Show the Fire

by Susan Fanetti

  “Len…”

  His expression smoothing, he put his arm around her and pulled her to his chest. “Okay, Doc. What other rules we got?”

  ~oOo~

  Two weeks later, Tasha stood at the counter, staring at her phone. Willing it to ring. The room was bright and loud with the sounds of her friends drinking, chatting, and laughing. Miles Davis played in the background—Kerry’s pick. Tasha and Greta, her chef friend, were laying out a spread. Chad, Carter, Kerry, and Nadia were noisily ignoring the fact that they were all being stood up. Len was supposed to be joining them.

  They all thought they were being stood up, but Tasha knew to be worried. She just couldn’t tell anyone why she was worried.

  Carter, he of the multicolored condoms, walked up to her and put his hand on her lower back. In her ear, he whispered, “A watched phone never rings, my love.”

  Carter Tate was an excellent example of Tasha’s varied tastes in lovers. He was only as tall as she—five-eight—and probably fifty pounds overweight. He had shaggy, strawberry-blond hair and a permanent three-day scruff of beard, but not the kind that looked planned. He just always managed to look like he’d forgotten to shave. He was nearsighted, and thick horn-rimmed glasses made his watery blue eyes seem too big. But he had an amazing baritone of a voice, which just rolled over the ears like satin. And he was absolutely fucking brilliant. A philosophy professor at the university in Springfield, he could be a pompous ass, but he had a great sense of humor, too, and Tasha adored arguing politics and ethics with him. And then letting him fuck her brains to mush. He was good at that, too. And he was bisexual as well as polyamorous, so he was very good in groups.

  However, things had changed lately for their group, because she and Len had worked out their boundaries for this new thing they had, and getting fucked by Carter was off Tasha’s menu. But tonight was supposed to be about Len meeting her friends, who were also the people that she had sex with, and seeing how he fit with them, and vice versa.

  They’d spent a lot of the past two weeks alone together, and it had been fantastic. Too fantastic. Tasha could feel herself getting wrapped up in Len, in ways that she was afraid could cripple her. It was time to bring the mix in. She needed to be reminded of how much she enjoyed unconventional arrangements. And so did he.

  When she’d raised the idea of this dinner party, she could see something like hurt in his eyes. That scared her, too. They couldn’t lose sight of their realities. They were not people who should be deluded about notions of everlasting, exclusive bliss.

  Even the most pyrotechnic sex could become routine, and love suffocated in routine.

  He’d agreed to meet her friends. He’d agreed to be at this dinner. He wasn’t anything like excited about it, but he’d agreed. She knew Len would call if he could. Even if he was bailing, he’d call and tell her as much. He wasn’t one to hide. So there was a problem. But she couldn’t tell her friends that.

  So she smiled at Carter. “I guess he got held up. Let’s eat, and then I’ll get out Cards Against Humanity.”

  Tonight would be a night that ended with that kind of game.

  And Tasha tried to set her worry to the side.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The cruiser had been on their collective ass for three miles at least. Len expected that Isaac would lead them off the interstate at the next off-ramp and they’d ride to a gas station, maybe a restaurant, as if that had been their plan all along, and hope that their tail would give up the pestering and cruise onward down I-44.

  They were carrying unlicensed weapons, but thanks to Havoc’s design, they all had custom saddlebags with false bottoms—really good work, good enough to thwart all but the most thorough search. And they weren’t giving the deputies probable cause for a search.

  But they were showing colors, of course. Sometimes, the kutte was all the cause law felt it needed. Especially since Leon Seaver had the star.

  Len missed the days of Sheriff Tyler. A true friend, and not just because they were paying him to be. And he’d had a long span of influence. When he’d been in office, almost the whole fucking corridor had been a safe zone, as far as law was concerned.

