Son of a bitch. Thor exhaled, the news a gut punch. He and Joyce had argued over the years, even brawled more than once over the sweet little Korean girl at the bakery with her tattoo fetish. But the MC made them brothers, and he knew Joyce would have taken a bullet for him, and vice versa.
“What’s it looking like?” he asked.
“You know it doesn’t work that fast,” Izzo replied, some of his natural growl absent from his voice. “Crime-scene guys are still there. Forensics will take their time.”
“Not what I asked you, man. You know Rollie’s going to want to know, so tell me … what does it look like?”
The phone went silent, so flat it seemed like he’d lost the call. Then Izzo spoke again.
“Definitely other people involved. Fresh tracks from a truck and a bunch of bikes. Three bikes were there. One’s a Harley—I’m guessing Joyce’s—but the other two are Japanese rockets, and I know you MC guys wouldn’t ride those bitches even if your mamas asked you nicely.”
“Two bodies but three bikes?”
“What I said,” Izzo muttered. “Detective on the scene thinks the Russian shot Joyce and then someone else tagged him for it. But the scene’s still hot. Got nothing else for you right now.”
Thor took a deep breath. He heard a grumbled voice in the corridor and the creak of floorboards under substantial burden, and he glanced up to see Rollie standing in the doorway with Baghead hiding behind him like a third-grade tattletale. Antonio had pushed himself up to lean against the wall.
Rollie had gone deathly pale.
“Call me when someone needs to ID the body, and let me know when we can pick him up,” Thor said, the words sounding callous even as he spoke them.
He ended the call without a good-bye and sat a moment, gripping the phone so tightly it hurt his hand.
“Joyce?” Rollie asked, his body filling the door frame.
Thor nodded, then laid it out for him exactly as Izzo had explained it. When he’d finished—and it only took seconds, so little time to sum up the end of a life—Rollie slammed a hand against the door frame. A dark intelligence glittered in his eyes, reminding Thor how often people underestimated SAMNOV’s president. Rollie acted like he was everybody’s friend, a big amiable bear of a man more interested in obscure movies and even more obscure beers to put on tap at the Tombstone. But the man was president of the North Vegas charter of the Sons of Anarchy for a reason.
“No word from Jax or his guys?” Rollie asked, staring at the floor, his hands clenched into fists.
“Nothing,” Thor said. “I left him three messages during the night.”
The room seemed to shrink, the floor to tilt. The air felt strangely heavy.
“You know what I’m wondering?” Rollie asked.
“You’re wondering why Jax sent me back here last night instead of just calling you,” Thor replied. “I figured maybe it was personal.”
Rollie huffed like a bear unhappy with its dinner. He turned to look into the hallway, where Bag twitched and scratched himself as he waited.
“Baghead … wake everyone right now,” Rollie said. “I want them up and moving in ten minutes.”
“Moving where?” Antonio asked, still rubbing at his eyes. “What are we doing?”
Rollie shot him a frigid glance. “I’ve got questions,” he said. “You guys are going to find me answers.”
“Where do we start?” Antonio asked.
“You start by finding Jax Teller.”
* * *
Izzo sat in the faux-leather reclining chair in his family room with a tumbler of spiced rum and pineapple juice in his left hand. He’d dropped his cell phone on his lap, and now he stared at the gleaming colors of his wall-mounted flat screen and wondered how this business with the Russians and the MC was going to shake out. He still paid alimony to his first wife, and his second—a blackjack dealer named Sarajane—liked shopping even more than Izzo liked booze or pussy. He was starting to think that a second alimony might be less expensive than his second wife.
Something made him glance down, and he realized his cell phone had been buzzing for a while without his noticing.
“Izzo,” he said, picking up.
“It’s Thor.”
“I just hung up with—”
“Last night I brought that guy to you,” Thor said. “You gave up John Carney’s name. Rollie wants you to head over to Carney’s and ask him what he told the guy.”
