All the Sky (26 page)

She shrugged. “You were with your family, and we were okay. But Nolan had some trouble calming down. Like he does. Hav, I don’t want to hash that out. I need to find my kid.”

“Okay, I’m on it.” He dialed.

“Who are you calling?”

“The clubhouse, see if he’s there.” He reached a groggy Dom. Nolan wasn’t at the clubhouse; Dom hadn’t seen him.

Havoc hung up and dialed again. Before she could ask, he said, “Isaac. Gotta bring the club in on this.”

“Why?”

But Isaac was answering, so Havoc put his hand up. “Boss, it’s Hav. Maybe got a problem. Cory’s boy went out walking around two this morning and isn’t home yet. Not at the clubhouse.”

Isaac was wide awake immediately. “Reason to think he’s hurt?”

“Walking in the middle of a cold night, four hours gone. Kid always comes home, never gone this long.”

“Anybody outside of town know you’re connected to them?”

“No.” Except that wasn’t true. He’d told one other person. “Only Bart. And, I guess, probably his old lady.” But Bart would never put innocents in jeopardy. Certainly not innocents connected to people he cared about.

Isaac clearly agreed; he didn’t chew on that information at all. “Okay. We’ll get everybody on it. We’ll meet at her place. Call Badge, I’ll call Show. Everybody there in twenty.”

When they ended the call, Cory was staring at him, her eyes suspicious. “Why did he ask who knew you were with us?”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised.

“Isaac’s voice carries. Why? Do you think somebody hurt Nolan because of you?”

His throbbing head was now twisting, too, thinking about everything that had happened to people the Horde cared about. Lilli. Show’s first wife. Show’s kid. Fuck, even Riley had gotten a little taste of it once. Their loved ones were always paying for the shit the Horde was in the middle of. But they weren’t in the middle of any shit now. They’d done one weed run. One. And it had gone right on plan. Their enemies list was shorter than it had been in years.

“No. No. He’s not hurt. He probably got turned around in the woods. We’ll find him and you can feed him some chicken soup or whatever, and everything will be fine.”

“Why would he ask that? Why would somebody hurt Nolan?”

“Nobody would. Not because of me.” He hoped that was true. Fuck, he hoped that was true. “Or any other reason. Get dressed. Warm clothes, good walking boots. Think about where he could be, so we have some places to start.”

She stared at him for another long, intense pause, and then she went to her closet. He called Badger, and then he finished getting dressed himself.

When he went out to the kitchen, Cory was making coffee. Good. He needed to kick this fucking hangover to the curb.

Thanksgiving at his folks’ had been fine. Or it had been exactly what it always was. His family, being his family. But he’d sat there and looked around the table at his parents and his sister, and his whole life in that house had crowded into his head. It hadn’t been a bad life. Or he’d never thought of it as a bad life. Not while he was in it. Not until recently, watching Cory and Nolan, being with them, seeing what they had even when they had so little. Feeling what he felt about them both, how he felt when he was with them. It was rewriting everything he thought about his own life, his own family. His own self.

And resentment and anger had begun to stoke a fire in his gut. He’d heard his father’s few brusque words, and had seen the way even at Thanksgiving he’d barely looked up from his plate, and had no longer seen the man his mother wanted him to see—a taciturn, no-nonsense man who believed his job as a father was to raise up strong people. Instead he’d seen a man who had just enough love for one person—his wife—and begrudged anything she gave anyone else, even his children.

He’d looked at his mother, and the gleam on his image of her had been tarnished by his sudden, late, understanding of what it meant that she had let him get beaten. She had never been under threat of reprisals, had she intervened. Only Havoc had ever felt the bite of the man’s belt buckle. Or the sting of the old buggy whip. Or the burn of the knotted rope. Don Mariano did not hit women. Ever. And, to the extent he was capable of it, he doted on his wife. But she’d let her son get beaten, usually to bruising, often to blood, and she’d cleaned him up and patted his shoulder and sent him on with the admonition to be better, Joe, be better. Be a good boy.

He’d looked at his beautiful sister, never struck by either parent, and saw a defective girl whose bright smile and easy laugh covered for her total inability to make any kind of life on her own. Their parents had worked a different kind of mischief on her, keeping her down in more passive ways. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t get a teaching job. She couldn’t make anything happen in her life. She couldn’t connect with people any better than Havoc could. Worse than he could, actually. He had the Horde, and now he had Cory and Nolan. She had no one but the people at that table.