  They’d just entered the county line—their home county—returning from a meet with Becker and his crew, the Brazen Bulls, out of Tulsa. Isaac, Len, and Tommy. Tommy had recently transferred in, with Zeke, from the Haymakers, an Illinois recreational club that had stepped up and helped them out of their jam the day they’d lost the kids and Len had been shot. The Horde needed butts in the seats around the table, and they needed experienced soldiers. Zeke was an outlaw from way back, who’d been missing the life. He’d vouched for Tommy, who was in his early thirties, a bold, brash young gun. Len hadn’t gotten a solid read on him yet. He was ex-Navy, big, with an aspect of real toughness about him, and he was thoughtful at the table. But he was loud and boastful, too. Len’s general opinion was that the louder a man crowed, the less he had worth crowing about. But the kid was still pretty young, not much past thirty.

  Show should have been with them, not Tommy. But there was some trouble in town that had to be dealt with, and Isaac had needed to meet with Becker. So Show had hung back to take point in town. Somebody had vandalized the Main Street Shops, breaking out all the storefront windows and doing a lot of damage to the shops themselves.

  The shopkeepers were outraged. They needed someone with power to listen to their complaints. They’d have been furious if a lesser member of the Horde had been given the job.

  Len figured the damage for kids. It was spring, and kids got rowdy in the spring. Sure, this was a bigger deal than the usual four-wheeling in somebody’s field, but it seemed too random and stupid for anything more dastardly than stupid kids. And stupid they were to fuck with properties under the Horde’s protection.

  He actually didn’t mind Show staying back. With the cartel business going like it was, Len thought it was probably a good idea not to have Isaac and Show together all the time. They needed to make sure the club had a leader. If something went down again and both Isaac and Show got caught up in it, there wouldn’t be much of the club left to save. In Len’s opinion, there was no one else fit to lead them. He’d decided he needed to bring it up to Isaac—him on Isaac, Havoc on Show, and long, hard thought before those two rode too far away from home together.

  Because something could go down at any time. The Brazen Bulls had just lost two of their own, shot down right in front of Becker and Eight Ball when a negotiation with cartel representatives went sideways. That was what the meet was about—Isaac and Becker, sitting in some nowhere hole of a bar outside Mt. Vernon, beginning to sketch out an exit plan before the cartel managed to wipe out their clubs with sheer malice.

  Becker was taking point to bring the Scorpions into this plan, because Isaac didn’t trust himself to stay cool with Sam—or, by extension, Hoosier. Despite the fact that the Horde and the Scorps had nominally repaired their alliance, it wasn’t the same, and Isaac bore a grudge. The Horde were taking the lead with the Wayfarers, the MC out of Indiana who worked the east end of the weed run.

  Len couldn’t decide whether it was real genius or stunning stupidity for the Perros to have so many crews running their weed. Or maybe it was just the necessity of a cross-country transport. It meant a lot of moving parts, a lot of people to manage. The Perros’ management style was to kill any problem. In spectacular fashion.

  Which made planning to cross them particularly…interesting.

  And they weren’t just trying to get out of the gig. The Horde, the Bulls, the Wayfarers, the Scorps—they all had axes to grind. Debts to collect. Everybody was looking for a way to put big hurt on a Mexican drug cartel.

  They were looking for war.

  But that was down the road. Here, Len, Isaac, and Tommy had more immediate concerns. As they passed the sign indicating that the next exit was a mile ahead, the cruiser behind them hit its lights and gave the siren a pop.

  Fuck.

  Isaac went to th
e shoulder, then Len, and then Tommy. The cruiser came over behind them. They killed their engines, took off their helmets, and dismounted.

  For a couple of minutes, they stood at the side of the road, waiting for somebody to get out of the cruiser. It was afternoon, and the light was coming through the windows in such a way that all Len could see was the silhouette of the driver. He was alone, though. Len figured this was a nuisance stop. Dick measuring. Okay, fine. Whatever. He had time.

  He had plans, actually, for the evening. Going to Tasha’s to meet her freaky little group of friends. He couldn’t say he’d cry if he got held up and missed that. He still had some things to sort out about what he and Tasha were up to.

