Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (13 page)

But she was rescued from the problem.

“Camille Margaret Ryan, why isn’t your bed made?” Shannon called from down the hallway.

Iris and Millie stared at each other in the mirror, Iris mimicking Millie’s guilty surprise. “Uh-oh. Your whole name. You better scoot.” When Millie jumped down, Iris handed her a tissue. “Best wipe the Raven Red off, too.”

Millie did, leaving a deep red smear on her cheek. She tossed the tissue without regard to where it would land and scampered back to her room.

Freed from her big sister responsibilities, Iris got back to work on her winged eyeliner.

~oOo~

Things were quiet on Main Street. The After-Christmas sales were mostly over, besides some
75% Off!
bins in the shops, and the weather was cold and grey. The strong winds of the day before carried on through the day. Most of the snow had blown away into drifts along the sides of buildings and against the boardwalk.

Iris was still learning about all the stock in Jubilee, and when she’d asked about a rack of folios filled with old photographs, Geoff had pulled one out and sat down on the floor in the middle of the main room. He’d opened the folio, and now they were sitting together, wearing thin white gloves, in the center of an arc of photos, many of them daguerreotype.

Iris recognized the style of photo right away. She’d written a paper on this nineteenth-century trend:
Memento mori
. Photographs of the beloved dead. They were meant as keepsakes, a last remembrance of a loved one. In the early age of photography, it might have been the only visual image a family had, especially in the case of the death of a child.

Many of the images spread out before them were of children. Mothers holding their dead babies. Families gathered around tiny caskets. Others were of adults on their deathbeds. In others, the deceased was posed as if in life, wearing a wedding dress or a military uniform, propped awkwardly on a chair, either alone or seated with the bereaved husband or wife.

Her research had given her a lot of facts about how, when, where, and what, but the why was the most interesting question for Iris. Though the pictures were eerie and sometimes downright gruesome, she thought them beautiful and sad—love’s desperate attempt to hold onto anything, the smallest little bit of memory. A photograph wasn’t a memory. It was the catalyst for memory. The thing you held onto so you wouldn’t forget.

She thought of the little silver star on the leather cord.

“Iris? Are you okay?”

She looked up at Geoff, and tears slid down her face. She swiped them away. “Yeah—sorry. Just…these hurt my heart.”

With a curious tilt of his head, Geoff smiled at her. “Me too. Some people think they’re ghastly, but I understand them.”

“What kind of people collect these?”

“Not many. Some like the macabre aspect. Others collect daguerreotypes and are interested in the craft and composition. Once, back when I had my shop in Kimmswick, I had somebody in who was family to the people in a photo. She was doing her family tree, and she just happened upon the photo in my shop. That was pretty special. I gave it to her. Didn’t feel like it was mine to sell to her.”

“You are a cool guy, Geoff.”

He laughed. “Not cool, no. I’ll take nice, though.”

“You’re absolutely nice.”

~oOo~

After supper with the family that night, knowing that Nolan was on patrol and what that meant, Iris changed into a much cuter outfit: dark jeans and her red boots, and a low-cut black top. She fixed her hair and touched up her makeup.

When she trotted downstairs and grabbed her leather jacket off the hall tree, her dad, sitting in the living room with Shannon, called, “Where you headed?”

“I’m a grownup, Daddy. I’ll call if I need you.”

“Iris Elaine Ryan,” she heard him grunt as he stood up, “around here, we tell our family where we’re going and when we’ll be home.”

She gave him the incredulous look that statement deserved. “When have you ever known when you were going to be home? Or said where you would be?”

Actually, as she said the words, she realized that yeah, for the past few years, he’d usually known both. He was a more or less regular guy now.

He didn’t respond except to cross his arms and glare down at her in his Paul Bunyan pose.

“I’m going to Tuck’s,” she conceded. “I will be fine, because Nolan will be there. I don’t know when I’ll be home, but I will, because I have to work in the morning.”

“You’re going to Tuck’s in that?” He cocked a fatherly eyebrow at her cleavage.

“Okay, Show.” And there was Shannon, to the rescue again. Iris could practically see the leash. And the choke collar. Her stepmother pulled on her father’s arm, but he didn’t budge.

Shannon leaned around him and smiled at Iris. “Call if you’ll be later than midnight, okay? Otherwise, I won’t get him to go up to bed.”

“Okay, I’ll call. Bye, Shannon.” She expressly didn’t say goodbye to her father. The papa bear deal was already getting old.

As Iris left, she had her first thought that she wouldn’t be able to live at home for long.

That made her sad.

