Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (26 page)

I was flying high on dopamine, the feel good chemical. But nothing could wreck my mood as I went shopping for four very excellent T-bone steaks. Perhaps I couldn’t surprise Gideon by doing a strip tease through the kitchen doorway, but I could at least have a good dinner waiting for him, even if it was cold by the time he returned.

It was probably around four in the afternoon when a knock sounded on my front door. Vonda had stayed after school to play basketball with her new friends and I was waiting for the call to go pick her up. Kimball had taken her kids downtown to rent a movie from a Red Box, a thrill they’d never known. I’ll never forget, I was reading a slim volume of Lawrence Ferlinghetti poetry. Gideon had trained me to look through the little peephole when someone was at the door, and that’s what I did.

It was just some delivery guy. I could see his truck behind him, a pickup with one of those slap-on magnetic signs saying he was with a florist. He even had a large bunch of flowers in his hand, so who was I to argue? I mean, who would be skeptical of that? No one.

“Flowers!” I cried, holding out my hands for them. “I assume these are from Mr. Gideon Fortunati?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the delivery guy, who was starting to look awfully familiar. Had I ever stopped in to his flower store before? “Courtesy of Mr. Gideon Fortunati.”

As I accepted the bunch of flowers from him, he lunged at my stomach with his other hand. A loud, sharp crackling like a live wire flailing on the ground filled my ears. A strange, unfamiliar but all-encompassing pain wracked my body. He pressed something against me that sent out electrical shocks so strong they zapped my brain, and I fell on the ground like a twitching epileptic.

My brain felt scrambled—I was no longer able to think in a linear fashion. I’m pretty sure the fake flower delivery guy stunned me with his Taser again, and again, maybe when I showed signs of coming to life. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of his king cab pickup truck, my hands bound behind my back with something like a zip tie.

“You’re taking me to Allred,” I yelled. I sounded drunk, though I’d never been drunk in my life.

“Sure as shooting.” He sounded terribly cheerful for a guy who had just kidnapped and tased a woman.

“You won’t get away with this.” I didn’t realize until later that I sounded like bad movie dialogue.

“Oh, yes, we will.”

“Who are you? I know you.”

“You don’t remember me? I’m Monte Brough. The Prophet sent me back from Texas just to take care of you.”

Monte Brough. Monte Brough.
The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it, with different hemispheres of my brain wrangling for control. “So there really
is
a Texas compound?”

“Oh, there’s a Texas compound all right. Why’d you doubt it?” Monte Brough adjusted his rearview mirror so he could look at me. “The Church of Good Fortune is twice as big in Texas. I think he aims to send you back with me.”

GIDEON

T
he sit-down with
Papa Ewey and my brothers went as well as could be expected.

It was a sober meeting. I sat next to my man Yosemite Sam. We hadn’t even brought to the table the issue of him and Sledgehammer coming with me to form the new chapter. The main agenda item wasn’t even the new chapter. It was the disappearance of Tim Breakiron.

Papa Ewey bracketed his hands on the table. “I’ve already discussed this in full with Gideon here. I wanted you all to hear it from his own mouth. You all know I sent Breakiron up north with Gideon last month as penance for the error he made in dealing with a member of the Bent Zealots.”

Men nodded and murmured. “Yeah.” “Fucking rape, man.” “Sort of twisted.”

Papa Ewey went on. “And I sent Gideon with him as penance for getting too handsy with my old lady.”

The mood in the chapel instantly lifted. Men chuckled and said shit like, “Who wouldn’t?” “She’s a hot mama,” and “Can you blame him?”

“In the interim, Gideon has made a good name for himself up there in Utah, establishing solid connections, getting in good with the fundies that we need to funnel our iron. Breakiron wasn’t in on any of this, because the main polyg only wanted to deal with Gideon. He even managed to get full title to a productive working mine. Don’t ask me how. But I stand behind that sort of tactic, whatever it was. Now we’re all wondering what happened to Breakiron. Seems he went a little off his rocker when he heard I wanted Gideon to establish a new chapter up there.”