Izzo drank again. Sweet fire in his throat. He’d had a pleasant buzz going before he’d gotten the call about the dead bodies on the ranch road, and now this. Why the hell did he keep answering his phone?
“The sun just came up, and I haven’t been to bed yet,” Izzo rasped, swirling the ice in his drink. “Let me get a few hours’ sleep and kiss my wife. Carney won’t want visitors this early anyway.”
He could hear Thor breathing, heard him curse quietly.
“Joyce is dead. You think we give two shits how much sleep you got or whether Carney is feeling friggin’ hospitable? I’d go over there myself, but you’re a cop. The old man’s less likely to shoot you. If I show up at his door right now … Look, Rollie wants you to do this. Whatever Carney told him, we need to know. Right now.”
Right now.
The trouble with having a second job that involved illegal dealings with violent criminals was that you could never call in sick.
Izzo downed the rest of his drink. Suddenly the pineapple juice had started to taste sour in his mouth. Couldn’t be the rum.
“On my way,” he said, setting his glass down. He thumbed the button that ended the call. “Asshole.”
The drive to John Carney’s place took a little over half an hour. Izzo passed joggers and bicyclists trying to get some exercise in before the day heated up any further. He saw a woman running with her dog, the beast too small to keep pace with her without struggling, and he fought the urge to roll down the window and shout at her.
At Carney’s place, he pulled into the driveway and sat a moment, watching the house. It seemed very still, very quiet. You couldn’t be a cop as long as Izzo had without developing some intuition. His told him the place was empty, but it made more sense to think that Carney was still sleeping.
He stepped out and gently closed the door, then walked to the garage. Carney’s old Cadillac sat inside the gloomy space, dust motes spinning in the light streaming in from the small windows in the garage doors.
Izzo went to the front door and knocked, but the sound came back hollow. Nothing moved inside, no curtains were drawn back. The house itself seemed disinclined to creak. Most houses seemed to breathe, but not this one.
He drew his gun, pulse quickening. Moving around the side of the house, he looked in windows as he passed. In the back, he saw broken glass on the patio and then turned to see the shattered kitchen door.
“Shit,” he whispered, quickening his pace.
He didn’t have to go any farther than the door. The diffuse morning light reached through the window above the kitchen sink and the jagged shards of glass jutting from the door frame. That golden glow cast a sepia tone across the floor and the tipped-over chair, revealing the sprawled corpse of John Carney. Izzo spotted a single bullet hole in his temple and a pool of drying blood that made a deep scarlet halo on the floor around his head.
Whatever the old man had told his visitors, Izzo would never know.
* * *
Jax hesitated before calling home, but it had been too long since he’d spoken to Tara, and he wanted to hear her voice before the day’s violence began. No way of knowing if he’d still be standing by nightfall.
She answered sleepily after the third ring. “Hey. You’re up early.”
The tightness drained from Jax’s body, and he felt himself smile. “Sorry. Been a long night, and we’ve got a long day ahead.”
“You find Trinity?”
“Yeah. I just left her and her boyfriend.”
“What’s he like, this Russian?”
Silence on the phone. Jax felt like he could hear the world breathing, there on the line.
“You still there?” he asked.
“That’s the same thing people say about me,” Tara said. “And the life you lead.”
Jax had been standing by the window in his temporary hotel room. Morning sun shone through the glass, and the small boxy room had begun to heat up. Now he went to the bed and perched on the edge, staring thoughtfully into a no-space in the middle of the room.
“I’ve made you promises, Tara,” he said quietly, glancing at the door, not sure why he didn’t want to be overheard. “I’m gonna keep ’em. We’re getting out of it—all of us. You, me, and the boys.”
“Be safe.”
Jax bit back the words that tried to make their way to his lips—fighting the truth. How could he tell her that as long as SAMCRO was part of his life, he would never be safe? The MC was his family, looming larger in his life than anything else, almost a third parent, but it was going to kill him one of these days. He did not intend for that day to be today.
“What’s happening there? The boys okay?”