And then he’d looked inward, and understood how deeply fucked up he was. How terrified—fucking terrified—he was of what was happening between him and Cory, what it meant. Realization had dawned that he loved her. He loved them both. It was the thing he hadn’t understood, that had vexed him so much. Love. He hadn’t even fucking recognized it.

For a brief moment, that rising sun of understanding had felt good. Knowing how he felt, naming it. Knowing with a striking clarity what he wanted. He’d felt excited and powerful, sitting there while his mother dished out a wide slice of pecan pie for him. Nearly bouncing in his seat at the thought of seeing Cory later in the evening.

And then he’d looked around the table again and understood something else. This was his training ground for family, this defective home that had fucked him up something awful. He didn’t want to be his father. He didn’t know how to be in a family and be right in it. He was wrong, and it was too late for him to learn to be right.

That was the thought that had stuck, and he’d left after pie and gone straight to the clubhouse, intent on drinking, intent on staying away from Cory. Debbie had come in when he was decently into his second bottle, and he’d gotten her all the way to his room and buck naked before he’d thought twice about what he was doing. It had been her tramp stamp. She’d been kneeling on his bed, in a position with which they were both familiar, the ink across her lower back right in front of him—a butterfly, with swirly lines on either side—and he’d thought of Cory’s, those two birds on a branch.

He’d sent Debbie away and had ridden to the little mobile home. Too drunk to ride, but he got there. He’d known he was being weak and wrong and that he should stay away, but he couldn’t.

She had Jack for him in the kitchen, so he’d kept drinking. He didn’t remember much more, until she was shaking him awake, with news that Nolan was missing.

When Cory finished making the coffee, she grabbed her keys off their little hook and went to the coat closet in the living room and pulled out her down coat. As she was pushing her arms into the sleeves, Havoc asked, “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going out. It’s stupid to be standing here waiting. He could be hurt. He probably is.” She turned and headed for the front door.

He moved fast to cut her off, taking hold of her arm. “No, Cory. You wait. You don’t go out alone. When everybody gets here, we’ll make a plan, cover ground in pairs. Nobody alone.”

She jerked her arm out of his hand. “
Nolan’s
alone. And why do we have to pair up?”

“We don’t know what happened. There might be more risk.”

Her first reaction was confusion, but then her eyes narrowed into the same suspicion she’d had in the bedroom. “You
do
think this is about the club. That somebody hurt him on purpose because of you.”

Fuck, that hurt so bad, and not only because there was truth in it. “No. There’s nothing. No reason someone would come after him. But we have to be smart, even so. You are not alone today. Period.”

She slapped him. “I swear to God, if you got him hurt, I will kill you. I will. And I
am
going out right now to look for my son. Without him, I
am
alone.”

There was too much in his head. Too much noise and pain and worry and…and fear. Too much. He grabbed her and slammed her into the wall. She lost her breath with a startled cry.

“I will fucking knock you unconscious and tie you the fuck down, and I am not exaggerating. You are not leaving on your own. This isn’t a negotiation. You do what I say and fucking wait.”

She stilled, and he could tell that he’d won. But something had changed in her eyes, in the way she saw him. He could see it, and he could feel it. But he couldn’t think about it or try to fix it, not now.

As he eased his grip on her arms, the thunderous roar of Harleys approached, growing louder. Hav went out into the front yard to see Isaac and Show in the lead, Lilli and Shannon in Lilli’s SUV, and Len trailing. As they were pulling in, Dom, Omen, Mikey, and Badger, all coming from the clubhouse, came over a rise in the road together.

~oOo~

They worked efficiently, plotting out a range for each group to cover. Isaac wanted Cory to stay at the house in case Nolan came back, but she shot the shit out of that idea. She called Bonnie over instead.

Cory was so calm. Calm was probably the wrong word. Stoic was better. She was stoic. Like she had shut everything down but the parts she needed to find Nolan. She would not let Havoc touch her, flinching away from even the slightest brush of his hand. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her.

