Rest & Trust

by Susan Fanetti

  Many of the girls who weren’t groupies were there for the protection. Some of them were hiding out from abusive husbands or boyfriends, men who refused to acknowledge that they were exes. Maria, the girl who’d been around the longest and was the de facto assistant manager, had come to the Horde escaping a pimp who’d broken her face. When said pimp had brought his massive balls and tiny brain into the Hall with the intent to drag Maria back out, the Horde who’d been present—Muse, Connor, Trick, and Ronin—had seen to it that he would never be a threat to Maria or any other person ever again.

  They’d been working purely straight in those days, but none of them had batted an eye at the work they’d done that night.

  Sherlock knew that Shaylee had come to the club for similar protection. Her pimp had been persuaded to release her free and clear after a ‘chat’ with Connor and Demon. The Horde’s reputation these days was again formidable; Sherlock couldn’t imagine anybody being stupid enough to think they could storm the Hall without an army at their back and survive.

  He was of a mind that women who came to the Horde like Maria and Shaylee were the best, most reliable girls. They had lost their rose-colored glasses long ago, and they understood the value of the club for them, and vice versa. They knew their place. A man could let his guard down a little and enjoy a woman’s company if he didn’t have to look out for her claws to sink into his kutte. So he was surprised to get attitude from Shaylee.

  “You know how this works, Shay. Don’t get bent.”

  Looking up at him, she smiled brightly and nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. See you later?”

  Before he could answer, he saw Hoosier, Bart, Connor, Lakota, and Trick walking single-file to the Keep. He had to go. He bent down and kissed Shalyee’s cheek, which still had a pink scar from her ex-pimp’s fist. The heavy flowers of her cologne filled his nose and didn’t play well with the lingering traces of his hangover. “Yeah. I want to get my hands on your bare ass.” He smacked her again, and she gave him a playful swat.

  Setting the ladder back up where she’d had it, Sherlock took his coffee, went around the bar, and headed to the Keep.

  ~oOo~

  Trick had come back from his trip looking good—healthy and tan, and in good spirits. His life was back on track; he’d gotten married in the spring and knocked his wife up right away. They’d had this summer honeymoon where he’d taken her and her daughter to see her parents for the first time in years and to see his grandfather, too. And he was building again. He looked good.

  It had been eight months since he’d been released from unreported custody. He’d never yet spoken in even the barest detail about what he’d endured during almost two months locked away, out of sight, but he’d come out of it looking like a prisoner of war—which he had, basically, been—and it had taken him months to return to some kind of normal. Looking at him here in the Keep, Sherlock thought that he was only just now really back to normal.

  Sherlock had done some deep searching while Trick was locked away, trying to find a crack in the government wall between him and the club, but he’d been buried so deep that all Sherlock, or Bart, for that matter, had ever come up with was wall. They’d almost given up hope when La Zorra had stepped in and pushed her way through that wall.

  They had to be careful how much digging they did into La Zorra. She had a crack tech staff, better than either Sherlock or Bart, and she would know if they went snooping where she didn’t want them. It was a strange place for Sherlock to be. Until the past year, he’d often bragged, in certain circles, that there was nothing he couldn’t hack. If information had been made digital, he could get it. He’d gotten his virtual hands deep in the private pies of the government, the biggest corporations, you name it—and not only American governments or corporations. He’d felt invulnerable. And then he’d hit that wall.

  He knew he could get up La Zorra’s skirts, too. Sometimes the temptation to see what she was hiding almost got to be overwhelming, but the downside was too great. If nothing else, he’d fuck his brothers up royally, and that was all the reminder he’d needed to leave La Zorra alone.

  That fucking tungsten wall DHS had had Trick behind, though—that tormented Sherlock in his sleep. He’d hacked the goddamn NSA before. Sure, he’d had to tiptoe, and back out in a hurry, but he’d gotten in. Yet he hadn’t even found a hint of a vulnerability when he’d been trying to help Trick.

  And still, Dora Vega had managed to find him and free him.

  There was so much scary shit, so much the Horde didn’t know, in that whole situation. Even now, eight months after it was ostensibly behind them, Sherlock still kept poking around, trying to find answers.

  But none of that was why Hoosier wanted the officers to meet with Trick today—not exactly, at any rate.

  It was unusual for the officers to call one patch in for a meeting, and Trick looked commensurately wary. He’d pulled out of the outlaw work after his ordeal. Nobody had begrudged him that, or turned any kind of suspicion his way. He’d sacrificed more than most for the club, and he’d stayed true. But Sherlock knew that if he had been called into a meeting like this, especially after he’d stepped outside the outlaw circle, he’d be worried.

  Trick indeed seemed worried. He’d only been back in town a couple of days; today was his first day back at the shop. He waited until everyone had sat in their customary seats, then asked, “What’s up?”

  Connor sat forward, and Hoosier didn’t object. Connor was Trick’s best friend, and Hoosier still had some lingering slowness in his speech. “We got some news, brother. It won’t be easy to hear, but the first thing we want you to know is that you’re clear of any grief.”

