by Bella Knight
The first time Luisa laughed from her belly was the day after Alo sang for her, and for little Sofia. She dropped a soapy cup into the water and splashed herself, and laughed at the water on her hands, her face. Alo looked at Fala, and at Alina, and they all smiled. Alina and Rina worked to make her laugh, making silly faces, making ridiculous statements, and having wool wars where they threw soft wool at each other before gathering, washing, carding, and spinning it. Even though the sheep had been sheared in the spring, they had bought bags in the summer and held onto them to work over winter. The local shepherds were delighted, and pledged as many bags as the Montana Wolfpack could afford, come spring. Paul did a lot of physical comedy, making everyone laugh.
Alo did things a little differently than he had before Luisa’s reservation. He worked very hard on learning how to heal women, and the sun dance, and learning Crow. He had kept an eye on the young mother before, but now he looked more closely. He began to learn her moods, when she was exhausted, confused, irritated, or relaxed and happy. He watched for the exhaustion, and told her to speak of it. “Many hands mean you can rest,” he said. “Take the time now, because you will be walking everywhere in the summer.” Luisa stuck out her tongue at him, but she slept more often, and would pass on chores when she was just too tired to do them.
This endeared him to Alina and Rina, known as “the two Inas.” They respected him more and listened to him, even when they didn’t agree with him. Crow had strong women, and Alo recognized and encouraged this.
Fala noticed, and she said, “Do not watch her like a hawk. Listen instead, Black Bear.”
So, he listened, and was able to hear exhaustion in her voice, even when she sat upright and used strong hands to card, spin, crochet, wash dishes, cook, clean, wash and fold piles of laundry, feed and brush the rabbits, muck out stalls, curry horses, dye wool, or make her silver jewelry. He took on her activities when he could, passed them on when he could not. He joked that they could rotate everything except Sofia’s feeding time, which earned him a wet sponge thrown at his head.
He didn’t see her beauty at first, as she’d been crying almost all the time when she had arrived. Now, he understood why. He recognized the beauty of motherhood, of course, as he’d seen it with Inola and Bella. But this, this was something more. A girl moved into being a woman, having long talks with Triesta about the business, learning how to ride the snowmobile to Sofia’s pediatrician appointments, teaching the others more complex crochet projects she’d learned how to do on YouTube, and passing her classes despite the workload and being a mother.
Luisa fought for what she wanted, was passionate about the Wolfpack. She defused minor quarrels with a smile and a lightly sarcastic comment several times a day with great skill. “Learned that one living with my mom,” she said. “Woman loves to pray to Jesus and drink. Usually both at the same time, until she passes out.” She handed him a dish to dry.
“Must have been delightful growing up,” said Alo. “My father was always angry, my mother always tired. My mother was so tired that; one day, she fell asleep and did not wake up. My father never spoke much again. I was so happy to be part of the Wolfpack, get my GED, and go to college. I never thought I’d do all that.” He dried three dishes in a row.
“Any brothers or sisters?” asked Luisa. She handed him two forks.
“One brother joined the army. Never saw him again, no phone calls, letters, Skype calls. I don’t even know if he’s still in the military. My sister died of a fever when I was seven.” He dried the forks and accepted a knife.
“That’s horrible,” said Luisa. “My sister joined the navy. Still writes to me. Not a word to Mom. She’s delighted that I’m here. She tried to send me money when Mama kicked me out, but I didn’t let her. She’s out on the ocean for a long time. She never even knew I was pregnant, or about Sofia.” She handed Alo a cup. He dried it. “I’ll wait until she’s getting ready to come back, so she knows where to find me.” She handed him another cup.
“I’d send her pictures,” said Alo. “Something to hold onto while she’s surrounded by steel in the middle of the ocean.” He dried the cup.
“Good idea,” said Luisa. “Help me pick some out?”
