Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (22 page)

Not seeming to have noticed that, Connor stood and took Pilar’s hand. He cast a long look back at his sleeping mother, and then they followed Bart out and down the corridor to the waiting room.

More people were giving her that strange look—not hostile, but wary. It made her neck prickle. Something was wrong, and Pilar began to get the sense that, somehow, all the wrong things prickling her neck and teasing her brain were connected.

Still, Connor didn’t seem to notice. He went right for Sherlock, who’d set up a little computer station in the corner.

“What’ve you got?”

Sherlock motioned him around to see the screen, and Connor kept her hand, so she went, too. Sherlock met her eyes and stuck there for an extra second, like he was evaluating her or trying to tell her something. What the fuck?

“I’ve been combing the security logs and recordings, looking for anything. I think I found something. I stitched some grabs together. First, there’s this. Starting four days ago.”

He tapped the screen and a digital, night vision image showing Nutmeg Ridge Drive and the Elliotts’ front yard came up. A grey pickup drove slowly up, pulled over and stayed there, then drove off. Pilar’s heart picked up an extra beat.

“Three days ago.”

Day, this time. The grey pickup, now in color, was faded red. Odd blossoms of rust covered the side panels, and the hood was oxidized. Pilar began to feel truly sick. Connor turned to her, his brow furrowed and his grey eyes dark. He said nothing.

Sherlock said, “Two days.”

The same truck. Pilar understood the suspicious stares now, and the fragments of worry and wariness she’d been feeling began to come together and find their fit. She lifted her eyes from the screen and sought out Moore, who was standing back. He cocked his head and mouthed,
You okay?

She shook her head, and Moore took a step toward her.

“No truck on this feed last night. But I patched into the camera at the entrance to the development. At eleven-forty-three, there’s this.”

Hugo’s truck, turning into Connor’s parents’ subdivision on the night that their house was burned to the ground and they were almost killed. The night that their whole street had been destroyed and four people
had
been killed. Her brother, recently wearing Assassins colors. Her brother, for whom Connor and the Horde had started a beef with the Assassins.

No, not for him. For her.

Sherlock tapped the screen, and the image froze, showing the front of the truck. A driver and a passenger. Pilar recognized only the driver. Sherlock directed his attention to her when he said, “Good shot of the plates from this angle. I ran ‘em. Hugo Velasquez. Some of us have met Hugo.”

Connor let go of her hand. “Pilar?”

From the corner of her eye, she could sense Moore approaching, and she knew he was getting ready to have her back. But they were surrounded by outlaw bikers, men who were angry and hurt, worried for loved ones. Loved ones her brother had been involved in hurting. Had he? Had he really? Could Hugo have done something as horrific as this?

She kept her eyes on Connor. The man she loved. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? That’s him. Right?”

“Yeah, it’s him. But…Connor, I…” She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to say that Hugo would never do something like this, that he wasn’t that far gone, that he was a fuckup, not a killer. But she didn’t know if that was true. She remember his fevered, fervent apologies, half-incoherent, when she’d found him passed out in the same truck. She’d thought he’d been sorry for joining the Assassins. But maybe he’d been sorry for something he’d known he was about to do.

She reached up to Connor, wanting to touch him, but he knocked her hand away with a feral shout. Then he dragged his own hands over his face. “The fucking
Aztecs
did this? To my parents? My
mother
? This is all because we helped that little asshole. Because we helped you.”

He turned away from her and back to Sherlock. “Get his 20. Then call me.” He shoved past her, through his brothers, and stormed toward the elevators. Several Horde, including Trick and Demon, followed right behind. She ran after him—if he found Hugo, he’d kill him, and Nana couldn’t handle that. Not another funeral. Pilar didn’t think she herself could handle that, either.

They had to be wrong—those images looked bad, but there had to be some other explanation. There
had
to be. Hugo hadn’t fallen so far as this. Not this.

She circumvented the men and came around to get in front of Connor and grab his arm. “Connor, wait!”

“GET OFF ME!” He shoved her hard, knocking her back. She would have landed on the floor, except that Moore was there and caught her. Connor saw them both, Pilar in Moore’s arms, and his face twisted into a nasty, terrifying sneer, and then he and the Horde turned the corner toward the elevators.

Moore set her on her feet. “What the fuck happened? Hugo set that fire?”

“I don’t know. Looks that way.” She turned to her friend. All around them were Horde family, those who hadn’t joined Connor on what she knew was his murderous mission. She dropped her voice. “I have to find him before they do. It’ll kill Nana if they get him.”

