Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (17 page)

“I hear.”

We stopped walking. I was going to have to trust my own daughter not to blab a matter of such vital importance. “We’re trying to find a way to get us out of here. Maybe even Kimball, Rayd and the rest of them.”

Vonda’s eyes were round. “Seriously? Oh my God, that would be
beyond
great, Mom! Are you serious? Are you frickin’ serious?”

I took her under my arm then, laughing. “Yes. We’d stay in Gideon’s house, but I haven’t figured out yet where the Manwills will stay. Now, this is just between us, hear? Don’t even mention it to Kimball, although she knows something’s up, too. Just don’t take the risk of anyone overhearing any talk.”

My mood became elevated after the illicit tryst with Gideon. Oxytocin flooded my brain with feel-good hormones, and stayed that way for quite awhile to come.

GIDEON

I
t was a
fucking shock to my system, going from the arms of that goddess to the shady, devious face of Bronson Carradine.

“How did you get in?” was my first question.

“Well,” he barked in that slick-tongued, sandpapery voice. He liked to amble around my bath tub in a superior, swaggering way. Each time I met the guy, I liked him less and less. Bikers have an inborn loathing of officers who upheld traditional laws, because we had laws of our own to follow. “Since the name of Reed Smoot seems to have finally been deleted from your security software, the name of Immanuel Zabriskie came in handy getting through the gate.”

“Zabriskie?” That was the old Altar of Sacrifice manager before me. He’d also gone to Texas. I instantly knew this meant he’d been murdered too. I’d suspected as much, of course, but anyone whose name became a password, well, they had fallen bravely fighting for the liberties of their country. They had finished a life of exemplary piety. They had changed a fleeting world for an immortal rest, among other epitaphs I’d seen on gravestones near my mine. Was I the next to go? Chiles had said he’d deed me half the mine. Why would he have me “fall victim to an untimely disease”?

“Yes, your old mining mana—”

“I know the name.” I rose gingerly from the tub, water sluicing off my body. Carradine could plainly see the creek of bathwater where Mahalia had walked after getting out of the tub. He handed me a towel anyway. It felt like heaven drying off, clean for the first time in a week. “What’s your business? I need more morphine.”

“Yeah, well, your gunshot wound is the reason I’m here, Fortunati. I heard about the business that went down last week over in the book bindery. You can’t go to an urgent care doctor without
someone
knowing. Someone’s going to see the bloodstained bandages in the trash can.”

“Yeah.” I snorted, drying my legs. “
Someone
who’s always lurking around the back alleys of urgent care places,
looking
for bloody bandages.”

“That’s neither here nor there, although my abilities to wring information out of someone are legendary. Fortunati, I’m here to make a deal with you. I won’t tell anyone about the shootout last week—since then, no one has seen Mr. Breakiron anywhere around the premises, though he hasn’t checked out of his room—if you agree to help me with a sting operation.”

“Oh yeah? What are you gonna get Chiles for? Having more than his share of wives? Leave it alone, Carradine. These people are just doing the best they can with what they have. Last time the government tried to step in down here twenty years ago they took away everyone’s children and stuck them in foster homes. Now
there
was a bad PR situation for you guys. You came off looking like heartless monsters. Oh, right, you
are
heartless monsters.”

“Take your medication,” advised Carradine as I stepped into some clean skivvies and my jeans. I just wanted to move ahead with my life, not rehash crap with some goofy fed. “It’ll calm you down.”

“I don’t
want
to be calm. I
work
with these people, Carradine. Chiles has been generous enough to give me that mining job and I’m grateful. Why would I want to screw it up?”

Carradine folded his arms. “Yes.
Why
would he give you that mining job? Why were you sent here into the hinterlands of Utah, away from the Bullhead City bosom of your club?”

I actually was taking my medication. It was in pill form now—I was done with the IVs. “That’s not a big government secret, Carradine. I screwed up. I was making time with my Prez’s old lady, and I learned my lesson.”

