Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (37 page)

Physically and emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed by the violent swells rocking her life at every turn, lonely and scared, and drunk on mojitos, she broke into tears.

“Everything’s over. We’re over. He wants us to be over. I can’t say how he’s hurt. I can’t say. I can’t say anything. But I’m so scared. I love him and he won’t let me help him. God, Lisa. Everything’s upside down.”

Lisa came around the table, sat next to her, and wrapped her in her arms. “Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay. I’m here. You’ve got me scared, too, but we’ll work it out together.”

Weeping into her friend’s hair, Juliana shook her head. Lisa couldn’t help her work anything out. The life she’d had in which Lisa Jones was her best friend—that life was over.

Now, without Trick, she was simply alone.

Trick sat in the corner of Hoosier and Bibi’s living room, a glass of orange juice—just orange juice—on his knee. He’d been back about two weeks, but he was still not at full strength physically. Apparently, that infection, which he’d been incubating for weeks, had nearly killed him. He still felt weak, and he’d only gained a pound back of the twenty-six he’d lost.

He smoothed his tongue over the implants in the left side of his mouth. They felt odd, unnaturally smooth. But they were better than the odd pain of the hole they’d replaced.

Mentally, he was a fucking wreck. Hence the orange juice: he’d learned quickly that alcohol and his broken brain were a very bad mix. It didn’t make him forget; he didn’t have that kind of luck this time. Instead, it brought down the barriers he was trying to build and let the memories, from the distant past and the recent, loose to run roughshod over his sanity.

So he sat in the corner and drank orange juice and watched a life he couldn’t share.

Scent and noise filled the house to the roof on this Thanksgiving. Bibi and the rest of the club women had turned the kitchen into an arena for some kind of acrobatic cooking event, and the house resounded with their chatter and with the savory aromas of a feast. He could smell the sweet potato casserole and acorn squash that Bibi always made special for him.

The Horde had a lot to be thankful for this year, and the air swelled with good feeling. Hoosier had recovered. His speech was almost normal, and while Trick had been away, Hoosier had gotten off his trike and back onto his chopper. They had a new house and had reclaimed the life that had nearly been destroyed in last year’s fire.

Connor and Pilar were married, and they, too, had bought a house and begun building a foundation for a life together.

Muse and Sid were expecting a baby in early April; they’d just announced at this gathering that they were expecting a boy. After what sounded like a rocky start, everything looked good; mom and son were healthy.

And Trick was home, and the club was clear of heat from DHS. They’d had a rat infestation, but it had been dealt with.

Trick was home—everybody was demonstrably thankful for that.

Except Trick, who was incapable of thanks or relief or ease of any kind.

When he’d first been taken, after a couple of days of solitary stillness, he’d been ‘interrogated’ frequently. At first, there had been legitimate questions: they wanted him to confess to killing Allen Cartwright. They wanted him to roll on the Horde and on La Zorra. She was their chief interest.

He knew how to keep his mouth shut, and the way he did it was to keep his mouth shut. He’d refused to talk at all.

Interrogations got increasingly less about questions and more about force and pain. And then, one day, after one of the times they’d dragged him, hooded and bound, into a truck or a van or something, and driven him several hours, then dragged him into another hellish room, they’d just stopped asking questions at all.

He had no idea how long after they stopped asking questions they’d kept torturing him. Weeks, at least. Centuries, in his mind. Then, when they no longer considered him a valuable asset, things had gotten very bad. There had been a moment then when he’d accepted that only death would free him, that he would spend the rest of his life at the mercy of people who didn’t see him as human—who had already made him less than human.

That was the moment, he thought now, that had broken him. He had accepted that fate, that life, and that acceptance had exploded any chance he’d had to return to the life he had before.

A hand settled on his shoulder from behind, and he jumped enough to jostle his glass and slosh orange juice over his hand and the leg of his jeans. Shaking his hand, he looked over his shoulder and found Hoosier standing there.

