Isaac stared steadily at Tommy, waiting. All Horde eyes were on him. Tommy was a good member. He was strong and brave, and he did what was asked of him. He wasn’t what could be called bright, but that worked for him more times than not. Havoc hadn’t been much of a thinker, either. He’d been sharp in a lot of ways, but he’d almost always have chosen action over thought. He’d told Badger once, over shots at Tuck’s, that thinking was for later, when you needed an alibi.
Badger smiled at the memory.
Finally, with one more look at Zeke, Tommy said, “Aye.” And the table took a breath and then tensed again as Isaac’s fiery eyes turned back to Zeke.
“Brother, you got a problem with this vote, any problem at all, you can put that kutte on the table. When the table has spoken, the matter is fuckin’ closed. I will not wait for another malcontent to take me down. I swear that on my own patch.”
Zeke stared back for about ten full seconds—which was a very long time when a whole table was waiting on his answer to a challenge like that. Finally, the old man nodded. “I rode outlaw for a long time. Before your time. Not once did we ever ask a woman do anything but cook our food, suck our dicks, or spread her legs.”
Holy shit. Isaac sat suddenly forward, his one good hand curled into a fist so tight it shook. Badger held his breath. This was the world’s shittiest time for Zeke to find his tongue. Being the strong silent type was so much safer than saying something like that when they were talking about Lilli.
But Zeke held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “But my first club shut down. Got run right over. So maybe our way wasn’t the right way. And I’m man enough to admit that the world moved on while I was playin’ weekend rider. I ain’t got a problem with the vote, boss. I apologize for forcin’ it.”
Isaac nodded, and that was the end of it. Badger could almost hear the collective drop in adrenaline around the table. His voice much easier, Isaac said, “Dom—talk to Lilli when we’re done here.” He took a breath and cleared his throat. “Before we adjourn, we got one more thing. Double A. He’s six months past his minimum, and we haven’t brought him to a vote.
Show interrupted. “He’s young—what is he, twenty-two, twenty-three?”
Double A—born Aaron—had started hanging around the club right after high school. Badger had gotten to know him then and had sponsored his Prospect application. Double A never balked at anything he’d been asked to do—and that remained true as a Prospect. He’d taken on a tough role as sparring partner in the ring, as well as cleanup duty for some of the Horde’s messier lessons. He had a strong stomach and stronger fists. Moreover, his day job was at the fireworks factory off of I-44. He’d learned a few things about explosives there, and had taught himself more. Badger hadn’t expected Double A’s patch vote today, but he was ready to endorse it.
Badger answered Show’s question. “Twenty-three. Three years younger than I am. Older than I was when I patched in.”
But Show obviously had concerns. “Yeah, brother, and you are too fuckin’ young to deal with the shit you’ve had to deal with.”
Though he was surprised by the concern for him Show’s comment revealed, Badger shrugged, the pull in his chest reminding him of the worst of the shit he’d had to deal with. “I won’t argue—I don’t know if you can be old enough for some of our shit. But fact is, he’ll time out in six months, and he won’t be much older then. We need to fill out the table, right?” He turned from Show to Isaac. “Right?”
Isaac cocked his head. “That’s for the club to decide. I say we decide with a patch vote. Any objections?”
There were none. A few minutes later, when Isaac rapped on the table with his un-slung fist, calling the meeting to an end, the Horde had another member.
~oOo~
“Hand me the torque wrench, would ya?”
Nolan passed the tool to Badger. They’d been working on the Sportster a couple of nights a week for a couple of weeks now. A couple of days after the Spring Fest, Nolan had come to him at the B&B, saying that it hurt too much to see the bones of what he and Havoc had not been able to finish together scattered over the worktable in the garage. He wanted to honor him by finishing what they’d started. But Nolan didn’t know enough to do it on his own.
Badger didn’t know bikes the way Havoc had known bikes. Havoc had had a sixth sense or something about this stuff. But Badger was decent, and Nolan, it was clear, had the same kind of sense that Havoc had had—just without the experience or training. They had a good manual, and they were learning as they went. They’d been having a good time. Nolan was right—it was a way to honor Havoc. In fact, sometimes it felt like he was in there with them.
The last couple of times Badger had come over, Adrienne had come with him. She was hanging out with Cory and Loki. They cooked supper while he and Nolan worked in the garage, but Badger thought Adrienne was also trying to get some understanding about the life of the Horde from Cory, who had lost more than anyone else—save, maybe, Show.
Badger didn’t know if Cory was ready to talk, but he trusted that Adrienne, who was naturally empathetic and kind, would not push her too far.
“How’re things going with Len?”
Nolan looked up, shaking hair out of his eyes—his dark hair had a tendency to flop over his face. He had a faint bruise on one cheekbone. “Okay, I guess. But he’s kind of…an asshole.”
Badger laughed. Sometimes he thought he could still feel the ache from his time training in the ring with Len. “Yeah—but that’s good. You don’t want him going easy on you. Somebody who’s trying to hurt you isn’t gonna go easy.”