~oOo~

Nolan wasn’t at Tuck’s when Iris got there, but a couple of the Horde were at the bar. There were at least one or two Horde there just about every night, keeping the peace—or managing the mayhem. On a Monday night, with only about ten or fifteen patrons in the joint, Iris expected it to be the former.

Tommy saw her first and smiled. “Hey, sweet thing.”

She went up and took the hug he offered, and the kiss on her cheek. “Hi, Tommy.”

“You lookin’ to slake a thirst? Rose—get Iris whatever she wants.”

This Rose was Tuck’s wife. She was about as old as Marie, and kind of fat, but she dressed like she was still young and hot. She dyed her hair—it was Lucille Ball red now—and wore low-cut tops that showed off her prodigious cleavage and her rose tattoo. She grinned at Iris and leaned that cleavage on the bar.

“Hi, sweetie. What’ll ya have?”

“Captain and Coke, please.”

“You got it—with extra cherries, right?”

Iris smiled her thanks, and Tommy leaned down on his elbows. “What brings you in? You lookin’ for Nolan?”

She wasn’t at all surprised that Tommy would ask. By now, after a meal at Marie’s, and spending the night in the clubhouse, she and Nolan were a known couple. It was a lot of pressure, the Signal Bend gossip machine. You didn’t get much time to get comfortable with your news, whatever it was, before everybody in town knew as much about it as you did—and wanted to know more.

But at her other side, Kellen threw his arm over her shoulder. “All dressed up so pretty, maybe she wants to dance.” He leaned in close, and Iris could smell that he’d been partying for a while.

Tommy pushed Kellen’s hand off her and pulled her around to his other side, putting himself between them. “You need Nolan?” he repeated.

“Yeah. Is he around?”

“Not yet. He and Saxon are still out. Shouldn’t be long now, though. Things are quiet all over.”

Rose brought her drink, with about ten maraschino cherries and a straw. At Tommy’s other side, Kellen said, “We can put something good on the juke. I bet you’re a great dancer. I’d love to see those—”

He stopped abruptly when Tommy’s open hand connected hard with the back of his head.

“Ow! Fuck, man! What? I’m just ‘preciatin’ a lady.”

Tommy shook his head in resigned defeat. “Okay. Iris, I’m gonna take my brother out and help him clear his head. He had a shit day, and he’s gonna have a real shit night if I don’t help him out. You good here on your own?”

“Sure.” She was about to say that nobody in Signal Bend would dare come at her, but Kellen was still leering at her. What the hell? He’d never paid her half a second’s attention before.

“Keep an eye on her, Rose,” Tommy called as he dragged Kellen to the door.

What, was she the whole town’s little girl?

She sat and nursed her drink for about ten minutes before the door opened again, and Nolan and Saxon came in. She watched as Nolan scanned the room. His eyes met hers, and his face brightened with a broad, genuine smile. He came right to her, and before they exchanged a word, he kissed her.

Yet again, this kiss was different from their others. In his touch, this time, she felt calm possession. He cupped her face in his hands, brushing her hair back, and he brought his mouth, open in anticipation, to hers. His lips were velvety firm and still cool from the winter outside. His tongue swept over her lips until she opened her mouth so he could enter. When he pulled away, he sucked a little on her bottom lip.

She opened her eyes, and he was smiling. Warm and real. God. A spasm rolled through her core, and she wondered if there were anywhere in Tuck’s they could get busy. Probably not. The bathroom? She almost laughed. No, not the bathroom. Gross.

“Hi. Didn’t think I’d see you tonight.” His eyes twinkled with pleasure.

“I wanted to. I hope I’m not in your way.”

“You’re not. Did you miss me?”

She’d been thinking about him since last night, almost nonstop. Doubly since sitting with Geoff on the floor of the shop, looking at those old pictures. There was something she’d wanted to say, but now that she was with him, and he seemed calm and content, and truly happy to see her, almost
relieved
to see her, the time seemed wrong.

It was a thing to hold back for the right moment. When it needed to be said. When it would help him to hear it. This wasn’t that moment.

So instead, she nodded. “I did miss you.”

His eyes got serious, but his lips were still turned up in that great smile. “I missed you, too.”

When he kissed her again, Iris thought she might need to call home and tell her dad not to wait up.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nolan had developed an addiction—to Iris. It was the clearest way he had to think about it. He felt like shit when he was away from her, he felt worse and worse the longer he was away, until he could barely be still, and then, as soon as he could get close to her again, he felt okay. Good, even. The past couple of weeks, since New Year’s, all he was doing was surviving every other part of his life until he could be with her.

It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t healthy, and he hated how needy he felt. It was love, he knew it was love, but the shit in his head was wrapping itself around that good feeling and warping it into something that was wrong.