There was another question looming in Pilar’s mind, bigger and darker than her grandmother’s pain: Could she love a man who’d killed her brother? The enormity of that question was too much, so she pushed it aside. The answer was not to have to confront the question.

“I’m in. Do you know where he is?”

“I know where to look. Moore, it could be fucked up. He’s inside the Assassins now. I don’t know what I’ll find. You should stay back.”

“I’m. In. Jesus, Cordero, you can’t go alone. I’m in. Let’s go.”

She turned and looked back at Connor’s family. There hadn’t even been any word yet about his father. But Connor was gone. After her brother. The rest of them were watching her, the expressions on their faces ranging from angry to worried to, maybe, sympathetic. But they didn’t matter. They weren’t her family.

Maybe they never would be.

~oOo~

“There’s his truck. Pull over.”

Moore did, but he didn’t kill the engine. He ducked his head and scanned the area. “Where the hell are we?”

“My old block. We used to live in that building.” She pointed at the sad, stucco building that housed six apartments and probably at least thirty people. Her memories of the life she’d lived there were warped and faded. Mostly, when she’d been a child, she’d been happy—that was how she remembered it, anyway. But the understanding of hindsight had pulled childhood recollections into more menacing shapes. Her childhood had been immersed in a manic breed of violence.

Her brother’s, though, had not. They’d moved before he was old enough for many memories to set and last. His childhood had been safer and quieter. This was not his home, their parents had not been his family. Their grandmother was his family. Pilar was his family. They were his home.

If he was here, they had truly failed him.

“Hugo came back home?”

At her friend’s question, Pilar sighed. “No. He doesn’t remember this place. But Raul lived next door. He had his man cave above the bar, but I’d heard he’d kept his old apartment, too. Friend of Nana’s complained about it a couple of times. He uses it like a safe house or something.”

“So your plan is to go up to the angry drug dealer’s safe house door and knock?”

It was just as likely—maybe more—that she’d end up tortured and killed as that she’d pull Hugo clear, but she had no other ideas. “You got a better one? I have to get Hugo out of there. Connor’s gonna kill him—and I’m not exaggerating for effect. I can’t let that happen.”

“I know. But…are you gonna give Connor up? Tell Hugo and whoever they’re coming?”

“No! What—” Pilar sat back. She hadn’t thought about what she’d tell Hugo to get him moving, or how she’d get Raul to let him go. It had to have been Raul who’d ordered the fire; it was Raul Connor should direct his anger toward. Even if Hugo had set it, he’d had no choice.

But he’d had a choice. He’d had lots of choices, lots of chances not to get involved with the Assassins.

Still, she had to save her brother. Not for him, not for her. For her grandmother. She was innocent in all of this, and she would suffer most. And Hugo didn’t deserve to die. He was a fuckup, maybe a lost cause. But not a murderer. He wasn’t. The boy Nana and she had raised was
not a fucking murderer
.

She slammed her fists on the dash of Moore’s truck. “Fuck! I just have to go and figure it out. Connor’s gonna find him any minute. You stay put, though. I don’t want you dragged into this shit.”

“Fuck you. We’re a team. Always been a team. You go, I go. So let’s just go.” He opened his door and stepped onto the street.

Pilar got out, too, and they headed toward one of the many dilapidated buildings on this dilapidated street in the heart of Assassins turf.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Connor rolled the door of the storage locker up. Before he stepped in, Muse grabbed his arm. “Brother, what are we doing?”

He shrugged Muse’s hand away and walked into the locker. “I’m gonna kill that fucker and every fucking Aztec in the state.”

“Okay. But we got no word from Sherlock yet. We don’t know where he is, what we’ll face, nothing. You need to take a beat.”

Connor turned on the older man. “Don’t pull that ‘count beats’ shit with me. I’m not Demon. I’m not losing my shit.” Demon was standing right there, but Connor didn’t give a fuck if he offended anybody.

Muse shook his head. “Yeah, you are.”

He hauled off, but Muse caught his arm in mid-swing. He said no more, just lased his blue eyes at Connor. Finally, Connor relaxed, and Muse let go of his hand.

“I gotta pay this back.” He didn’t give a shit that Hugo was Pilar’s brother. If that waste of oxygen was still drawing breath by the end of this day,
then
Connor would lose his shit.

This was all his own fault, and he had to do what he could to make it right. He’d gotten wrapped up in Pilar. He’d been pleased and flattered that she’d come to him for help, and he’d taken her Hugo problem to his father and gotten the whole club involved. And now his father might be dying. And his mother, who’d already been horribly hurt once because of the life her men led, had been hurt again. All because he was involved with Pilar.

