Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (13 page)

“You know I’m not gonna ask why you’re scared. You just tell me if I need to do anythin’.”

His mother had been an old lady for a very long time. She knew the score. “Just keep your phone close. Let me or Dad know where you are when you leave the house.”

“I was in the back yard, honey. Your dad already talked to me about checkin’ in. So that’s it?”

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing new. I’m just…jumpy, I guess.”

She reached up and cupped his jaw in her hand. “It’s not like you to be jumpy, Connor. There anythin’ you need to talk about?”

He sighed and dropped into a chair at the breakfast table. “I don’t know.”

Toeing off her rubber boots, his mother said, “I roasted a turkey breast yesterday and sliced it up for sandwiches, and I made a couple of loaves of white bread this mornin’. Did you have any lunch?” She pulled off her gloves and hat and set them on top of her boots. “And you can tell me what the fuck is up your ass.”

He laughed. His mom was an interesting broad. Trick liked to say that she was like the daughter of Gaia and Ares: the perfect mother, with a warrior’s heart.

“I love you, Mama Bear.”

She came over and kissed the top of his head. “You’re my baby. Now talk.” As she headed to the counter, without turning, and with a deceptively casual tone, she asked, “Anythin’ to do with the girl your dad told me about?” She opened the fridge and pulled out a beer, like she hadn’t just dropped a grenade in his lap.

“What?”

She popped the cap and brought the bottle to him. “Dad was just tellin’ me that y’all helped a girl out a while back, and you seemed kinda protective of her.”

“I
am
protective. That’s what I do. In general.” He took the bottle, and she lifted an eyebrow at him and then went back to the counter and started making sandwiches. In his head, he flipped through the very few opportunities his father would have had to form an opinion about him and Cordero.

The Keep. He’d gotten huffy at J.R. for calling her Latin pussy. Goddammit, Dad.

“I’m just thinkin’ it would be nice to have you close enough with somebody to bring ‘em over for Sunday dinner. Fill out the table, you know. You haven’t brought a girl around in years.”

“Jesus, Mom. Don’t nest. I’m not gonna bring anybody home. You want family and grandbabies, you got Deme and Faith for that.”

In the act of smearing mayonnaise on a slice of bread, she stopped and turned to him. “Honey, this ain’t about what I want. It’s about what you want. I know you want that in your life—a woman, children. Why don’t you look for it?”

“I did. Tried a couple times. Didn’t work out.”

“So you just give up? Connor Jerome Elliott, you are not that weak.” She slapped the knife across the bread with force and then stabbed it into the mayonnaise jar.

“It’s not weak to understand that my life and women don’t mesh.”

“You do see that you’re talkin’ to a woman who lives this life, right? Forty-two years and countin’. Standin’ here healthy and strong.”

“You haven’t always been.”

Her head jerked up, and her complexion paled. “We don’t talk about those days. And I came through it. Right?”

The reason Connor was an only child was because his father had always lived a violent life in a violent world—just as they both did now. When Connor was four years old, his mother had been taken hostage by an enemy of their old club. He hadn’t even been a member of that club at the time; he’d been patched into a support club. She’d been beaten and raped for three days before they’d found her. She’d been horribly hurt. And unable to have any more children.

Connor hadn’t known any of that at the time, of course; he’d been too young. He’d learned the story much later, as a young man.

Most of what Connor remembered of the year that followed his mother’s trauma was absence and silence. His memories of that year were like the old silent movies—monochrome and without sound. And all of his memories of his mother during that time were like still photographs. She sat, and she stared. Faith’s mother, Margot, his mother’s best friend and another member’s old lady, had done most of the raising of him then.

Margot had been pregnant and then had had an infant daughter of her own, Faith’s older sister, Serenity. The only happy times he remembered in that year had to do with that tiny little girl. Margot had let him hold her, play with her, sit at her cradle and rock her. She had smelled so good—when she hadn’t smelled like shit or puke, anyway. Her first smile had been at him.