“Come talk to me, son.”

The thought of having a heart to heart with his President filled Trick with weariness. Everybody wanted to ‘check in’ with him, every fucking day. It wore him out. So he just stared up at Hoosier, too tired even to answer.

“Now, Trick. Come on.” He turned and walked off, expecting Trick to follow.

Trick did, finishing his orange juice and setting the glass on a nearby table before he stood. Hoosier led him into his office, and when they were both inside, he closed the door.

Hoosier’s office was considerably more modest than Bart’s. The size of a normal bedroom, it had a bay window that looked out over the rolling lawn of their back yard, but otherwise, it was nothing special, furnished only with a plain desk and an ‘executive’-style desk chair, and a couple of matching upholstered armchairs. A large gun safe and a smaller regular safe were the only things that would seem out of place in any middle-class homeowner’s home office.

Hoosier nodded at the armchairs, and they sat.

“I’m worried about you, son. I can see it in your eyes—you haven’t left that place. Your body’s here with us, but your head is still there. You need to come back.”

Trick dropped his eyes and stared at the hardwood floor between his boots. His hand felt sticky from the spilled orange juice.

“Trick, talk to me.”

He shook his head. There would be no talking. Not ever. What he had to say was beyond human understanding.

And then he knew the truth of it. He looked up and met Hoosier’s eyes, shaded by heavy grey brows. “I want out. I need out. This isn’t my life anymore.”

Hoosier eyes flared slightly, but his only other reaction was to lean back in his upholstered chair. Then he nodded—not in agreement, but as if he were considering Trick’s declaration.

“I understand why you might feel that way. I don’t think you’re in a place yet to make big…decisions like this, though, son.”

Trick opened his mouth to argue that point, but Hoosier raised his hand. “You don’t want to talk, so listen instead. You are loved here. This is your family, and as alone as you feel right now, it’s not true. The only thing making you alone is the…wall you’re building yourself.”

“You can’t know what’s in here.” He struck his head with the heel of his hand.

“I said…listen, Trick. There’s nothing about what happened that you can’t share with your brothers. Me, Connor, whoever—we’re here, and we…owe you. Even if love wasn’t enough, we owe you. Think of Demon, son. He tried to keep his shit…locked up, too. We don’t have to…experience what you went through to stand with you.”

Trick looked away, out the big bay window. The kids were playing outside—tag or something like that, running and squealing. It seemed so shockingly
normal
.

“You know…I-I turned in my…kutte once. Went without it for a year.”

Trick turned back to Hoosier; he hadn’t known that.

Hoosier nodded. “Yeah. Beebs was going through a…a…bad time, and the fault was on me and the club, and I walked away from it. But it didn’t leave me. I felt the pull in my gut every…second I was away. And you know—leaving didn’t make what was wrong better. It just took something of me away. And that club wasn’t like us. We are a family. First thing—we’re a family. We’re
your
family, son. Let us help you.”

For the first time since he’d been back, Trick felt like he had something to say. But when he tried, his voice failed him. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Hooj, I think it’s more than what just happened. I think it’s more than Cartwright. I think things have been fraying for me since we went outlaw. I can’t get right with it. Cartwright was just the thing that made it clear to me. I love the club. I would die for any one of you. But I can’t kill for you anymore. I have to stop killing. Where I was—that was hell. I
earned
that. There’s too much death on my soul.” His eyes itched and his vision blurred. “Too fucking much. My whole goddamn life.”

Hoosier reached out and laid a scarred hand over Trick’s. “Then step back, don’t…step out. If you don’t want in on the dark work, then do what Deme did when he was…trying to get Tuck back. Work the shop. Stay straight. But sit at the table. That seat is yours, Trick. We need your heart and…mind more than we need your muscle. And you don’t spend the dark money, anyway. You don’t need it, and we don’t need you to earn it.”

