Stay Vertical (16 page)

Which he did now. Wiping his face with his forearm, he leaned back on one hand and enjoyed the sight as June sank to a sitting position on the plastic. She panted normally now, as though she’d just swum a mile. She raised her exhausted eyes to give him the most thrashed, hangdog look. Pride swelled in Lytton’s chest when he realized what he’d accomplished. Suddenly making women—in particular June—fall prey to monumental orgasms was his new favorite hobby.

“Jesus wept,” June panted.

That was such an endearing thing to say, Lytton remembered to remove her handcuffs. This one would require quite a bit of aftercare. He had to put his arms around her to rip off the Velcro, and he discovered he felt very affectionate toward her, almost as though he was the one being rushed by the surge of “nice” hormones. “You came like a freight train,” he whispered in her ear.

“I know,” she said weakly. “You’re more fantastic than my wildest dreams, Lytton. I don’t think I’m going to be able to give you up.”

“No one’s asking you to.” Lytton set the cuffs aside and massaged June’s arms. “Spend the night if you want. It’s getting too late to drive back down the mountain.”

“That’s very nice, but I have to go babysit my niece.”

Mentioning the niece reminded Lytton of something. He squeezed her hands, the bones feeling very tiny and birdlike. “I’ve heard that your mom has pancreatic cancer but is very poor. I’d like to help pay for her care.”

June’s eyes went even rounder. She looked utterly adorable with the nipple clamps swaying from the tips of her breasts. “What? Oh my lord, I couldn’t accept that. I barely know you.”

“But you’d accept a skull job from me?” She blushed. “Listen, June, I’ve got the money. If you’re going to be my partner you can accept this from me.”

She looked at him from under her lashes. “Don’t I have to call you Master…Master?”

He laughed and started sliding off the tweezer clamps. “It’s not necessary. Now listen. Go talk to the people of the home where you want to put your mother. Then tell me how much you need. If it’s pancreatic, I’m sorry to say she won’t last much longer. My own mother’s in a care facility so I understand.”

“Madison refused to help pay.”

Lytton was surprised. The two sisters seemed close, from what little he’d seen. “Really? Ford has that much influence over her that she’d send her own mother up the river?”

“It’s not Ford. I’m afraid we never got to the part of asking Ford because I’m sure he would’ve said yes. Madison outright refused. Apparently she hates our mother a lot more than I do.” She sighed sadly. “The old bat didn’t treat any of us very well, but she still doesn’t deserve to languish in squalor.”

“No one does.” Lytton took June’s hands again and looked her square in the eye. “I’ve seen enough of that on the res. So do what I ask, first thing tomorrow. I’ve got to go meet with Tobiah about a job, go call an inspector friend of mine, so I’ve got to go now.” Lytton gave her boob one last caress before she replaced it in the underwire bra cup. He instantly felt a pang of loss. And he barely knew her!

She stood to retrieve her pants. “Oh, I understand completely. I do have a hospice in mind but I believe it costs about seven thousand a month—”

Lytton stood too. Two figures were coming down the path toward the greenhouse. He could tell by the skinny cut of the rust-colored pants and the accompanying white belt that one was Tobiah. The other guy wore a black leather cut, making Lytton tense. “Doesn’t matter. Whichever one you choose is fine with me. Here, here’s your shirt.”

It was too late. June had barely stepped into her pants by the time Iso Weaver came barging down the aisle between the pot plants. “Driving Hawk!” Lytton knew Iso wasn’t terribly fond of him. He seemed to view him as competition of some kind, a threat. “We need to go over a few details of the Ochoa truck job. Well,
hello
.”

As if he hadn’t seen June from far away. As if that hadn’t hastened his journey down the pot plant aisle. Lytton bristled, and tried standing between June and Iso. “That’s fine. Let’s go back up to the house.”

“I tried to keep him up there,” Toby explained feebly, “but he saw June’s car and wanted to—”

“June, is it?” Iso stuck out a paw for her to shake, even though both her hands were tangled up in her mesh shirt, trying to get it on. “You’re Ford Illuminati’s sister-in-law, right?”

