Shuddering in a crouch on the weedy grass about six or so feet away from them, its tail tucked firmly between its legs, was the skinniest puppy Sage had ever seen. A puppy, not even a full-grown dog; she could see the youth in its sad face.
“Here fella,” Jace, one of Denny’s nastier friends, hunkered down and held out a piece of raw meat. The pup whined and turned in a tight circle. “Come on, baby, I know you want it.”
The pup whined again, and then inched very slowly toward the food. Jace let him take it.
And then he punched him in the face. They all laughed.
The pup yelped in terror and pain and ran away, stopping at the same place to rub his nose while he licked his jowls.
They were taunting that starving baby with meat, then beating it. For fun. It was so desperate for the food that it couldn’t run away. Tears burst from Sage’s eyes.
“YOU ASSHOLES!” She came around the corner and charged right at Jace. He was a lot bigger than she was, but she’d shocked them all. She went so hard at him, with everything she had, that she knocked him all the way off his feet. Landing on him as he fell to the ground, she rolled off and to her feet and began kicking him as hard as she could, as often as she could, wherever her boots landed. Shouting incoherently, he curled up against her assault.
There were three other men in the yard besides Jace, and they were all yelling. The dog was yelping. Somebody grabbed Sage by the ponytail and dragged her away, straight off her feet. She sailed to the ground, landing hard on her tailbone. It was Denny. His face twisted into a red knot of rage, he yelled, “THAT’S IT, YOU FUCKING CUNT!” and landed on her, straddling her. He punched her in the face. Sage’s eyeball seemed to swell right out of its socket, and her vision turned inside out.
Then he wouldn’t stop, and she couldn’t get her hands up or squirm out from under him. He punched her again and again, each fist landing on her face, her ear, her head. The world got watery and dim.
“Denny, no! Please baby, no!” Her mother was there, begging.
That’s it Denny, it’s all over for you now, shithead. You just broke the one and only rule. No touching the daughter.
He stopped and climbed off her. Sage rolled to her side, then to her hands and knees. She had her back to a bunch of asshole men who would happily kill her, but her mom was here now, and she’d be okay. So she stayed on her hands and knees until the world stopped sloshing around and she could see a little. Enough.
When she stood, Jace was standing with the other asshole friends. Through her foggy vision, Sage didn’t think he looked dangerous, at least not just now. He was too shocked and embarrassed. Besides, maybe Denny had done enough damage that he didn’t think he needed to add more.
There was a small sense of satisfaction beating in Sage’s heart. This was the end of Denny, at long last.
But when she found her mom, she had her arms around that son of a bitch. She hadn’t helped Sage to her feet. She wasn’t standing between her and more hurt. She was in Denny’s arms.
“Mom?”
“It’s time for you to go, Sage.”
“What?”
“You don’t need me, baby. You just make trouble here. Go back to your biker.”
Her mother was choosing Denny over her? “You’re throwing me out?”
“You don’t live here anymore already. I need to do what’s right for me.”
“He’s not right for you. This isn’t right.”
“Get the fuck out, you little skank,” Denny sneered. Both his fists were bloody.
“Mommy?”
At least her mother was crying. “Go, Sage. Please don’t make this hard.”
The puppy was still cowering in the yard. He’d moved that same small distance from this commotion and was closer to the gate. “I’m taking the dog.”
“Whatever,” Denny said. “Get the fuck out, or I’ll tune you up some more.”
When her mother didn’t protest the threat, Sage gave up. “I need my stuff.”
“You can come back later for it.” Denny no doubt meant to go through it and take anything of value. Luckily, he’d already taken anything she had of value.
Including her mother.
Too sore and broken for tears, Sage went to pick up the puppy. He howled pitifully and snapped at her, biting her hand, but she managed to pick him up and carry him away.
~oOo~
Sage stood beside the stainless steel table and held the pup as gently as she could while the veterinarian looked him over. He whimpered with every touch, and tried to scramble closer to her, away from the vet. On the short drive over, she’d held him in her lap, and he’d figured out she was a friend in a world with few of them.
