“The…thoughts are there. Words come slowly. Sometimes.”
A thought in his head at the moment was how La Zorra knew so much about his problems and recovery. He didn’t bother spending much time with it, though. If she wanted to know something, she had the means to find it out.
“Good, good. I am glad to have you back.” She shifted her regard to Bart. “I think your second and I do not see eye to eye so much.”
Hoosier took a drink of the Jameson one of her men had handed him. He should have known the guy’s name; he was familiar—one of her closer associates. He’d ask Bart later. For now, he used a long drink to compose his words.
“I chose a second who’d see eye to eye with me, Dora. I hope that our…partnership is strong.”
She smiled and sipped her own drink. “You have come back strong. Stronger than I was led to expect.” Her eyes shifted past them to the men standing behind them. “This is good. I admire you, Hoosier Elliott. And I like you. You are a man of honor. It is difficult to be honorable in the world we live in. I think you know this.”
Hoosier didn’t shift his attention from La Zorra, but he could feel, in the way he’d always been able to feel, the change in the men at his sides. They had heard what he had heard: she was telling them that she would not guarantee she would always act honorably, that she would sell them out if she had to. Or if she decided she wanted to. The partnership was strong only so long as the Horde were valuable to her as partners. And she was giving them fair warning.
He liked and admired her, too. She was strong and tough, and smart as hell. She had brought a whole country full of powerful, misogynistic men to their knees before her. And then she’d lopped off all their heads. Though she was ruthless, she had also been reasonable, and she had changed the culture of the cartels.
But she had continued to amass power, and with every attempt to unseat her or assassinate her, she gained a new level of resolve. Hoosier could remember coming back from a meeting when he’d felt a shift in her, and he’d understood that the only difference between her and every other power-hungry megalomaniac he’d ever crossed paths with was that, to gain her power, she’d had to scrap harder, be more extreme, more bloodthirsty, less forgiving.
And thus, when ambition finally overrode reason, as it always did, she would be more devastating an enemy.
Hoosier felt sure that a fight with La Zorra was coming. And he knew that, one way or another, it would be his last fight.
SEVENTEEN
Hoosier parked his trike on the street outside the ranch house he and Bibi had bought in a gated community in Madrone. He hated the gate, and their neighbors weren’t remotely their kind of people, but he wanted Bibi to feel safe. She had nightmares now. She hadn’t had nightmares since she’d been taken, more than thirty years ago.
Madrone wasn’t really the kind of town that attracted a lot of people like him and Bibi or any of the Horde. It was the kind of town where mid-level executives put down stakes, withstanding a punishing commute into L.A. so they could have a nice big house with a pool, and quiet streets for their kids to play.
Not that kids played outside these days.
Bibi had been heartbroken when they’d moved from their L.A. house. They’d left that beat-up old piano behind, donating it to their buyers in the same way it had been donated to them: because it was trapped in the living room.
And her garden. Years of work and love had gone into that yard and that house. Years of memories—some terrible, but most of them good. She’d hated to leave it all.
And just as she was getting her next house to fit her the way she wanted, it had been taken from her, too.
So they were starting again. Here in the waning sunlight of their lives, a few weeks from their forty-third anniversary. He was tired of starting over. And he was tired of finding out that, when he did, nothing really had changed. The same fights, the same struggles.
Still, some things had changed. Good things. He’d had to park on the street because the wide driveway was full of vehicles: Bibi’s, Faith’s, Pilar’s, and one he didn’t recognize, an old import compact. He had a guess whose it was: Renata, Pilar’s grandmother. Inside this unfamiliar house, he knew, he’d find a gaggle of women and, he hoped, his grandkids, too. This new home, still bare of mementos or memories, had been teeming with women almost since they’d first pushed the key into the lock.
They were all planning a wedding, and it was coming down to the wire. It had taken Connor to the age of thirty-seven to find the one who really understood his worth, but he’d found her. They were getting married within a week of Hoosier and Bibi’s anniversary. The club planned to party for that whole week, a celebration of Hoosier and Bibi and Connor and Pilar: the past, the present, and the future.
Before he even got the door open, he heard feminine chatter and laughter, and he grinned. This was worth it. This was good change, the future looking long and straight and bright.
His road had never been straight. Every twist, every turn had been a challenge, and every challenge had been more demanding than the one before it. But he had never backed down. He’d stood up and dared life to break him.
So far, it had not. Hard as it had tried, he was still standing. He’d chased what he wanted, and he’d fought for it. And he’d achieved it.
There was life yet to be lived. Family to love. Joy to be had. If it came with sorrows and struggles, so be it. Sorrow was what made joy taste sweet.
The kids were watching a movie in the living room, and he went by them unseen. The women didn’t notice him, either, as he came into the kitchen, where they were all sitting around the new oak table, yakking in the way only women could. They were looking at photos of flowers. He went straight to Bibi and lifted her right off her chair.
“Hooj! What—?”
He didn’t need to speak to answer her. Grinning, there in front of the women closest to him, women who made him and his brothers strong, he bent his wife over his arm and kissed the shit out of her.
The room was silent around them. When he finally pulled back, Bibi was flushed and breathless. Speechless, too. “Hooj? I…I…You…”
She sounded like him. But he knew what to say. “Love you better, baby.”
THE END
COMING SOON:
Knife & Flesh: The Night Horde SoCal, Book Four
Trick is struggling to make sense of his life and of the man he has become.
Juliana is trying to build a life for herself and her young daughter.
The life he wants is the life she needs.
Table of Contents
DREAM
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
DARE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
Dream & Dare Page 21