Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (20 page)

He lived a couple of miles away, and he rode, too. He had a big Kawasaki sport bike. “I’m sitting in my altogether on my couch, killing aliens. I can be there under ten.”

“Thanks, bro. My gear’s still strapped to the back. I’ll leave my key in it.”

“Already got my jeans on. See you in a few. Hey—you okay?”

“They jumped him in.”

“Oh, damn, Pilar. I’m sorry.”

Moore never used her first name. She knew why he was now. Because this was a crisis. “Yeah. We’ll talk.”

“Out the door.”

~oOo~

Moore had her bike in her garage while she was still struggling to get Hugo in the bath. He was semi-conscious but still babbling wild apologies and pleas for forgiveness. Pilar just shushed him, stripped off his bloody, soiled clothes, and got the tub filled. As she was helping him into the warm water, she heard her front door open.

She brushed her fingers through her brother’s hair, which was stiff with blood and sweat. “You just try to relax, Hughie. I’ll make you some tea. And when you’re out of the tub, I’ll fix up your cuts, okay?”

He nodded and laid the washcloth over his face.

Pilar closed him in and went to the kitchen, where Moore was getting himself a beer. When she came in, he opened the fridge again and handed her one, too.

“Thanks.” She twisted the top off and drank half down at the first go.

“So tell me.”

“I don’t know anything yet. All he’s done is cry and say he’s sorry and he didn’t have a choice, and whatever. But they beat the shit out of him, again, and he’s got a big feathered snake right”—she slapped her own chest—“here. He’s in.”

“Renata is going to lose her mind.”

Pilar nodded and looked out the window at the end of her kitchen, into the empty black of the night. “It’s her ultimate failure. That’s what she’ll see. It’s the exact thing she was trying to get us away from all those…” Pilar’s words faded out as other thoughts emerged. She turned back to Moore. “Fuck. What’s the date?”

“Um, the twenty-seventh. Why?”

“Jesus. I didn’t think. Oh, fuck. Oh, Nana, why didn’t you say anything? Fuck!” She slapped her forehead, hard, and Moore reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling it away.

“Hey, stop. What’s wrong?” He kept hold of her arm.

“It’s the twentieth anniversary of our mother’s death. And his father’s. I didn’t even think about it!”

“You think the Assassins guy—”

“Raul.”

“Raul. You think he thought about it? Brought Hugo in today on purpose?”

“Yeah. He’s poetic like that. And he was tight with both our fathers.”

“Jesus, Cordero. This seems bad.”

It was about as bad as she could imagine. But it was Hugo’s bad. The bed he’d made. Not her, not their grandmother. Him. He was lost to them now. “Yeah. But it’s on him. I can’t pay for his fuckups anymore.”

“I wish you didn’t have to.”

Pilar turned at the weak sound of Hugo’s voice. He was standing in the doorway, a towel around his waist.

“Hey, Kyle.”

“Hugo. You look rough, bro.”

“Yeah. Hey, sis. I feel better. But I don’t want to put those clothes on again. You got anything around here that’ll fit me?”

“A pair of your sweats that made it into my laundry last time I did it at Nana’s. And…I can lend you one of Connor’s t-shirts.

He got a strange, furtive look at the mention of Connor, but it left his face quickly. Pilar figured it was all part and parcel of the same problem: her brother was an Assassin now.

“I don’t think that’ll work.”

“It’ll be fine. It’s just a black t-shirt. I’ll grab it.” She went and got the clothes. When she came back to the kitchen, neither Hugo nor Moore had moved.

“Oh—I told you I’d make tea and fix you up. Have a seat.”

He took the clothes and dropped the towel right there to pull them on. “Nah. I just want to go. I’m solid. I can drive.”

“Hughie, you need to sleep it off.”

“No. I need to go.”

“No, you need to stay. I have your keys, and I can’t let you on the road in your condition. You could hurt somebody. Yourself or somebody else.”

“I’m clear. I told you.”

“Not gonna happen, bro.”

Without warning, he backhanded her so hard that she lost her feet and fell to the floor. “I SAID I NEED TO GO!”

Then Moore had him by the throat against the wall. “You put your hands on her again, and you will lose your fucking hands.”

Wiping blood from her mouth and nose, Pilar stood and dug his keys out of her pocket. She threw them on the floor at her brother’s feet. “Take them and get the fuck out.”

Moore looked over his shoulder at her. “Cordero…”

“I want him gone. Out of my life. As of now.”

