Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (27 page)

“You didn’t shoot to kill.”

“Second one would’ve been. I wanted to know who’d found me first. Of everybody it could’ve been, I wasn’t expecting it to be Horde. If you’re still Horde. Out here alone, you don’t have the club’s backing, do you? I’m right about that.”

“I’m not telling you shit. If you’re not gonna kill me, then turn me loose.”

Vega laughed. “Even if I did, and even if you didn’t repay the favor with a bullet in my head, you’d never make it out alive. Not with your shoulder fucked up. We’re bunking together for a week or two, at least. By the time you’re healed, maybe we’ll have found our understanding. I can’t let you go until we have.”

~oOo~

“I need to take a goddamn piss.”

Nolan had been tied to the bed for a whole day and the better part of another. Vega had given him water throughout this second day, two bottles’ worth. He’d given him antibiotics, which Nolan had been reluctant to take, but the heavy, hot pain in his chest and shoulder made him willing to take the risk. He’d refused painkillers except the ones he could read the word
Tylenol
on, and he’d refused to let Vega feed him like a fucking baby.

Now, he was fucking starving, his ass itched, his back ached, and his feet and hands were numb, in addition to the pain of his wound. And he had to piss.

But actually, he did feel a little better. His head was clearer, and it didn’t hurt so much to think.

Vega was at the wood stove, heating a pot of canned pasta on it, stirring with a wooden spoon. At Nolan’s complaint, he paused and looked over. “Yes. I would think that you do.” He went back to stirring.

“You want me to piss the bed?”

“If you do, you’ll be sitting in it a long time.”

“Are you gonna let me up to use the toilet or not?”

Vega took a long breath, like an exasperated father filling himself up with patience. He left the spoon in the pot and went to his weapon rack. Nolan had noticed a cabinet underneath the rack; now Vega opened it and brought out a revolver. He checked the load and came over to the bed, pulling a blade from his pocket.

Nolan eyed him with suspicion as he popped the blade open. “You’ll forgive me if I take some precautions.”

Vega had no accent at all unless he was cussing in Spanish—except sometimes, he rolled over the letter R or seemed to swallow his Ls. Like an old accent bleeding through.

“I’m going to cut your ankles free first, and then your wrists. You are going to stay still until I say otherwise. Agreed?”

Glaring at his enemy, Nolan nodded.

Vega did as he’d described, and Nolan remained still until he’d backed up. “Okay. See if you can sit up.”

Suddenly frantic to get up off that damn bed, Nolan rolled to his good side and swung his legs over the side. His feet touched the wood floor, and he pushed himself into a seated position.

Pain blasted through his torso and left arm, and the room canted wildly up and down and to and fro. “Agh! Fuck,” he groaned and nearly fell back to the pillows.

Vega grabbed his good shoulder and held him up. “Give yourself a minute to get oriented.”

Nodding, Nolan closed his eyes and waited for his brain to stop sloshing around in his skull. Fuck, he hurt. Vega’s steady hand felt not altogether terrible; it grounded him.

He opened his eyes. Vega was a foot away from him, if that. Since he was sixteen years old, he’d wanted this motherfucker dead, and here he was, literally within reach, and Nolan was leaning on him so he wouldn’t fall over. Jesus fucking Christ, what a fuckup he was.

The hand that wasn’t holding him up held a revolver pointed at his head.

“You ready to stand up?”

“Yeah,” Nolan gritted, not remotely sure that he was.

Using his right hand, he pushed himself off the bed. Pins and needles exploded in his feet, and agony in his chest, and he nearly fell again, this time on the floor, but Vega still had him. He shifted his hold so that his arm was around Nolan’s waist, and he helped him gimp his way to the door at the other side of the cabin.

Managing to support Nolan and keep his gun, Vega opened the door and helped him into the bathroom.

Such as it was. There was another pump sink, and a strange little toilet that looked…

“This is an outhouse.”

“It’s a composting toilet. I’m off the grid here, remember? Just the well for water. No sewer or septic, no power.”

“It’s an outhouse. Inside your house.”

Vega made that patronizing huff again. “Do you need to piss or not?”

He really needed to piss. His feet still bit at him, like he was walking over broken glass, but he made it on his own to the toilet. As he undid his belt, he turned to the open door, where Vega remained, his revolver aimed.

“You’re gonna watch?”

“I am. I’m not turning away while you’re untied. Do what you need to do.