“Her eyes are up there,” Lytton barked. Now he had to crowbar himself between the two, Iso was standing so close. “Let’s take it back to the house, buddy.”

June, of course, saw no reason not to be polite to Iso. She yanked her shirt down over her boobs, but Iso didn’t tear his eyes from them. “Yes, I’m Madison’s sister. You know Ford?”

Toby chuckled. “I’ll say he knows Ford. Last time Ford and him were in the same proximity, Ford planted an IED in his warehouse, blew it all to hell.”

“That’s okay,” Iso said greasily. “We needed a new warehouse anyway. So you’re this moron’s new old lady?”

June said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say old lady. We just met. You’re not mad at Ford for blowing up your warehouse?”

“Shit happens. I don’t let it affect my business dealings with him.” Iso tried to take June’s arm, as if to escort her back to the greenhouse door. “So you’re not his old lady? That’s intriguing. We could use a girl like you around—”

“
Enough
.” Gripping Iso’s forearm, Lytton jerked the two apart forcefully. June looked at him with surprise, Iso with annoyance. “We’re
working
together, Iso, not brothers in a club who share everything. June, you got your boots?”

June had sat back down to pull on her boots, and Lytton’s phone was pinging with a call from Saul Goldblum at the health department.
Fuck. Everything happens at once.
He needed to make June his old lady soon, or those carnivorous vultures would swoop in for the kill before he could say “ponytail butt plug.”

“I’ll be right there,” June called out.

Lytton was more than happy to put distance between her and Iso as he shuffled him toward the door. He tried to distract the twisted biker by discussing the upcoming job.

“So obviously I can’t borrow any construction equipment from my brother Ford, but I was thinking we could just go to a safety equipment rental place and get some cones, stop paddles, shit like that. Maybe a roller or two.”

Iso said, “We’ve got a couple of little dump trucks we could drive down the hill to the meeting place. Our brother Tyke will be stationed near Vernon, so when the Staples truck whizzes by he can radio us to be prepared. Now, why don’t you make that little sweetbutt your old lady, Driving Hawk?”

“None of your fucking business, Weaver. Why don’t we get some of those barricades with the flashing lights? It might be getting toward sunset by the time the Staples truck drives past our ambush point.”

“You could have a fake injured person on the side of the road,” suggested Toby. “Have someone waving down the Staples truck for help.”

“This is why we don’t invite you,” said Lytton. “We need the truck to stop, not speed up to ignore an injured person.”

“What’s wrong with that?” whined Toby. “Guy would be an insensitive jerk not to stop for a person whose limb is hanging off.”

“Lots of people go out of their way to ignore people with missing limbs. No, Iso’s plan is more straightforward. Gets the job done.”

“Shit. If you can’t add drama to the scene, what’s the point?”

Lytton rolled his eyes. Drama. Just what they needed more of. “We’ll just stick with our plans, thanks anyway, Toby.”

JUNE

“I
’m sure if Lytton understood Ford’s reasoning for killing Cropper, he’d come around to Ford’s way of thinking.”

Madison and I had just dropped Fidelia off with Ford at the Citadel. It wasn’t hard to convince me to take a detour into the game room where a pool table beckoned. The interview with the Public Works Department wasn’t until next week and the only other possibility in the P & E area for me was a supervisory position for water agency meter readers. That was way below my skill set, and the personnel were being replaced by computers anyway.

So Madison, Turk, and I were shooting a little pool, enjoying the freedom from crying children. We’d already spent hours at a children’s birthday party. Parties for two year olds were incredibly stupid. The kids were probably like “Um, who are these other kids?” Madison claimed Fidelia would feel left out and ostracized if she didn’t go to the party, but do two year olds really feel offended by social gaffes like that? It wasn’t like they were familiar with their own social circle. Seemed to me the parties were mostly for the parents, and I didn’t know any of those women. It was an ordeal.

Every moment I didn’t spend with Lytton was an ordeal, but he had that “truck job” with that Isosceles Weaver guy today. I loved the freedom I felt up at Lytton’s farm, and I couldn’t wait to get back up there. Being with him was a happiness I wanted to last forever.