“Shhh,” She stroked his fuzzy yellow coat. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise.” His little eyes looked up at her, asking if she really meant it.
The vet lifted his head and checked his eyes and teeth. “Well, he’s got all the typical maladies of a stray. He’s very dehydrated and obviously malnourished. He’s got fleas, and some fat ticks, too. I’m sure he has worms. More worrisome are the serious contusions around his head and chest, and I want to do an x-ray—I think this leg might be broken.”
All those weird sounds she hadn’t been able to make out—each one had been a blow to this little baby, hurt done to him for the depraved amusement of assholes. “Okay. Whatever you can do to make him okay. Is there a way I can make payments or something, though?” If only she hadn’t already given her stupid mother most of her money. “I can’t pay much up front.”
The vet was a youngish woman, maybe in her thirties, with auburn hair pulled into a severe bun, but she seemed a lot nicer than that schoolmarmish hairstyle made her look. She’d been gentle and sweet with the pup, her demeanor warm and calm, and now she turned that full effect on Sage. “We need to talk about you, too, sweetheart.”
Sage hadn’t passed a mirror yet, but her t-shirt was soaked with blood, and she felt it on her face, even after the vet assistant had given her a wet cloth, an ice pack, and a bandage for her nose, which was pretty mangled. Her vision and hearing had both gone wonky, and her head and neck drummed a syncopated beat of pain. Her face didn’t work like it was supposed to. The reactions of literally every person she’d encountered here at the emergency animal clinic told her all she needed to know about what Denny had done to her.
“I’ll be okay. So will he. No more danger. I promise.”
“If that’s true, I’m glad. But I was talking about the danger that already happened.” She leaned in a squinted at Sage’s face. “The swelling is significant, Miss Cleary. There might be a fracture.”
Well, her face did, in fact, feel broken. But Sage had no insurance, and she was too tired to contemplate what, if anything, a veterinarian could do for her. She just wanted to go home.
“I’m okay.”
The vet sighed and tried again. “We can call for help together, and you can wait in my office until somebody comes.”
“No. I don’t need help. We’re not going back there, and I don’t want more trouble.”
“You have a safe place to be? Someone to look after you?”
God, she hated having this conversation. It wasn’t how things were supposed to be. It wasn’t her who got beat up. She wasn’t a victim. Until today.
But she could answer this question with perfect honesty, because she did have a safe place to be. She had the key in her pocket. Becker would look after her when he got home tomorrow. “Yeah, I do. I want to take the pup, too.”
Did Becker like dogs? Would he be okay with this one? What if he didn’t? What if he wasn’t?
Her head hurt too much to worry about that right now.
“I want to keep him here for a couple of days,” the vet said. “We can do the scans and set his leg if it’s broken. I want put him on IV fluids, too, and get rid of his parasites. Just make him feel better all around.”
“I don’t know if I can afford ... how much will that cost?”
“Don�
�t worry about that right now. I work with an organization that provides medical grants to low-income pet parents. I can put the case in for one, and we can work out a payment plan for anything that doesn’t get covered. It’ll be just the cost of the materials and medications. No charge from me.”
She hadn’t cried since that first burst of tears when she’d seen what was happening to the pup, but now her eyes swelled painfully. The tears didn’t fall, though; they just backed up and made her hurt. “Thank you.” She bent and kissed the pup’s dry nose. He licked her lips, and his little tail thumped softly on the table. “Can you tell how old he is?”
“He’s in such bad shape it’s hard to make a good guess, but I think around five or six months. We’ll have a better sense when he’s feeling better.” She stroked the pup’s head and squinted at Sage. “You’re not okay, honey.”
“Yeah, I am. I want him to be okay, too.”
More than anything, she wanted Becker home, and she had another whole day to wait for that. She ached, and she was sad, and scared. But she had a place to be. A safe place. So she’d be okay.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They’d worked with the Bone Wolves MC, relaying Irina’s gun shipments west to California, for barely more than a year before she’d destroyed the whole MC and took over their meth operations. In the Wolves’ place, she’d installed a new chapter of Abrego 13.
