“Fuck, Blue. Jesus fuck. No, I don’t know. What do you mean she’s gone?
He didn’t know. But he understood. What Margot and Blue had done to that girl—he’d tried to tell Blue, and Bibi had tried to tell Margot, what folly it was to force an abortion on her, but neither of them could see past their own panic and rage.
“I mean she’s fuckin’ gone! She packed up a bag and shoved pillows and stuffed animals under her covers and went out the goddamn window. She didn’t even take her fuckin’ cat! Jesus CHRIST, what did we do? JESUS CHRIST!” Blue folded over, tearing at his hair, and simply yelled. The sound of it was so full of pain and fear, Hoosier almost yelled in response.
Connor only sneered down at the older man kneeling on the floor. Hoosier hoped he’d keep his mouth shut. If his son said what he was clearly thinking, this powder keg in his dining room would blow. Connor had made no bones, not to Hoosier or Bibi, at least, about what he’d thought about Faith being forced to have an abortion—and what he thought about his father not stopping it.
But how should he have stopped it? How was that his place? And, if he were completely honest with himself or anybody else, he thought an abortion was the best call. Not forced, no. They should have persuaded her, not forced her. But those two kids had no business being parents, and there was no way in hell Demon could have come back to L.A.
And they’d locked her up in their damn house for months, as if hiding her away would keep her safe. They’d done this. It made sense that she’d run the second she could refuse to come back.
“Connor, go clean up and see to the women.” Connor hesitated, glaring down at Blue. “Go on, son. Now.”
When his son was out of the room. Hoosier stuck the Beretta against the small of his back and leaned down to take Blue’s arm. “Come on, brother. Have a seat, let’s work this through. She couldn’t have gotten far.” Blue came up when he pulled, and Hoosier saw he was weeping.
They’d known each other forty years. Never before had he seen Blue weep.
As he got him to sit at the table, Bibi came in with a coffee mug; there was already a carafe on the table from the breakfast they’d been about to enjoy. “Where’s Margot?” she asked.
And Blue looked even more guilty than he had before.
Bibi blew out a breath. “Shit, Blue. What did you do?”
He dropped his head into his hands before he answered. “She did this. She gets in my head and gets me all twisted up. She makes me see wrong. Fuck…God! Faith can’t be out there by herself! She’ll get hurt. She’s too young. She doesn’t know.”
“Blue!” Hoosier looked up, surprised at the heat in Bibi’s voice. “What the holy fuck did you do?!”
Blue shook his head. “She might need help. She gets in my head and makes me crazy.”
“Goddamn. Goddamn son of a bitch brute of a stupid man.”
Bibi stormed back to the kitchen, and Hoosier heard her grabbing her keys off the hook and telling Carrie she was sorry, but breakfast was cancelled. When the two women left through the door to the garage, Connor came back into the dining room and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. He was young, but he was big, and he wasn’t somebody to fuck with. The only reason Blue had gotten over on him earlier was that he’d come in hot and unexpected.
“We gotta find her. Sherlock is good with finding things, right? She took her car—it won’t be hard to find it, right?”
“No, Blue. The club won’t help with this. No.”
“What? It’s Faith! We gotta find her!”
On this day, Faith had turned eighteen. Hoosier thought she had shown excellent planning. She wasn’t a runaway. She was an adult who had moved. And if she didn’t want to go home, and Blue tried to force her—which he would; Blue only understood force—then she could do serious damage to the club. Hoosier thought she would do it, too. The club had stood by these past few months while the things she loved and wanted had been taken from her. Hoosier didn’t think she’d even blink before she served them up on a platter if they got in her way now.
And he wouldn’t blame her.
“She’s eighteen, and she left by her choice. She doesn’t want to be there.”
Blue stood up, knocking the chair backward. “Fuck you! That’s my little girl!”
“You go after her, you expose the club. No.”
Blue went for him, but Connor was there. With one punch, Blue was on the ground, out cold.
Hoosier cocked an eyebrow at his kid. “I can defend myself, you know.”
Connor smiled. “I know. But I wanted to punch his head.”
Father and son stared down at Faith’s father. “Fuck,” Hoosier sighed. “This mess just keeps getting messier. Keep an eye on him. I’m gonna call Sherlock.”
Connor’s arm darted out, and he grabbed Hoosier’s sleeve. “You said—”
“I want to make sure she’s safe. We’ll find her, and we’ll keep tabs, but we won’t tell them where she is. I just need to know she’s safe. At least that. I want her to know she’s not alone out there.”
“She won’t believe you.”
“No, I guess you’re right. Maybe we just let her be, then. But I still need to know.”
One thing Blue was right about—Faith didn’t know how to be out in the world. Her parents had seen to that.
FIFTEEN
The next night, unable to sleep, Hoosier scooted out of bed, careful not to wake Bibi. He grabbed the oxygen tank he loathed and rolled it behind him out of the room, thinking he’d watch some television and try to doze off in the big leather recliner in the family room.