“I had to shoot him in self-defense,” I said to a table full of mean, nasty, lowdown bikers. My brothers. Standing, I lifted my shirt to show them the bullet wound where part of my liver had been removed. “He busted in in the middle of an iron transfer on fundy property, waving a piece around. He started to shoot a woman I’m in love with, and I happened to get in the way. So I shot him.”

I figured it would be simpler this way. Clean and direct, to the point, like my bullet wound. Most men looked to Papa Ewey for guidance now. I figured that. They wanted to know his reaction before letting me know theirs. Yosemite Sam was the only one nodding and murmuring on my behalf. That was because I’d already told him about Breakiron’s demise.

Papa Ewey said, “While of course I don’t approve of brothers burying brothers, it appears Gideon acted as any man would. His gunshot wound is evidence. And we’ve all known Breakiron has been capable of some loose cannon type of behavior.”

Now that it appeared Papa Ewey would stand behind me, men nodded and looked at each other. “Yeah.” “Damn straight.” Wishbone even said, “Remember that Mr. Magoo murder in Laughlin? Breakiron did that for the fun of it. I was there. Mr. Magoo was just coming out of a Target with a bag of M&Ms and a cheese grater. Breakiron just popped him in the head for the hell of it.”

“How’d you know he had a cheese grater?” someone asked.

Wishbone said, “Because Breakiron took his bag. He was pissed there was only a cheese grater. But he ate the M&Ms.”

Those details seemed to lend color and credence to Wishbone’s story. Anything that backed up my actions was fine with me.

Papa Ewey wanted to know, “Who’s this gash you’re in love with?”

“No gash, Papa. My old lady. I busted her out of that joint. Her and her daughter are living with me now, along with my Prospect. We’re busting at the seams in that house. I’d like to add to the agenda a discussion of using funds to purchase another house that can be used for money laundering as well as saving other poor innocent women and girls who are being forced to marry dirty old men at an alarming rate. I can contribute my own funds from the sale of my house here in Bullhead.”

Papa Ewey nodded. “We can add that to the agenda for next chapel, but a few of us have to go to the Lions Club now.” We were huge Lions Club supporters. They let us use their hall for larger functions our clubhouse couldn’t handle, and in return, we offered protection. I wanted to set up similar scenarios in Avalanche. “Where’s Sledgehammer going to go when you sell your house?”

“That’ll be part of next chapel’s agenda. I aim to take Sledgehammer and Yosemite Sam here with me, if you approve.”

Papa Ewey didn’t seem surprised. He even offered one of his current Prospects, but I said I was plumb full up on those. The meeting adjourned and an enormous load was lifted from my shoulders. Everyone seemed to agree that Breakiron wasn’t the sort of spokesman we wanted for our club. I’d been dreading explaining what happened to him for so long. Now I had to thrash it back to Avalanche to be with my old lady. Papa even gave me a
PROPERTY OF
patch to give Mahalia, but I thought it was too soon for that. I took the patch, but wondered when I’d give it to her. She might never be ready to be anyone’s property after what she’d been through.

Yosemite Sam wanted to come back with me immediately, but I told him to stay. I didn’t really have any room for him yet, what with being chock full of Morbots and other brothers. I did give him a key to my house and ask if he’d contact a Bullhead City realtor we knew who owed us a favor, and walk him through my house. I didn’t have the fucking time to put my own house on the market.

I don’t remember when exactly I started feeling uneasy as I drove back to Avalanche. I started riding faster and faster once I passed St. George, risking getting a Fast Riding Award and getting my first ticket in the state of Utah. Dingo rode faster to keep up with me, too. Contrary to popular belief, outlaw bikers don’t haul ass down the highways, tearing it up. In fact, we want to stay within the law even more than regular riding clubs, to avoid unwanted scrutiny. But that day, I just let worries take control.

