfully at the blond scrub of his beard.
“On what?” Clay said, scanning the table to make sure they all understood his reply. “We don’t know shit at this point. Chibs, if this is gun-trade business, could be our friends in Belfast heard something.”
Chibs had been born in Scotland but grown up in Belfast and had done stints with the British Army and the RIRA before some ugliness forced him to leave Belfast. He still had enemies in Ireland, but the old connections remained in place—unpleasant as they could be.
“I’ll reach out to Connor Malone,” Chibs said. “See what he knows.”
“We should talk to Lin, too,” Bobby said, that perpetually worried look on his face. “If the Russians are making a new play, could be Lin and his crew already know.”
“I’ll give Lin a call,” Jax said, nodding.
“Do it,” Clay instructed. “Report back.”
He glanced around the room. The Chapel was sacrosanct, everything discussed at the table considered private unless it was voted otherwise.
“These assholes may be nothing to worry about,” he said. “A bunch of Bratva dogs fighting over table scraps, hoping their masters in Moscow notice and carve them off a bigger piece. They keep shooting each other, that oughta distract them from worrying about who put Putlova in the ground. Just the same, keep your eyes open, watch each other’s backs until we figure out who’s giving the orders on either side.”
Clay scanned their faces again, making sure nobody else felt the need to weigh in.
“All right, then,” he said, banging the gavel. “Adjourned.”
* * *
Jax left the others in the clubhouse and went outside, swinging the heavy door shut behind him. The air grew close when they were in church, jammed in that meeting room. There were a lot of guys, now, and that was good—it made the club strong.
As he strode to his bike, he dug into his pocket and tugged out his cell phone. Calling Lin might be a waste of time—the Russians wouldn’t have asked permission from the Chinese before they started their civil war—but it was possible Lin had heard something. If the Russians killed each other off, that was all for the better, but Jax worried about collateral damage.
He reached out to Lin.
Footfalls scuffed the parking lot behind him and Jax turned, still skittish from the attack that morning. He must have looked ready to fight, because Chucky held up his hands—what was left of them—in immediate surrender, just to make sure Jax knew he wasn’t a threat.
As if Chucky Marstein could ever have been a threat.
“Whoa, Jax. It’s just Chucky.”
“You think I wouldn’t recognize you?”
Always nervous, the bald, goateed little guy seemed more agitated than usual. “No, no. I thought maybe you’d gone, ya know, rabid or something.”
Jax cupped the phone in his hand. “You came out here for a reason.”
“Sorry, yeah.” Chucky rolled his eyes at his forgetfulness. “You’ve got a call in the office. Lady sounds pretty upset. Urgent-like.”
A frown creased Jax’s brow as he started walking toward the office. “You get a name?”
“No,” Chucky said, catching up to him, “but if it helps, she’s got some kinda accent. English, I think. Maybe Irish.”
Jax slid his phone into the inside pocket of his cut, Chucky completely forgotten. He stepped into the shade of the office and saw the phone on the desk, old-fashioned corkscrew cord all tangled. His mother, Gemma, had inherited his father’s share of Teller-Morrow, and most days she could be found in the office. Jax was grateful she wasn’t there now or she would have been the one to answer the phone. During his time in Belfast many years past, JT had gotten involved with a woman named Maureen Ashby. Jax had a half-sister whose existence he’d only discovered when he’d made his own trip to Belfast. Any woman with an Irish accent calling the office of Teller-Morrow and getting Gemma on the phone would not be well received.
Jax picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Can you talk, Jax? I didn’t know who else to call.”
Maureen was a woman with sharp edges, but he’d gotten along with her well enough while in Belfast. She reminded him of his own mother, though Gemma would have crucified him if he’d ever said it aloud.
Hearing Maureen sound this desperate and a
fraid made Jax very nervous.
“What’s up?” He glanced back at Chucky, alarm bells going off in his head. Only one thing could have made Maureen Ashby lose her cool. “Something happen with Trinity?”
“Girl’s gone missing,” Maureen said. “Off the radar. I’ve left her twenty messages. Haven’t heard from her in more than two weeks and now—”
“What do you mean, two weeks? She lives with you.”
“Not for months she hasn’t.”