“Abel has a low fever. Nothing to worry about,” she said. “Some kind of virus that’s going around.”
“Good thing his mom’s a doctor,” Jax said. “I’ll see you all in a couple of days.”
A few seconds ticked by in which Jax knew Tara was busily missing him as much as he missed her. Things had changed between them while he’d been in prison. Tara had been hardened by his absence, and he couldn’t help thinking she was keeping something from him. Something that troubled her deeply. He kept waiting for her to tell him.
“Would I like her, this sister of yours?” Tara asked.
“I figure chances are fifty-fifty. Either she’d be the sister you never had, or you’d want to kill each other. Neither of you puts up with bullshit.”
“Two alpha females in one room can get tricky.”
Jax grinned. “That what you are? An alpha female?”
“Come home and I’ll show you.”
He laughed quietly. “Couple of days, babe. Then I’m all yours.”
“Okay,” Tara relented. “I hope I get to meet Trinity.”
A knock came at his door. “Babe, I’ve gotta go.”
“I love you. The boys love you,” Tara said.
“Kiss them for me,” Jax told her. “See you soon.”
He ended the call as he went to the door, not bothering to draw his weapon. They were in the lion’s den here, among people who had tried to kill him and Opie, totally exposed, but he had to count on them having mutual interests right now. They wouldn’t do anything stupid—he hoped.
Jax drew the door open to find a wary looking Chibs standing in the hall, one hand on the butt of his gun.
“Opie’s back with the bikes. We’re all set,” he said, and then gestured over his shoulder. “And you’ve got a visitor.”
Oleg stood behind him with a gleaming black assault rifle in his hands. Jax’s thoughts raced as he wondered how fast he could drop his phone and reach for his own gun. Then Oleg held the assault rifle out to him. “Call it a peace offering.”
Jax blinked, tossed his cell phone onto the bed, and took the assault rifle. Incredibly lightweight and shiny black, it had a long, curved magazine.
“What is this?” Jax asked. “Never seen one.”
“Nine-millimeter TsNIITochMash. Subsonic bullet speed. Silencer. It will punch through body armor at four hundred meters. Very new and very difficult to smuggle into this country, but Oscar Temple had several of them.”
Jax felt the light weight of the gun in his hands, testing its balance. He preferred a handgun and knew from the glint in Chibs’s eyes that he would have liked this monster for himself, but it would have been an insult for him to pass it on. Oleg was trying to break the ice between them.
“Thank you,” Jax said, and meant it. “I’ll put it to good use.”
Oleg nodded, unsmiling. “I’m sure you will.”
He began to turn away, but changed his mind and glanced up at Jax again. “Kirill will not say it—particularly because of the strife between our people and your club—but we are both glad you are here. The reinforcements will be helpful. Perhaps these mutual interests we have will make us friends.”
“Or at least not enemies,” Jax said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Oleg nodded grimly, completely missing Jax’s attempt at humor. Russians, he thought.
“Listen, Oleg, about one of our ‘mutual interests.’ You know Trinity has to stay behind today. She won’t like it, but—”
“It will make her furious,” Oleg agreed, “but she must at least suspect it. You could leave one of your people here with her, but we will need every man when we go up against Lagoshin.”
“She’ll be all right here?” Jax asked.
Oleg smiled, turning his grim features boyishly charming for a moment. Jax could see, then, the ordinary guy beneath the Bratva strongman.
“We will be busy killing all those who could threaten her,” Oleg said. “None of them will be alive to cause her trouble.”
“All right, then,” Jax said.
Clutching the assault rifle in his left hand, he reached out with his right. Oleg took his hand, and they shook, a pact not unlike the one Jax had made with Kirill, but more personal.
“Let’s see what other toys you guys picked up from Temple,” Jax said. “Then we’ll go give Lagoshin his morning wake-up call.”
* * *
Rollie was in his bar, wolfing down a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, when Thor came trudging out from the kitchen.
Rollie turned, figuring he was ready to leave, but he spotted the cell phone in Thor’s hand and froze.