When Badger had sat down with Isaac, Show, and Len and told them that Nolan was looking to track into the club as quickly as he could, nobody had been surprised. Isaac and Show had then sat down with Cory, though, and she had surprised them—she’d agreed without much hesitation. She knew what Nolan wanted, and she, like her oldest son, knew they had no family but the Horde. She understood his choice.
Badger thought that showed the steel in Cory’s backbone. No matter how she’d folded right after she’d lost Havoc, she was finding her strength again. Maybe finding more than she’d had. That’s what coming out on the other side of Hell did—if it didn’t break you completely, it made you stronger. Like tempered steel. Badger was finding that out for himself, too, maybe.
So Nolan had become a club project of sorts. Len was teaching him to fight. Isaac was continuing his training with guns. Badger was helping him build his bike, and Show was teaching him to ride, using one of the Horde bikes they sometimes loaned out when they were doing an extensive repair or a customization job. Show was also teaching him to drive—the kid hadn’t even had a learner’s permit yet.
As young as he was, there was little question that, if he wanted it, Nolan would, in a few years at the most, be Horde. The first legacy patch since Isaac himself. The only other legacy patch so far in the club’s history.
“Can I ask you something, Badge?”
“Sure, man.” Badger finished with the wrench and leaned over for a screwdriver.
“Why—why are you Horde? Why did you want to be?”
Badger stopped. That was a hell of a question. Two questions, in fact, with different answers, neither of which he was sure he could articulate.
“I don’t know if I know how to say it.”
Nolan just looked at him, waiting.
Badger spoke as he thought it out. “When I was a kid, the Horde was everything to this town. They fixed people’s problems. As much as anybody could. Things got real bad around here. I was just a kid, but even I could see the way things were dying. People losing their homes. Their jobs. Everything. My folks lost their farm—had to sell it off in parcels. Land my great-great-great-great-I don’t know how many greats-grandparents staked. Now my dad earns hourly working somebody else’s land. The club couldn’t save all that—they were hurting, too. But they kept people from starving. They made work for people where they could. They didn’t gi
ve handouts, and people didn’t want charity. But they found them something to do. They found some day work for my dad, before he got the gig he has now. My mom got her job because the Horde sent her over. She’d never had a job before, but they hired her on the spot. Len—when I was twelve, I went to him, looking for work, trying to earn something so my folks didn’t have to worry about me. He put me to work on his place, paying me fifteen bucks an hour. A twelve-year-old kid. After I did whatever work he gave me, he fed me and taught me. I wanted to be him when I grew up. It wasn’t just that, though. The Horde takes care of the town. When the police up and left, they kept order—something we still do now.
“That’s why I wanted to join. Because they were heroes. They took care of people, and people loved them for it. And they were clear about justice. People loved them for that, too. When somebody did wrong, the Horde made sure they paid. When somebody got a lesson, when the Horde collected on a debt, everybody in town knew it was right. No question. Because of the Horde, Signal Bend hung on. We hung together.”
He turned back to Nolan. “I’m Horde because I know that’s who we are. Even when things go wrong. No matter what, that’s who we are. Isaac and Show and Len—they won’t let us down. Not the club or the town. I trust them. All of them. I got wound up in my own shit and forgot that for a while. But as fucked up as things are, I know I can trust my brothers.”
Badger stopped talking and stared off into a distance beyond the walls of the garage, lost in memory. After a minute, he shook it off. “My brother, Jason, started hanging around the club around the time I started working for Len, and he had all kind of stories about how awesome it was. Jason does everything better than me. He’s smarter, better looking, stronger, whatever. He went to college on a baseball scholarship, and now he makes sacks of money as an engineer. He always did everything first and better than me. But when I got my patch? He was jealous. That felt damn good.”
Again, he brought his focus back to the moment, back to Nolan. In explaining it, Badger had found some clarity, some peace for himself. “I’m Horde because there’s no stronger family anywhere. No bond tighter.”
Nolan nodded. “Yeah. That’s what Hav said, too.”
Cory came to the door. “Dinner’s about ready, boys. Come clean up, please.”
They both nodded, and she headed back to the kitchen.
They gathered up the tools and began settling them back in their proper places. As he did so, Badger said, “Len told me that Hav saved me. He kept me going that day, before he died. I owe him my life.” He stopped and looked Nolan straight in the eye. “I got your back, Nolan. I’ll always have your back. That’s true for the whole club, but it goes double for me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“How about this? Would this work?”
Adrienne straightened up in the window at Fosse’s Finds and brushed her hands, then looked over her shoulder at Marcia, who was holding up a big, goldtone clock from the Fifties or Sixties that had radial spokes all around it, making it look somewhat like a sun. “Yeah. I can work with that. And that chest Dora was working on yesterday—she was doing that gold crackle thing. Is that ready?”
“I’ll check.” Marcia turned and went to the workroom in back.
Fosse’s was turning out to be an awesomely fun place to work. They were steadily busy during the weekends, and Adrienne liked talking to people as they shopped. Her first few weeks, things were quiet on weekdays, and that got a little boring, but Dora wasn’t averse to running down to the ice cream shop and bringing back sundaes, or across to the café for coffee, and then sitting around and yakking to kill time. So that was fun, too. Now it was summer, and the weekdays were busier, but they still manage some time to chat.