A golden glow brightened the hallway about halfway down. Lana’s door was open, and a light was on. As Hoosier neared, he heard Demon’s voice, soft and low. He was singing. Demon didn’t have much of an ear for music; the sound was more drone than tune. That didn’t make it any less sweet, though. Hoosier stopped at the doorway and saw Demon in the rocking chair, holding his daughter to his shoulder.
He was fully dressed, still in his kutte. He must have just gotten back from the run and gone right in to see his kids. Hoosier had done that, too, when Connor was little. Especially on a tough run, he’d wanted to get his hands on his boy as soon as he could.
Lana had had her first birthday in April. She was walking—running, even—and had a vocabulary of several words. More words than her brother had had at a year older. She was a lovely little girl, with her mother’s big hazel eyes and her father’s pale hair. And she was an absolute terror most of the time—demanding and dramatic, loud and rebellious. Once she’d realized that she could make herself heard, she did so with gusto. Sometimes even Tucker rolled his eyes at her antics.
But now, as she rested on her daddy’s shoulder, sucking her thumb, twisting the sleeve of his t-shirt in her other hand, her eyes drooping shut and then popping open, she was nothing but sweet, and together they were a sight that made Hoosier proud. To think that the couple of kids whose love had caused so much heartbreak and turmoil had somehow managed to find their way back to each other and make this little family—that was a testament to how wrong they’d all been to tear them apart in the first place.
Demon stopped singing abruptly, an embarrassed flush heating his face, when he saw Hoosier. Hoosier nodded and walked on down the hall.
A few minutes after he had himself settled in the recliner with a glass of Jameson and the remote, Demon came into the room. “You okay, Prez?”
“Yeah. You? Tough run?”
Demon sighed and shrugged out of his kutte. He laid it over the back of the sofa, then came around and sat down. “You’re missed, Hooj. We need you back.”
“Bart…over his head?”
“No. He’s got the reins, and we got his back. But we’re all…I don’t know. Things don’t feel steady. I don’t know what it is. I just know I miss you, and I’m not the only one. We need you back.”
“Can’t ride, Deme.” Damn, he had not expected to have to confront the dark realities of his future when
he’d gotten out of bed.
Demon stood. “You want to come out back with me? Something I want to show you.”
Hoosier unhooked the cannula from around his ears and looped the tubing over the oxygen tank. He followed Demon to the back door, grabbing his cane on the way out.
The night was cloudless, and the unbounded sky glittered with stars like only the desert sky could. He’d grown up in rural Indiana, and he’d taken stars for granted. But then he’d made his way to Southern California. He’d lived a long time in Los Angeles, and in that vast, highly populated expanse, the night never slept deeply enough for stars to wake.
Even on a clear night, a starless sky loomed close, like a low ceiling. It skewed perspective, made people think they were bigger than they were. Out here, though, with the sky so far above, so full of bigger, older things, a man felt his true size.
A man was reminded that there was much that was greater than he.
As they walked toward the garage, Hoosier remembered Sly. “Deme. Did Faith…tell you…Sly?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Yeah.” He didn’t say more, and they walked in silence to the garage.
Demon keyed a code in at a pad on the end of the building, and the nearest overhead door rolled up. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling winked on, and they were looking at his workshop.
And Hoosier would have sworn he was looking right at his 1970 Sportster chopper. It gleamed and sparkled under the bright lights.
But his old chop—all his bikes, like everything they had—had been destroyed in the fire. The Sportster had been the first bike he’d ever bought. He’d done the mods himself.
Emotion choked words that he already struggled to say, and it took him a long time to get one out. “Deme…Deme.”
Hoosier was rooted to the spot, on the gravel outside the garage, but Demon walked to the bike. “I found the guts at an auction. I knew your chopper inside and out, so it wasn’t much to build its clone.”
“Deme. God.” He felt breathless.
Worry creased Demon’s forehead. “Did I do wrong?”
“No…son. Hell, no. But I…I…I can’t ride.” He was supposed to learn to drive again; that was his next benchmark. But he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to ride a bike again—and certainly not a classic chopper. The loss cramped his chest.
“Maybe not this, not yet. But I put something else together, too. Come on in, Hooj.”
Feeling as afraid as if he were walking into an ambush—and hell, he felt like he was—Hoosier stepped onto the garage floor and walked toward the chopper. Demon crossed deeper into the garage and pulled a canvas cover off something in the corner. It took Hoosier a second or two to understand what he was looking at.
A trike. A big, old matte-black Softail. 2005 or so, he thought.
Demon ran his hand over the seat. “I didn’t do too many mods on this, since I figure it’s temporary. I did do this, though.” He opened the storage compartment at the back and waved Hoosier closer. Inside was a contraption that Hoosier recognized at once: a place for his oxygen tank. He was touched and infuriated in equal measure.
“Old man’s…ride.”