They went out, at radii around the house, on foot, as Nolan had been, with a plan to regroup in two hours. They kept in touch by cell phone, and the day was cold but clear, so the reception was good, until a couple of the groups—including Havoc and Cory—got deeper into the woods.

Twice, Havoc had tried to say something encouraging or comforting. Cory had simply raised her hand to cut him off. So they searched, the only words between them suggestions to check a pile of leaves or a deadfall. And Nolan’s name. Until they were hoarse.

Nothing. Not even a sign of him.

When it was time to go back for the status check, Havoc thought he was going to have to knock her out, after all. She didn’t yell or even fight. She just ignored him. She wouldn’t go. Not until he threatened to carry her bodily.

She stumbled over a root buried in dead leaves and almost fell, and he grabbed her arm to catch her; then he used the opportunity to keep hold of her hand. She pulled at first, but her strength was no match at all for his, and finally she let him. They came through the tree line hand in hand. Omen saw them and came running.

“We couldn’t get you on the cell. We got him. Lilli and Shannon are taking the SUV to him. Come on, I’ll lead you.”

“Where is he? What happened? Is he okay?” Cory shook free Havoc’s hand and ran abreast of Omen.

But Omen shook his head. “Just come on.” He broke into a run again, and Cory and Havoc followed suit. If Omen wasn’t saying Nolan was okay, then he wasn’t.

When they got to her driveway, she broke for the Beast, but Havoc grabbed her hand. “No. Ride with me.”

She tried to yank away, still not even bothering to argue, but he held fast. “If he needs a doctor, you’re gonna want to be able to help him, right? Not drive? Ride with me. Then you can ride with him.”

She paused, considering, and then let him lead her to his bike.

Was it only two days ago that he’d put the bitch seat on and taken her for a long, incendiary ride, the highlight of which had been fucking her while she hugged a tree in the woods outside the B&B?

Then, she’d taken to riding bitch like it was nothing, molding herself to him, trusting him to lead her body. Now, he had to grab her hands and make her hold him tight. She was stiff behind him, fighting the turns, trying to keep distance between them. Jesus fuck, if this was his fault. If Nolan was hurt or worse because of him, the Horde. Jesus fuck. He couldn’t lose them. He didn’t know how he’d go back to the way he’d been. He’d thought he’d been content; he
had
been content. He’d been content with his past, his present, his future. But everything was different now. It wouldn’t be enough now.

Chicks did—they ruined everything. But now he wanted to keep it ruined.

Omen led them to a spot on the main road into town, about three miles from Cory’s place. Lilli’s SUV was there. Isaac, Show, and Len’s bikes were there. Everybody was down in the deep drainage ditch off the shoulder. That ditch was full of leaves, and the bottom six inches or so was water—frigid, ice-skimmed, rancid water. Cory leapt off the bike at the very second it came to a stop and jumped down into the ditch. Havoc followed, landing in soup past his ankles.

Lilli was squatting, holding Nolan’s head. Shannon was at his feet. Len and Show were sliding a long, wide slab of wood—Havoc guessed it must have come from Isaac’s workshop—under him. Isaac was holding his body steady.

“Nolan! Kiddo, God!”

Isaac looked up at Cory’s cry. “He’s alive. He landed face up. He’s hurt and unconscious, and we’ve got to get him out of this cold water, but he’s alive. Hav—there are blankets in the back of the truck. We need them all.”

He nodded and turned, but Omen was already pulling them out of the hatch. He tossed them down to Havoc. More bikes were coming; Badger, Dom, and Mikey pulled onto the shoulder.

Cory couldn’t get closer and eventually stopped trying, making way for the men to get Nolan out of the ditch. Havoc stayed back, feeling ineffectual. God. The kid was blue and still, covered in mud and grime. Leaves. Blood.

He looked like a body, not a boy.

Cory grabbed the blankets out of Havoc’s arms as soon as they had Nolan on the shoulder, and she went to her son, covering him with each one, tucking them under his blue chin. “Come on, little cub. Let me see your eyes. Be okay. Be okay. Please be okay.” She looked up at Isaac. “How long for the ambulance? Somebody called 911, right?”

Isaac shook his head. “Never get here in any kind of good time. We’ll put him in Lilli’s truck, take him ourselves. A friend of ours is an ER doctor at County. She’s waiting. So let’s go. You ride with Lilli. We’ll get you there fast.”