Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (5 page)

Wait—what was she going to do? Amble in and ask her random fuck from a few nights ago to drop everything and come with her and save her brother from a fucking street gang? Her brother who might well not want to be saved? Yeah, that was beyond loco. That was just stupid.

But what other option did she have?

While she grappled with that question, her phone rang—her grandmother again. Her finger hovered over the “dismiss” button, but instead she answered. “Hi, Nana. I’m still looking.” Mostly true.

“Oh, Pilar. I’m real worried now. His boss called the house. He didn’t go to work or call or anything.”

While Hugo was quick to quit a job and had been fired quite a few times, he never took a sick day, and he was never a no-show. That was a point of pride for him. When he decided he didn’t want to go in, he’d call and quit without any notice, but he didn’t, as he said, ‘puss out’ and just bail without a word. So they had the next anomaly in an otherwise familiar search mission.

“Okay, okay. I’m getting close, I think. I’ll be in touch soon.

“Okay,
mija
. Call soon.”

Pilar put her phone away and pulled out of the Vons lot, headed toward the Night Horde’s bike shop. She couldn’t remember the name of it, but she knew where it was.

~oOo~

The name was Virtuoso Cycles, and it was a gleaming, beautiful showroom, with gleaming, beautiful custom bikes arrayed across a glossy floor. Pilar had a bike of her own, one she loved, but it was just a stock Victory Hammer. She’d never been to this shop.

It was a Saturday afternoon, but still early enough that they were open, and she could hear the muffled sounds of power tools coming from some point beyond the back wall. The showroom, though, was empty except for an attractive young woman sitting at a reception desk. When Pilar walked toward the desk, the woman looked up and smiled a bright, professional smile.

“Welcome to Virtuoso Cycles. Can I help you?”

Still not believing she was going through with this, Pilar answered, “I’m looking for Connor? Is he around?”

The woman’s smile changed a little, took on a knowing tinge. “Let me call back and see if he’s available. Can I tell him who’s asking?”

“Pilar.” No point in saying more; her first name was all he knew—and he’d said he’d never known anyone else with her name.

While the woman made her call, Pilar turned and went to the ring of bikes. God, they were gorgeous. Some were just modified stock bikes, but a couple were obviously entirely unique builds. One was a spectacular black and brass—could it be brass?—piece of art that looked like a Renaissance-steampunk mashup. On the floor in front of it was a plaque that read:
Best of Show, Rat’s Hole Bike Show, Sturgis, S.D. 2022. Designed & Built by Patrick Stavros
. On the plaque was a photograph of one of the bikers she’d seen the other night at The Flight Deck, and had seen there a few times, with long, dark-blond dreads and a bushy blond beard. He stood next to a guy wearing an ugly-ass green rat suit, like a debauched Mickey Mouse. The unsmiling biker was holding a big metal version of the ugly-ass rat, which was apparently the trophy that came with the win.

“Hey.”

She turned at the gruff voice behind her and wasn’t even three feet from Connor. He was wearing a black coverall, opened to the waist and showing a white, v-neck t-shirt, stained with grease. His sleeves were rolled back to his elbows. She’d seen a lot of his ink when he’d been in the ring at The Deck. Much of it seemed to have a Celtic flair, including the big piece on his right forearm, like a leather bracer carved with Celtic knots. In an arc just below his collarbone he had row of different knots. The hair on his chest obscured that ink slightly. Down his spine, she knew, he had the word HORDE in thick, Celtic-looking letters.

Around his neck he wore a gold crucifix, slightly larger than, but otherwise not unlike, the one she herself wore.

Damn, he was hot. Right in her wheelhouse, too: tall, brawny, and just the right kind of furry—the well-kept kind, only where it ought to be. Also apparently Catholic—of the Irish persuasion, she guessed.

Not that that should fucking matter.

“Hey,” she answered, the picture of eloquence.

He smiled that melty smile, and for half a second, Pilar just about forgot that she was here because she needed help for a possibly dangerous problem.

