Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (28 page)

She was wearing one of the unattractive potato sack dresses, but she was my shapely old lady—
my
fucking property. The other fundies followed Chiles down the street like some fucking shootout at O.K. Corral. The feds followed, one of them shouting through a little white bullhorn. “Stop this instant and lay down your weapons. We have warrants to arrest all of you.”

Of course they were doing no such thing, having no real motivation to do so.

I had no choice but to join the line of feds. This was something I might’ve seen myself doing back in my MARSOC days, but not since. I told myself I was just walking
alongside
them, being more on their side than the fundie’s side. A few feds fanned off into a side column to hold at bay crowds of dozens of other polygs who had wandered out to see what the fuck. Carradine, myself, and maybe three other feds followed Chiles as he shrieked unintelligible shit about Bolivia and Ecuador cleansing their nation.

He wanted Nicaragua to be more humble, it seemed, as he dragged Mahalia into yet another unmarked building.

Carradine told me from the corner of his mouth, “This might come down to a hostage situation. We might have to use a distraction, smoke bombs, a stun grenade, whatever.”

I didn’t like the stun grenade. It would momentarily immobilize Chiles, but would also temporarily blind Mahalia. The concussive blast had been known to give people heart attacks or third degree burns from the flashbang. In some cases, structures had been set on fire and people had died when they’d refused to or been unable to come out,

Then I recognized the building. A small cardboard sigh in the corner of the window said “lattes now!” and I realized it was the coffee shop Vonda had told us about, where the gambling went on. Fundies were now fleeing it like cartoon characters with their arms stuck straight out, their terrified feet almost blurs.

“O People, repent ye!” Chiles was yelling from the coffee shop doorway. “I have let this servant stay in bondage to prove I am coming! I will send pure cleansing power to prove my strength, and leave no root or leaf in this territory standing!”

Holy shit on a crucifix.
That didn’t sound good.

Chiles vanished inside with Mahalia while my men roared up on their Harleys. I’d instructed them to give me twenty minutes to extricate my love, and to come if I wasn’t back. The feds didn’t know who to hold at bay now. They pointed their weapons this way and that until Carradine spoke into his little mic and calmed them all. They went back to pointing their pieces at women dressed like Quakers as I told my men,

“He’s got her inside that coffee shop.”

Sledgehammer nodded. “This could be a fucking endless standoff. I’ve seen cases go on for at least twenty-four—”

Everyone jumped two feet and at least one piece shot wildly when a sudden piercing, ear-splitting siren sounded. Sledgehammer clutched Dingo’s sleeve, Dust Bunny clutched mine. Luckily the trigger-happy fed had shot up into the air—where the bullet eventually came down, no one ever found out.

“It’s coming from there!” shouted Dingo, pointing to the coffee shop.

I yelled, “Must be the siren they rigged to warn people cops were coming. They’ve got a bookmaking op in there.” Vonda had said the alarm was on the side of a soda machine in the front.

Now people poured out of buildings in droves. In fact, it was hard to believe that many fundies could fit in these buildings, that’s how many streamed out and onto their front lawns. I saw what Mahalia was doing. The more witnesses, the less likely it was Chiles would do something crazy. Or wait. Would that make him
more
likely? Some people loved an audience.

But when the siren stopped, I could hear people remarking.

“Mahalia Warrior’s in there!”

“He’s got Mahalia!”

“He’s been keeping her captive in different houses.”

“Why’s he doing that?”

There were even a few murmurs that Chiles might be, shall we say, not entirely right in the head. It was women who made these remarks. Men would never dare defy or question that loony tunes. It took women to get up the balls to say things like,

“He’s been acting a little weird lately.”

“He kept her naked in there, beating her.”

“Sometimes I question his judgement, especially lately.”

“Oh my God, what’s he doing?”

What was
who
doing?

I’d allowed the chatter to distract me. Dust Bunny pointed, and when I turned, all I saw was one of Carradine’s pants legs as he hot footed it into the coffee shop.