“Yes.” Carradine practically wiggled his eyebrows, he was so in the know. “And you’re repeating the same mistake, making time with Chiles’ woman.”

I shot him a murderous glare. “Don’t you dare fucking repeat that lie to
anyone
, hear? I may be injured but I’m not fucking above silencing anyone who runs around telling lies about me. And Mahalia Warrior. She’s blameless in this whole thing.”

“Well, here’s the rub, partner. I won’t
have
to tell anyone about you and Ms. Warrior if you just help me out.”

Holding my T-shirt, I looked at myself in a mirror. The stitches were still swollen and painful even when air wafted over them. They said they’d had to cut out portions of my liver that had been mutilated by the bullet. “What sort of help did you have in mind?” I knew there was nothing I was going to help him with, even if I was capable. It had just been too ingrained in me ever since I was a juvenile delinquent kid living on the streets, letting smelly old men suck my wang for straight bank. You just did
not
cooperate with the law. Being in the Assassins pounded that into my skull even more violently.

“Help you out
how
?” I shot, and quickly put my T-shirt over my head, to get the painful lightning jabs over with fast. Why did I wear such damned tight T-shirts? I’d have to ask Dingo to bring me some of his K-Mart ones. He loved the ones with Star Wars logos. On second thought, I’d stick with my own even if they hurt.

“Well, you’re an insider. You could give me invaluable information about the location and types of his weapons stockpiles. Like, are we talking twelve AKs? Or hundreds, maybe thousands, of rifles and handguns? How much artillery does he have? Can you confirm it’s the book bindery where he’s storing it all? And, more important, what are his plans for it all?”

Sighing deeply, I turned to look at the guy. “Carradine, listen. I’m sure you’re a nice guy. You might even be the kind of guy the Assassins would do business with if you had something valuable we wanted. But you’ve got to understand. I can’t give you numbers or locations of anything. It’s a conflict of interest for me. For all I know, he might want weapons because he’s expecting the end of days.”

“One of those doomsday preppers, eh? It’s a conflict of interest for you because you’re the one selling him the armament.”

I breezed on past him, but I really had nowhere else to go. Mahalia forbade me from leaving the cottage. “I admit nothing, Carradine. If you’re planning on staging a raid, I want no part of it.”

Carradine dropped the palsy-walsy attitude now. “I’ve got more than enough already to get Chiles for stockpiling weapons, interstate trafficking, and welfare fraud.”

I opened the small fridge. “You can’t get him on welfare fraud, Carradine. Those women truly
are
single mothers.”

“If they are literally single mothers, Chiles should be paying them child support.”

I snorted. There was bacon in the fridge, but I didn’t feel like frying any, or cooking eggs. There was a homemade loaf of something. I took that out. It smelled like sourdough. “Chiles would just say he already sort of does pay them child support by giving them homes to live in and stipends to shop for groceries with. He’d get out of it somehow, Carradine.”

“That’s why I’m more interested in the weapons stockpiling angle. My bosses are too. What have you seen in there? Was it in the book bindery? Sources tell me that’s where the shootout occurred last week.”

I sliced into the bread. The pungent aroma drifted into my nostrils. I hadn’t had real sourdough in years. I was going to toast that baby to bring out the flavor. I lied, “All I’ve seen is a few completely legal fifty cal sniper rifles. And no,
not
in the bindery. I have no idea why you’re so fixated on that.”

“Where’d you see them?”

I turned to face him. “Who’s your source?”

Carradine frowned. “You know, Fortunati, I can just subpoena you. You might not believe in any higher power that forces you to tell the truth under oath. But I’ve got a feeling you’re a true blue son of Uncle Sam.”