“Nah. Hooj, look. It’ll get you on the road until you can handle the chopper. It’ll get you back to the table.”
“You did all this…for me?”
“For you and for all of us. And not just me. Connor brought the trike out. Everybody chipped in for parts and shit. You’re missed, Prez.”
The trike represented the waning of his life on the road with the same urgency that it offered him his best, maybe only, chance to return, even briefly, to that life. Standing between it and the replica of the first bike he’d ever owned, Hoosier felt undone. He was not a man who easily cried, but in the itch and heat behind his eyes, he knew tears loomed.
“Thank you…son.”
Demon’s grin was wide and unaffected. So much in him was still the young man who had always been surprised to be treated with kindness.
He was almost glad Blue had died, because Demon belonged here. In this family.
~oOo~
Hoosier stood in the middle of the room and watched as Jesse and Lakota carried Blue’s body in and laid it on the pool table. It was fitting, in a way, that his first rest was there. He’d been a pro with a cue and had taught most of the patches a thing or two.
“You bring a sheet?” He asked Ember, who’d covered the table in a tarp for them. She’d been crying heavily, and makeup ran in black streaks down her face. All the girls were crying.
“Yeah, Hooj.” She picked up a square of cloth from a bar stool and shook it out, then laid the sheet over Blue’s pale, exsanguinated body. His old, scuffed cowboy boots, now soaked in his own blood, remained uncovered.
“Dad.” Connor stood behind him. “Margot doesn’t know yet.”
Fuck. He put his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. “Yeah. Okay.” He looked around the room, making eye contact with every exhausted, distraught face. “Bart. Call Abner at the mortuary. Tell him we need his special service.” Abner would falsify the papers so Blue could have a fitting burial without his death officially being anything more than a natural end. “Sherlock, reach out and pull everybody in. We’re on lockdown.”
Though he had no fucking clue how he’d ‘debrief’ the disaster today’s run had been. Jesus fucking Christ, Sanchez had slit Blue’s throat unprovoked, while Hoosier was standing right there. Sanchez was dead now, too.
And Sam Carpenter, the mother charter president, was angry at Hoosier. For putting the business at risk. By avenging the death of a brother. The Perro Blanco cartel had Sam by the testicles, and the rest of the club was supposed to squeal? Fuck that.
He noticed that blood had soaked through the sheet over Blue’s body. “Ember, darlin’, can you do something to…I don’t know. Margot…” He didn’t know what words to say, but he didn’t want Margot to see her old man this way.
Ember put her hand on his arm. “I’ll take care of it, Hooj.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” He turned to his son. “Go home and get your mom. I’ll get Margot.”
“Okay. You want me to tell her?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll see her when I get back. You look sharp, boy. Keep an eye out for trouble.”
~oOo~
“She’s lost everythin’ now, Hooj. I don’t know what to do for her.”
Sitting on the couch in his office, Hoosier tucked his wife more tightly under his arm and rested his cheek on her head. “I know, baby. You sure she’s okay on her own?”
“She’s got so much Valium in her system, I don’t think she knows her own name right now. The doc says she’ll sleep through. I’ll check in on her, and I’ve got the girls checkin’, too.” Maybe when she wakes up, Sera will be here.” She looked up at him. “How ‘bout you? You holdin’ up?”
“Yeah.” He let himself sigh. “I guess I’m too tired to feel it all. I’m glad—I got shit to do, and I can’t get bogged down in the loss. Things weren’t the same between us since Faith left, but that man was at my side a long damn time.”
“Faith. I need to tell Faith.” Bibi sat up and grabbed her big purse. Pulling out a burner that she never used for anything else, she dialed Faith’s number.
Hoosier watched with interest. They’d found Faith within days of her leaving. Hoosier had told her parents, after all; seeing Blue’s anguish had been too much for him. But he didn’t give them specifics, and he had insisted they leave her alone.
Margot had been fine with that. Blue had taken his fists to her the day Faith left—and as much of a bully as Blue could be, as fiery as those marital spats got, to Hoosier’s knowledge, he’d never actually hit her before or since. With that beating, Margot had lost any and all interest in her youngest daughter.
But getting Blue to stand down and let Faith return on her own terms had taken violence and threats. The man had been frantic with loss.
Bibi had gone up to San Francisco to see her once, and she’d ma
naged to get Faith to agree to take phone calls—from Bibi, no one else. They’d been able to make sure she was okay. And they’d never told Blue or Margot that they were in contact. Faith had demanded it of Bibi, and Bibi, in turn, had demanded it of Hoosier.
Faith had never come home, and Blue had never recovered.
“Baby,” Bibi spoke into the phone. “Come home. Right now…It’s your daddy, hon.” She took the phone from her head and cleared her throat, her eyes closed, tears sparkling on her lashes. Hoosier reached for her hand and folded his around it.
“He died tonight. You have to come home…I told you it would happen, Faith. Come home. Stand with your family and say goodbye. Sera’s comin’. She’s already on her way.”
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