I was about out of my mind by the time I thrashed it past the High Dive. Dingo was probably wondering what news I’d received to make me drive that way. Seeing Mahalia’s truck in my driveway didn’t calm me one shred. Harleys belonging to Sledgehammer and Dust Bunny were both there. As I parked, I checked my phone. No calls or texts, so logically nothing was wrong. I still felt uneasy. A few long-stemmed dyed carnations were scattered on the stoop. They seemed a strange symbol for something terrible.

I took the front steps two at a time. Sledgehammer met me halfway down the inner foyer stairs, hand held out in a calming gesture.

“Now, we don’t know for sure, but—”

“Where’s Mahalia?” I barked, shoving on past him.

Dust Bunny stood in a group with Kimball, Vonda, and the other kids. I made a beeline for Vonda. She’d been crying, and ran into my arms.

“What the fuck!” I shouted. “What happened?”

“Mom never came to get me at school,” Vonda sobbed, “so I had to wait for Dust Bunny to get off work at the mine.”

“Oh, hell…” I knew it was over then. Mahalia had been taken by those fucking polygs. And how would I find out where?

Dust Bunny picked up the story. “When we got back here, the door was wide open—”

“They didn’t even bother covering it up!” declared Sledgehammer.

“—and those flowers were on the ground. We figured they lured her to open the door by posing as a flower delivery guy—”

“—and she’d open it, thinking they were from you—” choked out Vonda.

“—and they, well, took her.” Dust Bunny finished on a pathetic, weak note.

Sledgehammer literally stepped in, looking wider than he was tall. He was puffed with anger and frustration, I could tell. “I rode all over hell looking for a fucking flower delivery truck. We didn’t want to call you, to interrupt your sit-down at the mother club table.”

Dust Bunny added, “And why bug you when you’re way down there?”

I guessed they’d done the right thing. Hell, I was
there now
, and I
still
couldn’t do a damned thing about it. Sledgehammer had done what I would have probably done. All to no avail.

I handed Vonda over to Dingo—she liked and seemed to trust him. As I dialed my cell, I stomped down the steps to look at the offending flowers. I wanted to fucking stamp on them, but they might be our only evidence, for whatever good that was.

“Carradine. This is Gideon Fortunati.”

Carradine sounded extremely happy to hear from me. “Fortunati! Hey, how long did it take you to get out of Black Rock City? Took me about four frigging hours—”

“Yeah, there’s been a kidnapping. I just got home from Bullhead City and Mahalia’s been taken by the fundies.” I told him the basic story. It was only a bare bones story with not much meat, not much to go on. But I knew what I wanted Carradine to do. “Look. Make your raid now. I know you said the wheels of justice turn slowly. But I also know you’ve been planning this raid for weeks so you must have some of the wheels in motion. If you don’t fucking do it, I will.”

“It’s not that simple, Fortunati. Most of these guys will be coming from Salt Lake. I understand your need to have this take place right away. You want your woman back. But we need to work with protocol and within the existing parameters—”

“Carradine, I know you’ve been working on this for awhile. Don’t tell me you can’t at least get a few guys together and go arrest that fucking multiple-wife-raping son of a bitch. You can get him on bigamy if nothing else.”

“Yes, but we want all our ducks in a row. Wouldn’t you rather have him charged with fraud, money laundering, and child sexual assault?”

“Go into the coffee shop just like Vonda told you,” I roared, near my breaking point. “If you bring undercover vehicles and not those giant black SUVs with the letters ‘SWAT’ blaring from the doors and roofs, if you just manage to dial it back a bit and go low-key, you can get Chiles today, you can get him tomorrow, I don’t fucking care, but I want my fucking old lady back!”

I should’ve known better than to rely on some fucking fed. At the very least I figured Carradine could create a giant diversion while I went searching for Mahalia. I didn’t care—I’d hold a piece to a Morbot’s head to get my intel. Whatever the fuck it took.

Carradine sounded like he was getting irritated with me. “We already
have
a low-key raid in place, Fortunati. And I appreciate all your information about the bookmaking op and all. But we want to fucking do it right. Right now I could muster two, maybe three other guys at the drop of a hat. The team is in Salt Lake—”