  Two weeks they’d been together. And they were together. Len was surprised by his depth of feeling for her. Or no, it wasn’t the depth of feeling that surprised him—he’d loved her since she was a kid, though not in the same way—it was the focus of that feeling. He thought about her a lot. He wouldn’t say it was distracting him, because he didn’t get distracted. But he thought about her a lot, and when he was free, he wanted to be with her.

  It had been just the two of them for these two weeks. After Nadia, that first night, and then that long, strange conversation they’d had the next morning about group sex and multiple partners and their rules, they’d fallen into each other and stayed there. And they were hot as fire together. He was in no rush to change things up. He wasn’t sure he agreed that they needed group sex to stay into each other, but Tasha was insistent about it.

  If someone had told him that he’d be happy fucking the same woman almost every night, and just one on one, he’d have laughed. If someone had told him he’d get serious with any one woman, he’d have laughed. If someone had told him he’d get serious with a woman who wanted group sex and that he would be the one feeling conflicted about it…

  And yet.

  But Tasha had a point. Twenty-five years, he’d mainly been banging multiples. Like ninety percent of the time. She liked variety, too. Maybe they would be setting themselves up for hurt if they tried to pretend that everything about the way they liked sex was suddenly different because it was them.

  But that didn’t mean he wanted to meet the people Tasha still wanted to fuck. He was doing it, because this is what they’d agreed to. But he was in new territory. Grabbing an armload of girls from the Hall, or random pussy off a run, was different from sitting down with a group of Tasha’s friends, all of whom she fucked, and trying to fit into that.

  So getting pulled over by law at least had the positive effect of giving him something else to do.

  The driver’s door opened at last, and the deputy stepped out, still silhouetted by the lowering sun. But as he closed the door and popped the guard on his holster, Len realized that Leon Seaver himself was walking toward them. Without backup.

  That was the delay. He’d been sitting in his cruiser, calling for backup.

  With that, Len understood that their night had just gotten very long. They were going in. He glanced at Isaac, who was looking at him. Even through their sunglasses, Len understood that Isaac was thinking the same thing, and that he knew Len knew, too.

  Len looked over at Tommy, and didn’t like the kid’s posture. Too aggressive. Could be trouble. “Down, boy. Don’t make it easy for him,” he muttered. Tommy glanced his way and shifted into a more relaxed stance.

  Isaac stepped forward as Seaver approached.

  “Sheriff.”

  “Mr. Lunden.”

  “There a problem?”

  Seaver pulled his collapsible baton from his belt and opened it with a sharp flick of his wrist. All three Horde reacted, tensing into readiness. Seaver swung the baton and smashed the taillight on Tommy’s big custom Softail chopper. Tommy took a determined step toward Seaver, and Len snapped his arm out and grabbed him. “Stand down, kid.”

  Seaver walked to Len’s custom Sportster, without a word, and did the same. And to Isaac’s Fat Bob.

  “Taillights out, boys. You really need to be taking better care of your rides. I’m going to have to impound these motorcycles as safety risks.”

  “I’ll break you in two, motherfucker.” Tommy.

  Stupid fucking kid.

  Seaver turned to him and smiled, his aviator sunglasses reflecting the sun just right so that he looked like a soulless robot. Another cruiser pulled up behind the Sheriff’s vehicle.

  Within two minutes, they were all three of them face down on the ground, being cuffed. Isaac grunted hard, and Len moved his head enough to see Seaver’s knee on Isaac’s back. Isaac’s back was not good, not since C.J. He couldn’t help but react, his body and mind conditioned to protect his President. Operating on instinct, he tried to lift up, but the deputy manhandling him hit him hard on the back of the head—felt like he’d used his baton—and things in Len’s head went wonky.

  ~oOo~

  Len had a record. A fairly extensive one, but mostly for minor shit when he was young. His longest stretch inside had been nine months for assault with a deadly weapon. He’d been in his twenties then. He hadn’t even been in lockup in fifteen years. He hadn’t had cuffs around his wrists in a decade. But he remembered it vividly. The feeling of being trapped and vulnerable was the only thing that could give him real anxiety. He had trouble maintaining his cool when his hands were bound.

