Jax bumped shoulders with the Russian as he walked by, heading for the bikes. Chibs and Joyce were already there, waiting with Lagoshin’s other thug, Luka. Ustin caught up to Jax and Opie as they were climbing onto their bikes.
“Where are they?” Ustin demanded, lowering his voice an octave and attempting to intimidate them.
Jax strapped on his helmet. “I told Lagoshin the plan. I’m going in after my sister. When we get there, you won’t need to ask the address. He promised me an hour, and that hour starts ticking the second you call him. Just follow me. You can call him when you see the place.”
Luka sniffed imperiously, as if he’d smelled something revolting. “You don’t trust Lagoshin?”
Jax winced at the bruises on his face and the way every breath hurt, thanks to the kicks he’d taken to the chest.
“You’re joking, right?”
He kick-started his Harley and twisted the throttle, tearing out of the parking lot. Chibs, Opie, and Joyce had been ready and followed him out. It took the Kawasaki Russians a few seconds to get themselves together, but they caught up fast enough. Jax had no intention of trying to lose them—not when they could prove valuable to him.
Dawn was still many hours away, but Jax could practically feel it creeping up. Too many pieces were in motion, not just Lagoshin’s and Sokolov’s crews, but SAMNOV and the cop, Izzo, not to mention Carney and Drinkwater, whose daughter would find him in the next ten to twelve hours, if not sooner. The night air grew heavy around him. Normally, riding was freedom, but in the small hours of that night it felt claustrophobic to him. Caution could only take him so far.
Two miles from Drinkwater’s house, on an access road that led along the property line of a dried-up ranch and back toward the beltway, Jax pulled off onto the shoulder. Dust swirled up around his Harley. He pulled off his helmet and dismounted. One by one, the others followed suit, ending with Ustin and Luka. The Kawasaki Russians looked pissed when they ripped off their helmets, although the difference between joy and fury would be hard to discern on those unforgiving faces.
“What you doing, man?” Ustin demanded, marching up to Jax, hand drifting behind his back, trying to decide if he should pull his gun. “You try an’ cut Lagoshin out, you know what’s gonna happen.”
His accent was Russia by way of LA gang-speak, like he’d learned English from watching bad cop shows.
Jax held his hands out at his sides. “Don’t be stupid. My sister’s in the middle of all this. You really think I’m gonna risk her life if I can help it?”
Opie and Chibs stood in the road, watching for approaching cars, but this time of night, nobody would be out driving this dusty ranch road unless they were up to no good. Joyce had stayed next to his motorcycle, an anxious look on his face. Jax was being unpredictable, and it was very clear that unpredictable scared the shit out of Joyce tonight.
Ustin pointed at Jax. “Why we stopping, then?”
“I changed my mind. Lagoshin sending his men in after these other Russian pricks might work in my favor. Provide a distraction. Go ahead and call him.”
A thin smile touched Ustin’s lips, snide enough to be sinister. He nodded.
“Smart man,” the Russian said, and he dug out his cell phone.
Jax drew and shot him twice in the chest. The gunshots boomed across the dried-up ranch, so loud it almost seemed to be the noise that blew Ustin backward in a fanning spray of his own blood. His cell phone spun in the air and hit the ground almost at the same instant he did. The smell of blood and gunpowder swirled around them.
“Son of a bitch!” Joyce cried. “What are you—”
Luka roared and lunged toward Jax. Opie and Chibs reached for him, knocked his gun away before the barrel could clear his waistband, and drove the gray-eyed Russian to the dirt shoulder. Opie slammed him twice against the ground and then stood back, picked up Luka’s gun and pointed it at him.
Opie glanced over at the guy Jax had killed. “Ustin…”
“Don’t say it,” Chibs said.
Opie grinned. “We have a problem.”
Luka stayed on the ground but let loose with a torrent of what could only be Russian profanity.
“Jax, what are you doing?” Joyce asked, shaking his head and staring, slack-jawed, at the dead Russian. “We had a plan—a good plan that would have protected Trinity. Now Lagoshin’s going to kill you both!”