Well, I’d be good goddamned if Carradine was going to one up me. This was
my
op,
my
woman. Carradine was sort of a horse’s ass, too, so I made a beeline after him.

Chiles was holding Mahalia like a human shield, his barrel to her head. It was almost like in a bad movie when he shrieked, “You’re not taking us alive! We have no fear of the afterlife! We know it’s our time for the full cleansing of our Zion!”

For her part, Mahalia yelled, “I know no such thing! I’m not ready to die, Allred! Please, please, for the love of God, put that thing down and let us all work out a peaceful agreement.”

I had to hand it to her, the woman had courage. Most hostages I’d seen were lucky to still be standing tall enough to shit their own pants.

I told Carradine sideways, “Listen. I’ll jump over to that magazine rack, like I’m going to ambush him from there. The second he takes the gun away from her head, you can shoot—”

Carradine never heard the rest of what I planned to say. He made a sudden sprint toward Chiles. I never did figure out what his intentions were, to be honest. Was he hoping to just make a giant lunge? To offer himself up as a sacrifice so while Chiles was shooting him, I could shoot Chiles?

That didn’t even happen, though. Because the second Chiles shot Carradine through the forehead, he returned his barrel to Mahalia’s temple. That sight of her face is permanently ingrained on my memory banks. Her normally large, round eyes bulged in horror. A spray of blood had even airbrushed her face as Carradine flopped forward on the ground, his fingertips just inches from her toes.

“I’ve been warning everyone to prepare!” shrieked Chiles, hauling Mahalia behind a wall.

The wall probably separated the coffee shop from the gambling area. I creeped toward it, listening intently.

“Prepare for what?” I shouted. I wanted to draw Chiles out, to keep him talking.

“My priesthood has been holy since the days of Joseph Smith,” he trilled. “Beware to everyone how they treat me.”

“Why is that, Chiles? Why do they need to treat you better?”

It didn’t matter what he said. None of it made sense anyway. I listened like a safecracker to the tone of his voice reverberating from behind the wall. It was made harder because it was an open wall, like a partition that would separate bathrooms from the main restaurant, so his voice was thrown over by a potted plant in the corner.

Chiles obliged me by raving some more. Chances were, he didn’t even have the barrel to Mahalia’s head anymore, since he was apparently safe behind the partition. Was that a chance worth taking?

“There needs to be an awakening! Lest we repeat the errors of our past mistakes, I will be judge and ruler, and none can stop me now.”

I took aim and shot at the height I estimated his head to be.

Chiles actually made an “agh!” sound, a strangled noise of pain. There came the thumping of bodies, only one hitting the thin carpet.

I tore ass around the corner. In fact, my reaction was so instantaneous, I practically caught Chiles’ body in my arms. I leaped to one side to clutch Mahalia to my chest, still pointing my gun away from us in case some random fundy had been lurking, armed, behind the gaming table.

The back door was open. Gamblers had apparently run at the first sign of a commotion outside. We were alone, gazing openmouthed down at Chiles’ sprawled body.

I had gotten him right through the forehead, just as he’d nailed poor Carradine. A little shower of sheetrock by his feet attested to my sharpshooting skills.

There was no need to shoot again. Only when I breathed a sigh of relief did I realize I’d been holding my breath for a good, long while. Once I clutched Mahalia tighter, I realized she was shaking like a candle flame.

“O God, O God, O God,” she kept whispering over and over, her hand covering her mouth.

I kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay, little one. It’s okay, sweetness. Everything’ll be okay now. I’m here. My men are here.”

In fact, someone was sneaking in the open back door now. Without letting go of Mahalia in the slightest, I whipped my pistol arm around to level it at the intruder.

He put his hands up. It was only Sledgehammer. Dust Bunny and Dingo followed like SWAT members, darting this way and that in sort of modified isosceles stances, Dingo holding his piece sideways like a gangsta. I’d have to teach him this useless technique would just jam the gun. The recoil would turn him sideways. It was hard to aim and completely inaccurate.

