Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (4 page)

“Never leave a man behind. You’re welcome to come over and drink with us.”

“Thanks, but no. I’ll head out.” She turned and held her hand out to him, which was weird. “Anyway, thanks. I’ll see ya.”

“Don’t thank me. That’s fucked up.” He pushed her hand away and slid his arm around her waist. “I’ll walk you out.”

With a firm hand on his chest, she held him off and stepped back. “No. I’m good. Have a good night, Connor.”

He let her go.

When he got back to the table, Trick lifted his eyebrow at him. “I can’t tell whether you just had an epically hot fuck or an ice-cold rejection.”

Connor sat down and poured himself a beer from the fresh pitcher on the table. “Both, I think.”

When he put the glass to his lips, he could smell her on his hand.

~oOo~

Sherlock moved his finger around on his tablet, and an image went up on the back wall of the Keep: a photograph of a man in a suit, grey hair, slightly balding. Fairly average in just about every way.

“Allen Cartwright,” Hoosier said. “L.A. County District Attorney. La Zorra wants him dead, and she wants us to do it.”

The men in the room who had not been privy to that information already all reacted in some way—not strongly, though. No one was exactly shocked. Almost every man in the room had killed at least once. But there was surprise, and they all looked at each other or directly at Hoosier. They were not contract assassins, as a rule.

“Why?” Fargo hadn’t had a seat at the table for very long, but he’d been vocal from his first meeting. He didn’t stir shit, but he was curious and careful, and he asked deep, layered questions. He’d been a sharp Prospect with enough initiative to get his work done and enough savvy to know when not to use his initiative. He had Connor’s attention—he was a smart kid.

But Connor knew Hoosier wasn’t going to answer his question. They didn’t have a clear answer to give. “Personal. She wasn’t forthcoming with more than that. We can check into it ourselves, but there’s risk there, too. So we’ll have to decide whether we care if we know why.”

Connor didn’t particularly, but he knew some of his brothers, like Trick, for instance, would struggle with killing a man without some sense that there was a valid reason.

But Trick didn’t push that point right away. Instead, he asked, “Why us?”

“Distance,” Bart answered. “We’re not on his radar. Our routes don’t cross into his territory, and we’ve got no beef with him. We haven’t drawn heat for our association with the Águilas cartel yet. Since we shut down the Dirty Rats out here, our work has been nothing but smooth and quiet. Fuck, we’re just peaceable, law-abiding citizens, except for what’s in the trucks we ride with. Dora thinks that makes us perfect for this job.”

Muse leaned in, and the projected image moved over his face a little. “And what do
we
think? This isn’t the kind of guy we can yank off the street and no one will notice.”

Like Connor, Muse was an enforcer. They had four enforcers, including Diaz and Demon as well. Back in the day, they’d needed that much muscle, and they might need that much again in the future. Muse and Diaz were their finesse guys, and Connor knew that they were expecting this job to land at their feet. He didn’t think that was the right play, though. He’d talked to his father and Bart, and they agreed.

So he spoke up. “No. We can’t grab this guy. This needs to be a straight-up hit.” He turned to Trick. “Sniper, if we can make it happen.”

Trick sat back with a quiet whistle. “I’m rusty, man. I don’t know.” Trick had been an Army sniper and had done tours in the Middle East, until he’d been kicked home on a general discharge for beating the shit out of his commanding officer. Connor knew the story and knew that it was true, but the Trick he knew was a quiet, mellow guy. He also knew that beating your CO into a hospital bed and coming out with nothing worse than a general meant that the CO had fucking deserved it—and he had.

“Wait,” J.R. cut in. “So we’re doing this? Is this going to a vote, or are we so bent over to La Zorra that we don’t have a choice?”

“We’re voting it. Not today. I want everybody to have a handle on the job first,” Hoosier answered. “She asked, she didn’t tell. But let’s be clear. We say no, she won’t be pleased. We need a good reason.”

“I fucking hate being on a bitch’s leash,” J.R. groused. It had been adjustment for most of them to deal with a woman with that kind of ferocious power. J.R. was the last one still bitching about it, though.

Ignoring him, Trick asked, “What’s the upside? This a paying job or just a favor?”

“A job. Upside is a cool mil.”

That shut even J.R. up—except for one word: “Fuck.”

Hoosier nodded. “Dora Vega pays for what she values.” He gestured at Sherlock. “Sherlock has some more pictures to show us. What I want to do the rest of this meeting is figure out if we have a way to get this job done. If we have a way, then we can decide if we have the will.”