Jax stood over Ustin, watching blood run out of him and pool in the dirt. Crimson turned black in the moonlight.
“Either Lagoshin sent hitters to Charming to try to take out SAMCRO, or Kirill Sokolov did,” he said. “Do you know which one?”
Joyce scowled. “Of course not.”
“Me either,” Jax replied, with a glance at Opie and Chibs. “I show up where Sokolov’s people are and they figure out who I am—maybe Trinity’s told them she’s my sister, I don’t know—they’re gonna kill me. That is, if they’re the Russians who want to destroy SAMCRO.”
He wandered over to Luka, bent, and did a quick search, taking away the Russian’s cell phone and a small knife strapped to his leg. Dirt rose up from the hard-packed shoulder, the grit getting into Jax’s mouth.
“I bring them our friend Luka,” he went on, “and maybe they listen long enough for me to get Trinity out of there. Bringing Luka to Sokolov shows goodwill, and maybe if they poke him a bit, they can make him tell them where Lagoshin’s holed up. Everybody wins.”
Joyce just shook his head, backing up. He glanced at Opie and Chibs as if expecting their support. “This is crazy. Stupid.”
Ice spread through Jax. His upper lip twitched as he let the mask he’d adopted fall away, and he sneered at Joyce.
“Figured you’d feel that way, considering.”
Joyce went silent and still. Stared at Jax. “What are you talking about?”
He glanced around, saw Opie and Chibs watching him with expressions as cold as the one Jax wore, and started shaking his head. “I don’t know what you think—”
“Now’s not the time to lie,” Chibs said. “We’ve no patience with it.”
Joyce went pale. All emotion leeched from his face, and he turned again to Jax. “I’m just looking out for you and your sister, man.”
Anyone who saw Jax in that moment and didn’t know him well might have been forgiven for thinking he smiled just then. A flicker. The expression, however, was one of disbelief.
“Don’t make it worse by being a pussy, Joyce. You had the balls to turn on your brothers, take money from the Russians … at least have the balls to face the music now that it’s here.”
“I didn’t, though … I would never…”
Opie held Luka’s gun. He raised it, aimed at Joyce’s head. “Someone told them we were headed to Drinkwater’s house.”
“That could’ve been any of the guys! Thor, Hopper, even Rollie. Shit, man, Baghead is a basket case!”
Jax shook his head. “Only it wasn’t any of them. I should’ve known it back at Birdland. You were so clued in about the Russians, where and when they’d be there. Started trouble with ’em because you figured you could. You’d dealt with them before. Guy wearing a cut has to be stupid or damn sure he’s not gonna eat a bullet if he’s gonna start trouble like that. Something seemed off then, but when Krupin rolled up on us after the visit with Drinkwater, I knew it had to be someone from SAMNOV, and you’re the only one who makes sense.”
Jax cast a quick glance at Luka, saw the way the Russian was watching them, and he had his answer.
Desperation had Joyce sweating. His chest rose and fell in quick breaths. He shook his head again.
“I promise you, this wasn’t me,” he said. “You don’t believe me, fine, take it to the table. You’re not in Charming. Talk to Rollie, man, if it’ll make you feel better—”
“Exactly what I’m gonna do,” Jax said.
Which was when Joyce went for his gun.
Opie shouted in alarm, but he had nothing to worry about. Joyce never had a chance.
Jax shot him through the skull, and Joyce flopped backward onto the dirt.
“Idiot,” Chibs snarled, staring down at the dead man. “Who goes for his gun when he’s got one pointed at his head?”
Jax exhaled, staring at the spatter of Joyce’s blood in the dirt. “He knew it was over for him. If we took it to the table, it would’ve ended the same way. Maybe he just figured this was quicker.”
Opie wiped his prints from Luka’s gun, then pressed it into the grip of Ustin’s dead fingers. Luka muttered a curse in Russian, seeming to have abandoned English entirely since the tables had turned on him.
“What are we gonna do with this guy?” He pointed at Luka, and all three of them stood there for a moment contemplating their next move. They had nothing but motorcycles. No way to get Luka where they needed him without the risk of the guy taking off.
