Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (3 page)

My mouth watered.

That
had to be Gideon Fortunati, not the brutal, dumb beanie guy. Had to. Just
had
to.

Oh, how I wanted that to be Gideon Fortunati, with his shock of reddish auburn hair, his clean-shaven, sensual face. He had long arms, too, not those stunted-looking appendages of Mr. Beanie and other Cro-Magnon men of my community. His features were shapely and well-modeled, even when shouting at his friend.

Wetness bloomed between my thighs. My heart sped up as my yearning for this man increased.

Their language had never been heard in this saintly valley, either.

“You weren’t even invited to this fucking meeting, Breakiron! Back the fuck off!”

Breakiron poked Gideon in the chest. “This is
my
run, doofus! You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.
I
should be Reed Smoot, not you.”

Which was odd, because Reed Smoot was a Cornucopia member who had vanished without a word about six months earlier. How did they know Reed?

Gideon bellowed, “You were told not to come!” By this time, other brethren had gathered around the arguing men. Men resembling blue-collar workers with shirts buttoned to the neck, men with hair cut as though a bowl had been placed over their heads. I still hadn’t gotten used to Cornucopia’s sense of style. “You blazed your way through the fucking gate without anyone inviting you.”

Kimball and I actually gasped loudly when Gideon grabbed the finger Breakiron was poking him with and wrenched it. I thought I could hear the crack of the bones—but maybe that was Breakiron’s ungodly howl. His face screwed up, his legs collapsed under him as Gideon wrenched his finger. Gideon’s jaw jutted, fire in his eyes. I’d never seen anything more manly in my life.

I was witnessing some primal, bestial scene. Gideon was asserting his authority over Breakiron, and the brethren gathered around seemed to know it. No one made a move to break it up. When Gideon kneed the screaming ape-man in the groin, it was all over. Breakiron fell to his knees, his free hand flailing, as though unsure whether to bash Gideon or protect his genitals.

By that time, Allred and Parley were on the scene, Parley with a gun drawn. At a barely perceptible nod from Allred, men lunged forward to snatch Breakiron by the arms and haul him off. I’d seen these motions of Allred’s, noticeable only by remote satellite and dogs. The men who surrounded him, though, were attuned to these signals, and as they hauled the biker back to his Harley, Allred shook Gideon’s hand.

Kimball and I looked at each other with shining eyes.

Then we remembered the empañadas.

She yanked the oven open, and we both grabbed a cookie sheet of little pies from the counter.

“What do you think?” I asked. “I was right, wasn’t I? He’s handsomer than Granite Mountain.”

Kimball shoved her sheet in. “Prettier than Temple Square. But just like that Grillo fellow, he’s going to leave tonight and never be seen again.”

Kimball saying “never be seen again” reminded me of something. “Did you hear him mention Reed Smoot?” We’d often discussed how Reed had simply vanished. Most people say they didn’t know what had happened to him, and a few said he went to our compound in Texas. But Reed had been a high priest with four wives, one of whom had since been sealed to Orson Ream. It was all very strange. If he had just gone to Texas, why hadn’t his wives gone with him?

“Yes, I did! He said he should be Reed Smoot. Why are they pretending to be Reed? Do they have something to do with how he vanished? What are you doing?”

“Serving them coffee to go with their whiskey.” I was going to make my serving tray extra nice. I was even going to put a sprig of violet alfalfa into a vase with a contrasting spray of mulberry paintbrush. I liked wildflowers. When I was allowed outside the gates on Relief Society business, I liked to gather them.

“You sure are dolling up that tray. Using the outside sugar? How do we know these rough bikers don’t have something to do with Reed? After what happened to Field, how can you be serving him expensive sugar?”

My first husband Field had also been “disappeared,” but I thought I had more of an idea about what had happened to him, due to OSHA ordering an investigation, as it happened on the job. “Well, at first I wanted to see Gideon because I wanted to stand next to a virile man who wasn’t related to Joseph Smith. Now, like you said, I want to find out if he has something to do with Reed.”