Had been involved with her. No more.

His fault.

Muse was talking, responding to the last thing Connor had said aloud. “No question. But we don’t know yet what we need. Give Sherlock a minute to get the intel.”

He was right. Connor wheeled around and kicked a box. “Fuck!” He looked around at the men who’d come with him: Muse, Demon, Trick, Lakota, and Diaz. They were six men. Enough to wage a battle, if they needed to. But not without some idea what lay ahead. “Okay. We wait.”

They waited maybe ten, fifteen minutes, and then Connor’s phone buzzed. It was Bart. He answered. “Bart—word on my dad?”

He didn’t answer right away, and Connor’s head began to throb with desolate anxiety.

“Bart! Fuck!”

“Sorry.” Bart cleared his throat. “He’s out of surgery and in the ICU. He alive. But it’s not good, Con. You should get back here.”

Connor squeezed his eyes shut and made himself focus and breathe. “I can’t. Not yet. I need to pay this back. You got anything on that?”

“Yeah. We got a 20. 5728 Mission Street. Deep in Aztec turf. It’s a freestanding apartment building. Six units. We can’t put you closer than the building, Connor. But one of those units is rented to a Carlita Hernandez d’Esposito. I’m thinking she’s blood family to Raul. Unit 1B. Be careful, Con. The whole fucking crew could be in that building. Ready for you.”

Connor was counting on it. He wanted to take the whole fucking crew down. “What about the other units?”

“Rented to civilians. You gotta go in easy, brother.”

There was no easy way to go in. It was broad daylight, and he meant to kill them all. “Okay. Thanks, man. How’s my mom?”

“She’s awake. The women are in with her now. She’s worried about you and Hooj.”

That made Connor smile a little. His mom was always looking out for everybody. “Tell her I’ll be back soon as I can. I’m gonna make this right.”

Another pause, and then Bart said. “Okay, brother. Keep me looped in.”

“I will.” Bart was the head of the club now. For now. Until his dad was back on his feet. Only until then.

Connor hung up and shared the news with his brothers.

When he was finished, Trick said, “We can’t go in hot, Con.”

“They burned my parents. My dad might be dying.
My
mom got hurt
. Did you see her? I want them all dead.”

“Brother, I hear you. Now you hear me. If you want to go now, before noon, in an apartment building, then we need to try to do it quiet.”

“Nobody on Mission Street ever called a cop in their lives,” Diaz added. “We don’t gotta go in that quiet.”

Trick turned on him. “It’s more than that. How many people live in that building? You think the Aztecs are going to give a shit if kids get caught in our crossfire?”

“So what’s your plan?”

Lakota stepped up and flipped his dagger in his hand. “If we can get the jump on them, we can do it quiet.”

Connor sat down on a metal chest in the locker and forced himself to think. They were planning a battle in an apartment building. If they could go quietly at all, it would only be at the beginning. They might be able to take down any posted guards. Once inside, though, it would be chaos. No way to avoid it.

Trick had his phone out. “Here’s the street view of the building. Six units. Three floors. So two units each floor. One door into the front of the building. One back door, but there’s a balcony on the back of each unit, with fire escapes.”

Connor took Trick’s phone and studied the images. “We need at least two guys at the back. That leaves us with four going in the front. Do we know how many Aztecs there are?”
Trick added, “And do they have families? Kids? What’s the outside number of people we need to be ready for? And what are we doing with the women and kids?”

Diaz answered that. “They got one still locked up, but if they brought Hugo in, there’ll be seven members. Esposito’s kids are grown—his boy is a member. I don’t know about the others.”

Standing back up, Connor moved to the back of the locker. “Keep sharp out there.” It wouldn’t do to be seen pulling weapons out of a self-storage locker. “We go in with small arms and suppressors. And we suit up.” He heaved a stack of Kevlar vests out of a chest he’d uncovered. “We deal with what we find. We try to keep our bullets where they belong. But I’m not taking the weight for what those shitheads do to their own people. Let’s shut the fuck up and move.”

~oOo~

It was a couple of days before Halloween. The weather was warm and bright, the cloudless kind of day that got boring in Southern California. Kids were in school, and people who had jobs were at them, so the street was quiet. A few cheap, indifferent Halloween decorations sat on porches, were taped to doors and windows. But this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people let their kids trick-or-treat. This was the kind of neighborhood people took their kids away from to trick-or-treat someplace safer, with better candy.