So, after the dishes were done, he helped her pick out a single photo of her pregnant, and send it to her sister, with a letter about how she got pregnant, skirting the rape part. She insinuated just enough that her sister Valeria would get the idea, and that the person was long gone. Three days later, she sent the first baby pictures, and pictures of the farm —the rabbits, horses, crops, her bed and the baby’s crib, and her coursework.
Valeria, now calling herself Val, wrote back with anger about the rape and Luisa being kicked out, and with increasing wonder and hope at the baby pictures and Luisa’s studies and farm chores. She offered to pay for anything Luisa or baby Sofia needed, and wrote that she looked forward to seeing them when she was on leave in the spring. She began calling from time to time, even though the sisters were in very different time zones, in order to see Sofia and Luisa in real time. She spoke in a mixture of Crow, Spanish, and English. She had a narrower face than Luisa, and looked badass in her military uniform.
They celebrated the winter solstice, as the shortest day of the year, with sodas, chips, dips, popcorn, and movies. They all slept in the next day, and then they rushed to get the last of the things out before Christmas. They sold much more than they thought they could even make on time, but they were successful due to some all-night sessions working in shifts.
They all spent Christmas day laying around and not moving their hands much, as they’d worn themselves out creating all the clothes, dolls, drums, and Omar’s hand-carved flutes, a new addition. They celebrated with a feast of roast beef, potatoes, and vegetables, with caramel apple pie with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. Alo and Fala cleaned up while everyone else watched movies on television. They all ended up falling asleep early, and slept well into the next day. They did farm chores and spent the day watching football and eating tacos and chili rellenos.
On the second day of the new year, they went back to work. They had all their orders fulfilled, and new orders came in at a crawl. So, Alo had a team meeting. “We’re going down to four days a week. Four hours of chores, and four hours of study. You have to stagger your days off so all days are covered…” He was cut off by a cheer, and Luisa and Alina did a little happy dance. He showed the new schedule they needed to cover. “Farm chores come first, but…”
“Call of Duty!” said Omar. They all laughed.
“Okay, let’s figure out what needs to be done on what day, farm chores solid, and the orders and building up a little inventory…”
“And I’m gonna need help with the necklaces. I’m gonna fire up lots of glass beads, build up inventory. I’ve got the earrings down to where I can make a pair every twenty minutes,” said Luisa.
They all got the new schedule nailed down, and Omar and Alina, who took the first days off, went to create snacks for themselves for their Call of Duty video game marathon. They even had time to order and install more hydroponics, and Alina learned the route to let Paul take some time off from his duties. Finally, finally, they were able to get some rest.
High Desert Love
Bannon sighed, letting his feet find the rhythm on the sidewalk just outside his house. He had so much work that he was exhausted and needed a clone. His assistants had assistants. He hired for competence and discretion. The fact that he was willing to deal with ex-soldiers missing limbs got him a great deal of respect, and a lot of work with the influx of people wanting to be hired.
Wraith hired Thandie to be her second voice, and Tori to help weed through candidates. He turned, and ran farther out. No one else was out at five thirty in the morning. His dog Pepper kept pace. He thought as he ran.
Sadly, they couldn’t take people with head injuries or seizure disorders, but he was able to put two people behind the scenes with those difficulties. It was legal to treat seizure d
isorders with hemp oil, and Sergeant Ronny Wachovic used a small amount every morning to prevent seizures. He’d been seizure-free for six months, and did fantastically well at running the many background checks and data mining they needed, and with keeping the Wraith up-to-date on the results of his queries.
Lieutenant Ruden Palac handled his headaches, migraines, and frustration with sunglasses, a dark room, and a dog named Indigo who lay down on Ruden’s foot just before a migraine came on, giving Ruden time to take his meds, an inhalable medication that smelled and tasted like metal. Ruden learned from Daisy Chain how to do deep financial searches, how to find records that criminals didn’t want found, and how to follow the money trail. He’d put people’s lives back on track by finding out things about those who wanted to harm High Desert’s clients, such as finding out a stalker had done it before, exposing a pattern of insanity going back years, and finding the money a mother attempted to steal from her rock-teen daughter. He had moments of confusion and forgetfulness, but the dog was trained to spot those, too. Ruden took frequent breaks and did top-quality work.