“
Mahalia
! You’re getting in over your head.”

Oh, how many times had I heard
that
one? Yet I was still President of the Relief Society and was still allowed to personally serve Allred, for better or worse. I must be doing something right.

I knew this was a selfish and conceited thought. I scurried through the dining room and into Allred’s office before Kimball could berate me some more. If the truth was known, I doubted that Gideon Fortunati had anything to do with the disappearance of Reed Smoot. For a year or so, there had been an odd rash of people coming into Allred’s office using the names of men who had “gone away to Texas.” The truth, at least about the names, was probably not so nefarious.

Oh my sin
, that man was handsomer than a pat of butter melting on a stack of pancakes. Just being in the same room as Gideon made my pulse throb in my wrists as I set the tray down on a sideboard. It wasn’t my imagination that his eyes kept flickering from Allred to me. Gideon Fortunati was even more impressive close-up. Observing him in profile like that as he sat in an armchair with hands gripping each armrest, I admired his classical features. So what if he was clad in black leather chaps snapped tightly around each thigh? So what if I strained to see the picture displayed in a biomechanical tattoo that laced around his bare bicep? Biceps alone were a tantalizing sight in Cornucopia, but this man’s masculinity sucked the potency from each man from here to Salt Lake.

He was glancing at me. I know he was.

“I must say, I’m impressed with how you handled that, ah, that associate of yours.” It was rare that Allred praised anyone. He was flattering him for some self-serving reason, I instantly knew.

“I have to apologize for Breakiron,” said Gideon, with a slight hint of Arizona drawl. “He just blazed in through the gate when I was talking to your man.”

“Yes, my man told me something like that. You handled him like someone who’s accustomed to being in a…
security
position before.”

Gideon looked confused. “Security? Not really. Back home, I run a rock quarry. A small one, not like the ones I’ve seen out here. Aggregate, riprap, gravel for building materials around Bullhead City. Nothing exciting.”

“Yet you’ve been sent here.”

Gideon obviously had no forewarning of Allred’s peculiar form of drawing information from someone. “Yes, I’ve been sent here.”

“And no one’s minding the store?”

“Excuse me?”

“No one’s running your quarry.”

“Oh, I suppose my partner’s doing an all right job. Now, about this military iron. We’ve got some Grade A Russian ladies coming into the Port of San Diego from Armenia.”

It was Parley Pipkin who held up his hand. “Please. Wait until Sister Mahalia has finished serving.”

Shiz
! Since when did they censor any of their boring blather in front of me? But Allred appeared to be agreeing with Parley.

“Right,” he said chummily. “We wouldn’t want to shock the lady’s sensitive ears.”

Sensitive, my bottom!
But I had no choice other than to smile pleasantly while handing Gideon his coffee cup on a saucer.

“Sugar or cream?” It was almost embarrassing, how thrilled I was to be talking directly to this man. I was even justified in bending over and placing my hands on my knees as I waited for his response. What a sad world, where this was the apex of my entire month. And, quite possibly, year.

He almost looked abashed as he lowered his gaze from mine. “Black is fine.”

Wow
. Was I the only one who had caught the double entendre? Or did Gideon not notice I was part black? I was a crazy mix of things from Mexican to black to Navajo. Apparently back in the mid-1800s when Mormonism was in its infancy, wives had been at a premium, so some had chosen whoever was at hand to fulfill their quota to attain the highest degree of salvation. I was
zbini
, the Navajo word for black, among many other things. I was such a misbegotten mish-mash of ethnicities, I was continually surprised that Allred pursued me for his wife. I wasn’t even that beautiful, with my frizzy hair that continually had to be tamed, my wide bottom. But then, Allred had many arcane desires, theories, and viewpoints.

I was chagrined he didn’t want me to do anything else for him, as now I was forced to move back to the sideboard while the men sat in uncomfortable silence.