~oOo~

When Connor came out from the dorm later that night, his dad was sitting alone at the bar, drinking his typical Jameson. It was mellow in the Hall so far, but it wasn’t a weekend night. It would be just the patches and the regular girls. On Friday nights, they opened their doors a little, invited fresh blood—girls who might want to make a habit of banging bikers on call, men who might be interested in hanging around, sometimes a few celebrity tourists. Otherwise, though, it was pretty much just family around the clubhouse. They had a rep for being wild, but really, they were boring most of the time.

That wasn’t to say they sat around other nights reading the Bible and singing hymns. It was sex, booze, and rock-n-roll. No illegal drugs, just weed and booze. There wasn’t a prohibition on anything, but everybody knew there was no point in inviting trouble. The clubhouse was clean. They didn’t get heat from law these days, even with their dark work, but even if the clubhouse were raided, there’d be nothing here to incriminate them.

He sat down, and Jerry, their new Prospect, picked up the bottle of Jameson and poured him a tall glass without him having to ask. He nodded his appreciation and took the glass.

“What do you think about this gig?” he asked his father. “You trust her enough for this?”

Hoosier took a long swallow of his whiskey before he answered. “I think we’ve been working with her for a year and a half, and she’s been straight up with us. She’s earned some trust.”

“To ice a guy without knowing why, though. That’s an assload of trust.”

His father turned and considered him. “You got qualms?”

He didn’t, actually. He trusted La Zorra enough. She was too savvy and careful to go after a high-pro guy like this DA without an excellent reason, and if she was keeping that reason close to her chest, she had a good reason for that, too. He’d never known a cooler customer. “No. But others at the table will. She is asking a lot. The money won’t turn all their heads.”

“Yep. Got some work to do.” His father narrowed his eyes and examined him. “The money turning yours?”

Connor lit a smoke and took a drag, blowing it out before he answered. “No. The money’s great, yeah. But it impressed me more because it feels like respect. She needs a job done, and she pays to get it done, instead of throwing her weight around in threats. I like working with this woman. She has all her marbles. She gets that this is a job.”

“Yeah, agreed. She’s pulling more and more power, though. At some point, they all start to believe their own legends. That’s when the shit meets the fan.”

As his father tipped his glass to his lips again, Maria, one of the more established girls, came up behind Connor and slid her hands over his shoulders. “You hanging around tonight, Connor?” she purred in his ear.

He liked Maria; she was a good girl, and she took care of the Horde, in any way they needed. She was hot, too. Normally, on a night like this, when he wasn’t planning to go out and catch himself a little bunny, he’d turn right around and take Maria up on her offer.

But tonight, he wasn’t into it. He guessed his head was too full of this La Zorra business. And he was restless. He couldn’t put his finger on why. It was like he was lonely, or something. But not for the company of Maria.

So he patted her hand. “Don’t think I am, puss.” When she kissed his cheek and headed off to find company elsewhere, he turned to his dad. “I think I might go to the house, see what Mom’s got in the fridge.”

Hoosier drained his glass and pushed it away. “Now that sounds like a good night. Let’s roll.”

CHAPTER FOUR

About eight years earlier, when Pilar was just coming into the department, during a period of relative prosperity for the state of California and with a big tax boon, the county had done a massive restructuring of emergency services. They’d opened new stations, eliminated the use of private ambulance services, and expanded platoon numbers.

But prosperity always cycled with penury, and the state was now coming off a tight couple of years. Many public services had been curtailed and workers furloughed.

That hadn’t been the case for emergency services. They’d avoided furloughs, and all the new fire stations had survived, but platoons had been cut and the work schedules at the fire stations had been adjusted to include a thirty-six-watch. After a thirty-six-hour watch, a platoon got three days off. The schedule was a mix of twenty-four and thirty-six-hour watches, with two or three days off between. A thirty-six hour watch could really be a bitch.

There were plenty of watches that were mostly served in the station, doing maintenance and busy work, getting a good night’s sleep, eating good meals, working out, taking down time, maybe answering a couple of calls for a fender bender or some dope who’d gotten his arm caught in a fence or something. But there were also times, especially during the wildfire season, where the platoon spent almost all thirty-six hours in turnout gear, neck deep in fire and smoke.

They’d all learned early on to make the most of their off days because who the fuck knew what they’d face on the clock. Even a watch that had been fairly low-key could go to shit at any time. Like the last one.