Bannon counted himself as lucky to have these unusual workers. They worked harder than all the able-bodied workers he’d hired put together, with an energy and focus that surprised him, and made him increase his own drive and focus. He turned another corner, and Pepper glided along with him.
He had a lot of balls in the air. Gregory had, thank heaven, trained Shiva on how to do the Evade classes at Henry’s school, and Shiva had taken over the job of teaching them. As Gregory’s employee, they made money off the classes. They had income with the training sessions with law enforcement from all over the country in the warehouse High Desert owned. Tori was a genius at creating nasty scenarios that left everyone hot, sweaty, and ready to argue tactics afterward, and over nachos and beer (or sodas).
They had some of the most high-powered clients ever, due to their location being close to one of the busiest international airports in the world, with access to things like golf courses. Things the high-powered liked to use to do business, and absolutely some of the finest hotels in the world. They also had Gregory’s record label. The label’s chanteuses generated funds, because underage songstresses needed security and supervision. So, swing shift did as much or more business than the business meetings, contract signings, airport pickups, and law enforcement training did during the day. Bannon ran up a low rise, and the dog effortlessly kept pace, still deep in thought about the business.
They spent staggering amounts of money and added a second office in an extremely secure building for more clandestine meetings, such as those between very high-powered people and others of their kind. Like law enforcement witness protection details, and those wildly popular singers, athletes, and internet stars who were just trying to do their business without being mobbed.
Bannon was all in favor of getting people in and out without a whisper of their ever being in Las Vegas. Cars would drive up to private planes, pick up the individuals, maybe a rock star signing a prenuptual agreement, or possibly a billionaire needing a secure place to do business. The business would be conducted, with water, coffee, and finger food consumed, and they would then go back out to their respective planes and vanish into the air. Bannon had no concern as to what happened to them after his security, in partnership with theirs, he just got them into their planes. He did care about repeat business, privacy, and the ultimate security.
They spent a fortune on hiring the best, getting everyone trained, insurance for people and buildings, installing the best security, and a fleet of town cars, SUVs, and motorcycles to move everyone around like chess pieces in a game where only Wraith knew all the pieces. He’d hired Wraith so he didn’t have to oversee every damn detail, but he wanted to be sure everything was done right. Her injuries concerned him, but she was getting better every day. Having kids and getting help running things made all the difference. He ran back down the rise, and stopped to water himself and Pepper.
He was getting very tired of High Desert Security and Protection being a target. Someone had hired actual mercenaries to attack them and their allies the last time. The Justice Department had covered everything up; they liked getting international terrorists off the streets as much as anyone, as quietly as possible. Wraith and Frenchie, their FBI contact, kept anyone from getting arrested or even detained, despite fifteen live ones and one almost-dead one in four separate attacks. The near-simultaneity of the attacks themselves, and Frenchie and Wraith’s dogged determination to find the shooters had resulted in a very fast takedown.
And his own damn client was the one responsible. The financial assets management company that had an embezzling killer as one of their main partners dissolved, and had reformed itself under another name. The trusts were all carefully managed under law enforcement supervision as the cases wound through the courts by special people hired to do so.
Bannon knew Chalke was a worm the day he met the man, and suspected embezzlement of the client brought to him, a young girl orphaned, the embezzler in charge of her trust fund. His office manager, Jaime Choi, and his wife Kat, they had successfully adopted the girl and moved the trust to a manager the girl hired herself, a young man named Victor Balewa from Traina, Balewa, and Thorne who managed the trust under Lily’s watchful eye. Bannon had taken on the girl in order to protect her from a fat man whose last instinct was to protect his client; he merely wanted to stash the girl, who had refused to attend a boarding school.