  He’d been foggy after that hit, and he figured he had at least a minor concussion. The back of his t-shirt was wet, so he knew he’d been hit hard enough to bleed. But he hadn’t lost consciousness. He’d sat in the back of the deputies’ cruiser with Tommy, worried about Isaac, who was alone, cuffed in the back of Seaver’s cruiser.

  Now he was alone in an interrogation room, still with his hands cuffed behind his back, trying to breathe easy and keep his cool. He hadn’t been processed, just shoved into this room and locked in. He assumed that Tommy and Isaac were in similar conditions, but he had no way of knowing. They hadn’t been allowed to talk on the way to the station, and they’d been separated immediately thereafter.

  One thing about being an outlaw in the legal system: ‘rights’ didn’t quite work like normal people thought they did. There was a whole grey area where rights just disappeared. That grey area happened before processing. With no charges brought, and without a record of them being brought in and why, law had a lot of latitude to slow things down and mess things up.

  Len kept track of time, and he estimated he’d been alone in that room, his hands cuffed behind his back, no food or drink, for about four hours when Seaver came in and sat down at the table across from him.

  He smiled. “How’re you healing, Mr. Wahlberg?”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “No need. You haven’t been charged with a crime. You could be. Deputy Johnson reports that you resisted arrest, and he was forced to subdue you. But for now, I’d just like to chat.”

  Len stared stonily. They wouldn’t be chatting.

  “Mr. Nickels is new to your little club. He’s been very forthcoming, though. Enlightening, really.”

  Tommy. Len weighed the chance that Seaver was spouting bullshit against the idea that they’d put the Flaming Mane on the back of a rat. The Horde had had its share of betrayal in the past few years, but he felt sure he’d smell that kind of rat, the kind who’d talk to law, if they had one. And if he was wrong, this wasn’t the place to work that out. So he stared and kept his mouth shut. If Tommy was a rat, then they’d get charged. If he wasn’t, then Seaver would eventually be forced to let them go. Unless they found the illegal metal in the false bottoms of their saddlebags. He figured Havoc’s engineering was probably being put to the test at that very moment.

  There was no scenario, however, in which Len would find talking to law the preferable alternative.

  So he got as comfortable as he could with his hands dead behind his back and his body screaming silently for freedom, and he stared.

  ~oOo~

  It was nearing eleven o’clock that night when they were rel
eased. Until they were, they’d been kept handcuffed. And Len had never even gotten a wet wipe for his head. His hands tingled sullenly. He supposed it wasn’t a terrible thing that their bikes had been impounded and couldn’t get released until tomorrow, because he didn’t think he’d be able to wrap his hands around the grips.

  Isaac called Show, and the three of them walked down the block to a diner to wait for a pickup. They didn’t talk much. That as much as anything told Len that they’d all handled things the same way—silently. After so many hours of concentrated silence, it was hard to pick up the rhythm of speech again.

  Isaac was limping much more noticeably than usual, but when Len spoke up to ask how he was doing, he got only a violent scowl in response.

  So they sat in near silence at the diner counter, drinking coffee and staring into their cups until Show and Zeke rolled up in the club van. Then they rode back to Signal Bend in the same heavy quiet.

  Show dropped him at his place. He didn’t ask if Len wanted to stay at the clubhouse that night. He knew he needed to be alone. And he did. He stood near the barn and watched the van drive down his lane, and then he went in to check on his horses. He’d hired a kid from down the road who tended to them regularly, since his schedule was erratic, at best. But he always checked in on them when he got home at night, no matter how late. They were quiet, most of them asleep. But Dinah dropped her head over the door of her stall, nearest the door, and nickered at him.

  “Hey, old girl.” He rubbed her wrinkled, pink nose, his hands still feeling pins and needles. Dinah was his oldest mare. He’d retired her from breeding a couple of years ago. But she was a natural mother and had taken on a role of granny to the babies. This year, with all the cartel crap going down, and Sophie’s murder, and getting shot, and the general chaos, he hadn’t bred any of his girls. He hated not having babies around. Dinah hated it, too. But he had no time to do it right.