Aaron staggered as he rose, one hand against the wall to keep from collapsing. Feliks had hurt him badly, but now Feliks was dead. Trinity hated it all, but she wouldn’t lie to herself. Aaron deserved whatever Oleg and Gavril did to him. They had come here to make a fair deal, and they’d been betrayed.
Oleg had a fistful of Aaron’s hair and jammed the barrel of his gun against the bodyguard’s gore-streaked throat.
“You know where the guns are in this house,” Oleg said. “Tell me no, and I shoot you in the leg. Then I stomp your balls until they burst.”
Trinity’s stomach roiled.
“You’re gonna kill me,” Aaron said, his voice trembling.
“It’s what happens when you’re on the wrong side,” Oleg said, jamming the gun barrel harder against his throat. “But you take us to the guns right now, not another word from you, and you die with both balls and both eyes still where they belong. No pain. One bullet. Quick.”
Aaron deflated, all hope leaving him, and nodded once. He started toward the back corridor where Antoinette had gone to make her call.
“We’ve got maybe ten minutes,” Gavril said. “Less if anyone heard gunshots.”
Against the wall, John Carney shifted and let out a small sob. Trinity, Oleg, and Gavril all turned to look at him. Broken and shaking, he stood there crying old man’s tears.
“Gavril,” Oleg said.
Trinity knew the tone, knew what it meant.
“No,” she said.
Oleg frowned, glancing at her, his gun now aimed at Aaron’s back. “Trinity.”
Letting the old man’s gun hang by her side, Trinity walked over to Carney and stood in front of him. She didn’t look at him, afraid to meet his eyes.
“This man did nothin’ wrong. He’d put this life behind him till we asked him to do us this favor. I’ll not allow you to kill him for it.”
Oleg hesitated. Lips pressed together in a white line, he thought it over, but Trinity knew how it would end. The brutality he’d threatened Aaron with … he’d have done it all but gotten no joy from it. Violence was a tool for Oleg, but he didn’t have a killer’s heart, and he believed in people reaping what they’d sown.
He gestured toward Carney. “Go and sit at the table. You’ll leave when we do.”
Silently, Carney went to the little round table in the kitchen, dragging out a chair.
Aaron started to turn, maybe to make a fight of it again. Oleg struck him in the temple with the gun.
“Walk.”
The bodyguard walked the first of his final steps. Oleg and Gavril followed.
Trinity knew they could have used her help to carry the guns they were about to steal, but she pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from red-faced John Carney. He wiped his tears and looked at her with doubtful eyes.
Carney glanced over at the corpses of Temple and Antoinette, and his expression darkened. She thought for a moment that she saw in him the hard man he’d once been.
“Oscar dealt the cards, lass,” Carney said. “He used to say, ‘The house always wins,’ but he was a fool to think it. Sometimes the house loses. Sometimes the cards go the other way, and the house gets burned to the ground.”
5
Jax held his son Thomas in his arms and pressed his nose against the boy’s head. Thomas wasn’t a baby anymore, but his head still had that baby smell, reminding Jax of his most important role. His sons were his world, his reason for breathing. People talked about the measure of a man, but to any man with children, the only real measure was in the eyes of his kids. If someday they learned the things he had done for the club, for brotherhood, and to try to build the future he wanted for them … he hoped they would understand why. But the more time passed, the more he realized that giving them that future mattered more than them forgiving him for what he had to do to get them there.
Laughter and the sound of splashing came from the bathroom. He kissed Thomas on the head and nudged the door open. Tara Knowles knelt beside the tub, washing the hair of Jax’s older son, Abel. They both looked up at him—his old lady and his boy—and their smiles tugged at him. Abel’s hair was full of suds, and Tara had been sculpting it into strange curls and waves, showing Abel in a hand mirror.
“Hello, Daddy,” Tara said.
Abel tried to throw a handful of soap bubbles at him but they didn’t go far.
“I’m headed out,” Jax told her.
Tara stood and reached for Thomas, who stretched out his arms for his mother. Jax kissed the boy’s head and handed him over. Tara smiled again, and it lit up her angular features. Her face could turn a man to stone if Tara was displeased with him, but she had a dark beauty that made him reach up and trace the contours of her face.