“Shit,” Opie muttered.
Chibs laughed humorlessly. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Jackie. Situation’s changing fast. We’re making this up as we go along.”
Jax scuffed his shoe against the dirt. “We can’t call Rollie unless we feel like taking the time to convince him Joyce betrayed the club.”
“Never mind that he went for his gun,” Chibs added.
“He’ll lose his shit that we didn’t take it to him before getting into this situation,” Opie finished for him. “We could just say Ustin killed him, but this other piece of Bratva shit isn’t going to cover for us.”
They all stared at Luka for a few seconds, Jax trying to decide how much they needed Luka. Enough to go to all the trouble it would require to get him where they needed him? He swore quietly. They might not need Luka to convince Kirill Sokolov, but if they did …
“Drag the bodies away from the road,” he told Chibs and Opie. “Dump the bikes on the other side. I’ll get to cover, keep him guarded, while you two go find us a truck.”
Luka had a smile on his face, enjoying their frustration.
Jax cracked him across the face with his gun, then turned to Opie and Chibs.
“Make it fast, or this whole thing is going to fall apart around us.”
13
As Oleg shook her, Trinity fought to stay asleep. She sighed, grumbled, and batted his arm away. In that bleary state between sleep and wakefulness, she became aware of the thin line of drool on her cheek and the dryness of her throat.
“Come on,” she heard Oleg growl. His hand clutched more tightly at her arm, and he shook her so that her head lolled back and forth like an old rag doll’s. “Trinity!”
Her eyes snapped open. They burned, craving sleep, but she batted his hand away more forcefully and propped herself up, glaring.
“What time is it?” she demanded, the question accusation enough.
“Get up, love,” Oleg said, more gently this time, although his gaze carried a grim urgency.
Trinity threw back the single sheet, untangling her legs. Oleg handed her jeans over, and she slid into them. She wore no bra under her tank top, but he seemed too impatient to wait for her to put one on, so she grabbed a thin sweater from the bedpost and slipped it over her head even as he ushered her into the corridor.
“What the hell—” she said, voice muffled by the sweater.
As she drew it downward, trying to keep her footing, she heard voices coming from other rooms, saw Timur and Gavril rushing up behind them with guns in hand, and fear burned the last cobwebs of sleep from her mind.
“Lagoshin,” she said. “Is it—”
“No,” Oleg said, taking her by the hand as they hustled toward the lobby. “In answer to your question, it’s nearly four in the morning. You didn’t hear the truck pull up?”
“I was dead asleep.”
Oleg pushed through the door to the lobby, drawing his gun. In the darkness, the moonlight that came through the lobby windows turned the gun a ghostly blue. It seemed strangely alive, as if it were more at home with deeds done in dark.
“I’ve got her,” Oleg said.
Trinity glanced past him. Kirill stood over by the lobby doors, up against the frame with his gun pointed at the ceiling, keeping himself shielded from bullets that might fly through the doors. Vlad and Pyotr were positioned on either side of the uncurtained section of glass at the front. She saw nothing but darkness outside, had no idea what might have spooked them so completely.
Kirill pushed the door open just a bit, careful to expose as little of his body as possible. “Put those headlights back on!” he shouted.
Twin spots blazed to life, so bright that she had to shield her eyes. She blinked, getting used to the glare.
“If it’s not Lagoshin, then—”
“Step into the light!” Kirill called to the front parking lot.
A single figure stepped from the darkness into the brilliance of the truck’s headlights. A halo of white light silhouetted him, but then he walked a dozen steps nearer to the lobby doors, and the angle of the light changed. She saw the beard and the cut of his features. Trinity knew that face, and that walk.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered.
“You know this man?” Oleg asked curtly.
Trinity stepped away from him, crossing the lobby. He called her name, reached out, and grabbed her arm, fearing that someone might start shooting.
She turned and looked at him, feeling almost as if she were in a dream. “That’s my brother.”
Oleg’s eyes darkened. “You never told me you had a brother.”