Serenity and Connor had ended up not being all that close. Sera was a straight arrow and had wanted nothing more from their life, from the time she could grasp what it was their fathers did, than to be away from it. Connor had wanted to follow his father from the time he could grasp what it was their fathers did.

When he’d learned about his mother’s trauma, the knowledge had drawn him closer to the life, not driven him from it. He’d wanted to be strong, to fight, to protect. Not to flee.

Faith, seven years younger than he, had been the sister who’d become his sister.

“Connor.” His mom set a plate with two sandwiches and a wedged tomato in front of him and sat next to him with a plate of her own—one sandwich and a tomato. “I got through it. I had love, and I got through it. Everybody’s got shit to deal with. It don’t matter what job you have. Ditch diggers, secretaries, doctors, outlaws, we all got shit. You look for the one who’ll carry you through it, and who you want to carry through.”

Still caught up in those old memories, he didn’t answer. He picked at his sandwich for a second, his appetite gone.

His mother put her hand over his. “You’re young, honey. Don’t give up so quick. If you want somethin’, go find it.” With a sharp pat on his hand, she sat back. “Now eat up. I need you out back to carry that big potted tree to the other side of the yard. I made you that meal, and now you owe me.”

He laughed and picked up a sandwich. “You’re awesome, Bedelia.”

“Yes, I am. Good you know it.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Pilar parked her Element on the street in front of her grandmother’s house. Renata Salazar lived on the ‘wrong’ side of Madrone, in the only neighborhood in the city limits that didn’t look like people cared. Even so, it was about five steps up the affluence ladder, and completely across town, from the neighborhood she’d moved them all from, where the Aztec Assassins ruled.

Pilar had parked on the street because the driveway was full of Hugo’s truck and their grandmother’s old Corolla. The garage had never been a place they’d kept cars. Their grandmother had a lifetime packed away in there—boxes and furniture and who knew what. All of their mother’s things were there. Every last knickknack. Even her toiletries from the bathroom.

When Pilar and Hugo’s mother had been killed, they’d been living in a rickety two-bedroom apartment. But it had been filled with expensive crap, especially electronics. Pilar had been just old enough to begin to understand why—to wonder no longer why there were holes in the walls and cockroaches in the cupboards when the living room was a sea of leather furniture and sleek black boxes.

By eleven, she’d figured it out.

She understood what was happening when her stepfather, Little Jay, would sit in that living room with his buddies, all speaking in low murmurs, while their mother, Olivia, stayed back with them in their shared room and read them stories.

Or she thought she’d understood. Little Jay was like her father had been. A man who always had a gun under his shirt. A man people were afraid of. Then, as a child, she’d been proud. She’d thought fear and respect were the same thing. She’d thought they lived like they did because Little Jay and his crew stayed in their home neighborhood, even when they could afford more. They stayed with their people, didn’t abandon them. She’d thought it made them Great Men instead of Bad Guys.

Neither her father nor Little Jay had been bad fathers. They had usually been gentle with Pilar and Hugo, even indulgent. And Pilar’s memories of her mother were all good—a sweet, pretty woman who dished out hugs and kisses freely, who kept the best house she could under the circumstances, who made delicious food and chatted freely with the neighbors. Who fought for her children and protected them fiercely.

Her own father had been shot down in the street the day of her fourth birthday party. By the time she was five, she had a stepfather and a baby brother. She’d been too young at the time to wonder at that timing. By the time she was eleven, she hadn’t remembered enough of her life before Little Jay to wonder about how he’d come to be in her life.

By the time she was old enough to reflect on it, her mother, father, and stepfather were all in the ground, and it no longer mattered. So she locked the question away.

Little Jay and Olivia had been killed much like Pilar’s father had been—a drive-by. Two others had been killed, both Assassins.