“You need something, or d’ya just miss me?”

There wasn’t any point in dancing around the problem—it was time sensitive, anyway. So she got to it. “I need something. A favor. Pretty big one.”

His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything. He simply waited for her to continue.

“Um, okay.” She was nervous—well, shit, of course she was. She was about to ask a near-stranger to rescue her idiot brother from the lair of a notorious gang. “I’ve got a problem and nobody to help me with it.”

To that, he did respond. He reached out and took hold of her elbow, pulling her toward the seating area. She noticed that the actual ugly rat trophy was under glass on a square pedestal nearby.

Before he could push her into a leather chair, she pulled her arm back, careful not to be abrupt about it. She didn’t need to sit; it wasn’t that kind of problem. “My little brother isn’t answering his phone, for almost a whole day now. I’ve been looking for him. I found his truck outside the Cypress Court Apartments.”

Connor reacted to that, his head going back in a kind of reverse nod. A sign of recognition.

“You know it?” she asked.

“I do. That’s Aztec turf. He in some trouble?”

“I don’t know. He hangs around with some of those guys sometimes. His dad was an Assassin.”

Again, his dark eyebrows lifted. “But he’s not in?”

“No. He wasn’t as of last night, anyway.”

“When you say ‘little brother’…”

“He’s twenty-five.”

“That’s a man. If he wants in, then that’s his call, isn’t it?”

Yeah, she guessed it was. But Hugo wasn’t a man, not really. The calendar didn’t matter. He was still a child. “I know. But my grandma is worried, and I am, too. I just need to see that he’s okay, and I can’t go in on my own.”

That earned a dry chuckle from Connor. “No, you can’t.” He sighed deeply and looked away, out the showroom window. “What help do you need, Pilar?”

She really did like the sound of her name in that gravel voice. “I need to be able to get into where he is and at least make sure he wants to be there. I need to try to get him out.”

“You know where he is, or just where his truck is?”

“His friend lives in the Cypress. And the High Life is just down the road from there. He’s in one of those places, I’m sure of it.” She huffed in frustration and admitted the truth. “But no, I don’t know where exactly. Because he won’t answer his phone.”

“It’s on, though?”

“What?”

“His phone—it’s on, ringing before it goes to voice mail?”

She thought about that for a second. “Last I checked, yeah.” Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she dialed Hugo. It rang five times. “Yeah, it’s on.”

He nodded and took her phone out of her hand. “Okay. That should make it pretty easy to nail him down, I think. Come with me.” And then he took her hand and led her across the showroom and through a black door at the side.

~oOo~

She’d been sitting at the bar in the Night Horde clubhouse, drinking a bottle of beer that Connor had handed her before he’d gone off somewhere.

The room she was in looked like a big, ratty bar. Grungy and a little smelly. The opposite of the high-end gleam of the showroom fifty feet away.

There weren’t any guys around except one kid, whom Connor had called Jerry, who was stocking the bar and putting clean glasses away. He ignored her, other than to eye her bottle every now and then, as if waiting for when she’d need another.

Otherwise, she was basically alone. There were a couple of women around, but they were in the kitchen, talking and laughing, and Pilar knew she wasn’t invited—not that she would have wanted to be, anyway. So she sat, she sipped, and she waited.

Jerry had just handed her a second bottle when Connor came back into the room, now dressed in jeans and his kutte, and trailing another biker. This one had a heavy, dark beard and inch-wide gauges in his ears. Industrial piercings, too. And a ring through his bottom lip. Kind of punk. Cool. And he had vivid, bluish-green eyes. These Horde dudes were hot.

“Pilar, this is Sherlock.” As Pilar and Sherlock nodded their greeting, Connor went on, “He got a lock on your brother. He’s at the High Life.”

“Fuck.” She’d been holding onto a slim hope that he was wasted at Jaime’s, playing some stupid video game. If he was at the High Life, then he was wound up somehow with the Assassins, most likely.