They pulled their bikes up around the corner from Mission Street—not too far for a quick getaway, but far enough that their engines wouldn’t announce their arrival. They were already suited up and armed. Connor gestured a reminder of the plan, and they headed out.

Demon and Muse would cover the back. Connor, Trick, and Diaz would come through the front. Lakota would keep watch, guarding the large front window, in case somebody came through that way.

Connor led the way up the front, tight to the buildings to keep their profile low. About two doors from their target, as he scanned the street with one eye, he pulled up short and gestured for the others to stop.

Trick was right behind him. “What is it?”

He nodded to a late-model GMC truck parked directly in front of the building they were up against. Trick looked, then looked harder. He turned back to Connor, frowning. Then his head swiveled hard back to the truck.

“Fuck me. Is that…?” There was a sticker on the rear passenger window of the extended cab. A Maltese cross.

“Yeah. Fuck.” That was Moore’s truck. If Moore was here, then Pilar was, too. Those two were joined at the goddamn hip.

Diaz leaned forward. “What’s the holdup?”

“Con’s old lady might be in there.”

Connor shook his head. No. Not his old lady. Maybe that was the way they’d been headed—who was he kidding; yes, they’d been headed that way—but he was shutting that shit down. It had never occurred to him that it might be
he
who’d be the one who couldn’t deal, but he couldn’t. Watching that footage, seeing that her brother had fucking
burned his parents’ house down with them in it
, burned their whole neighborhood, and seeing the look in her eyes, the way she’d tried to protect her brother, even after what he’d done, that she had chosen that piece of shit over him—he couldn’t deal with any of it.

And now she was here. To protect her brother. From him.

So he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s move.”

~oOo~

They got to the door of the apartment without incident. An old woman had stepped out into the hall and then, seeing them, had stepped right back in and locked her door, but otherwise, as far as they knew, they hadn’t been seen. Connor had called Muse; he and Demon were in place.

It was go time.

He could hear music and talk beyond the door. He checked the seams around the jamb. It was possible, if you knew what to look for, to make a good guess about how many locks on a door were actually engaged. Connor knew what to look for. This door had three locks, but only one deadbolt appeared to be engaged. With the assumption that a chain guard might also be engaged on the other side, he stepped back and aimed his heavy boot.

The door came in on the first kick; the whole jamb tore away. Connor made quick, instinctual note of the scene: nine men, including Moore and Hugo, and three women, one of whom was Pilar. No kids he could see. Without taking any more time, he fired at the nearest head, a grey-haired Aztec with a scaled wing inked on the side of his face. The man fell dead, and Connor prepared for chaos.

For about thirty seconds, chaos happened. They had caught the Aztecs unawares, and by the time those men had their weapons out, the Horde had already ended three of them.

Then Esposito grabbed Pilar and shoved his gun into her face, the barrel pushing savagely into her mouth, and Connor threw his free arm out to stop his men. “Hold!”

He cared. He shouldn’t—he should let whatever was going to happen to her happen, as long as he got to her brother, but he cared. Hugo had hurt his family, his
parents
, and Pilar was here, had chosen her brother over him. But he couldn’t turn off his heart. He loved her like he’d never loved anyone. Even now. Even here at the scene of her attempt to betray him. He wouldn’t forgive her, but he couldn’t stop loving her. He felt rent in two.

Now, Esposito laughed crazily and wrapped his hand around her throat, still shoving the gun against her lips, and Connor saw that she’d been bound—her hands were tied behind her back. “Hugo,
hermano
, you’re a popular guy.” He looked at Connor. “You here to save him again, too? His sister thinks she can bargain him back out. Or are you looking for his head? He did a good job for me, I gotta say. I’m thinking he’s due for a promotion already.”

Pilar struggled harder, and Esposito squeezed her throat more tightly. She uttered a pained, stilted groan. Unable to stop himself, Connor took a step toward her, and Esposito grinned, sliding one hand from her neck over her shoulder to grab a breast and squeeze.

Pilar’s pain and tension was obvious, but Connor forced himself to keep his focus on her captor, who leered as if he had won something. “Or maybe it’s
her
you’re here for. Maybe you just want this fine piece of ass right here? She’s got her mother’s looks.
Dios mio
, Olivia was somethin’ else. Shame she got caught in the crossfire. I meant to make her mine.”

Hugo and Pilar both reacted to that. Pilar stopped struggling, and Hugo turned and faced Esposito. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Again, Esposito laughed that madman laugh. “You don’t got much upstairs, do ya,
Hughie
?” Again, he directed his attention to Connor. “You boys drop your guns right now.”