“Be safe,” Tara said, kissing him even as she took Thomas in her arms. “You come back to me.”
“Don’t I always?” he asked with a grin.
“If you know what’s good for you.”
The lightness of the conversation hid a darkness beneath it. Tara didn’t want him to go—not with just Chibs and Opie to back him up—but she wouldn’t tell him to stay, either. Jax had not shared the details with her, only that Trinity was in danger.
Tara had wrapped her arms around him, pressed her body against his to remind him what he would be missing while he was gone, and knitted her brows as she stared into his eyes.
You have to go, she’d said. I love you for that. But you never knew she existed until half a year ago. Don’t die for her.
He didn’t plan to, but they both knew the risk was there. For everyone, yeah … and moreso for the people in their world. The life they’d chosen meant he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth on a regular basis. One of these days, the jaws were gonna chomp.
Jax went to the tub and splashed Abel, who kicked and splashed him back. He kissed Tara and Thomas again, then turned and left without looking back. He picked up a small bag by the door—just a change of clothes and a few things—and went out, closing the door behind him.
* * *
Chibs and Opie were little more than shadows in the driveway as Jax stepped outside. Their bikes were familiar silhouettes, comforting ghosts awaiting new life.
Opie lit a cigarette, the flame momentarily illuminating his face. Jax approached them as the moon slid out from behind a scrim of clouds.
“You set?” Opie asked.
Jax went to his bike. “She understands.”
Opie shook his head, reminding Jax of a bear. “Wish Lyla did. Maybe Tara can talk to her.”
“I’m sure she would if you want.”
Opie exhaled cigarette smoke. “She’s gonna have to get used to it. She thinks we’re going to end up in Vegas with a roomful of whores.”
Chibs stepped between them, threw an arm around each of them, and grinned the devil-may-care grin that always seemed to lift the spirits of his brethren.
“We get this sorted out, maybe we save that bit for the return trip,” he said.
Opie smiled, took another drag on his cigarette, then dropped it to the pavement to grind it out. At some unconscious signal, the three of them moved toward their bikes. Jax had the sack with his gear slung over his shoulder, and now he slipped the second strap over his other shoulder. He wore a leather vest similar to his cut, but this one had no markings—no patches or symbols of any kind. Chibs wore a threadbare old denim jacket with an olive drab T-shirt beneath it. Opie had a plain navy sweatshirt with its sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Without their cuts—with no link to the club—he thought they all looked naked.
“You sure this is the right move, Jackie?” Chibs asked, smoothing his goatee as he sat astride his Harley-Davidson Dyna Street Bob. “Traveling without showing our colors?”
Jax nodded. “We can’t pick sides till we know which side tried to kill us.”
“Clay seemed pretty unhappy about it,” Opie noted, reaching for the handlebars.
The plan had not pleased Clay—that was certain. He didn’t like the i
dea of the club being three men down for days, didn’t like them going out essentially undercover, and most of all, didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t control whatever unfolded in Nevada. If it had only been about Trinity, Jax figured Clay would have bitched even more, but he at least acknowledged that the trip ought to help give them a better idea of what the hell the Russians were up to.
“Clay knows it can’t be avoided,” Jax said.
Chibs kicked his bike to roaring life. Jax was about to follow suit when headlights washed the driveway in yellow gloom, and he turned to see his mother pull up in her black Cadillac XLR-V. She left the big vehicle idling at the edge of the property and climbed out, slamming the door before striding across the yard toward them.
“Boys,” she said, her voice almost lost beneath the growl of Chibs’s engine.
Opie and Chibs both nodded at her. Opie might have said her name, but Jax was barely paying attention. He sat on his Harley, one hand on the throttle.
“You didn’t have to come see us off,” he said.
Her lips pursed in something like a scowl. “I came to see my grandsons.”
Gemma Teller-Morrow looked damn good for her age. Her brown hair had blond highlights and auburn streaks. She had a hell of a figure and enough of the beauty of the girl she’d once been that much younger men would look at her twice—and maybe keep looking—until her eyes drew their attention. Once they looked her in the eye, most guys turned away, unprepared for a woman so in charge of every moment of her existence. She worked hard to keep hidden the never-healing wounds that life had given her. Jax had seen them, though. He knew them well.