“Yeah. You know, we don’t have a relationship with the Aztecs. We barge into their house, they’ll take it poorly.”

She couldn’t ask them to do that. She’d just have to go in on her own and take her chances. Her family, her problem. “I understand. Thanks for finding where he was, though. That helps.” Intending to go out the nearest door and find her way back to her Element, she slid off the barstool.

But Connor wrapped his big paw around her arm. “Hold on. I talked to our President, and he okayed it, so we’re going in. Three of us. I just want you to be aware that this could turn into a clusterfuck, and I don’t see a way of keeping you out of there—your brother doesn’t know us, so you’ll have to go in with us.”

Jesus, the whole club was going to help her? That was more than she’d expected—a lot more. It was on the tip of her tongue to back out, to apologize and say she didn’t want to put them at risk. And that was true. But she’d come here, and she’d asked, and they’d stepped up. It seemed disrespectful to say ‘no, thanks’ after all that.

And she needed them.

“I understand. Thank you.”

Connor nodded and gave her that smile. “Always happy to help a lady in need.” Then he winked.

Normally, she’d have side-eyed a smarmy line like that. But right then, in this moment, this context, while he was sliding a Glock into a holster, and after he’d helped her with a different kind of need a few days before, it wasn’t smarmy. It was just funny and charming.

So she laughed and winked back.

CHAPTER FIVE

Madrone was a quiet, picturesque, mostly bland little town. Until urban sprawl and crazy real estate prices had pushed the workers of Los Angeles so far out, this part of Southern California had been little more than desert broken up by a few small towns and the lands of a few intrepid ranchers. Aside from a core area that had been around since the 1800s, when a little one-horse town had risen up around a train depot, and one area on the western edge of town that was on the seedy side, the rest of the Madrone city limits bounded middle-class and upper-middle-class developments, the kind that had gates at their entrances or at least brick pillars holding brass plaques with names that started with “The” or ended with “Estates”: “The Commons,” “The Meadow,” “Mountainview Estates,” like that. The commercial district was mostly strip malls and office parks designed to suit the architecture of the neighborhood. A city ordinance required that all signage be low to the ground, so as not to disrupt the view.

Because that was what Madrone had going for it more than anything else: three different mountain ranges rimmed the horizon in three directions. On a clear day, you could stand anywhere in town and feel like heaven itself was in reach.

In the odd way of community development, a couple of towns that abutted Madrone were nowhere near as well-heeled. It was thus possible to cross a street that served as a city limit and leave a tidy, landscaped neighborhood to enter a desiccated husk of a town that had been obliterated by one or more of the cyclical state downturns.

Aztec Assassins turf was in one such area. As Connor, Sherlock, and Diaz rode, taking positions around Pilar’s little SUV, they crossed Calaveras Road and dropped about four tax brackets. The view at the horizons was the same, and just as close, though the roads here weren’t designed so carefully to make the most of it. The buildings had been erected with a desultory attention, and their care had only dwindled from there.

The High Life was housed in a single-story building at the end of a block that had mostly been abandoned. There was a bakery, a laundromat, and an electronics repair shop, but otherwise the storefronts on the block were empty. A major factor for the lack of vitality was the High Life itself, Connor knew. It wasn’t the kind of bar you happened upon. It wasn’t on anybody’s barhopping itinerary. It didn’t attract the kind of people that kept a neighborhood vibrant. Though it ostensibly did business as a bar, it was really the Aztecs’ clubhouse, and anyone who drank there was a friend. Everybody else stayed away.

The Horde had no beef with the Aztecs—yet—but they had no working relationship, either. They stayed out of each other’s way, letting Calaveras Road serve as a kind of force field. The Aztecs dealt drugs, but those drugs came from a different source, one that had a stable truce with La Zorra.

As Pilar and the Horde pulled up across the street from the High Life, Connor knew that what they were about to do, if it went badly, could ripple out and cause a lot of problems. Beefing with the Aztecs could, if it got bad enough, disrupt a truce between two drug cartels, and that could mean open warfare in two countries.