Gideon broke it. “So your daughter here can’t keep a secret? I doubt she’d blab the business dealings of her dad.”

A giggle bubbled out of my lips. I could see Gideon in the large gilt mirror above the sideboard.

He chuckled, too. “What’s so funny? She seems perfectly discreet.”

I was way past flattered that he would consider me Allred’s daughter. And “discreet,” too! No one had flattered me like that in years. In Gideon, there were untold mysteries yet to be revealed. I wanted to know ever so much more about this man!

Parley said, “She’s not The Prophet’s daughter. Sister Mahalia is his wife.”

Oh, my squash.
Now that the cat was out of the bag, he’d
never
talk to me again. But what was I thinking, anyway? So what if I somehow managed to finagle a moment or two alone with this rugged, tough biker? What would that accomplish? I was sealed to The Prophet, and there was no going back on that one.

Allred addressed me now, so I turned and folded my hands in front of my apron. “Mahalia is a newcomer to Cornucopia, but she’s already been made the President of the Relief Society for her skill with bookkeeping.”

I felt I was being allowed to speak. “I was a CPA on the outside.”

Allred continued. “Mahalia is my spiritual wife in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. I know some find it strange, but that’s of no concern to us.”

“No concern, indeed,” echoed Parley.

Allred said, “These practices were wrongly abandoned by the mainstream. I’m a Brighamite to the core. Plural marriage is a requirement for the exaltation that’ll allow us to live as gods and goddesses in the afterlife.”

I could tell Gideon was doing his best to hold in a guffaw. I sympathized with him. I didn’t believe I’d ever become a goddess, either. So much had been ripped from me in my thirty years. I was pragmatic. What had I seen with my own two eyes that would lead me to believe such scrud? Now I was ashamed that Gideon Fortunati knew I was sealed to a crusty, ridiculous old man such as Allred, as though I’d had any choice. The best years of my life had already passed me by. I had only decades of sameness to look forward to.

Gideon said, “I might not agree with your religious beliefs. But I can tell you that you’re one lucky man to have such a goddess for a wife. I’m not married. Never been able to find a woman I’d want by my side for the rest of eternity.”

“I’m glad you believe in eternity, at least.” I could tell by Allred’s grin that he’d continue to do business with Gideon. He turned his head toward me now. “We are done with you, wife.”

“Until you get them little beef pastries,” said Parley.

So I was forced to leave. I shushed Kimball out of the kitchen so I could serve the empañadas when they were done, but apparently Allred had finished his business with Gideon by then and the office was empty. I raced downstairs while a thousand pretexts for doing so ran through my mind.
I need to know about the dinner menu. I need your approval on a donation to the General Missionary Fund. The dog needs to go to the vet.

Something. Anything. On the front landing, my head whipped from side to side. I just saw the usual groups of women resembling frontier pioneers and men who seemed on their way to a sock hop thrown by, well, fundamentalists.

Allred and Parley were gone, but Gideon’s bike was still there. Without thought to what my excuse would be if caught, I strode over to it. My head turned unbidden when I heard his voice around a corner.

He was talking on a cell phone, leaning against the building with his back to me. It was evident by the singsong, matter-of-fact tone that he was leaving a message for someone.

“I know I’m not supposed to be doing this, Chelsea, but I miss you like hell. It’s only been three days since I’ve seen you and I can’t get you out of my mind. Listen, I’ve still got that burner number I gave you. Papa Ewey can’t figure out you’re calling me if you call this number.” He sighed deeply, his shoulders shuddering. I had to strain to hear what he said next. “I miss you, Chelsea. I love you.” Slowly, with a regretful shaking hand, Gideon punched the
END
button.

I dashed out of there so fast he probably felt the wind of my skirts.

GIDEON

S
uddenly Avalanche, Utah
was a heaven on earth, chock full of potential. When you inhaled, you had the feeling you could do anything, cradled by limitless vistas. You felt like you owned the land. God had given it to you.