“Tell me this isn’t more bad news, bud.”
Thor shrugged. “Well, it ain’t good news. The old guy Izzo put Jax onto—John Carney—is dead.”
Rollie swore and smashed a fist down on the bar. The fork he’d been using bounced off the wood and spun to the floor at his feet.
A dark thought swept through him. “You were with them when they talked to Carney?”
Thor nodded. “You know I was. It all seemed fine. Not to mention that Carney had kept information back from the cops that might’ve put them onto Trinity. I know what you’re thinking, but Jax had no reason to go back and hurt this old man.”
“All right. Go track down an address for the real estate guy Carney gave up to Jax. What the hell was his—”
“Drinkwater.”
“Him.” Rollie nodded. “Meet me out back. We’ll let the others search for Jax or some Russians. You and me are gonna take Bag, Mikey, and Bronson over to see this Realtor and see what he knows.”
Rollie took one last bite of his toast and then rubbed a finger over his teeth. He shoved back the stool he’d been sitting in and headed for the back hall.
“What if Drinkwater’s already dead?” Thor asked.
Rollie paused, glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, I’m expecting to find him dead. Seems to be the theme of the morning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from him.”
16
Jax sat in the passenger seat of a black Audi, the interior of which smelled like cigarette smoke and body odor. No new-car smell for Ilia, the Russian behind the wheel. In the backseat, Oleg kept a gun jammed up against Luka’s rib cage and snapped questions at him in Russian that Jax figured amounted to “right or left?” Luka was their human GPS this morning.
The air conditioner buzzed, turned all the way up, but for Jax all it did was chill the smoky, dank interior of the car. The Audi should have fit all four of them comfortably, but he felt claustrophobic. He’d hated having to leave the Harley behind. Worse than that, he despised having to sit idly in the passenger seat while Ilia did the driving. He didn’t know the Russian, had no idea how
Ilia would respond if things went to hell. Oleg wouldn’t have put him behind the wheel if he hadn’t been a capable driver, but Jax kept opening and closing his hands, wishing for the grips on his Harley and the comforting freedom that came along with it.
He said nothing.
Whatever fate awaited him and Trinity today, he’d committed to it. No way to back out now. The assault rifle Oleg had given him waited in the trunk of the car.
A loud engine roared beside the Audi, and he glanced right to see Opie riding alongside. Opie peered in the window, just making sure the Russians hadn’t decided to put a bullet in Jax’s head now that they had him in the car. Jax nodded once and Opie dropped back behind the Audi to ride side by side with Chibs. The stitches Rollie had put in Opie’s side seemed to be doing the job, keeping the graze along his ribs closed, and his color had improved. He’d be in pain, but he’d manage.
“Your men look out for you,” Oleg said.
“Not my men,” Jax corrected. “They’re my brothers.”
Ilia glanced at him but then returned his focus to the road ahead. Jax thought he could practically hear Oleg thinking in the backseat.
“I understand,” Oleg said at last. “It is the same with us.”
Luka scoffed and started to say something. Oleg struck him in the head with the butt of his pistol, and Luka grunted, almost whining, then fell silent.
The Audi’s tires seemed strangely loud on the road. The morning sun blazed down, baking the hood of the car and the tinted glass windshield, and Jax knew the day would be a scorcher. Why a girl from Belfast would think she could find happiness in Nevada, he had no idea.
In his pocket, his cell phone buzzed. As he reached to retrieve it, he realized it wasn’t his phone at all. He carried his in another pocket; this one belonged to Luka.
The text message came from someone called VK. Two words: Check in.
“Your friend Krupin wants you to check in,” Jax said.
They kept driving. Oleg forced directions out of Luka, but there were hesitations that concerned Jax. They moved past a ranch and through a tract-housing development until they reached the outskirts of Las Vegas proper. Hotels and casinos loomed in the distance, silhouetted by stark sunlight.
Sons of Anarchy Bratva Page 17