All because Connor was feeling chivalrous.

That wasn’t entirely true; it wasn’t just on him. This was what they did, why they were respected in Madrone, and why people looked the other way at some of their less savory activities: the Horde helped where they could. Pilar had come asking, and the club had obliged. Still, this Saturday afternoon was likely to be a lot more exciting than Connor had expected.

As they gathered on the sidewalk, Pilar nodded at Diaz. “Token brown face to meet the spic bangers?” she asked him.

Connor was offended, and opened his mouth to say so and point out that a bitch asking for help like this should try a little fucking courtesy, but Diaz grinned and answered, “Not like that. I volunteered. But it’s true that these assholes don’t speak Spanish.”

Connor and Sherlock both flipped him off.

Pilar made a scoffing sound. “They all speak English in there. They’re not just off the truck.”

“Yeah,” Diaz answered. “But it’d be good to catch any side talk, you know?”

“True, yeah. But
I
speak Spanish.” She looked up at Connor, who was still struggling with that spike of irritation. When he didn’t respond to her comment, she huffed and added, “So…what?”

He looked at his brothers and then across the street to the entrance of the bar. A tall neon sign with a martini glass and a flashing olive glowed in the nearing dusk. This area had no restrictions on the height of its commercial signs. “We go in. We ask nicely. We work from there.” He glanced down at Pilar, who was binding her mane into a lush ponytail at the back of her head. “You stay behind us. Understood?”

She shook her head. “I thought I was going in with you because you need me to talk to Hugo.”

He hated having to explain the obvious. Biting back a sigh, he said, “We need you in there. But you’re not armed, and you are female. These guys have a bad rep with women. So you stay behind us. We’re your cover. Got it?”

Without answering, she turned back to her Honda and hit her fob to unlock it. Then she opened the passenger door and ducked in. When she came back, she was pushing a little handgun into the back of her jeans.

“Now I’m armed.”

Connor reached around and grabbed her gun. When she tried to grab it back, he pushed her away. “No way, puss. Last fucking thing we need is you starting some drama waving this thing around. I don’t even know if you can shoot.”

“I can. I’m good at it.”

“Well, someday you can show me. But not now.” He tucked the gun into his own waistband.

When she went for him again, Sherlock snatched her and held her back. “He’s right, sweetheart. We can’t add any more variables to this equation.”

Shrugging free of Sherlock’s loose hold, she glared at Connor and opened her mouth to say something that would, he knew, be irritating in one way or another. So he grabbed her chin in his hand and closed her mouth. “I know you’re all up in your girl power and shit, but you want our help, you do it our way. Got it?”

This time, she did answer that question, with a not-very-convincing nod.

“I want to hear you say it, puss.”

“I got it. And don’t call me puss.”

“You could take a lesson in gratitude,
puss
.”

At that, she had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry. You’re right. I’m just…”

She didn’t finish, but she didn’t have to. “I know. Let’s see if we can get this done. Our goal is to bring your brother out quietly. If he wants to stay, are you looking for us to make him leave?”

“No. If he wants to be there, then that’s his call. I just need to know he’s okay.”

“Good. If he wants to go but they don’t want him to, then we’ll do what we can. But that’ll be messy as fuck—and that’s why you stay behind us. Understand?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I do. I will.”

“Shoulda worn vests,” Sherlock muttered.

“We go in wearing vests, and they know we expect trouble—so that’s what we’d get. We’re trying to get out of here without firing a shot.” He looked across the street again, unsnapping the guard on his holster. “Okay, let’s do this.”

They crossed the street. Connor was the first one through the door, feeling the weight of his Glock against his ribs. Diaz came in behind him. Then Pilar, and then Sherlock, covering the rear.

Connor widened his vision to see the entire scene, adjusting quickly to the darker space. The lighting made the kind of gloom that was typical for a place like this.