“Hang on,” Jax said, growing more frustrated than worried. He turned and ushered Chucky from the office. When the little guy had gone, he sat down at the desk. “Start from the beginning.”
“There’s no beginnin’, Jax. She’s off with them Russians, and I figure if anyone can find her, it’s you.”
Jax pushed a hand through a thick scruff of his blond hair. “What Russians?”
Given the events of the day, just asking the question made him nauseated.
“Five months ago, it was. A whole Russian delegation shows up—Mafia bastards—wantin’ to do business with Brogan, Dooley, and Roarke—”
“The Russians didn’t come to Belfast uninvited,” Jax interrupted.
“Do I bloody care if they were invited?” Maureen snapped. “They were here doin’ business, that’s all I know. Roarke had a friend among them, as much as Roarke has friends.”
A dreadful calm settled over Jax, the same feeling that always descended on him when things took an ugly turn. It felt like sinking into quicksand and simply throwing his hands up, letting it drag him down, knowing that once it had swallowed him, things would only get worse.
The Irish Kings—the ruling council of the Real IRA—had entertained a visit from some faction of the Bratva. It made a sick kind of sense. Jimmy O’Phelan had been the RIRA’s man in California, handling the illegal gun business and the relationship with SAMCRO. He’d tried to cut SAMCRO out by directly approaching the Russians, but he’d gone completely rogue, making a mess big enough that the Kings not only gave their blessing for him to be killed … they rewarded SAMCRO for carrying out the hit.
Now, if Maureen knew what she was talking about, the Russians had made an appeal to the Kings after Jimmy O had been killed. Jax needed to know more—needed to know how that visit had gone and what it meant for the relationship between SAMCRO and the Irish—but Maureen hadn’t called to talk business or the politics of criminal enterprises.
“One of the Russians—a strong-arm fella named Oleg Voloshin—he followed Trinity like he was in orbit around her.”
“You think he took her?” Jax asked, grip tightening on the phone.
“I know he did, Jax. Trinity fell for Oleg. She thinks she’s in love with him … and if I’m honest, I didn’t mind so much. I’ve loved my share o’ men who didn’t exactly follow the letter of the law, and Oleg—he’s a sweet lad for a hired gun. Trinity went off with him about four months ago, but she kept in touch, called me regular until a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t heard a whisper from her, and it’s got me scared out of my wits.”
Jax leaned back in the chair, staring at the office door Chucky had left open—staring at nothing.
“Listen,” Maureen went on, “I know there’re other things we need to be talkin’ about, but right now—”
“You’re worried,” he interrupted. “I’m worried myself. But getting out of the country’d be next to impossible for me right now. Going to Russia—”
“Who said anything about Russia?”
“I thought Trinity went back with Oleg.”
“She left with him, yeah, but your sister’s not in Russia. She’s in America. Last I knew, she was in Nevada.”
Jax spun toward the desk, digging up a pencil and a sheet of paper.
“Anything else you can tell me about where Trinity’s been staying, or about this Oleg guy or his people?” he asked.
Maureen rattled off what she knew, which was precious little, and Jax scrawled down anything that sounded promising—which wasn’t much. Only when he hung up the phone did he sense the presence of someone else behind him.
He turned to see his mother, Gemma, staring at him with a familiar, disgusted curl to her lips.
Gemma sneered. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
4
Caitlin Dunphy had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend after she’d found him in a pub with another girl. Hurt and humiliated, Caitlin had confronted him and then left the pub in tears, after which the girl he’d been chatting up had given him a further dressing-down and poured a beer over his head. The boyfriend, Tim Kelley, had stalked back to Caitlin’s flat with more alcohol fueling him than a drunken sailor would’ve thought wise. Tim and Caitlin had argued, and then they’d fought, fists flying. Like any good Irish girl, she’d given as good as she’d gotten … right up until he grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her in the throat.
Trinity had loved dear Caitlin. They’d been at school together as girls and spent plenty of nights together at the pub, as well as mornings on a run in the park. Once they’d even been in jail together, and the less said about that, the better. Trinity had been unable to cry at Caitlin’s funeral, rage obliterating her grief, desperate to get her fingers around the handle of a knife and give Tim Kelley what he had coming. Less than a month later, the bastard was done for, but it hadn’t been Trinity who’d killed him.