It hadn’t occurred to him that he could stay in and stay out, both, and he wasn’t convinced that he could. “It’s not like Deme. It’s not temporary. I can’t go back. Never. I can’t…I just can’t.”

“That’s your call. You ever…change your mind, there’s room for you in that work, too. But either way, you stay in. Make your pretty bikes. I’ll hand over…management of the shop to you—bump your take up a bit. And you sit at the table and…y-you give us your insight, like always. But you don’t…pick up a weapon unless you want to do it. And your family is ours—protected, no matter what.”

“I don’t have a family.”

“I know that’s not true. I got to know your…lady and her girl while you were…away. You have a family. Don’t stand outside, son. There’s no relief out there.”

Trick’s head hurt, almost as much as his heart did. The sliver of an idea stabbed at him, dug deep and made him bleed: he might not have lost everything, and if hadn’t, then he still had it all to lose.

He turned away from Hoosier, back to the bay window. “I don’t know, Hooj.”

Hoosier gripped his hand. A lot of strength flowed through that old hunk of scarred skin. “Well, I do. I’m not…losing you, son. No…fucking way.”

Trick turned back and stared at Hoosier’s hand—the scars from flesh melted by fire; the old ink on his wrist, blurred and faded into a kind of blue; the dark spots of years in the sun; the rough knuckles beginning to swell from age and wear. It was a wise hand, a father’s hand. And it was strong.

“Okay,” Trick whispered. “Okay.”

~oOo~

He had one more thing to do as an outlaw, and he did it the week after Thanksgiving, early in December.

La Zorra wanted to see him again. He owed her his freedom. So he was riding south with Hoosier, Bart, and Connor.

He’d decided he’d give her what she wanted. He owed her, and, anyway, it didn’t matter.

On his back he still wore a kutte, and he’d committed to staying in the club, but there had been no miraculous recovery of his sense of family and belonging, no end to the brutal torment of his nightmares, no return of his strength of body, mind, or spirit.

He’d sat at his station in the shop a couple of times, but he wasn’t able to work, not on a build. He’d occupied his time with repair jobs. The rest of his time he spent in the clubhouse, usually alone in his room, reading the few books he’d tossed in his pack, because the girls had apparently decided to take him on as a project. They fussed over him constantly, offering every kind of comfort, but he wasn’t interested and couldn’t tolerate their attentions. He wanted only one woman, but a life with her was impossible.

Connor had told him that Juliana had stopped calling to check on him; that, he thought, was for the best. She needed to make a better life for Lucie than he could give them. They both needed to find someone better to fill their lives. Someone whole.

So whatever Dora Vega wanted didn’t matter.

~oOo~

They met in one of her favorite hotels, on the San Diego coast. She’d greeted them all warmly, welcomed them to partake of a gourmet spread, and then they’d sat at discussed business.

Trick held himself apart from that, listening but not speaking. He heard that she was still buying guns and ammunition, and that she’d placed an order for bigger ordnance while he was away. To him, it seemed she was arming herself for a real war, but she’d been buying weapons for more than a year, and so far there had been no large-scale violence in Mexico—or in the US, for that matter, not related to her empire.

She was also increasing her product delivery and had arranged for her associates at the different destination points to move the greater quantities. Trick wondered where the product was coming from; to the extent he knew, she’d have had to strip her Central and South American growers of everything to move the weights she wanted moved. That, to him, was her first poor business move. Raping the land of all it had to give was short-sighted and risky. And she controlled so much territory that wearing out all those crops could cripple the whole business. It didn’t make sense.

But he kept his mouth shut. He’d offer his perspective in the Keep, if he were asked. Otherwise, it didn’t—couldn’t—matter. That life was gone. Now it was up to him to build a new one.

After the business meeting finished, Dora sat back. Usually, she drank gin and tonics, but today she was sipping martinis. Gin was definitely her libation of choice. She tipped the martini glass up and finished her latest drink and then pulled the spear of olives from the empty glass.