He also knew that those wounds made her more formidable instead of less. Gemma had raised him by example. No one understood her as well as Jax did, not even Clay. She knew why he had to go to Nevada and wouldn’t stand in the way, as much as she hated it.
Gemma kissed him on the cheek, took his forearm, and squeezed once, not at all gently.
“Don’t take stupid risks for Maureen Ashby’s little bitch.”
Jax shook his head. “I’ll see you in a few days, Mom.”
Gemma walked off, her heels clicking on the driveway as she approached the front door. Tara would not be happy to see her, but Jax couldn’t run interference any longer. They had to get on the road. He kicked the Harley to life and felt immediately at ease. On the back of that bike, engine snarling, road unfurling beneath him … that was where he belonged.
Jax rode out of the driveway with Opie and Chibs in his wake.
Just one stop to make before they headed to Nevada.
* * *
Connor Malone had never liked his office. It was the place where he was most vulnerable. At his desk, he felt that at any minute law enforcement might break down the door and arrest him. He never answered the phone without his skin prickling with paranoia that his conversations were being overheard.
Instead, he took most meetings in pubs and diners, at dog parks and boxing clubs … even in a run-down barn on an Indian reservation. He’d read somewhere that a man who courted trouble couldn’t be surprised when it followed him home.
Ah, wee Connor … ye’re nervous by nature, his ma had always told him.
And yet somehow, as nervous as he was, Connor had worked his way up in the Irish Republican Army to become right-hand man to Gaalan O’Shay, who ran the RIRA’s operations on the west coast of the United States. Should have made him nervous as hell, but it was never the work itself that unsettled Connor—it was the knowledge of how quickly it could all go tits up, landing him in prison or with a bullet in his back.
Lately he’d been more anxious than ever. The illegal gun trade was enough risk, but now their arrangements with the Sons of Anarchy involved the Galindo cartel, which meant drugs. American culture’s love of guns was romantic, which meant many citizens would rather look the other way than worry about illegal guns. But Americans’ love for drugs was more like carnal lust, and they were ashamed of their addictions and more eager to point a finger.
The word had come from Belfast—the deal had gone through. Gaalan didn’t trust Jax Teller, thought of him as volatile—unpredictable—as much for his temper as for the streak of righteousness that went through the younger man. Connor liked Jax well enough, but Clay Morrow had always been easier to read. Clay’s motivations were clearer, not muddied up by doubt or moral hesitation.
Jax Teller had called an hour earlier, and Connor suggested they meet in a booth at the White Horse Diner, a spot just off the highway in Morada, not far from Charming. Connor liked the place because they served breakfast twenty-four hours a day and because the tired truckers and exhausted parents and manic children never gave him a second look, no matter whom he might be meeting.
He shoveled forkfuls of southwestern omelet into his mouth and kept glancing at the door. He’d chosen a booth at the back out of reflex, though he’d have preferred to sit by the window. He didn’t expect the Sons of Anarchy to come riding up to the plateglass window at the front of a diner and open fire—they might be lunatics, but they weren’t stupid—still, caution was a good habit. The sort of thing that kept a nervous Irishman alive.
He took a bite of toast, a sip of tea, and then glanced up to see Jax and Chibs moving toward him through the diner. Connor frowned at their attire—strange to see them without their cuts—but the absence of the familiar SAMCRO vests served to make them less conspicuous, which pleased him.
“Connor,” Jax said as he slipped into the booth, “thanks for coming out.”
“It sounded important,” Connor replied.
Chibs glanced around, eyes seeking trouble, then slid into the booth beside Jax. “Hello, Con.”
“Filip,” Connor replied with a nod.
Chibs glanced at the meal on the table with an expression that was not quite a smile—more like a memory surfacing. “Breakfast three meals a day.”
“My doctor advises against it,” Connor replied. “We’re not as young as we used to be. But I spoil myself now and again. You gonna order something?”