  Trick raked a hand through his long hair. “Fuck, Con. Out with it.”

  “Stiles is dead.”

  Mark Stiles was Trick’s wife’s ex and the father of her little girl. He’d threatened to cause everybody trouble until Sherlock had found some dark dirt on him. They’d thought they’d achieved a ‘mutually assured destruction’ balance with him, keeping him in line. La Zorra hadn’t been happy with that arrangement, but she had deferred to Trick’s wish to keep him alive—Trick’s little stepdaughter loved her father. Instead, La Zorra had made an overture of her own to bring Stiles into her fold.

  “What? Fuck. What’d he do?” There was tension in his voice, but Sherlock thought that Trick looked a little relieved, too. Understandable—Stiles had been a jackass, and he’d been in Trick’s way.

  Connor looked at Bart, who gestured to Sherlock to pick up the thread—which he did. “We only know any of this in retrospect. It was done before there was even a trail. I don’t know whether it was an attack of conscience or stupidity, but while you were gone, he went to the Feds. The only reason it went nowhere fast is that he happened to land on a Fed that La Zorra owns, the one who took over your case, or whatever it was, last year and got you out. George Ellery. La Zorra was his first call, and she was on it so fast, Stiles was dead within an hour.”

  “Ellery also turned the rats out to us,” Lakota added. “He’s solid.”

  After Trick had been hauled in, the club had scrambled to understand why. Suspicion had fallen on Jesse quickly, because he’d been acting off for weeks. When Sherlock and Bart had found enough to level an accusation at a long-standing member and his buddy Titus, the two had already run for the Fed cover. When Ellery got involved, he’d handed them back to the Horde.

  What had happened next would be burned into Sherlock’s head for as long as he was capable of memory. A rat’s day of reckoning was the harshest the club could mete out.

  Bart shook his head. “I’d caution against any of us getting too comfortable with anybody. Who the fuck knows what we’re dealing with in the government. Whatever it is, it’s darker than black ops. We are off the grid.”

  Sherlock nodded; he agreed completely. “Yeah. At this point, what we don’t know is everything, and we can’t find a way in. If we’re not rooting around in La Zorra’s drawers, then the onl
y intel we have is what comes out of her mouth.”

  Trick sighed, watching his fingers trace grooves and scars in the blonde oak of their table. “When I saw her last, back in December, she said something cryptic and provocative. She said, ‘Not all agencies have badges and emblems in the floor, and not all agencies work toward the same end.’ Something like that. She also said she had allies everywhere, and they were people who shared her vision. She didn’t say what any of that meant.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before?” Hoosier asked, his forehead low over his eyes.

  “She asked for discretion, and none of it made much sense to me. I was still pretty out of it back then. I’m sorry.”

  “It is pretty cryptic,” Sherlock agreed. “And doesn’t tell us what we don’t know. It does confirm that there is something very big and very shady going on all around us, though.”

  Trick nodded. “I’m sorry for my part in all this crap.”

  Connor waved him off. “Fuck that, T. You did your job. The mess is not on you, and the Stiles thing—hell. That’s a loose end tied off.” He leaned on the table. “You okay with breaking it to your little one?”

  Trick heaved a sigh and shook his head. “That’ll suck, and Jules is going to have trouble with it, too. Lucie’s been asking a lot of questions about why she can’t keep people she loves with her. Taking her to meet her grandparents backfired a little that way. She didn’t want to leave them. And she loves her father.” He sighed again. “But we’ll get her through it. Honestly, this is better. I hated that motherfucker for what he did to Jules. I’m glad he’s not a threat to anybody anymore. Wait—what about his wife? Nikki?”

  For a couple of seconds, nobody spoke, which was more than enough answer.

  “God,” Trick muttered. “She was innocent.”

  “Dora doesn’t like loose ends,” Connor finally replied. “She gave Stiles a break, and he threw it in her face. She doesn’t make mistakes twice, either.”

  “God,” Trick said again.

  ~oOo~

  “Okay,” Hoosier slapped his hand on the table to grab the attention of his men, who’d gone off on a tangent about the upcoming Miles of Smiles national toy and charity run. “The big…l-l-logistical push is going to be mobilizing right after the charity run to head up to Sturgis. Trick—you got your registration in for the show?”

  Trick nodded. “Sent it in before we left.”

  “Good man. You gonna be ready to roll that thing out?”

  “Yes sir, I will. I’m gonna haul it home, though, finish it there, if it’s okay. That way I’m around more for Lucie.”

  “That’s fine. But we’re talking at least two weeks of…down time in the shop unless we can pull in some temporary help. The days of the charity run are a loss, but I’d rather stay open while we’re in…South Dakota if we can. Ideas?”

  “Nate’s getting pretty good with repairs,” Demon offered. “He could take a station while we go north. School doesn’t start until after we’re back.” He’d sponsored Nate Jackson, their new Prospect, a nearly twenty-year-old kid who was still in high school. One of the provisions of his prospecting period was that he graduate.

