Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3)

by Susan Fanetti

  There was hot coffee in the machine behind the bar, so he went back and poured himself a big mug, then added a light splash of milk from the bar fridge.

  “You want a cup, T?” he asked Trick.

  Trick didn’t answer, so Connor padded over in his bare feet and sat on the couch facing the television. On a Wednesday morning, bare feet were safe in the Hall. On a Saturday morning, that was a risky choice.

  The screen showed a reporter standing in Pershing Square in L.A.—the scene of Allen Cartwright’s death a week earlier.

  That hit had gone smoothly, and exactly as planned. Trick had taken a position on the rooftop Sherlock and Bart had cased, and he’d made a bullseye, dropping Cartwright with a bullet in the forehead from about five hundred yards away.

  They had no connection to Cartwright, and Trick had been sure to leave no trace of himself or his assignment behind. If a crime could be perfect, that hit, it seemed, was it.

  He sat for a second and listened to the news. The reporter had thrown the story to footage of a press conference, several men in uniforms and bad suits lined up behind a podium. The man at the mic was obviously a Fed. They all just had a look about them.

  … investigators have determined that the shot came from a distance, estimating at least four hundred yards. We are searching every building within a thousand-yard radius of the incident…

  Connor turned to Trick. “Anything to worry you?”

  His friend’s attention finally left the television. “No. They’re nowhere. And I left nothing. I’m sure of it. They’ll probably eventually figure out that the cameras were hacked, but Sherlock and Bart erased their tracks. I’ve played the scene out in my head about a thousand times in the past week, and it went just the way I’d played it out in my head beforehand. We didn’t leave a trace.”

  He leaned back. “That guy had little kids. A wife. Sure the fuck wish I knew why La Zorra wanted him dead.” He rubbed his head again; he’d been doing that, like a nervous tic, since he’d had his dreads and beard cut off.

  There was no point turning over the matter of La Zorra’s motives, so Connor changed the subject and nodded at Trick’s head. “How you doin’ with that, Velcro-head?”

  Trick lifted his middle finger, flipping him a lazy bird. Then he answered the question. “My head doesn’t feel like it’s full of helium and about to float off anymore. And I almost recognize myself in the mirror. Still sucks, though.”

  “So grow ‘em back.”

  “I guess. I don’t know. The point is lost now. Turns out, I am who they trained me to be. A drone who kills without question.” Making a disgusted sound, he picked up the paperback on his lap and tossed it onto the table at his side. It was black, with a black and white picture on the cover, like one of those medieval etchings or something. Connor took a closer look, and the picture was pretty involved—and also pretty deranged: people hanging from chains and ropes. The title of the book was Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, by Michel Foucault.

  “That some fetish shit?”

  Trick scoffed. “No, asshole. It’s not ‘fetish shit.’ It’s a critique of the prison system, and it has some stuff about soldiers, too. Soldiers are a lot like prisoners. We all are, actually. Everything we do is scrutinized and judged, every way we act is because of it. We all live in the panopticon.” At Connor’s frown, he shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I’m in a mood.”

  Trick was always reading some thick-ass book that put him in a mood. Connor considered him his best friend, and vice versa, but they were very different men. Aside from their physical differences—Trick was fair and lean, while Connor was burly and dark—they were different in interest and temperament as well.

  Trick had a college degree. Connor had managed to get himself through high school without getting expelled. Trick was a voracious reader, who liked to Think Big Thoughts and have deep conversations about books and politics and current events. Connor thought politics was a crock of shit, and he had never been a reader. Reading meant sitting, and he didn’t like to sit. He liked to do.

  He was a problem-solver, a fixer. Trick was a problem-seer, an analyst. Where Connor tended to be loud and was quick to fight, Trick was quiet and always measured in his responses.

  Maybe that was why they got along so well and, ironically, got each other without trying. They were opposites, and they filled in each other’s gaps. They complemented each other.

  While Connor was thinking that, the television caught his eye again. The screen was full of flames, showing a fire that had happened during the night. He saw the ‘76’ on one of the trucks and knew Cordero’s station was there. He didn’t know if she’d been working last night, but he watched intently, looking for her. Why he thought he’d be able to recognize her, he didn’t know. All the firefighters looked the same, buried in heavy gear.

  But then two came out of the burning building, carrying bodies. One firefighter was considerably bigger than the other and had an adult over his shoulders. The other carried a child.

  That was her. He knew it. His chest tightened. Fuck, she was impressive. An actual hero, carrying a child literally through fire to safety.

  Ever looking for the ‘human interest’ story, the cameraman zoom hard toward the scene of the firefighters handing over the victims to the paramedics, laying them on stretchers.

  And then Connor’s attention shifted from Cordero to the man on the stretcher. “I know that guy. That’s Marshall Bridges.” A glance at the text on the bottom of the screen, showing the street name, settled it.

  Trick leaned in and studied the television, but then a firefighter blocked the camera and pushed the crew back. “I didn’t see. You sure? The Bridges Motors guy?”