The mayor owned the shop, and he popped in every other day or so, but his daughter, Dora, did the day-to-day running of things. Mayor Fosse was nice, and probably would have been just fine as a boss. But Dora was fantastic, sweet and funny, with a wry sense of humor that would have been biting if it weren’t always delivered with her bright smile and reassuring wink.
She was an artist herself, though she wouldn’t say so. In the back, she refurbished pieces people brought in on consignment or things she’d bought at auctions and estate sales, and she did beautiful work. Not just basic refinishing, though she did that for people, too. But when she was making something for her stock, she did crackle and decoupage and all kinds of wonderful effects and treatments. She turned people’s broken-down discards into art.
Dora was teaching her the techniques she used. Adrienne thought of it as learning to work in new media. Definitely art. Usable art. She could totally get behind that.
Marcia was a town girl, still in high school, who worked about ten hours a week during the school year. She was sweet and helpful. Now that school was out of the summer, she was around more, and Dora had decided that, among the three of them, they could manage a whole-shop remerchandising. To the constant soundtrack of Dora’s beloved Dixie Chicks, they’d been rearranging and cleaning and polishing for a couple of weeks. Badger and Show had come in after closing for a few nights—together—and built new shelving for them.
Adrienne was happy. She’d found work she liked. It was humble, but that was part of its appeal. She felt like she was doing a lot of the same things she would have been doing if she’d taken an entry-level job at a SoHo gallery, but this felt more worthwhile. Maybe that was nuts.
It didn’t pay much, but she didn’t need much. And if she could maybe get on full time, it would pay enough so that she could move out of the B&B and still save what was left of her mom’s money for something like a down payment on a house someday.
To see Show and Badger come back together was the icing on her Signal Bend cake. She didn’t know what had happened to make Show willing to forgive Badger and accept him again as a brother. When she’d asked, Badger had only shrugged. When she asked Show, he’d winked and kissed the top of her head. Not exactly answers. So something had happened in the club, and it was none of her business. She was going to have to get used to that.
And she was trying. Sometimes she felt like ‘Adrienne Renard, Girl Detective,’ running around town, questioning the old ladies. But after Badger had told her as much as he’d ever told her about what had happened to them in the fall, and what kind of business the Horde got into, she had to get her head straight. That night, he’d had nightmares again and had been desperate with her again. She knew she couldn’t leave him. She wouldn’t.
But she had to reconcile the Badger she knew and loved, the family she knew and loved, with the Horde he’d described. And she had to reconcile all that with who she was—or was becoming. All of that had already been in flux, but she didn’t want to lose herself in the undertow.
Then she’d thought about the women of the Horde. Lilli and Shannon, especially. She knew them well—she looked up to them both. She knew Cory and Tasha less well, but they, too, struck her as admirable women. Women with integrity and strength. They were fully committed to their men and to the Horde, and they were strong and good in their own rights. There was obviously a way to accept the life and not be swallowed up in it. So Adrienne asked.
And they’d told her.
They all had different stories, different takes. Shannon, happy at the thought of Badger and Adrienne settling down together, was expansive and encouraging in her answers; Lilli was direct. Cory was sad but honest. Tasha, who’d grown up in the club, was practical. What it all came down to, Adrienne had decided, was trust. These women trusted their men, and they trusted themselves. They trusted each other. They trusted the club itself. Within that trust, they loved unconditionally and took care of their family. The rest? Just details.
That made sense to Adrienne. It felt like the way family was supposed to be. Unconditional love and support. Sticking together no matter what. The way her own family had once been. Until her father had cast her off for not choosing to live her life in a way of which he approved.
Marcia came b
ack from the workroom. “Dora says she wants one more coat of polyurethane on that chest, but leave a space for it, and she’ll put it up as soon as it’s dry.”
“Okay.” Adrienne turned back to the scene she was setting in the display window. Within a week of working this job, Dora had handed over the styling of the displays to Adrienne. When she’d been wandering around town, before she got this job, she’d liked the messy windows best. Now, though, with this big oriel window as her canvas, she’d changed her mind. She liked having a canvas like this.
It was almost the first official day of summer. To commemorate that, she was doing a sun theme, all gold and white and glittery. The crackle chest, with the sun clock on it, would be the centerpiece, but there was more. Among a host of other gold, yellow, and white pieces, she’d placed a mirrored nightstand in the space, in front of a pretty Andrew Wyeth print in a shimmering gold frame. She’d found a box in the back full of little disco-ball Christmas ornaments, and she’d draped yellow satin in the window and hung the ornaments from the ceiling. The light from the real sun and the reflection from the bright items made Adrienne feel like she was surrounded by warm sunshine.
It made her feel hopeful.
~oOo~
She’d just come back from putting away the ladder and the rest of the leavings from her summer window project when the bell over the door tinkled. Show’s daughters, Rose and Iris, walked in. They’d been in town about a week and would be around for two more. This was the first time that Adrienne had spent much time at all with them. Only once before had their visits coincided—a couple of Christmases ago. But Adrienne had only stayed the weekend for that trip.
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