Renata had her apartment and theirs packed, and they had moved, in what had seemed then like a matter of mere days. She’d left Little Jay’s things behind and had taken every single thing that had been their mother’s. Almost all of it was still in the boxes she’d packed in that rush. The gold crucifix Pilar wore was the only thing of her mother’s she had, though she supposed she could dig through the garage and rebuild her mother’s life entirely.

Now, her arms laden with shopping bags, Pilar walked alongside the cars in the driveway and went in the side door of the house. Her grandmother didn’t like people coming in through the front and traipsing the outside inside through her living room. She was the kind of woman who left the plastic covers on her lampshades. The living room was for ‘company’—which she never had.

They’d all done their living in the kitchen and the little ‘family room’ in the back, which was really just an enclosed porch with a window air conditioning unit.

“
Hola,
Nana
.
I went to the market.” Pilar stepped into the kitchen and set the bags on the white-tile counter. As she started unpacking groceries, her grandmother came in from the family room.

“
Gracias, mija
. Did you get the plantains?”

“Yep. They were on special, so I got a whole bunch. If that’s too much, I’ll take some home with me. Oh, and the deli had that fruit salad Hugo likes, so I got that, too.” When Hugo didn’t come into the room, to help or even to say hello, Pilar called out, “Hugo! Come on!”

Putting a carton of milk in the refrigerator, her grandmother said, “He’s not here, Pilar.”

“What?” It had been almost three weeks since he’d been beaten, so he was healed. But he’d been milking it, lazing around, lapping up their grandmother’s nursing. Hiding from the Assassins.

“He said he had a line on a job.”

“But his truck’s in the driveway. And it’s five o’clock in the afternoon. And Friday.”

“A friend picked him up. I didn’t recognize the car. Maybe it’s night work?”

“Nana…” The only kind of ‘friends’ Hugo had were the kind that brought trouble.

“I know,
mija
. But what can I do with him? Lock him away? He’s a grown man.”

“Maybe if you’d treat him like a grown man, and quit wiping his ass for him all the damn time, he’d act like a grown man.”

Her grandmother slammed the fridge door. “I do the best I can. I know his troubles are my fault. I didn’t get your mother out of that place after your
abuelo
died, and she got taken in by that gang. And I lost her. I got you and Hugo away as fast as I could, but it costs a lot to live here. I had to work so much. I couldn’t be in two places at once!”

Pilar pulled her agitated
abuela
into her arms. “Shh, Nana. It’s okay. You did good. You took care of us. We both always felt your love. You don’t have to try to make up for doing the best you could to keep us safe. But you’re right. Hugo is a man. He should be, anyway. Maybe it’s time to let him go. Maybe he needs to know we won’t fix his fuckups for him anymore before he’ll try to fix them himself.”

Her grandmother sniffed and relaxed on Pilar’s shoulder. “Don’t swear,
mija.
”

“Sorry.”

“I love him. I love you both.” She stepped away from Pilar and went back to unpacking groceries. “I can’t sit back and let him suffer. I just can’t.”

Sighing, Pilar pulled the plantains out of the bag and set them in the wide, shallow bowl her grandmother kept for fruit. “I know, Nana. I know.”

A thought occurred to her as she was packing the empty bags together. “What did the car look like?”

“You know I don’t know from cars. It was an old sporty one. Like from that old show with the talking car.” She waved her hand. “Long before your time. But it had a bird on the hood. A painting of a big bird.”

“A Trans Am?” She took her phone out and found a picture online. “Like this?”

“
Si
. But black, and the wheels were gold.”

She knew the car. She’d seen it parked outside the High Life the night they’d found Hugo. She’d driven by that place a couple of times since and had seen the driver get into it once. It was Sam’s—Raul Esposito’s main thug. “Fuck.”

“Don’t swear,
mija
.”