  “Yeah, yeah. He bought his oldest a Low Rider for high school graduation last year, had me pimp it out. He was a pain in the ass about it, and I had to talk to him a lot. He said some stuff that got me twitching, so I asked Sherlock to study him up. He didn’t need to—he’d already known. The guy has three chop shops across SoCal. That’s how he makes his real bank. And that means he’s hooked with some crazy cholos.”

  “You think this is something, then?” Trick waved at the television.

  Connor shrugged and stood. “Don’t know. Probably not. It’s interesting, though.” He rubbed his bare belly, which was really starting to complain. “But right now, I’m more interested in breakfast.”

  ~oOo~

  “Hey, Mom!” That afternoon, Connor closed the front door of his parents’ house. When his mother, Bibi, didn’t answer, he walked through the entry and headed to the kitchen. The faint aroma of baking bread made his mouth water. He was going to raid the larder before he left.

  “Mom? You around?”

  He knew she was—her Cadillac was in the garage, and the overhead door was open. But when she still didn’t answer, and the kitchen was empty and pristine, two loaves of fresh bread cooling on racks on the granite counter, his heart sped up a little. “Mom!”

  That fire at the Bridges’ house the night before had him extra twitchy, and without a solid reason. Yeah, Bridges bought stolen cars from the Aztecs—and every other gang in that biz in the bottom half of the state. Yeah, Cordero had worked the fire. Yeah, he, and by extension the Horde, was connected to Cordero and her problems with the Aztecs. But those were all coincidences. Correlation did not imply causation. The Horde had nothing to do with Bridges, except for tricking out his spoiled kid’s bike. Whatever trouble the Horde might have with the Aztecs, last night’s fire was irrelevant.

  But he was twitchy anyway.

  The Aztecs had done a couple of drive-bys past the clubhouse and bike shop over the last couple of weeks, since the Horde had meddled in their affairs. Nothing more than that, just literal drive-bys, slowly down the street, but Esposito was waving his dick around, and the Horde were waiting for them to do something more.

  They had to wait, at least for now. La Zorra had not been impressed by the news that the Horde had any kin
d of trouble with the Aztecs. She shared their opinion of the gang as scum and generally beneath her notice, but she didn’t want to weaken her truce with the Fuentes cartel. Plus, her attention had been on the L.A. District Attorney.

  La Zorra was pleased with the hit, and the Horde had brought in a huge stack of cash. But neither she nor they needed law to turn toward them over the Aztecs. She had asked Hoosier, Bart, and Connor to stand down until there was aggression, and they had agreed it was the best course. So they were waiting, and letting Raul Esposito wave his dick around. Connor wanted to cut it off.

  And those assholes went for family all the time. If the Horde were sitting on their asses while a loved one got hurt, Connor would tear the whole fucking town apart.

  He had asked Sherlock to check in on Cordero’s brother. Hugo was home with his grandmother, and so far, it didn’t look like the Aztecs were pushing on him to make his debt right. That was that, then, as far as Connor was concerned. He and Cordero, whatever had been going on between them, however she’d fucked with his head—that was dead. So Hugo and his sister were on their own. He needed to worry about his own family.

  Good plan. Except he couldn’t stop thinking about her. The few times they’d fucked played in a loop all night, every night, whether or not he was with a Madison, Hailey, or Kristy—no, KEARsty. Whatever. But more than that, he thought about their dinner at The Bunkhouse, sitting across from her while they ate and talked, seeing her in that cardinal sin of a dress.

  He’d been right to walk away. She’d changed things up between them, and he hadn’t wanted that. But she was still in his head.

  Right now, though, the only thought in his head was his mother. He pulled his phone out, but before he called her, he tried one more time, yelling, “MOM!” at the top of his voice.

  He dialed, and her phone rang in the house.

  Fuck!

  At the moment that his concern blossomed into fear, the French doors to the back yard opened, and in came his mother, wearing a floppy straw hat, her gardening gloves, and bright yellow rubber boots. “What the hell, Connor? Why are you in here roarin’ like a big ol’ grizzly?”

  Relief exploded his heart, and he grabbed her and lifted her off the ground. “Jesus fuck, Mom. Thank God!”

  She pushed on his shoulders, and he set her down. When he looked down at her face, she was giving him this look she had, one eyebrow up, her eyes a little squinty, like she was reading under his surface. Since he could remember, that look had made him feel naked—and guilty, whether or not he had something to hide.

  “You know I’m not gonna ask why you’re scared. You just tell me if I need to do anythin’.”

  His mother had been an old lady for a very long time. She knew the score. “Just keep your phone close. Let me or Dad know where you are when you leave the house.”

  “I was in the back yard, honey. Your dad already talked to me about checkin’ in. So that’s it?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Nothing new. I’m just…jumpy, I guess.”

  She reached up and cupped his jaw in her hand. “It’s not like you to be jumpy, Connor. There anythin’ you need to talk about?”

  He sighed and dropped into a chair at the breakfast table. “I don’t know.”