“Excellent shooting,” said Sledgehammer, jamming his iron into his waistband. He peeked around the corner. He must’ve seen Carradine sprawled there like an Egyptian, one of those chalk outlines on the ground. “Hey, got an idea. Give me your piece.”

Trusting him as we had to, I handed it over. He’d only accept it after covering his palm with a paper napkin. I saw what he was getting at when he went around the corner. We followed. He wiped my grip clean with the hem of his shirt, then kicked Carradine’s piece out of his limp hand. He placed my iron gingerly against Carradine’s spread fingers.

We all looked at Carradine like we were mourners. There was no sadness for the loss of the goofy fed. Then again, he could’ve been much worse. He wasn’t half-bad, for a fed.

Now he’d get the credit—or the blame—for having offed the psychotic fundamentalist. It was best to keep our spanking new club out of it. Sledgehammer made the right call. My name would ring in the streets with suspicion, anyway. Suspicion was what being an outlaw was all about. Your name and rep made or broke you. Ridding the populace of this massive menace was a good start for our new chapter.

Dingo whapped his chest with his piece. “Goodbye, Mr. Carradine. Rest in peace knowing you saved the planet from many hazardous shipments of alcohol and tobacco.”

Dust Bunny was the only one who guffawed at this. But he soon shut up too when he saw how dead serious the rest of us were.

I said, “He probably singlehandedly prevented the Great Vodka Flood of ’15.”

Now it was okay to laugh. We all let loose with a big round of chuckles, maybe because it eased the tension and feds were coming in the front door.

They kicked the door, even though it was open, maybe just out of habit. We had to hold our hands skyward until they figured out we were the good guys, and we were allowed to file outside. Only then did I stick my piece into my waistband, too, so I could keep both hands on Mahalia at all times.

Her sister-wives wanted to clamor around her, but I pulled her off to one side.

“Some of those bitches sat there twiddling their thumbs while that bastard abused me.” I’d never seen such venom in my normally sunny old lady. “I wouldn’t give them safe passage out of here if you paid me in chocolate-covered almonds.”

“But you’d help some others?”

Her tone made a sea change then. “Oh, of course! Gideon, I like your idea of helping women who want to leave Cornucopia. This place can be filled with joy and happiness until you throw in a couple of bad eggs like Allred.”

“Who’s second in line? Parley Pipkin?”

“No, he’s just the Stake President. He’s not nearly enigmatic enough. I guess there’ll be a big power struggle to fill Allred’s shoes. The wives and kids will be taken care of, of course.”

Then a fed came over and wanted details. They kept ushering women and children out of the saltbox houses. They poured out like the houses were arks in a never-ending stream. It took awhile before they were satisfied and let us go, and we slept the sleep of the dead that night.

Looking back, it really was the start of the rest of my life, as they say. Some men were arrested, but most were released a few days later with only probation. For lack of anyone more important to throw the book at, Parley Pipkin served the most time—six months for bigamy. Some women and kids were forced to relocate to Flagstaff. Prompted by media photos of sobbing kids, public outcry meant they returned the pilgrims pronto to Cornucopia. Women’s’ rights advocates, though, would keep the battle cry going for a long time to come. It only helped strengthen our position.

There was no denying the place was a fucking white slave factory from which no woman had ever escaped alive. Mahalia was the first.

GIDEON

“P
lease come to
order.”

I was finally able to say those words I’d heard Papa Ewey say so many hundreds of times.

Looking back now, at first I felt like a total ass. Who was I to presume to run a sit-down at a brand new table? This table wasn’t even carved, like our Bullhead City mother chapter’s was. It was actually a long picnic table so bashed in I’d bought a plastic table cover at Target to hide the scars. Though to my credit, I had a member of Lazzat Un Nisa carving us a new one.