Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) Read online

  “I talked to her last night.” Muse saw the danger coming. He kept his voice low.

  “You talked to her? What did you say? Why the fuck would she trust you?” His head dropped an inch or two, like a bull about to charge. “You didn’t fucking talk to her, did you?”

  They had the full attention of the men and women—and dog—in the Hall, which had filled while they were back in Muse’s office. Several of their brothers had stood up, knowing Demon and what he could do.

  “Easy, brother. I did talk to her.”

  “But that’s not all, is it? You fucked the bitch who stole my kid! You son of a bitch. Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me I’m wrong!” Spittle flew from his raging mouth. Muse set his muscles. He wouldn’t lie—lying to a brother was bad news. But he would fight if he had to.

  But before Muse could answer, Demon roared, “TELL ME I’M WRONG!” and punctuated the last word with a right hook into Muse’s face. Even though he’d been ready for a blow, it knocked him backward over a table, and he landed on the floor.

  And then a large black missile was airborne and headed straight for Demon. Barking and growling furiously, Cliff jumped and sent his body into Demon, knocking him backward as well. The dog stood over him, snarling, his teeth bared and aimed at Demon’s throat. But he didn’t attack. Demon was a friend, so Cliff was giving him a pointed warning.

  “Off, Cliff.” Muse stood, rubbing his face, trying to decide whether his cheekbone was broken. At his command, Cliff calmed and stepped off. But he stayed on his feet, eyeing Demon, growling at every move. “Here, bud.”

  With a last, suspicious glare at Demon, Cliff came over, tailing wagging, and licked Muse’s hand.

  Lakota looked from Muse to Demon to Cliff. Then he laughed. “That dog is badass.”

  His amused comment broke the tension, and the rest of the men laughed. Muse smiled and ruffled Cliff’s ears. Demon, back on his feet, still glared.

  When the room was quiet, he grumbled, “You are, aren’t you? Banging her?”

  “If I am, don’t you think it helps you if she’s a friend of the club?”

  Demon blinked, working that through. “That why you did it?”

  No. He’d done it because she was hot and he’d wanted her. He maybe still wanted her. Not maybe, definitely. But it was true that keeping her close could be helpful—and possibly give Demon access to information he might not otherwise get. “It helps you.”

  “Long as you don’t piss her off.”

  “Then I won’t piss her off.” He crossed the space between them and held out his hand. “Can we get a drink now?”

  Demon scowled at Muse’s offered hand, then took it and let himself be pulled into an embrace.

  ~oOo~

  The Night Horde SoCal sat around their table in the Keep. They met every Friday afternoon, in the tradition of the original Horde charter in Missouri—and of every club Muse knew about. Friday was church—or, in the Horde’s way, the Keep.

  The SoCal charter currently had thirteen patches and three Prospects. Not a huge club, but larger than the mother charter, especially with two members of that charter in prison, including the legendary Isaac Lunden, former President. No longer, though, did the Horde play on fields that could get them sent away. They had a wide array of legitimate businesses. Especially SoCal. They had the bike shop, regarded as the best in California and the whole west coast; a security and protection business; and their various entertainment industry support work—from equipment rental to technical advising and stunt work. That last was what Muse managed. He hated it. But he was good at it, and he did what the club asked of him.

  None of it made the kind of bank that basic outlaw work had made. Not even the bike shop, despite its reputation and celebrity clientele. Muse, already chafing at the routines of a ‘normal’ life after long years as a Nomad outlaw, now struggling just to keep his bills paid and his sister taken care of, and still steaming after the humiliation of just being called for missing his club dues for the second month in a row, was giving the argument now going on between his President and VP every bit of his attention.

  “It’s a bad idea, Hooj.” Bart, the VP, had said his bit and had then cut off Hoosier now three times. The President looked about ready to slit his VP’s throat. Usually, those two got along well and had a good cooperative relationship. Watching Bart fight Hooj so hard at the table, Muse knew that the details of Hoosier’s business—which had not yet been shared—were dicey. They must be. Bart continued, ignoring the fire coming from the Prez’s eyes. “All the shit that went down a few years back—that destroyed a whole club and almost took down the Horde, too, that sent Isaac and Len away and got good people killed—all that shit started with a job like this. We play on this field again, especially in SoCal, and we are asking for big trouble from bad men. It’s insane that we’re even talking about it. We shouldn’t be. And Missouri will bust a vein over it.”

  Hoosier slammed his ringed fist into the table, leaving yet another gouge in the oak. Bart had told everybody about the table in the Missouri Keep, describing it like it was some fucking magical piece of art, created with the Great Isaac’s own hands. Muse had never met Lunden. He was probably a decent guy. If he was half as good as his reputation, then he was more than a decent guy. And no question that he’d led a hell of a battle to destroy a whole drug cartel. But Muse fought a tendency to roll his eyes whenever Bart had a story about Isaac.

  Apparently, that table Lunden had built was so special that they’d all taken care not to mar it. For years. Muse thought that was bullshit—it might be true, but it was wrong. A club table should show the story of the men who sat around it. It should be gouged and burnt and scratched. In the same way that a kutte showed the life of the man who wore it—tattered and rubbed soft and smooth, despite years of loving care.