Moore released her brother. Hugo scooped up the keys and hurried out the door, out of her life.

Pilar watched. When the front door closed, she turned to her best friend. “We need to follow him, at least make sure he doesn’t hurt Nana. I’ll take you back to your bike. Thanks for this.”

He hugged her hard. “I got your back, you know that. You sure you want Renata to see what he did to your face?”

She ducked and checked her reflection in her stainless-steel toaster. Her right cheek was turning interesting shades of purple already. “Yeah. She should see this. And I should see her today. I can’t believe I fucking forgot what day this was. C’mon. We need to make sure he stays away from her tonight.”

~oOo~

Most of the next watch was quiet, and that was good, because Pilar felt slow and thick. She’d spent the night at her grandmother’s. Nana had been grieving alone, both happy and sad that Pilar had forgotten such an important date—happy because it meant Pilar had truly moved on from that life, and sad because it meant she herself was alone in her loss. Pilar had found her sitting in the family room, going through a box of her daughter’s things—just a random box, with nothing of importance in it. But it was all important.

So she’d spent the rest of the evening sitting and letting the woman who’d raised her, loved her, taught her how to be who she was, tell old, familiar stories about the woman who’d wanted to do those things for her.

In the end, she’d lied about her face, said she’d fallen in the desert. She didn’t tell her grandmother about Hugo’s new future. It had been the wrong time, the wrong date, for news like that.

They had a school tour at the station during the day, but otherwise, the watch was quiet. Everybody noticed that Cordero was off her game, and they all saw her face, but Moore got between her and any questions. She bunked down early, after dinner and the evening checks, while most of the platoon was hanging out in the rec room. Moore caught her hand and gave it a quick squeeze as she left the room to head for her bunk.

The call came in just after oh-one-hundred hours. Everybody was up almost in unison and down the brass pole. Their station was an old one and still had a pole. They weren’t supposed to use it anymore, some bureaucratic circle-jerk had decided that poles were unsafe, but theirs hadn’t been taken out because it was ‘historic.’ So they all used it. They were firefighters, dammit. They came down the pole.

As Pilar was getting into her turnout gear, she had her attention focused on the information coming over the speakers. They were getting called in to a fire in progress. Third alarm. Residential location, multiple-structure involvement, brush at risk. And then the address: Mountainview Estates, Nutmeg Ridge Drive.

She bobbled her helmet. “
¡Dios!
”

That was Connor’s parents’ street.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Horde had no charter in Vegas, but their old club had. Ronin had been a member of that old charter, and they still had contacts in the area. The new Brazen Bulls charter was based in Laughlin, which wasn’t far from Vegas. And it was a point on their eastbound route for La Zorra. Besides, it was Vegas. It was an excellent place to hold a meeting.

They’d been leading the eastbound route for almost a year now, and yeah, it had occurred to Connor, and to all the Horde, to everyone with a sense of that history, that La Zorra and her Águilas cartel were replicating the routes and reach of the Perro Blanco cartel. Hard to miss. She was taking over what that dead cartel had left behind.

That was just good business; in the years since the Perros had been taken down, those routes had mainly been left to fade out. What had filled in the gaps had been a hodgepodge of less organized and established ‘entrepreneurs.’ The cartel culture in Mexico and Central and South America had stabilized, but the trade in the north had become erratic—still profitable, but much less predictable. A free market.

A place where bands of hotheaded idiots like the Aztecs had thrived.

La Zorra had not announced it as her intention, but it had become clear nonetheless: she was bringing the trade under control. Her own kind of regulation and standardization.

Which was why she’d been pleased and impressed with the way the Horde had handled their Mexican cockroach problem. It had taken a few weeks for Sherlock and Bart to gather intel and for Sheriff Montoya to get his ducks lined up, to take that intel and turn it into a raid, but when law had gone in, they’d gone in big. Almost the entire crew had been hauled in, and their property—the building and all their cars and bikes—had been seized. Permanently.

Keeping their distance, the Horde hadn’t been able to be present for that beautiful sight, but it had made the local news, and Montoya had provided Hoosier with a report.

They’d caught them with their inventory showing. Sherlock had tracked some kind of a pattern somewhere—Connor didn’t understand all that computer whiz-bang crap and didn’t care to—and had been able to suggest a date when a raid would be most productive. And the Aztecs had had a back room full of heroin and crystal, all packed neatly in a shipment of flour and sugar, ostensibly for the bakery next door.