“Sorry, Nana.” She didn’t say more, and her grandmother didn’t ask—in fact, she seemed to have made a firm decision not to ask. Pilar didn’t know what to do with the information that Hugo had gone off with a high-ranking Assassin, or whether to do anything at all.

Let him go. Let him make his mistakes and clean up after himself. Their grandmother couldn’t, but did that mean that Pilar couldn’t, either?

So she kept her mouth shut and let her grandmother have her denial.

~oOo~

It was Friday night, and Pilar was off on Saturday, but she was in a foul mood and shrugged off Moore’s call to join them at The Deck. She hadn’t been there since the last night she’d seen Connor, and she was fairly certain she wouldn’t be going back.

Fuck, she could not stop thinking about that guy. Talking to her grandmother earlier, realizing that Hugo was falling back in with the Assassins in some way, apparently voluntarily, had everything about the night they’d found him spinning around in her head. The way Connor had helped, and pulled his club into it, too, simply because she’d said she needed help. The way he’d shielded her and stayed with her until he was sure she was safe.

The way they’d fucked that night. How comfortable she’d felt sleeping with him.

Those thoughts pulled into a frenzy all the others that were normally floating around in there already, and she could barely be still.

There was something between them. And she’d missed the window.

Fuck, she was lonely. Fuck.

Then she thought,
You know what? No. Why am I not going for what I want?

She had no good answer. If Connor wanted to be done with her, he was going to have to make it a lot more clear than ‘See you around.’

It was after nine on Friday night. Without bothering to change, without even bothering to brush her hair, Pilar grabbed her keys and went out. She walked past the Element and opened the garage.

Where she was going, she wanted to ride.

~oOo~

Night Horde parties were well known. Every Friday night. They partied other nights, too, maybe even most nights, but on Fridays, they opened their doors. It wasn’t totally open, you ostensibly had to have been invited, but it wasn’t like anyone was checking a list at the door.

Pilar backed her bike in at the end of a line of bikes on Mariposa Avenue. These were guest bikes, she knew; the Horde parked in the side lot, which was fenced with eight-foot-high chain link.

People—the men mostly heavyset and heavily bearded, and the women mostly busty and in bedazzled black, everybody inked—milled about on the sidewalk outside the front door to the clubhouse. Music thudded heavily against the walls—Stevie Ray Vaughn.

She was noticed, but other than some cordial nods in her direction, which she returned, no one interacted with her. She opened the door, and the music poured into the air. Then she stepped into the Horde clubhouse.

It wasn’t her first time, of course. Connor had brought her into this room when he was arranging to help her. But then, it had been almost empty. Now, it was packed to the rafters with people. Weed and cigarette smoke filled the air. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but people were well on their way to blind drunk. They were laughing, playing pool, or pinball, or in various stages of getting busy. No wonder Connor hadn’t thought twice about fucking her in the parking lot. There was a lot of nakedness going on around her, and nobody but the people involved even seemed to notice. Except her.

She stopped looking at that and started looking for Connor.

He was standing at the end of the bar, and a little redhead was rubbing all over him, wearing shiny red booty shorts and a miniscule silver lamé halter top. She was unbuttoning his shirt. He smiled down at her, that fucking melty smile, then he turned his head and put a cigarette to his lips.

Pilar hadn’t known he smoked. She wasn’t a fan, but she could deal. What she couldn’t deal with, however, was the little redhead, who now had his shirt completely open and was scratching long, red talons over his nipples.

When his hand went to Red’s ass and he bent down to kiss her, Pilar…well, she lost her shit. A little. She had no right to, but that hardly mattered.

Clearing the remaining distance in about four strides, she grabbed Red by the shoulder and yanked her back. “Sorry,
chica
. Connor’s got plans tonight.”

But Red wasn’t one of Connor’s little teeny-boppers. She was young, but she wasn’t naïve—she had the cold look of a chick who’d seen some shit. She turned on Pilar, hauling off and punching her right in the eye. “Fuck off, bitch!”