  SoCal’s table was a great slab of blonde oak. Just a table. And after a few years of use, it was showing wear. As it should. Muse rubbed his fingertips over gouges made by his own rings, then returned his eyes to his President. “Let’s hear the details. All we’re hearing so far is how you two feel about it, and we don’t even know what you’re fighting about.”

  With a gesture that said he was giving up for now, Bart leaned back. Hoosier sent another venomous look his way, then turned to the whole table. “You know Connor and I were up in Big Bear last night, sitting down with Wade Ferguson.” The club did security for Ferguson’s strip and gambling clubs. “He wants us to expand into other parts of his business. He’s looking for us to ride protection on a San Diego to Oakland transport. We’d do a handover with Smiling Ghouls. Every two weeks. Eight percent cut.”

  Lakota, the club Secretary and Treasurer, asked, “Product?”

  Hoosier took a beat, and Bart filled in the space. “It’s a border run. You know what it is.”

  “Goddammit, Bart. Sit back and shut the fuck up,” Hoosier snarled. “We’ll fight this out after the details are all on the table.”

  “Drugs, guns, or people?” Demon was usually quiet at the table. He preferred to leave the thinking and debating to others and often seemed to be barely paying attention to club discussions. But his attention was sharp today.

  “Wouldn’t bring people to the table, Deme. Those days are done. And guns run south, not north. This is a one-way transport. It’s coke and heroin. The take is huge. Ferguson is saying we’re looking at one-fifty, two-hundred every two weeks.”

  “This is exactly the shit that nearly got us all killed four years ago. Running fucking drugs for a cartel.” Bart spoke without looking at Hoosier.

  Again, Demon spoke. Muse wondered what it was that had him so vocal and keen here. “This is for Ferguson. He’s not cartel, is he? He’s, like, an Indian—like you, right?” Demon addressed the last question to Lakota, sitting across the table from him.

  Lakota sighed and answered his question. “Ferguson is Serrano, asshole. I’m Sioux. Lakota Sioux. Get it? We’re not all the same.” Demon shrugged, and Lakota went on.
“Coming from the border, the drugs are cartel. No question. Doesn’t matter what face hired us. We take this, we’re working for some cartel. Bart’s right. It’s bad news. I don’t care how much money’s in it.”

  Muse, though, was thinking about the money, running totals in his head. He was good with math. One-fifty, the conservative end of Hoosier’s estimate. Take thirty grand off for the charter fund’s twenty-percent take, of which the Missouri charter would get twenty percent. That left one-twenty to be divided among the patches. Officers got a bigger chunk than regular members, but members working the run got a bump. Muse would work that fucker. He’d personally pull in ten to fifteen thousand a month. For this run alone.

  He’d never have to worry again about whether the San Gabriel Care and Rehabilitation Center was going to boot Carrie out because he’d missed a payment. Fuck, he could pay ahead.

  And he missed the outlaw life. The adrenaline, the freedom. The taking shit from no one, ever.

  Hoosier spoke up again. “We’re not voting today. Despite what it looks like with me and Bart today, I’m not sure I disagree with him. What happened with the Perros was bad, bad shit. We all felt it, we all suffered. Some more’n others. We lost good men. We lost Blue to that bullshit. While he was standing at my side. So everything Bart says is true. And let’s not piss ourselves and try to pretend it’s raining. Yeah—this is cartel work. But things south of the border are different since Santaveria’s gone. Calmer. Truces are in place, and people still working those fields say things are stable. Maybe it wouldn’t be a repeat of the past. But we should make a decision thinking about the past. Remembering it. I know none of us want to relive it.”

  He leaned back, spinning the gavel on the table. Muse had noticed that he did that when he was truly conflicted. “But this is a table full of outlaws, and I’m not so sure we’re as reformed as we think we are. We’re fighting each other more, and I think that’s because we’re all feeling squeezed by our straight life. Money isn’t coming in like it was in the day”—he looked right at Muse—“and I know some of us feel that hard.” He sighed. “Maybe we don’t take this business. If we don’t, Wade will pull his legitimate work from us, and that’ll be a big hit. Maybe this job is too big, too much, and it’s worth it to walk away from somebody like Ferguson, who thinks he’s got us by the short ones. But if we lose Ferguson as a legit associate, then we’re gonna have to go deep into the grey to stay afloat at all. So maybe what we vote on next week is to broaden our horizons again, Ferguson and his Mexican friends or otherwise.”

  Muse’s heart was pounding. He already knew how he was going to vote.

  ~oOo~

  Right after the Keep, Muse sent Keanu back to his house to drop Cliff off. He trusted his brothers not to be shits to his dog, no matter how wasted they got, but Friday night parties got crazy and crowded, full of hangarounds and hangers-on, and Cliff would lose his mind. And who knew what a stranger might do to him.

  Muse found himself a seat in the corner. Normally, he kept himself busy on Fridays, taking a few girls in succession, but tonight he wanted to think. So he sat and drank and watched girls try to work the pole. It always surprised him how fascinated most girls seemed to be with that thing, like they all harbored a fantasy of being strippers.