Esposito had made bail quickly and gotten most of his guys out within a few days—everybody but Sam, whom they’d nailed on a rape and murder charge, using DNA they’d collected after the raid, and who was being held without bond—but their property was gone. The bar, all of it.

Since then, the Aztecs had been silent—possibly destroyed. That could have blown up in the Horde’s face; the Fuentes cartel relied on the Aztecs to move their product in and beyond their turf. But Connor had clued in another crew, rivals of the Aztecs, and they were stepping in—at a lower cut.

The Fuentes were appeased, La Zorra had not been ‘inconvenienced,’ the Aztecs were crushed, and even Montoya was indebted: that raid was a magnificent feather in his cap. His name had made national news, even.

The Horde could have taken credit in their circle, if they’d wanted. But they’d decided to keep their name out of it. Despite the reach and impact of the coup, it stuck a little wrong that they’d used law to fight their battle. They were satisfied with the result, not proud of the play.

Connor was a little proud. It had been his idea, and it had had a lot of nuanced parts. Nuance wasn’t usually his approach. He had a—well-earned—rep for going hard and full-frontal at a problem. He saw a fight in all its dimensions, but he preferred the direct approach. Sitting back and waiting to hear that Raul Esposito, a fucker Connor truly hated, had been
arrested
, and that that was the sum total of his punishment for threatening Pilar…not easy. Connor wanted to feel that bastard’s blood on his face.

But still, the plan had been intricate, had gone off without a hitch, and had had much better impact than a beatdown on Esposito would have had. So he felt a little pride.

Sitting in a party suite at a high-end Vegas strip club, drinking whiskey from a bottomless bottle, watching stunning women dance, Connor felt well satisfied, even when he gently set aside a third girl offering a lap dance. He was on a run, and a lap dance wasn’t cheating, anyway, but he’d never really understood the appeal of a lap dance. Getting all worked up with no finish? And the point was…?

“Conman! What is up, my brother? You’re batting pussy away like you got it to spare.” Eight Ball, the President of the Brazen Bulls mother charter in Tulsa, plopped down next to Connor on the ornate, leopard-skin sofa.

Connor laughed and finished his whiskey. Before he could set the glass down, a nude, sparkly girl came up and refilled it. “Not pussy, Eight. Just the suggestion of it. I’m happy to look.”

Eight Ball shrugged as a girl came up to him. He spread his arms, and she started her routine. As she writhed on him, he turned to Connor. “Thought I’d see Hooj at a meet this big.”

Connor took a drink from his refreshed glass. “Yeah, he planned to be. Got laid out hard with some kind of flu bug. Bart’s on point, though. Why—you got something more to bring up?”

“Damn. That’s too bad. Yeah, I do, actually.” He paused as his lap dance got more intimate, and when the girl moved away from his head again, he continued, “The Bulls are thinking about expanding again, starting a charter in Northern Cali.”

That had Connor’s attention. The Bulls Nevada charter was still pretty fresh, not yet three years old. But the Bulls had never stopped being outlaw. They had a small but healthy gun-running business that had been going for a couple of decades. “Why NorCal?”

“Our Russian friends are looking to move product into Canada, and they asked us to vet partners. We’re thinking why pull in a partner if we can set ourselves up out that way.”

Connor nodded. “Makes sense. What’s that got to do with the Horde, though?”

Eight Ball patted the girl’s ass. “That’s enough, sugar tits.” When they were alone again in their corner, he turned to Connor. “They’re also wondering if your hot Latin Queen might be in the market for some Russian steel.”

Ah. “I’ll talk to Hooj and Bart. We’ll bring it to her.” Connor could already see the complications in making the routes two-way. Everything got bigger—the payoff, the danger, the risk of exposure, the interest of the players. Connor liked it as it was. They were all making good bank, and things were running smooth as clockwork. It wasn’t his call, though. The Brazen Bulls were friends, and La Zorra was an ally. If they wanted to work out an arrangement, then an arrangement would be worked out. But he had a question: “Did you bring it up with Bart?” Bart was the senior officer here in Vegas.

Eight Ball gestured around the room. Bart was back at the hotel; strip clubs hadn’t been his scene for a long time. “Hard to find him havin’ a quiet moment.”

“Yeah,” Connor chuckled. “Our boy is tied down hard.”