She’d regretted that for years. Always would. Trinity Ashby had spent her life on the fringes of a violent world, but she’d never been a criminal herself, and she certainly wasn’t a killer. She would’ve made an exception for Tim Kelley.
For Caitlin Dunphy.
When John Carney had asked her name, Caitlin’s had popped out. It shamed her now to think of it.
Too late to turn back now, she thought.
In so many ways.
* * *
The Summerlin Gun Show wrapped up in the late afternoon, but the breakdown took a while. Trinity had a hell of a time keeping Oleg and the other guys from getting impatient while they waited, never mind that the four of them just standing around together—this Irish girl and a trio of grim Russian guys, all edgy and paranoid—was going to draw some unwanted attention, even in the waning hours of a gun show. She’d sent Gavril and Feliks off on a drive, while she and Oleg had alternated between perusing the sellers’ booths, listening to the musical act performing at the east end of the show, and visiting the big silver Airstream trailer that had been converted into a mobile cantina and snack shop.
Their kettle corn had been delicious.
Now, with the gun show over and the sun swiftly sinking behind the red mountains in the west, they drove along the dirt road leading up to the main house on Oscar Temple’s ranch. There were fences everywhere, but their focus was on security. They spotted a couple of guards and at least three cameras, which made Oleg and the guys nervous. They were following the battered old Ford pickup with the heavy cab on the back that John Carney used to bring his wares to gun shows, and Carney had called ahead.
They were expected.
Trinity had to wonder, though, just what it was that Oscar Temple might be expecting. Carney must have given him the basics, but would a man like Temple react poorly to scuffed-up, stone-faced men with Russian accents? If she’d learned anything about Americans, she thought he might.
“Let me do the talkin’,” Trinity said from the backseat.
Gavril was at the wheel, with Oleg in the passenger seat and Feliks in the back, beside Trinity. They all scowled at her, even the man with whom she’d fallen in love.
“It’s possible you have said that once or twice already,” Oleg said.
Trinity narrowed her eyes, pushed herself up between the seats, and made sure he was looking her in the eye.
“I’ll say it a thousand times if that’s what it takes to get through your thick Russian skulls.”
Oleg’s grin stretched the thin white scar that ran along his jaw from chin to earlobe. The tattoos on the back of his neck and along
his arms were somehow cruel and beautiful at the same time. He had high cheekbones and a small mouth and the narrow eyes of a man who might like to hurt you. The stubble on his shaved scalp did nothing to alleviate such concerns, but Trinity knew better. She’d felt his touch and seen the hunger for her in his eyes. Oleg would never hurt her, except perhaps by dying for her, and she wanted to do everything in her power to prevent that.
Gavril drove. Always. Ugly and dark-eyed, he had a face that looked as if he’d been in a thousand fights and lost them all.
Feliks was the quiet one. Six and a half feet tall, he had built himself into a wall of muscle. Trinity had the feeling that most fights with Feliks ended before they began, with his opponent pissing himself before a punch could be thrown.
“You talk to us like children,” Gavril said. “I crushed the throat of a man who spoke to me like that.”
Trinity smiled and sat back in her seat. “You’re not the first man to hint he’d like to kill me. I believed the other guy more.”
“One of us loves you, Irish,” Gavril muttered, huge hands tight on the wheel. “But it isn’t me.”
Oleg glanced into the backseat again, one eyebrow raised. Gavril might be a killer, but the two men were like brothers, and he would never hurt the woman Oleg loved. Feliks kept silent, as always, but he rolled his eyes just a bit to indicate that he also thought Gavril’s threats were hollow.
The huge, rambling ranch house grew larger ahead of them. Trinity saw Carney’s brake lights go on, and then Gavril hit the brake. The tires of their black Mercedes kicked up a cloud of dust, and they waited for it to clear before opening the doors. The Bratva had taught her not to expose herself anywhere she didn’t have a clear view of her surroundings.
Trinity climbed out of the car and slammed the rear door. The Mercedes ticked as the engine cooled. She’d suggested they steal something a little less Russian Mafia–cliché than a black European sedan, but Gavril insisted that they had standards. Oleg had swapped out the plates with those from an old Volkswagen Rabbit. Nobody would be catching up with them tonight, at least.
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