  Jerry was still hanging on as a Prospect, coming up on two years in. He’d officially time out at two years, but Sherlock thought there was a chance they’d give him one more year. He was a good guy, just not very bright, and after the Jesse fiasco, everybody was reluctant to open the Keep doors to anybody who wasn’t remarkable.

  “Stuff is good with engines,” J.R. put in. Stuff was just a hangaround, but he’d been hanging around for well more than a year. “This could give him a chance to show us something.”

  Jerry was a hopeless mechanic; another knock against him. He was a great rider, though.

  “I can take a station, do some light repair work, keep an eye on the scrubs,” Muse added. “I’m staying home. I’m not leaving Sid on her own with Ez.”

  Muse and Sid’s son, Ezra, was three months old. Muse didn’t do a lot of confiding or complaining, but he’d been walking around like a zombie for the past three months, so maybe they weren’t having such an easy time of their new parenting gig.

  Hoosier nodded. “Understood. We’ll miss you up there, but thank you for the offer. I know you hate working the shop.”

  Muse shrugged. “It’ll be fine.”

  “I think we can make it work with three stations up. Anybody doing…c-custom jobs, schedule around those two weeks. Last bit of business: Bart.”

  Bart sat forward. “Yeah. Isaac got home yesterday. We now have no Horde inside.” He smiled as the table gave that bit of news the thunderous applause it deserved. When it was quiet again, he continued, “They’re doing the party for him and Len next week. Since we can’t send anybody east to represent, we’d like to send them a barrel of Jack. I can get a good rate, but everybody needs to throw in five hundred.”

  “What the fuck?” J.R. protested. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  Bart turned and snarled at him. “Dude, loosen the purse strings. Pull a few bills out of the envelope in front of you and chill the fuck out. They gave up more than seven years of their lives to get us all free of Santaveria. Isaac almost died inside. Five hundred dollars is a small price to pay.”

  “Not everybody at this table was tangled up with the Perros. I wasn’t.”

  Bart leveled a look at J.R. “This club exists because of what those men gave up.”

  Trick opened his own envelope—something he never did—and thumbed through it. He tossed a thousand dollars on the table. “There’s mine and J.R.’s put-in.”

  A thousand dollars, Sherlock knew, was a sizable chunk of Trick’s take—which was substantially smaller than any of the other patches’ takes, since he’d pulled out of all the lucrative work. Other patches had envelopes with three, four, five times as much.

  The statement he’d made with that gesture resounded in the room. The rest of the patches began to pull their own contributions from their envelopes.

  “Fuck you. Fucking martyr.” J.R. pushed five hundred dollars back at Trick and opened his own envelope.

  When Bart had collected the money, Hoosier nodded. Then he laid his hands flat on the table. “We need to watch the petty…disagreements, brothers. The work we do, we need to be whole. There’s a ring out there; use it. If you’re stewing in resentment, then call it out and settle it. But I don’t want us going into the shit we go into unless we are all in…sync. Understood?”

  The heads around the table moved up and down.

  “Good. Sherlock—you’re on the intel for the new run?” Sherlock had detailed the new run and the logistical challenges earlier in the meeting.

  “I am. I’ll hit my buddy up in Transportation on Monday, and I’ll work out a route around the construction.”

  “Good. Okay, brothers. We’re adjourned.” The President knocked his rings on the table, and the Horde pushed their chairs back and stood.

  Sherlock closed up and stacked his tech. He wanted to get it stowed away and hunt up Shaylee. And get a drink.

  ~oOo~

  While he was up talking to Lloyd, he should have worked out an alternate route to get back out of downtown San Bernardino, too. There was some kind of mess going on at the courthouse, and traffic was absolutely fucked—so fucked that even on his bike, he would have had to jump the curb and ride down the sidewalk to move.

  One of the beauteous things about being out of a cage was that a rider was almost impervious to traffic. Cars and trucks had to stay in line and get bogged down. A biker could swing out and split the lanes. Getting truly stuck in traffic was rare—and all the more infuriating for it.

  He was stewing in the jam, feeling the last effects of the morning’s hangover, eating a fucking diesel pickup’s foul exhaust and getting a bellyful of rage, a block from the melee at the courthouse. Some kind of demonstration, it looked like. It seemed too…condensed to be a riot or something like that. And there were signs bobbing around, and th
e indeterminate noise of somebody shouting into a bullhorn.

  Sherlock rolled his eyes and fidgeted on the saddle. What people thought they could accomplish by waving a sign, he did not know. You want to get people to notice you? You want them to change? Hit them where they live. Dig into their secrets and their treasures. Don’t wave a fucking cardboard sign and think anybody else gives a shit.

  The first bark of noise that overtopped the din of traffic and the rumble of the crowd at the courthouse, Sherlock figured for a backfire. But then there was another. And another. And then the air was full of it. Gunfire—and some of it automatic.

  Now what was happening at the courthouse wasn’t condensed at all. Now it was a riot. Now it was madness.