Maddy leaned on her pool cue. “What makes you think he
doesn’t
understand Ford’s reasoning? Maybe Ford’s reasoning doesn’t matter to him.”

I waited until I’d finished my shot. No good. I had no patience for this sort of nitpicky game. I leaned on my cue stick, too. “Well, maybe because
I
don’t know the reasoning behind it? I’m in the dark, Maddy. Maybe if
I
knew, I could convince Lytton to go easy on his brother.” I hadn’t breathed a word about Lytton’s involvement with The Cutlasses. As Lytton had instructed me, I was to pretend I hadn’t heard a word of any of his business dealings. At the very least, I was consorting with his cannabusiness enemies by hanging with Turk and Madison.

Was it my imagination, or did Turk shy away to the far side of the pool table to take his shot? He clearly wanted none of whatever the answer was. Madison even looked out the window at the red rocks in the distance. “Let’s just say, Cropper wasn’t the most delicate of people. He saw nothing standing in the way of putting his hands where they didn’t belong.”

I didn’t get it at first. “So he was sticking his finger in someone else’s piece of the pie? Isn’t that what bikers do?”

Turk scratched big-time, completely knocking the cue ball off the table. “Fuck!” he cursed, and had to crawl under a cocktail table to retrieve it.

Maddy came closer to me and lowered her voice. “Cropper molested me, June. Not just once, but several times.”

My heart thudded. I’d always seen Cropper as sort of creepy in that caveman sort of way, as though he had played too much without a helmet. I’d seen him strike Ingrid a few times, although I hardly felt protective of her when she’d done the same to us so many times before. I never felt any warm stepdaddy feeling from him, and was glad when he left, even though it meant Ingrid was in the lurch again.

But molesting Maddy? No doubt she didn’t want to dwell on it, and I in no way wanted to force her to relive anything, but of course I was curious. I had to step lightly. “Molested? As in—”

“Grabbed and fondled, yes,” Madison said quickly, taking the cue ball from Turk and setting it on the table.

“You don’t have to talk about this,” Turk said. “Just that June knows Ford had every good reason to do what he did.”

“Oh, I understand completely!” I said brightly, setting my hand on my sister’s shoulder.

Her look was dark. “Do you, really? Did he ever touch you?”

My hand on her shoulder became a dead weight. “Well, no, but I always got creepy feelings from…him…” Madison was right. How could I ever
really
know
what she’d been through unless it had happened to me?

Turk said softly, “She didn’t tell Ford for a long time because she was afraid he’d kill Cropper. Rightfully so,” he added, before going to take a turn at the table that wasn’t his turn.

This was all too heavy for me, and I wanted to change the subject. Luckily, Maddy did it for me.

Suddenly cheerful, she said, “Listen, do you have any of that stuff you give Ingrid? Let’s take it out to that dog’s head rock at the end of that runway before it gets too dark.” Quieter, she leaned in and told me, “Don’t let Ford know we’re smoking Lytton’s stuff.”

Turk added, “That’s where the vortex is supposed to be.”

Pure and Easy was littered with psychic vortexes, columns of purified, concentrated energy that could cleanse your soul. The old airfield the Citadel was situated on was supposed to have several of them, and The Bare Bones were constantly having to deal with hippies toking up right where they wanted to wash their motorcycle or bang some chick. Having lived with some animist African tribes, I could probably fall for that woo-woo crap more gullibly than most people, so I agreed. “After the game.”

More steel-toed boots were clattering down the hall by the time I sank my last ball. Ford was on his cell, being trailed by Ziggy, Faux Pas, and Tuzigoot, who had become the new sergeant-at-arms after the disappearance of Cropper’s scary right-hand man, Riker. There were rumors that Ford had buried Riker as well.

“Man, this is going to blow back on us,” Ford was saying angrily. He stopped suddenly in the doorway to the game room, and Ziggy and Faux Pas nearly ran into him from behind. “That fucker has his own agenda. We need to be united now more than ever, Duji. We’ve got to shut those fucking Cutlasses down.”