She was going to get hurt, he was going to fuck it all up, unless he could free the good from the bad. The solution was to deal with the bad and get it gone.

The solution was to deal with David Vega and get him gone. All the rage in him had honed to that one point.

But the club had voted him down. Repeatedly. So the solution was to change the vote.

And he thought he knew how.

That was why he rode down Bart’s long gravel driveway on an early afternoon in mid-January, during a week of false spring. If he could get Bart—who fucking
had
to want Vega dead as much as Nolan did—to change his mind, he thought the rest of the club would fall in.

He was surprised to see his mom’s SUV parked in front of the garage. All the kids were in school, except maybe Deck, who went to part-time preschool. He didn’t know what she’d be helping Bart with if the kids weren’t around.

At the door, he knocked and opened, sticking his head in. The Elstads’ new bloodhound puppy scrabbled across the floor, tail wagging. Nolan reached down and caught her before she escaped from the house.

“Hey—Bart?”

“Yeah—kitchen.”

Nolan went in. His mom and Bart were sitting at the table, drinking coffee. There was a tablet on the table between them. It looked like they were doing some kind of online shopping.

He set the pup down. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, kiddo.”

“Hey, brother. What’s up?” Bart asked.

“Need a minute.”

His mom got the message and pushed back from the table. “Okay. I need to get going anyway. You need me to pick Deck up today?”

Bart stood as she did and smiled. “No, I got him. Thanks for all this.”

“Sure. I think she’ll love it.” She held out her arms, and Bart hugged her.

As she came to the entry where Nolan stood, she squeezed his arm and offered him her cheek. He bent and kissed it. Her skin was flushed, like she was blushing. What did she have to blush about?

“I haven’t seen much of you lately. Why don’t you bring Iris over for supper tonight? I’ll order pizza.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll call her.”

“Excellent.” With a wave to Bart, his mom left.

Nolan turned back to Bart, who was carrying the coffee mugs to the sink to dump them. “Are you and my mom…”

Bart stopped and stared at him, the mugs hanging in his hands. “My wife is dead six months, and you’re asking me if I’m tapping your mom? Fuck you.”

Nolan didn’t know if that made it better or worse. Because something was up with his mom, and if Bart wasn’t along for the ride, then Nolan was worried.

“Sorry.”

“She’s helping me out. That’s it. There’s shit Riley did for the kids that I had no idea about. I don’t know what I’m doing half the fucking time.” He threw the mugs into the sink, and Nolan heard something break. “Goddammit. Why are you here? What the fuck do you want?”

He’d been an asshole for asking, but he wasn’t necessarily sorry that Bart was thinking about Riley just now. He came into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, brother. I was out of line. But I need to talk to you.”

Bart glowered at him for a few seconds, then nodded and let the matter drop. He opened a high cabinet, and Nolan saw several bottles of booze. “You want a drink?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Once they had Jack in hand, Nolan followed Bart to the table, and they sat. “What do you need to talk about?”

Not seeing a reason to hedge, Nolan got to the point. “Vega. I know you want him dead as much as I do. He needs to be dead. Nobody we love is safe as long as he’s breathing.”

Bart sat hard back in his chair; it was practically a flinch. “Club voted, Nolan. That issue is closed. We leave him alone.”

“If you were with me, we could bring it back to the table.” Nolan leaned in, feeling desperate to get Bart to see things his way. He
had
to. He
had
to know what Nolan was feeling. It had to be even fresher, more painful for Bart. “With us both, I think the vote would flip. I know Isaac, Show, and Len, at least, would vote with you. With them, and you and me, most of the rest would flip, too. Hav told me once that the club follows the lead of the one who’d been most hurt. They see my hurt as dealt with. But not yours. They’d follow you.”

Bart drained his glass and set it down hard. “You don’t get it. Maybe I want Vega dead, but I don’t want a hand in killing him. I told you in the Keep awhile back: I killed the man I needed to kill. My hurt is dealt with, too—as much as it can be. Badge is right, brother. Nothing good will come of stirring this shit up. If Vega is a threat, then going for him only makes him a bigger threat. If he’s not a threat, then he’s not a threat—unless we kill him and land on law’s desk again.”

“How can you say that? You thought he was out of commission after Santaveria, but he was just deeper in the background, building the business that killed your wife and hurt your daughter. Hooj is dead, too. He wants the cartels broken, and he hasn’t managed it yet. Why do you think he’d stop?”

“His cover is blown wide open. Everybody in that business wants him dead.”