Sometimes, for Pilar, making the most of her time off meant heading up into the mountains for a hike, or maybe snagging Moore to go climbing with her at Joshua Tree. Other times, it meant shutting down as much as she could and just being quiet.

After the last watch, Pilar had needed quiet. She’d spent her first day off as a homebody. She’d gotten up, taken her run, then come home to shower and spend the rest of the day in baggy shorts and a beater. She’d done her laundry, tidied up her apartment, watered her plants and then camped on the sofa for the rest of the day reading and watching television.

The next day had been pretty much the same, except that she’d put on actual clothes and run errands and gotten some pampering, too—had her unmanageable mane trimmed, had a massage, went to the market. By that evening, Friday, when White called, she was ready to be social again. But White had wanted to try a new place, and the vibe had been too clubby for Pilar. Too much driving bass from the DJ, too many pretty people. Deciding she’d been wrong about being ready to be social again, Pilar had fended off the complaints and digs of her friends and headed home alone after only a couple of drinks.

She’d lain in bed that night wondering if her life weren’t way too fucking small. It seemed strange, or even ungrateful, to have the kind of job she had, a job that made a real difference, that made her a goddamn hero, and then look around and think,
meh
.

She’d never felt it before, not in almost eight years on the job. She was proud of what she did, of who she was. But she spent her whole life with the same people. Her colleagues were her friends—her only friends. Other than her grandmother and brother, she had no one else in her life. In fact, she intentionally shut everybody else out. She didn’t date; she fucked. She fucked actively and as often as she wanted, with a couple of fuck buddies or with a random hookup here and there, whichever struck her fancy at the time, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten dressed up to have dinner with a man she liked.

There were reasons for that—she’d seen the stresses that this job put on relationships and families, and she knew why. Nothing about this life was normal—not the hours, not the work, not what it could do to your head. She thought her colleagues who tried to be with  normal people and make a normal home were either nuts or stupid.

She couldn’t imagine spending a watch picking up burned parts of people and animals and then having to go home and be a loving partner to somebody who’d been sitting in a nice, tidy office all day. All she wanted to do after a call like that was drink, fuck, and be left the hell alone. She was better off sticking with people who got that.

But that Friday night, she’d looked around at her friends, all of whom lived a life like hers, all of whom she loved and would die for without a blink, and thought
Damn. I know everything there is to know about all of you. My whole life is at this table.

And it wasn’t enough.

Abbie’s mom was still clanging around in her head—not the scream, though that was there, too, but the complete focus she’d had on her little girl. Despite the woman’s own extreme physical trauma—she’d been sitting in the driver’s seat, bleeding out, half of both her legs gone—she’d never stopped talking to her little girl, trying to send strength to her, not knowing that Abbie wasn’t there anymore to take it. Her little girl. Her own child.

For all the love and friendship Pilar had in her life, she didn’t have love like that. Maybe it was for the best—Abbie’s mom had had it and lost it horribly. But Pilar was feeling some kind of lack all of a sudden. It was perverse.

After a night spent wrestling those dark thoughts, Pilar nearly threw her phone out the window when the alarm chimed at five-thirty in the morning. She was tempted to pull a pillow over her head and try to sleep in, but she knew the danger in that. Screwing with her sleep schedule on her off hours only made her slow on her on hours. So up she got on this last off day, her mood dark and stormy.

As usual, she jumped up and grabbed the pull-up bar she had installed in her bedroom doorway. She did her fifty, and then, feeling more awake if no more content, she headed to her bathroom to get her morning started.

~oOo~

Her phone rang as she was towel-drying her hair. Draping the towel over her shoulders, she walked nude into the kitchen and checked the screen. Her grandmother. Pilar knew she’d leave a message if it was something important, so she stood at the counter, in the beam of the sun streaming through the bare windows, and waited.

When the alert came up, she checked her voice mail.
Call me,
mija
. Hugo didn’t come home last night.

Fuck. Hugo was her younger brother. Their grandmother called him a troubled soul. Sure, that was one way to put it. Half the slim piece of life she didn’t spend at the barn she spent bailing her brother out of trouble.

Pilar returned the call, and her grandmother answered immediately. “Oh, thank goodness.”

“What’s up, Nana?” She put the phone on speaker and poured herself a glass of tomato juice.

“I’m worried,
mija.
He didn’t come home, and he’s not answering his phone. He came home from work last night and barely said anything to me. Just changed his clothes and left again.”