Connor asked as he put a forkful of omelet into his mouth.
“Tempting as it looks, I just have a question for you,” Jax replied.
“One question? You couldn’t have asked over the phone?”
Chibs shot him a withering glance. “No.”
Connor understood. Jax wanted to look him in the eye while asking. It troubled Connor to think they viewed him as someone so easy to read. Maybe it was true—maybe he was a bad liar. He promised himself he’d work on that.
“So ask,” Connor said.
Jax rested his hands on the cracked linoleum tabletop. “Where do things stand between your bosses and the Russians?”
Connor could hear his mother’s voice in his head again, reminding him what a nervous child he’d been.
“I’m not sure what you’re askin’.”
“Bullshit,” Chibs muttered, brows knitted in consternation. “Don’t piss about, Con. We haven’t the time.”
Intense as they were, unpredictable as ever, these guys wouldn’t do anything to upset their arrangement with the RIRA. Connor knew that, just as he knew they wouldn’t risk violence in the middle of a diner when there were small children just two tables away.
He knew that, but he didn’t know it.
One of these days, that uncertainty—the fury simmering inside Jax Teller—was going to get a lot of people killed. Connor didn’t plan to be one of them.
“As far as I know,” he said, “there are no ties between us and them. Not now.”
Jax leaned over the table, brows rising, blue eyes fiercely intent. “A bunch of Russians forced me and Opie off the road, tried to kill us in broad daylight. A second group showed up and drove ’em off. They’re killing each other, Connor, and they’re doing it on American streets with illegal guns. This conflict is gonna be bad for business, ours and yours. So maybe rethink your answer. I know the Russians sent a delegation to Belfast a while ago. I wanna know if anything c
ame of it. I’ve got two factions shooting at each other and at members of my club. I wanna know which side the Irish are on.”
Connor took a deep breath. On his plate, the remnants of his omelet were beginning to get cold, but he’d lost his appetite.
“If this comes up later,” he said, “you and I never had this conversation.”
Jax nodded. “Agreed.”
Chibs gave a small nod as well, prompting Connor to forge ahead.
“Bratva went to Belfast lookin’ for a deal. You’ve got that right,” Connor said. “From what I hear, they were on the verge of something that might’ve proved inconvenient for you lads, but when word reached Roarke that the Bratva had splintered, that ended it. Belfast won’t get involved with the Bratva until the power struggle’s over and the dust has settled.”
Jax narrowed his eyes unhappily. He glanced at Chibs and then cocked his head as he looked back at Connor.
“Thanks for that. All I wanted to know,” he said. “Shit was happening back then, kind of chaotic, so I understand Roarke and the others considering alternatives. But the arrangement between Belfast and SAMCRO is solid now. If the Russians come back to try again once their situation stabilizes, that door is closed.”
Connor scratched the stubble on his chin. “You askin’ me or tellin’ me?”
“I’m saying our arrangement is clear,” Jax replied. “If the subject comes up, you make sure you let Roarke and the others know.”
“I can’t do that, Jax.”
Chibs had his fists on the table. They tightened as if he wanted very much to use them. “Why not?”
Connor dropped his fork onto his plate and sat back. “I already told you, Filip … as far as anyone else knows, this conversation never happened.”
He turned to signal the waitress for a coffee refill. When he looked back, Jax and Chibs were leaving. They didn’t bother to say good-bye, and Connor was just happy to see them go. He picked up a half-eaten slice of toast and took a bite, erasing the past few minutes from his mind.
6
Moccasin Road ran east to west across the northern edge of Greater Las Vegas, mostly through gray-brown scrubland with more cactuses than houses. At its western end, the hills of Red Rock Canyon rose upward, changing the view from isolated alien landscape to something approaching true beauty. Jackrabbit Ridge was the sort of lost and lonely road that Hollywood had taught Trinity to expect to find all over Nevada, dusty and lined with prickly brush. When she’d first come to Nevada she had been disappointed to find it much more civilized than she had anticipated, but in recent weeks she’d learned just how much of the state remained wild and inhospitable. Las Vegas might be close enough to show its garish lights at night, but out here they might as well have been lost in the desert.
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