  For most, it would only be a fantasy—at least as far as the pole was concerned. But God love, ‘em, they tried.

  Ember was on it now, and she was actually good. Despite her age, and her flabby, worn-out body, she was adept and acrobatic, holding his attention with some fairly impressive maneuvers. Maybe she had been a stripper once, when she was younger. Muse didn’t know. He didn’t know anything about her, and he didn’t care. But she was good on the pole, he’d give her that. And she gave great head.

  But he wasn’t interested in Ember’s mouth, or in her pole skills, anymore. In fact, he wasn’t interested in the party. He wanted to get clear, give his head some space to think.

  Maybe take a ride by Zinnia Lane, see if anybody was home.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Sid woke on Saturday morning, she was alone in her father’s condo, but the coffee was made, and he’d neatly set out a mug and a grapefruit for her on the kitchen counter, with a Post-It stuck to the white tile. In his elegant, foreign-looking script, he’d written, Namaste, nanu! I’m off on my constitutional, but will be back with you soon. Then we will have an outing!

  His ‘constitutional’—what normal people called a walk. Rajesh Tuladhar started every morning with a brisk, three-mile walk, taking the exact same route, leaving and returning at the exact same time. He was a man of very specific, iron-bound routines. Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, he came to the States to study at UC Irvine, and he’d never lived anywhere but Orange County since. Her mother’s theory about her father’s rigid lifestyle was that the culture shock from Nepal to Southern California had been so severe he could only manage it by making his life as predictable as possible.

  And he had. His weekdays varied not at all—and when they did, there was usually a frantic call to Sid. He allowed for some limited flexibility on Saturdays and Sundays, but not for surprise. It was one thing for her to visit on a weekend because he’d asked her to come help him record a program—or for her to call a few days in advance and ask to visit. If she’d just popped in, though, he would have sent her away, his day being already planned otherwise. Even if that plan had been to read all day.

  In the course of her own studies, Sid had come to wonder whether her father might land somewhere on the ‘highly functional’ side of the autism spectrum. He was brilliant, but often out of sync with others. Most people called him ‘quirky.’ People who didn’t have to live with him. People who had to live with him saw the breakdowns and frantic rages when his ordered life broke formation.

  But he was the sweetest man in the world, with a huge heart full of love, and he was willing to offer it to anyone. It took a lot for him to stop trusting a person—which had, especially since Sid’s mother had given up on him, caused him a few problems. He was easy to take advantage of, big brain or not. As his only child, it fell to Sid to keep him out of trouble. Fifty miles away was about as far as she could ever imagine living from him—and as close as she ever wanted to.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee, skipped the grapefruit, and went out onto his balcony, which overlooked harbor, about half a mile away. The mid-October morning was bright and felt like it might become warm—a typical day on the Southern California coast.

  She didn’t have to wonder much about what ‘outing’ her father had in mind. There were only three choices: the Old World Village for shopping, the library for books, or the harbor to watch boats. It didn’t really matter; he wouldn’t offer her a choice, and she didn’t mind. He just wanted to be able to spend some time with her, and he wasn’t good at chatting. Last night, after he’d had his mid-level freakout about her hurt hand, he’d conducted an interview to learn about any news she had. Then she’d set up his History Channel show to record, and they’d sat side by side on his couch and watched television, without saying a word to each other until eleven o’clock, when he’d turned off the set and announced it was time to begin preparing for bed.

  Preparing for bed was a ritual for her father, as was rising for the day. He was a Buddhist, born into the Urāy merchant caste of Kathmandu, and he began and ended every day at the little shrine in his bedroom.

  Her mother was a French-Canadian Catholic. Sid was…whatever. Some strange hybrid of the two, maybe. Her spiritual upbringing had been much like her cultural and social upbringing, much like her parents’ marriage: schizophrenic. Cluttered and disorganized. Yet framed by rituals and routines of all sorts—an oddly rigid kind of chaos.

  Her parents loved her, and she loved them—never had there been a doubt. Her mother had loved her father once. Her father loved her mother still. But Sid had grown up navigating a world pulled in two different directions—by a woman who needed not to be controlled and a man who absolutely ha
d to do things, and have them done, the ‘right’ way, the same way, every time.

  How they’d managed to fall in love, Sid had no idea. She knew the story, but she still had no idea. They could not have been less compatible.

  But she knew how they’d stayed married for more than twenty years. Sid herself was the reason—neither parent had wanted her to grow up in a ‘broken home.’ They both had the same emphatic idea, in this one way alike, that a child should be raised with both mother and father in the home, an intact nuclear family.

  Her father would never have divorced her mother. His idea of marriage was lifelong. Period. But her mother had considered her sentence served when she’d deemed Sid to be grown. They’d separated before she had received a copy of her B.S. degree in psychology to place in the empty folder she’d been given at the commencement ceremony.

  Some children were stressed out because they thought they were the cause of their parents’ divorce. Sid had been stressed out because she knew she was the cause of her parents’ long marriage.