Becker had despised the Bone Wolves, a club with a deep, wide river of white pride running straight through it. The Bulls were mostly white, but Ox, their VP at the time, was Chicano, and Caleb was Osage, and both men had been not-so-subtly disrespected. The whole table had been pissed when Irina had named the Wolves as contractors despite the Bulls’ misgivings.
It turned out that she’d wanted them for their meth, and a year or so later, nothing was left of that shitty club but a smudge on the dusty landscape.
The Abregos had had control of this little town for not even a year, and the Volkovs had iced the Becker-led Bulls out for only a few months, but in that short span of time, Kellwood, Texas, never much more than a wide spot in the road, had turned into a wasteland. As they rode down the main drag, the Bulls passed lot after lot with a ‘For Sale’ sign, or a boarded-up house, or a burned-out building, or some combination thereof. Irina Volkov’s new pet gang had created its own personal mini-apocalypse.
Abrego 13 was rooted in El Salvador, rising up from a civil war or revolution or something like that. Apollo knew the details and had explained, but Becker didn’t much care about their origin story. He cared about the risk they presented in the here and now. They’d left their bloody mark all over Central America, up through Mexico and into the southwestern US.
One thing about the Abregos—they made no pretense of being friendly. The meet was just a handoff, with none of the ritual associated with allied clubs. There would be no shared meal, no hospitality, nothing but business, and then the Bulls would get the fuck out of Kellwood.
The Bulls pulled up before a decrepit barn on one of the many abandoned homesteads. Because it was their first run on this new drug line, and because they were splitting off from here in directions north and west both, the whole club, every patch and the prospect, too, were on this run. It was more than logistics that had Becker assigning the work to the whole table. He wanted a significant presence, and he wanted every patch to be equally invested in this work.
As they dismounted, the barn doors opened, and six Abregos strolled out. With Simon and Rad at his sides and the rest of the club grouping behind them, Becker walked forward.
All outlaw crews Becker knew of identified with ink, but the Abregos went about ten steps farther than most—they inked their faces. Enthusiastically. No pretty little spray of flowers for these bastards. The more thoroughly covered an Abrego’s face, the higher in the organization he was. The Abrego on point in Kellwood had a full skull covering his face, including his eyelids, and both cheeks were covered in hashmarks. All the Abregos at least had hashmarks on their cheeks—they wore their kill counts. Every Abrego had a kill count; they wouldn’t even consider a man as a prospect unless he’d killed for them.
And still, Becker considered them an upgrade from the Bone Wolves. He walked up to the skull face, the leader of this crew—whose actual name was Alex Diaz—and waited for him to offer his hand. After a moment of silent squinting, he did, and Becker shook it. “Alex.”
“Becker.” Diaz’s heavy, rolling accent was apparent even in the short syllables of his name. Becker sensed Terry, their bilingual prospect, move a few steps closer, on the periphery but close enough the hear any Spanish that the Abregos might speak.
He didn’t want to fuck around with these creepy bastards, so Becker said, “If you’ve got the cargo set, we’re good to go.”
“There is one thing first.” Diaz stepped back and to the side, and the other Abregos moved as well, leaving a lane between them, as if making way for a king.
A man in a cream-colored suit, his skin a ruddy bronze, his thick black hair slicked back from a pronounced widow’s peak, walked out of the barn, alone, down the row the Abregos had made, like the whole thing had been rehearsed in advance.
Becker recognized the man but couldn’t place him right away. His mind spun and clutched, looking for the answer. He didn’t want to be caught flatfooted when this slick Mexican dick made his way to him.
He had it—Julio Santaveria. An up-and-comer for Irina’s new cartel partner, the Perro Blancos. With Russian help, the Perros had won a cartel war and overtaken a sizeable chunk of the Colombia-Mexico pipeline.