  Toeing off her rubber boots, his mother said, “I roasted a turkey breast yesterday and sliced it up for sandwiches, and I made a couple of loaves of white bread this mornin’. Did you have any lunch?” She pulled off her gloves and hat and set them on top of her boots. “And you can tell me what the fuck is up your ass.”

  He laughed. His mom was an interesting broad. Trick liked to say that she was like the daughter of Gaia and Ares: the perfect mother, with a warrior’s heart.

  “I love you, Mama Bear.”

  She came over and kissed the top of his head. “You’re my baby. Now talk.” As she headed to the counter, without turning, and with a deceptively casual tone, she asked, “Anythin’ to do with the girl your dad told me about?” She opened the fridge and pulled out a beer, like she hadn’t just dropped a grenade in his lap.

  “What?”

  She popped the cap and brought the bottle to him. “Dad was just tellin’ me that y’all helped a girl out a while back, and you seemed kinda protective of her.”

  “I am protective. That’s what I do. In general.” He took the bottle, and she lifted an eyebrow at him and then went back to the counter and started making sandwiches. In his head, he flipped through the very few opportunities his father would have had to form an opinion about him and Cordero.

  The Keep. He’d gotten huffy at J.R. for calling her Latin pussy. Goddammit, Dad.

  “I’m just thinkin’ it would be nice to have you close enough with somebody to bring ‘em over for Sunday dinner. Fill out the table, you know. You haven’t brought a girl around in years.”

  “Jesus, Mom. Don’t nest. I’m not gonna bring anybody home. You want family and grandbabies, you got Deme and Faith for that.”

  In the act of smearing mayonnaise on a slice of bread, she stopped and turned to him. “Honey, this ain’t about what I want. It’s about what you want. I know you want that in your life—a woman, children. Why don’t you look for it?”

  “I did. Tried a couple times. Didn’t work out.”

  “So you just give up? Connor Jerome Elliott, you are not that weak.” She slapped the knife across the bread with force and then stabbed it into the mayonnaise jar.

  “It’s not weak to understand that my life and women don’t mesh.”

  “You do see that you’re talkin’ to a woman who lives this life, right? Forty-two years and countin’. Standin’ here healthy and strong.”

  “You haven’t always been.”

  Her head jerked up, and her complexion paled. “We don’t talk about those days. And I came through it. Right?”

  The reason Connor was an only child was because his father had always lived a violent life in a violent world—just as they both did now. When Connor was four years old, his mother had been taken hostage by an enemy of their old club. He hadn’t even been a member of that club at the time; he’d been patched into a support club. She’d been beaten and raped for three days before they’d found her. She’d been horribly hurt. And unable to have any more children.

  Connor hadn’t known any of that at the time, of course; he’d been too young. He’d learned the story much later, as a young man.

  Most of what Connor remembered of the year that followed his mother’s trauma was absence and silence. His memories of that year were like the old silent movies—monochrome and without sound. And all of his memories of his mother during that time were like still photographs. She sat, and she stared. Faith’s mother, Margot, his mother’s best friend and another member’s old lady, had done most of the raising of him then.

  Margot had been pregnant and then had had an infant daughter of her own, Faith’s older sister, Serenity. The only happy times he remembered in that year had to do with that tiny little girl. Margot had let him hold her, play with her, sit at her cradle and rock her. She had smelled so good—when she hadn’t smelled like shit or puke, anyway. Her first smile had been at him.

  Serenity and Connor had ended up not being all that close. Sera was a straight arrow and had wanted nothing more from their life, from the time she could grasp what it was their fathers did, than to be away from it. Connor had wanted to follow his father from the time he could grasp what it was their fathers did.

  When he’d learned about his mother’s trauma, the knowledge had drawn him closer to the life, not driven him from it. He’d wanted to be strong, to fight, to protect. Not to flee.

  Faith, seven years younger than he, had been the sister who’d become his sister.

  “Connor.” His mom set a plate with two sandwiches and a wedged tomato in front of him and sat next to him with a plate of her own—one sandwich and a tomato. “I got through it. I had love, and I got through it. Everybody’s got shit to deal with. It don’t matter what job you have. Ditch digger
s, secretaries, doctors, outlaws, we all got shit. You look for the one who’ll carry you through it, and who you want to carry through.”

  Still caught up in those old memories, he didn’t answer. He picked at his sandwich for a second, his appetite gone.

  His mother put her hand over his. “You’re young, honey. Don’t give up so quick. If you want somethin’, go find it.” With a sharp pat on his hand, she sat back. “Now eat up. I need you out back to carry that big potted tree to the other side of the yard. I made you that meal, and now you owe me.”

  He laughed and picked up a sandwich. “You’re awesome, Bedelia.”

  “Yes, I am. Good you know it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Pilar parked her Element on the street in front of her grandmother’s house. Renata Salazar lived on the ‘wrong’ side of Madrone, in the only neighborhood in the city limits that didn’t look like people cared. Even so, it was about five steps up the affluence ladder, and completely across town, from the neighborhood she’d moved them all from, where the Aztec Assassins ruled.