A chill went through her. There’d been a dangerous edge to his tone just then, and it scared her a little.
“Half-brother. It’s a long story.”
“You’d better tell it.”
She nodded. “I will.”
Then she turned from him, walked toward the door with Kirill and the others staring at her. Kirill held up a hand to stop her.
“Look, I brought you a present! Something you need!” Jax shouted from the lot. “What I need is to see my sister.”
Kirill glared at Trinity with deep mistrust. It hurt her, that look, but desperate men were always paranoid, and she couldn’t blame them for being uneasy about surprises. It shocked her that there had not been any gunfire yet. She could picture it in her mind, though … Jax rolling up in this old pickup, getting out, calling out to whoever had been on guard. Knowing the Bratva were here in the hotel—And how had he known that? How had he even known she was in Nevada at all?—he’d just put himself out there as a target. Bloody fool could’ve been gurgling up blood from his lungs by now. If Trinity had been on watch and someone had come strolling up, knowing they were there, she’d have made sure he had at least one bullet in him by now.
Had they hesitated for her, because he said he was her brother?
That alone could have its own complications, if they thought she had told anyone where to find them.
“Kirill,” she said, “I swear I don’t know how he found us. But he’s a good man. You can trust him. If he’s got somethin’ for you, it’s gonna be somethin’ you want.”
Oleg came up behind her. Despite feeling that she’d sinned by omission with him, he seemed to support her. After a few seconds, Kirill nodded.
“Come ahead slowly!” Kirill called.
Trinity glanced at the truck’s headlights and wondered how many other men were out there. Jax made his way toward the lobby doors, lights playing strangely over him, so that at times he seemed barely there, but then he reached the door, and Kirill unlocked it. Jax came through with his hands up. Kirill backed into the lobby again, covering him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Trinity said, crossing her arms.
Grim and troubled was Jax’s resting face, and tonight he certainly had reason to be wary. For a moment, though, he smiled, and it reminded her how much his grin made him look like a little boy.
Jax stepped toward her.
“Not yet,” Oleg rasped, pointing his gun at Jax’s chest.
Kirill aimed at Jax’s back. The others stayed where they were, re
ady for any attack from the parking lot.
“What’s this gift you have for us?” Kirill asked.
Jax’s eyes went cold, his features hard. “Outside in the truck. I’ve got two of my guys with me. I rode the motorcycle—they came in the truck with the present.”
Kirill pressed the gun against Jax’s back.
“That’s enough,” Trinity said, knowing her own eyes had gone cold, her features hard. They had not grown up together, but there were many things she and Jax had in common—chief among them, an unforgiving nature.
Jax gave a single shake of his head, letting her know not to make a fuss.
“You must be Oleg,” Jax said, glancing from Trinity to her lover. “I’m gonna guess the guy making demands behind me is Kirill Sokolov. You’ll be happy to know, Kirill, that your buddy Lagoshin’s down two more men. One of them, Ustin, is dead on an old ranch road about fifteen minutes’ drive from here. The other one, Luka, is alive. He’s out in the truck. I’d have wrapped him up in shiny paper and put a blue ribbon on his cock, but the stores are closed this late at night.”
Trinity wanted to laugh, but she was too confused.
“What are you doing here, Jax?” she asked again.
“Needed to see you.”
Understanding dawned on her. “My mother called you. Told you I was in the States.”
Jax nodded toward Oleg. “Told me about your new guy. Congratulations, by the way. You two make a cute couple.”
She thought Oleg might say something, but when she glanced at him, she saw only suspicion and anger in his eyes.
“Jax,” Kirill ventured. He gave Jax a little shove with the nose of his pistol. “Take off your shirt so I can see you wear no wire.”
Jax hesitated. Trinity could see the request worried him, and she didn’t know why. No. Don’t tell me you could be that stupid.
“Do you not want Luka?” Jax asked. “I figure he can tell you where to find Lagoshin and you guys can end this little standoff.”
“How do we know you didn’t bring them here? That Lagoshin and his men are not out there right now?” Kirill demanded.
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