I was. I really was. There was nothing in our biker culture that belied a belief in the founding fathers’ credos. If anything, we enforced those beliefs. All for one. One for all. But since I couldn’t honorably give Carradine a single additional shred of intel about Cornucopia, I said, “All I have to do is speed dial Chiles. Since saving his life last week, I’m on his honor roll. I tell him you’re in here, you’ll be lucky to get hustled out at the business end of a tank.”

Carradine held up his hands. “All right, all right. No need to get pissy. I’m going. You know how to get ahold of me.”

“Listen, Carradine. I’m not in Allred Chiles’ back pocket. I’ve got no love lost for the guy myself, and I suspect him of being a wife abuser. But I’m out here to start a new chapter of our club, a new
legitimate
chapter, and I don’t want anyone messing that up. I’ve got a good gig going. I see no reason to throw a monkey wrench into anything. So split already. People might say we’re in love.”

“All right,” Carradine agreed, reluctantly moving to the door. I was already busy inhaling my piece of sourdough toast. There was a stick of butter in the fridge, but I wanted to eat it plain. Carradine was just irritating me, like a fly buzzing around a room. He turned at the door to face me. “This thing is going to go down whether or not you like it, Fortunati. It’d be best if you and the people you love were coincidentally removed to safe houses before all the shooting started.”

I waved him off, not bothering to see where he went. Someone would see him eventually, know he was out of place, and call Chiles.

Strangely, no one had left me any voicemails the past week wondering where Breakiron was, or anything else of that nature. There were a couple of innocent voicemails, my old roommate Sledgehammer asking me where the electric drill was, Sax telling me Dust Bunny was on his way up, and then Dust Bunny asking some technical, admin-related questions about the mining office. But no one wondering where the fuck Breakiron was.

Now that I thought about it, he didn’t really have anyone who’d care. He had no old lady, having scared the last one off years ago. He’d been in the club at least as long as I had—in other words, the entire eight years I’d been there—but I’d never noticed any siblings or relatives come by to see him. The fact remained, though, I’d shot him through the throat, even though it was in self-defense. I was going to have to face the music eventually.

I wanted to leave it that way for now. Eventually I’d have to answer for my crime. I wasn’t in Papa Ewey’s good books to start with, and Breakiron had been his Veep, for better or worse. I could have tried to cover it up, to make an excuse, to say Breakiron drove off a cliff or went back East to family. Nobody would dig too deep. But right now, I couldn’t take off, ride back to Bullhead City to sit at the chapel table. Even once I got better, I couldn’t. Time was of the fucking essence right now, and saving Mahalia and her daughter was my number one priority. Breakiron could have his funeral later. He certainly hadn’t given two shits about mine.

But then I thought. Maybe I should have asked Carradine more questions about
when
this raid was set to take place. He was right—it’d be handy if I had Mahalia and Vonda out of there before any commando action took place.

I didn’t have time for a fucking sit-down with Papa Ewey and the rest of the club. They’d need to bring my action to the table, and seeing as how I was already exiled into extremist sect territory, well, who knew what the outcome would be. But I was literally stuck in that cottage, and I was praying that the second I got out, it would be to take Mahalia and Vonda with me.

I was doubtful it’d be safe to just bring them to my house. Even though a safe house would be a good idea, if it meant collaborating with the feds it would be a convenience I couldn’t afford. I’d heard too many stories of Cornucopians dragging women screaming back to the compound. It was ironic how they threw away men and boys, yet had to drag women back fighting them all the way.

Dust Bunny was set to visit me shortly thereafter. He came in, telling me his password was Monte Brough, given him by Pipkin. That was weird. I’d never heard of Monte Brough. For the hell of it, I texted Mahalia that question, and went to sit with Dust Bunny at the small kitchen table.

“Thanks for coming up here and helping with the mine.”

“No problem at all. It’s an honor. A challenging honor. I’ve just been Sax’s assistant for years, going to gem shows with him. Then lately I’ve been working in his new rock shop. But managing a mine? Wow. Beyond my wildest dreams. I read the assay. It said there are indications of platinum?”