“Looks like you might be, too, brother. I know we don’t see each other much, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you turn in by yourself before. You’ve been passing on some prime-quality booty.”

“Happens to the best of us.” Connor finished his drink and waved off the eager girl with the replenishing bottle.

Eight Ball watched her go. “And you’re turning in now, ain’t ya? Damn. It’s barely midnight.”

He shrugged and patted his old friend on the shoulder. “Pick up my slack for me, Eight. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Pilar was at the station and hopefully sleeping; he knew he couldn’t call her now. But he could call it a night and jack off to the memory of the freaking
incendiary
sex they’d had the morning he’d last seen her, and that was worlds better than any random hookup, no matter how prime the offerings in Vegas were.

Sweet fuck, that had been intense. He’d never felt anything like it. Their sex was always great, pretty much always the best sex he’d ever had, often the most inventive, too. But that had been…emotional. And not just because she’d ended up crying, something he’d not seen her do before. Hell, he’d almost been brought to tears himself.

He loved the fuck out of that woman—and that scared the fuck out of him. He was lost to her, and if she bailed…

But she wouldn’t. He’d seen that in her eyes the other morning. She was as gone as he was.

And he’d been jacking off to that memory for the past three days.

He was in his room, settling in to do just that when his phone rang—once, then was silent. That got his attention: their code for an emergency was a single ring, then a call back, to let the receiver know to drop everything and answer, even if they were on the road.

He had the buzzer and the tone on; when the second call came in, he picked it up as soon as the phone started to move. “Yeah, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Sherlock. Brother, you gotta get back. Right now.”

He sat up. “What is it? My dad sick?” It was just the flu, just a bad flu. His dad was getting up there, past seventy, but still hearty. He was fit like a man fifteen or twenty years younger.

“I got an alert for the alarm at their house.” Sherlock was patched in to everybody’s home security system. It was all custom shit that went to him, not to any company, and not to emergency services until he pushed it through.

He was up and grabbing his clothes. “Break-in? They okay?”

“Not a break-in. A fire. The whole neighborhood is going up, and the woods behind. Connor, listen. There are casualties. I’m on the scanner. There are dead at the scene. I don’t—fuck, I don’t know more. I don’t know if it’s them. I can’t reach them.”

Dead? His parents? “GET THERE. JESUS FUCK! GET THERE NOW.”

“Lakota and Fargo are on their way. Just get back, Con.”

“Call everybody else. I’m out.” Connor hung up and grabbed his shit. Feeling panic and desperation massing at the base of his skull, he forced his brain into work mode, narrowing his focus on the task at hand: get home. On his way down the hall, be passed Trick’s room. He paused. He needed to get on the road, but he…fuck, he wanted his friend. This was too big to deal with on his own.

Before he could decide to knock or to go, the door to Trick’s room flew open. Trick was there, in open jeans and nothing else. “Con! Jesus. Gimme two minutes, and I’m with you.”

Connor only nodded and stepped out of the way when a half-dressed girl cleared out of his friend’s room.

~oOo~

They were back in Madrone in less than three hours—all the Horde. By the time Connor and Trick were pulling out of the hotel parking lot, Demon, Muse, Ronin, Bart, and J.R, everybody else who’d gone on the run, were running to their bikes, too.

Before they’d crossed into the Madrone city limits, Sherlock had updated Connor, and he knew that his parents had been taken away from the scene injured but alive. They were headed straight for the hospital.

He also knew that Pilar had been called to the fire and was still working it. He didn’t know if it had been her who had saved his parents.

The blaze was still raging. Six homes had been consumed, three of his parents’ neighbors were dead, four others injured, and the crippling drought of the summer and fall had turned the field and woods that abutted the neighborhood into a wildfire.

He spared a slice of his worry for Pilar, hoping she was safe. But she was well-trained and tough as fuck. He had faith in her. He turned all of his attention, all of his worry, all of his fear to his parents.

They met Lakota, Jesse, Diaz, Fargo, and Keanu at the hospital. Faith, Sid, Riley, and Veda, all the old ladies but Diaz’s, were there, too. The Horde family filled the waiting room. Connor didn’t bother to wonder who had the kids—they were probably at Riley’s with the housekeeper or something. He didn’t care.

Faith got to him first. She’d been crying. Oh, fuck, why had she been crying? He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. He didn’t know why he was shaking her, but he couldn’t stop. And then Demon was there, trying to pull him loose. He knocked him away and grabbed Faith harder. “What happened? How are they?”