Bannon knew, that by protecting the girl and taking on that worm, he’d gotten his company attacked, again, and the people he loved and respected the most had nearly been killed. Women, children, ex-soldiers suffering from PTSD. He wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself if any of his people (and he considered the Nighthawks and Soldier Pack to be his people) had died.
He had visited the fallen LVMPD officer, Lieutenant Pocero, himself. The man was on leave, but expected to make a full recovery from being shot in the back. He had been wearing a vest, which had saved his life. Pocero was on a boat in Florida, on an all-expenses-paid fishing vacation, with his two sons. His wife wisely had someone else clean and fry up the fish. She spent her days swimming and shopping, free from seeing to the needs of one ex-football player and two current high school linebackers.
But, Bannon couldn’t see letting that worm go somewhere else with Sarah Ryse, now Sarah Ryse-Choi. And Jaime was so happy with his little family that Bannon couldn’t chalk it up as a bad investment. No, people were always a good investment. Look at the Soldier Pack. He’d funded quite a bit of their startup costs, but now they pulled their own weight, paid back the houses and apartments as fast as possible, and went into other businesses other than Harley repair, such as most of his own staff.
Bannon put the dog’s collapsible dish away in a pouch and into his pocket; he then moved to complete the run back to his house. He thought about what to do next. Go into Reno? Go to Los Angeles, and compete with the high-priced security there? Guard actors and politicians, covering it up when they dropped their pants or committed crimes? No, he had built the reputation of his company as being allied with law enforcement. Looking the other way wasn’t his thing. New York was a nut he had no interest in cracking.
But, there were places that could use his expertise. Albuquerque, Phoenix, Taos. Nothing too far away, places that could have the same formula as his business. There were Iron Knights and Valkyries there, and some clubs had their own Soldier Pack. They were very small operations there, three women or men at a time, not the six-person Vegas operations. Did he want to do that, though? He could leave High Desert in Vegas to Gregory and Wraith, and take off to a new city. It would be terrifying, and he could fail.
Failure was not something that he minded, but he’d build up this company from a tiny office in the back room of a garage. Failure would make the company look bad. Success would spread their resources too thin. He’d have to find and rent office space, move in office furniture, install a state-of-the-art surveill
ance and alarm system, hire and train more people, make sure they met his standards. Sure, they would be satellite offices. Vegas would still be the standard.
He decided to ruminate another time. He had one hell of a day planned, and it wasn’t going to stop until his head was on a pillow. He ran the dog back, fed and watered Pepper. He lifted weight in a high-intensity interval training routine, building up a hell of a sweat as he used poses to build up muscles in his entire body. He showered, shaved, dressed, and headed to the office in his black power suit and his red power tie.
Rosario picked him up, one of their few grave shift people. They picked up a client at the private airport on the way. Emilio Morais was highly intelligent, funny, and joyous. Emilio was in from Rio, and was off to Tokyo the next day. He was a software billionaire who remembered where he came up from, the favelas, or slums, of Rio. He quietly bought some shanty buildings and replaced them with a clinic and an attached school. He’d literally cleaned up the area, building a sewage treatment plant, razing and rebuilding larger low-income apartment buildings that were actually up to code, and built small factories where people could code apps, farm vertically, and make silver and semiprecious stone jewelry, and sew colorful costumes.
The problem was the gangs. He had refused to side with any of them, and had simply said to them, “I’ll do my business, and you’ll do yours.” He refused all strongarm tactics and refused to pay any protection money or “rent” to the local gangs. He also didn’t allow drug dealing on his properties. He did allow a small, perfectly legal group of prostitutes to operate in one of his apartment buildings; the third floor became synonymous with a good time. They weren’t the tiny, dark, hot rooms of the other red-light districts. They had cheerful blue and yellow walls, ceiling fans, soft florescent lighting, big beds, and music booming into and out of the windows. He also refused to pay off the crooked cops, a huge no-no in that part of Rio.