Hip-hop music played on a jukebox near the door, and a girl danced alone in front of it. Two men sat at the bar. One guy stood behind it, paused in the act of wiping the top. Two men playing pool to the right. In the back corner, at a big round table, five men. Three women, as well—two of them being passed around to be pawed by them all. One woman sat on the lap of the man facing into the room.

Ten men, all showing Aztec colors. No Hugo, apparently. Connor glanced over his shoulder and sent Pilar a silent question, making sure. She shook her head and shrugged subtly.

Okay, fuck. If Hugo wasn’t here, then they’d come in with no good reason. The man in the corner was their leader, Raul Esposito. As the Horde walked forward into the room, all the men came toward them, hemming them in. Only Esposito remained seated.

A massive, shaved dude with three teardrops inked at the corner of his eye and an elaborate sugar skull on his throat stepped directly into Connor’s path. “You lost,
ese
?”

Connor smiled, keeping it friendly. “No, friend. We’re here to ask for some help.”

Baldy grinned nastily, and Connor’s fingers twitched. Then the guy turned and looked back at his boss. When he stepped to the side, Connor knew that, at least, they’d get an audience.

Some crews in San Bernardino County, and everywhere else, ran like businesses, saw value in their territory and the people in it. The Horde was one such, and they worked with several others in one way or another. But the Aztecs were like the Dirty Rats. Bottom feeders who got off on tearing shit down.

He fucking hated this piece of shit gang that solved every problem with blood and noise. He hated the way they lorded over this rundown turf and never put anything into their community but drugs and death. They acquired their wealth by scraping the last dregs of hope from the people who lived around them, and they flaunted it in front of the same people. He would have preferred to have come in here with two AKs strapped to his back and just strafed the shit out of every last one of these assholes.

But the Aztecs had friends bigger than themselves, and the ripples reached far. He kept his smile plastered to his face and looked down at Raul Esposito.

Esposito was older than Connor—late forties, maybe early fifties. His dark hair was slicked tightly back against his head. A long, wide scar bisected his face at an angle, from his temple, over his hooked nose, to his jaw on the opposite side. When he smiled, it was impossible to believe it could be sincere.

He gave Connor that smile now and pushed the girl off his lap. She teetered off toward the bar. “The great and famous Night Horde Motorcycle Club needs help from some
cholos
down the block? Can it be?”

“I guess so. Our friend here is looking for her brother. She’s worried. Just wondering if you might help us find him.”

Esposito tilted his head, and Connor took one step to the side, enough to let Esposito see Pilar but not so far that he couldn’t cover her if he needed to.

“Pilar. What you hanging with these boys for? You want some bad-boy dick, we can give you plenty right here.” He laughed, and his lackeys laughed with him.

Pilar shuddered ever so slightly, and Connor felt his fingers tense and curl into his palms. He sensed the same tension in his brothers.

“Just looking for Hugo, Raul. Is he here?” There was a catch in her voice, and Connor realized that she was scared. Of course she would be, should be, but it affected him more than seemed reasonable.

Esposito leaned back in his chair and dropped his hands into his lap in a dramatic gesture of disappointment. “Your brother, baby girl, is a bad boy, too. He took something from me. He has a debt to pay off.” He nodded toward a man at the back. He said something in Spanish, but Connor could barely order a beer in Tijuana, so he had no idea what. Diaz, though, changed his stance, moving into battle readiness.

“The door,” he muttered at Connor’s side.

Connor pushed Pilar fully behind him, and Sherlock came in tight. They made a circle. And Esposito’s man opened the door.

Behind the door wasn’t somebody ready to attack them. In fact, none of the Aztecs had moved except the guy who’d opened the door. What was behind it, and was now in full view of the room, was a man Connor assumed to be Hugo. He was stripped to a pair of soiled and bloody khakis and bound to a support beam. His face was grotesquely swollen, and his chest and arms were horribly bruised and striped with bloody gashes. He’d been beaten and whipped.