“That was true after Santaveria. He still managed to survive. He just changed agencies. That he’s alive now means that somebody’s got his back, and that means he’s still in the game. Bart, I’m not asking you to pull the trigger. Just make the vote. I need him dead.”

But Bart shook his head. “That’s the problem right there.
You
need him dead. You see this as Havoc’s kid. You need to see it as Horde. You see him as our enemy, and yeah, maybe he is.
But we’re not his
. We’re not pulling any heat right now. Vega never had a vendetta against us. Even if you’re right and he’s still working his crazy crusade, we’re not in that fight anymore. If we stay clean, he’s got no reason to turn our way—and neither does whoever he’s working with. Killing Vega doesn’t bring Hav back, or Riley, or undo anything that’s been done. It only puts us at risk. All we can do is move on.”

Nolan’s fingernails dug into his palms. He didn’t know how to make anybody
see
this the right way. They all thought they were keeping their family safe, but they were letting a fucking murderous bastard run loose. They were wrong, and Vega was going to land on them again someday, and they were going to lose more than they already had. They all were.

When he spoke, he called up all his patience and made his voice calm. “You’re wrong. Vega
is
the risk.”

“We’re gonna have to agree to disagree, brother. My priority now is not putting my kids in more danger. I am not going to vote anything that brings us heat. I am done with murder and bloodshed and burying people I love. I will not help you pull this club back into that fuckery.” Bart stood up. “I got some shit to do before I pick Deck up at preschool. I’ll see you.”

Thus dismissed, Nolan left Bart’s house.

And then he rode.

~oOo~

Nolan sat at a closed-for-the-season frozen custard shop just outside Hermitage, a town more than a hundred miles from home, and stared at his phone. What he had decided was a big, dangerous move, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to make it.

He brushed his hand over the leather of his kutte. The Night Horde. From the time he’d met Havoc, Horde was all he’d wanted to be. Nothing else. None of those idiotic dreams of his childhood mattered at all. He’d wanted this kutte, that family. If he made this decision, he was putting all that on the line.

And Iris, too.

And his own life. Everything.

Telling himself he wasn’t making the decision yet, that he was just gathering all the information he could first, he dialed.

“Yeah,” a terse voice answered on the second ring.

“Sherlock, hey. It’s Nolan.” Sherlock was the Intelligence Officer of the SoCal charter.

There was a pause, and Nolan envisioned Sherlock checking the number on his phone.

“Hey, brother! Good to hear from you! What’s goin’ on?”

Sherlock was a lot older than Nolan—in his forties, maybe—but he was a diehard geek and a gamer, and they had bonded over games during the year or so that Nolan had been with the SoCal charter.

Rather than answer Sherlock’s question yet, Nolan asked, “How’s SoCal?”

“We’re good. Rolling along quiet. Still coming back from it all, you know. But we’re good.”

“Your old lady? The kid?”

Sherlock laughed. “They’re good. Everybody’s good. You just call for a sit rep, bro?”

Jesus. Was he really doing this? Just information. That was all he wanted. Just to know. And if Missouri wasn’t invested in this problem, he bet SoCal would be. “Need a favor. Some intel.”

Another pause, this one longer and heavier. “Intel Dom can’t get you? Or Bart?”

“I need this off the table—mine and yours.” And there it was. He was going against his club. His stomach rolled. “I just need the information. I don’t need anybody any deeper than that. Just the intel.”

“What are you doin’, brother?”

“We got reliable word that Vega is alive. He was spotted in Manitoba. I need to know if he’s still there, and why. Or wherever he is now.”

Yet another long pause, this one so long that Nolan checked his screen to see if the call was still live. “Jesus Christ, Nolan. If you need this from me—”

“Table voted it down, yeah. Please, brother. You know what that fuck did. Missouri doesn’t have the heart for the fight anymore. It’s too long that they’ve been flying straight.”

“They?”

He hadn’t said ‘we.’ Nolan slammed his eyes shut, as if that would keep him from seeing what he was doing.

No—this was just information. He hadn’t decided if he would act yet. He was just keeping tabs on the guy, at this point. “Will you help me?”

Sherlock heaved a harsh breath, and the sound filled Nolan’s ear like static. “I think this is a shit move you’re making.”

“Will you help me?”

“I don’t know. I need to think. I’ll be in touch.”

Sherlock ended the call.

Nolan sat on the picnic bench before the empty custard stand and stared into the distance.

What was he doing?

What he needed to do.

~oOo~

Nolan put his phone back in his pocket. His fingertips grazed the cord of Ani’s star, and he took a moment and rolled it between his fingers. He didn’t wear it anymore, but he hadn’t been able to put it completely aside yet.