“Perv,” he grumbled and opened his jeans.

Sweet fuck, it felt good to piss. He did it forever, and when it was done, he closed his jeans and, from habit, reached to flush. There was nothing. He didn’t know what to do.

“Just close the lid,
pendejo
.”

“You know, I know what
pendejo
means.”

“Good for you.”

Nolan went to the sink. The pump was on the left, though, and with his left side fucked, and the angle off to use his right arm, he couldn’t get the pump to bring water. Vega came over and got it going, and Nolan washed his hands.

All at once, he ran out of gas. A sound like static filled his ears, and his vision went dim. Certain he was going to pass out, he grabbed the side of the sink. Only the pain pulsing through his torso kept him conscious.

Vega’s arm went around him. “You’re pale. Come on, let’s get you off your feet.”

He was too fucking weak to resist.

Rather than the bed, Vega took him to the table and sat him in one of the straight-backed chairs. “You need to eat.”

With the gun trained on Nolan all the while, he went for the pot of pasta and brought it to the table. He filled a plastic bowl and gave him a plastic spoon. Nolan wanted to refuse it, but his stomach rumbled at the smell. It was just cheap-ass kid pasta, little raviolis from a can, but he’d been eating protein bars for a couple of days before his fast here in the cabin, and he was famished.

From a cabinet, Vega got a can of vegetable juice. Warm. “Drink this, too. You need vitamins.”

Then he sat at the other end of the table and, with that gun aimed, set himself up with the same meal.

Nolan dug in; he couldn’t help it. Halfway through his gorging, he looked up and asked, “Why the fuck aren’t you killing me? I’ll kill you first chance I get.”

“I know.” He grinned and waved the gun. “That’s why I’m eating one-handed.” After a bite of ravioli, he added, “I’m not going to kill you unless you give me no choice, Nolan. I understand why you want me dead. It’s right that you do. It’s right, but it won’t make anything right. What I did to Havoc—that
haunts
me, to this day. I know now that that day is when it all started to go wrong. I tried to make it right, but there is no making it right. Killing me won’t make it right. It will only make you wrong. And I don’t want to kill you, because I don’t want to compound my many sins by laying your body on top of your father’s.”

“His body, and Riley Chase’s body, and Hoosier Elliott. And more.”

“And my wife and my children. And more. Yes. Many died. There is blood and pain all around me.
Si
.” He stared down into his bowl. The gun sagged an inch in his hand, and he shook off that moment of introspection and faced Nolan again. “I want no more of it.”

“Why? Why did you do everything you did? Because it was your job?”

With an expression like disgust, Vega chuckled dryly. “I made the job serve my mission. My mission was everything. It was more than my family, more than my home, more than myself. More than my eternal soul. Have you never needed something so much that you were willing to risk everything you had to make it happen?”

Nolan’s shock at the question, a question that had reached into his head and coiled around his deepest thoughts, must have shown all over his face, because Vega smiled sadly.

“Yes. I suppose you have.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Iris checked the dark hallway and listened for signs of stirring among her family. The only sounds she heard, besides the ticking of the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs, came from the end of the hall, where her dad and Shannon slept. She didn’t linger to listen to those sounds too long. Those two were getting old, but they behaved like horny teenagers half the time.

She closed her bedroom door and turned off the overhead light. She went back to her bed and stretched out on her belly, then tapped the volume down on her laptop.

“Okay. Nobody’s going to bust in. The kids are asleep, and Daddy and Shannon are…in bed. What’s going on?”

Her sister let out a breath, and the image on Iris’s screen shook as she repositioned herself. “It’s fine. The usual. Mom’s doing better—she has a different cast on her arm, and her foot is just in one of those soft boot things. She can get around on her feet now, as long as she plays it cool.”

“And Ray? Is he still around?”

“Yeah. He went off for a few days last week, but otherwise he’s in town. Not around the house much, but that’s normal. And nobody’s complaining.”

“Is he being a dick?”

Rose tipped her head back and forth in a gesture of equivocation. “He’s Ray. You know. It’s okay. He likes me better than he likes you, and he’s treating Mom okay. He did make some comment about her weight, but it was pretty mellow, for him. I think he honestly feels really bad that she got so hurt.”

“I want to tell Daddy what happened. What’s been happening all this time.”

“What? Irie, no.” Rose brought her tablet right up to her face. If they’d been in the same room, she would have been leaning close. “You know you can’t.”