Apollo had done research on all the players in this complicated game they played. The Perros hadn’t been a significant force before Irina threw her weight behind them, and now they were top dogs. For now, anyway—Mexican cartel politics were notoriously vicious and unstable, so who knew how long the Perros’ power would last.
Julio Santaveria was blood kin to the cartel boss, Felipe Santaveria—a bastard son, if Becker recalled correctly—so his time on the road was probably limited. No doubt Daddy would call him into the inner sanctum when he’d made his bones.
But why the fuck was he here, on a meth run? Irina didn’t share the meth business with the cartel. That was purely a made-in-the-USA product, and the Abregos were here on her contract, right? This had nothing to do with the Mexicans. Right?
As Santaveria approached, while Becker’s mind raced through possible answers to his many questions, he took the advantage he had and nodded a greeting, showing calm suspicion. “Julio.”
The man clearly hadn’t expected to be remembered. He offered a predatory smile. “Becker. We meet again. You’ve climbed far in a short time. Ascendency is something we have in common.” His accent was noticeable, but his English was flawless.
“I assume there’s a reason you’re here for a run that doesn’t involve the Perros.”
“I have a proposition for you.” He extended an expensively suited arm, indicating that Becker should walk off to the side of the desiccated yard with him.
Becker turned to Rad. “Hold firm.”
Rad nodded, and he and Simon closed ranks as Becker stepped out of their line. The other Bulls stepped forward, too, all of them at the ready.
Santaveria laughed. “There is no need for such caution. We are all allies, yes?”
“It’s best to be cautious when things don’t go according to plan. You weren’t part of the plan, Julio.” Becker sat on his pounding heart and kept his voice calm and confident. He hoped. Inside, he was thrumming so hard his eyeballs felt loose.
“This is a small thing. I have some product to add to your planned shipment. One crate only, to go north.”
“There was no mention of an extra crate in the Volkov manifest.”
“This is not for the Volkovs. This is something between the Perros and Bulls only, yes?” He held open his jacket and showed a thick—two or three inches think—envelope in the interior pocket. “That is $50,000. For you, to keep or to share howeve
r you like. All for simply adding one box only to your shipment and allowing my client to collect in Nebraska, when you hand off the regular shipment.”
Fifty K was pocket change to Irina, and probably to Santaveria, but it was decent money for the Bulls, especially in their current condition, and especially for literally no extra work.
But Irina Volkov controlled her routes with an iron fist. The runs were planned in granular detail, with contingencies worked out in multiple directions.
Santaveria was asking him to hijack a Volkov run for business that didn’t involve the Russians—which was a crock; it all involved the Russians one way or another—and offering him a payment behind Irina’s back.
Becker had a choice. He could betray Irina Volkov, who wasn’t there and might never know about this deal, or he could refuse the son of a Mexican drug lord while a Salvadoran death gang looked on. Taking Santaveria’s job would help the Bulls right now. But it might hurt them far more if Irina or Alexei got wind of it.
If.
Jesus Christ.
What he desperately needed was someone to talk this through with, and his whole club was right there, not fifteen feet away. But he knew if he walked away from Santaveria now and conferred with his brothers, he’d show weakness he’d never live down.
This was what Delaney meant. This was why he’d always said I.
Fifty thousand dollars. For no work. Just a little mail delivery. If he turned it down, he could put the Bulls in fire before he could warn them. But if he accepted it and Irina found out—
Hold up. The Abregos were contracted with the Volkovs. The Perro Blancos were bankrolled by the Volkovs. Every man standing in this hot-ass, weedy barnyard was working for Irina Fucking Volkov. He’d just thought it—all their business involved her in one way or another.
This was a goddamn loyalty test. That Russian bitch.
Becker wanted to laugh, but he held the urge back, so he could really sell his answer. “Sorry, Julio. It’s a nice offer, but the Bulls are here on a Volkov job. She’s our customer today. We won’t take on extra cargo without her okay.” He was careful to call her a customer, and say won’t rather than can’t.
Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8) Page 21