Hugo worked in at a distribution center for an online retailer, loading boxes onto trucks. It was a decent job, and with his long history of short time on jobs, he’d been lucky to get it. Their grandmother had pulled some favors. Pilar expected Hugo to shit on that soon enough. He took obnoxious advantage of their grandmother, and he had from the time he was just little.

Renata Salazar was their mother’s mother. Pilar and Hugo had different fathers, both of them bangers, and both of them dead. When, twenty years ago, the drive-by shooting that killed Hugo’s father also killed their mother, Renata had gathered up her grandchildren and moved them to Madrone. She’d worked three jobs to put them in a decent house in a safe neighborhood and keep them fed and clothed. Consequently, Pilar had done a lot of the raising of Hugo.

And she’d done a piss-poor job of it.

He was twenty-five, five years younger than she. Despite the move they’d made to get them clear of the gangs, and despite their grandmother’s hard work and strong will, Hugo was constantly on the precipice of repeating the mistakes of a father he barely even remembered. He hated to work, he loved to party, and he was always scamming for the easy buck, the easy high. He was buddies with some of the younger bangers in their fathers’ gang, the Aztec Assassins. He wasn’t a member, but it was a standing question whether he would be.

By the time he got through high school, actually managing to graduate and still not in the Assassins, they had both thought they’d gotten him through the tough part. But they’d been wrong. It was forever going to be the tough part for Hugo.

She drank down her juice and sighed. “Okay. I’ll check around for him. You know if he’s been talking to any of his asshole buddies in particular lately?”

“Don’t swear,
mija
.”

“Sorry, Nana.” Pilar rolled her eyes. “Has he been?”

“No. He’s been doing good lately—just going to work and staying home with me. I don’t know what happened yesterday.”

It could be any of a number of things—somebody he owed had come looking for payment, he’d fought with his boss, he’d been rejected by a woman, anything from a big deal to a small deal could set him off and start him burning everything down.

“I’ll check around and let you know. Call me if he comes home or calls,
si
?”

“
Si, si
.
Gracias
,
mija
. You’re my good girl.”

Yep. She was the good girl.

~oOo~

After three hours doing the Hugo Velasquez Tour, Pilar found his rusty pickup. From its location, she knew he was with his friend Jaime, and that meant that he was hanging with the Assassins, either up in the roach motel Jaime called home or down the street at the High Life, the bar where the Assassins held their court.

Either way, she was deep into Assassins turf and not a moron. She drove her old Honda Element past Hugo’s truck and parked in the lot of a Vons supermarket. For about the thousandth time, she texted her brother, this time saying that she knew where he was and he needed to get his ass out.

Like all the others, that text went unanswered. This wasn’t Pilar’s first rodeo; she knew that the most likely scenario was that Hugo was high out of his mind, either passed out with the bedbugs on Jaime’s rancid couch, or with his head down on the bar at the High Life. But she’d been texting for hours, and it was unusual for him not to respond at all. A thin thread of anxiety wove through her frustration and anger. He could be in real trouble. The kind of people he was hanging out with made real trouble on a daily basis. She couldn’t just shrug her shoulders and drive off. She had to know he was okay and get him home.

Alone, though, she couldn’t. Jesus, an uninvited woman walking alone into either place would be lucky to be in one piece when she limped out. Hugo wasn’t a member, so even if he were in a position to stand up for her, he could offer her no coverage. And if he was in trouble with them, or just passed out? Fuck. No.

She ran through her mental list of male friends, all of them strong, all of them good fighters, and any of them would be willing to help her out. But she’d be asking them to take on possibly life-threatening risk for her reprobate brother when they spent their working life at that kind of risk. She was a better friend than that.

The cops were out of the question—she had friends in law, sure. One of her fuck buddies was a San Bernardino County deputy. But ratting on the Assassins brought the kind of trouble best avoided. Nothing good would come from that.

Fuck. She knew no one who could help her, no one she’d be willing to put at risk.

And then a new thought rolled into her head. She maybe knew one person. Well, not
knew
, exactly. Except in the biblical sense. Connor. He was Horde. And she’d picked up a heavy protector vibe from him. Plus, the Horde had a rep for helping people out around town. Would it be completely loco to see if he could help?

Yeah. Completely loco. Besides, she didn’t have his number or his last name or anything.

Then again, she knew where the clubhouse was, and it was only a couple of miles away, back inside the Madrone city limit. They had a big bike shop. If he worked there, maybe he’d be around.