Iris sat up and leaned on her crossed legs. “How can we not? What if she’d landed at the foot of those stairs just a little bit differently? What if he’d broken her neck and killed her?”

“It’s not our call, sis. Mom’s not stupid, and she’s not crazy. You know what she says. She wants things as they are.” It was a refrain among them—that their mom wasn’t stupid or crazy. Whenever the topic came up, Rose or her mom said it. They said it so much, Iris had to wonder if they weren’t all in denial. Well, she wasn’t. Not anymore.

“She’s stupid
and
crazy to let a man treat her like this. And she says
Daddy
is the bad guy!”

“It’s not our call.”

“Well, it sucks.”

With a sigh, Rose changed the subject. “Any word about Nolan?”

Almost three weeks, and no word. “No. I know the club knows what’s going on with him. Daddy gets this weird look when I bring him up. But he won’t tell me. I’m scared it’s really bad.”

“If Daddy knows what’s going on, he’d tell you if it was all that bad. Like, if he’d died. Daddy wouldn’t hold that back.”

“Rose! Don’t even say that.”

“I’m saying he must be alive, or they’d tell you. Just chill. He’s probably on some super-secret spy mission to kill some poor slob. That’s what they do, right?”

“Don’t be a bitch. You know it’s not.” She knew Nolan was doing whatever he was doing outside the club, their father had told her that much, and she had told Rose that much as well. But Rose always assumed the club was lying or at least prevaricating about most things. Like they were perpetrating a massive conspiracy.

“Whatever. Look, it’s late, and Christian’s flight gets in early tomorrow, so I’m signing off. Keep your mouth shut about Mom, Iris. This isn’t Daddy’s business—and it’s not yours, either. You left, I’m here, and Mom wants to be here. So drop it. And Nolan is fine. Just chill. In general. Okay?”

Christian was allowed in Little Rock. He wasn’t allowed to stay in the house while Ray was around, but he could be close and give Rose support. Their mom didn’t like him—he was metal guitarist and looked the part, with tons of piercings and lots of ink—but he didn’t wear a Night Horde patch, and he’d been with Rose for a couple of years, so he was tolerated.

Iris wondered how things would have been different right now if she’d been able to bring Nolan to Little Rock with her. Or if Ray hadn’t knocked their mother down the stairs in the first place.

If wishes were horses, their mother often said, and never finished the sentence. Iris hadn’t even been able to guess at what that meant until she was in high school, and she’d been in college before she’d known the rest:
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride
.

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever. I’ll talk to you soon.” She closed her laptop before Rose could respond.

Irritation layered over her steady state of restless worry and made it difficult for Iris to be still. She got up from her bed, set her laptop on her dresser, and grabbed a pair of sweats off the floor. She was off tomorrow, so she didn’t have to wake up early. She’d go downstairs and watch television or something.

She was halfway down the staircase when her phone began to ring. Uncharacteristically, she hadn’t brought it with her, so she turned and trotted back up the steps. As she hit the landing, it occurred to her how late it was. Nobody called her this late.

Realizing it could be Nolan, she ran down the hallway and careened around the doorway into her room and grabbed her phone.

The number was unfamiliar but the area code was local. Nolan didn’t have his phones, but maybe he had a new one. She answered. “Nolan?! Nolan?!”

Country music blared in her ear.

“Nolan! Is it you?”

“Iris?” No—not Nolan. A girl’s voice. Iris dropped to her bed and put her head on her hand. She felt a thunderclap of disappointment so keen and brutal that it was grief.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“It’s Gia. Gia Lunden?” As if Iris would have known any other Gia.

It was two o’clock in the morning, and Gia was fifteen years old. Why was she somewhere so loud? And why was she trying to whisper?

“What’s wrong, Gia? Are you at Tuck’s?”

“No. I’m at…um…that place in Millview. The biker place?”

Iris sat up straight. “You’re at
Moe’s
? Gia, what are you doing?” Iris had learned that Raider Moe’s had a terrible reputation, especially in Signal Bend. It was a really rough place, and not in the way that Tuck’s got rough. People got hurt at Moe’s. And it was like a shark pit for women. Gia wasn’t a woman yet, but she looked like one—and that made it even more dangerous for her.

“I need help. I can’t call home. My mom and dad will…I can’t call them.”

“What happened? Can you tell me?”

“I snuck out with some friends, but now it’s weird, and I don’t have any way home. I just need a ride. Can you give me a ride?”

“It’s weird how, Gia?” Iris was already getting dressed, finding a sweatshirt to pull over her camisole and slipping her feet into the nearest pair of boots. Not a great look with her grey sweats, but who cared. “Can you get away?”

“I need help. Don’t call Daddy. Or Uncle Show. Please don’t tell anybody.”

Jesus Christ, she was tired of stupid females keeping terrible secrets. “I’m on my way right now. Stay someplace as public as you can. By the bar. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

But Moe’s was like fifteen miles away.

As she left her room, she stopped in the hall and stared at the closed door at the end, where her father was.

She should tell him. It was the right thing to do. But she also knew the way he would overreact if it were
she
in trouble, and she knew that Isaac would go in even hotter. Gia only needed a ride. Maybe she could just drive to Millview, pick her up, get her home, and keep everything calm. Then they two would talk after a good night’s sleep.

With that plan in mind, Iris left her father sleeping and hurried from the house.

~oOo~

Raider Moe’s had once been a barn. It still looked like a barn, but now it was surrounded by a gravel parking lot and had a big, flashy, flashing sign where the hayloft door had once been. As Iris pulled in, her heart drummed an erratic beat against her ribcage. People were drinking and partying around the trucks, and more than a few cabs had steamed windows.

Half the lot was lit with bright dusk-to-dawn lights, but the rest of it was in darkness. Iris searched until she found a spot near a light.

In the pocket of her sweats, on her keychain, was a collapsible baton. It was small but heavy. She knew how to shoot; her father wouldn’t have it any other way. And she had a small pistol of her own. But her father had also taught her a lot about gun safety, and she knew that knowing how to shoot and knowing how to use a gun were two different things. She was terrified, and she wouldn’t be steady enough to use a gun in a place like this. She’d end up disarmed and in deeper trouble. Or she’d accidentally hurt someone innocent. So she had her baton—another gift from her father.

There was a long line of motorcycles near the building, but it seemed odd to Iris. All the bikes were different—cruisers and choppers, sportbikes, touring bikes, bobbers. They were all different colors, their contrasts standing out in sharp relief under the glare of the lights. When the Horde parked, all their bikes were so similar, though they were all different, that the line had a kind of beauty. Even at a rally or somewhere a lot of bikers congregated, Iris had noticed the fluid coherence. This line seemed disorganized and kind of ugly.

The walls thumped with the music coming from within. When Iris put her hands around the door handle, she could feel the vibration.

She went in—and through a metal detector. Couldn’t have used a gun, anyway. Nobody stopped her when she went through it, so her baton must not have made it do whatever it did.

She’d never been here before—the Horde hated the place and warned everybody away from it—but standing just inside, it seemed like a normal bar to her. A big bar stood in the center, square, with two bartenders that she could see. Most of the light in the place was concentrated over the bar. The rest of the lighting was composed of plain metal hanging lamps, except in the back corner, where there was a stage behind chain link and a dance floor.

The chain link suggested it wasn’t the world’s nicest place.

But there was no band now. The music was blaring from a juke or a sound system or something. People were dancing. Some women were dancing like they were on the job.

Mostly, though, people were drinking. A lot of the tables were full, and the atmosphere was rowdy but, as far as she could tell, not hostile. She’d been to frat parties that made more warning bells clang in her head.

She couldn’t see Gia from where she stood—five-foot-three was not the kind of vantage that made scanning crowds easy, unless it was a crowd of preschoolers—so she wended her way to the bar, where she’d told Gia to wait for her.

For the most part, people left her alone. She was wearing an old, lightweight hoodie and sweats tucked into cowboy boots, and her hair was piled on her head in a big clip—and she had no makeup on. She looked like a woman who’d been ready for bed, not ready to party.

But she still got a couple of leering stares. Some guys just leered at anything with boobs.

She wished she’d thought to put on a bra.

At the bar, she took a turn, searching the people sitting and leaning there, as well as the people nearby. No Gia. Right in front of her, somebody left their stool, and Iris took it. She pulled her phone from her sweats pocket and tried Gia. Nothing. That could be really bad—or it could simply mean that it was too damn loud in here.

“What’ll ya have, darlin’?”

The bartender was a big, older guy, with a long, thin, grey ponytail and not much on top. A walrus of a mustache moved around his words. Iris leaned over the bar so he would hear her. “I’m looking for a…my cousin. She called from here for a ride.”