Текст книги "Sons of Anarchy. Bratva"

Автор книги: Christopher Golden

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Luka had been beaten and cut, lost two fingers and four teeth. His face was split and swollen and bloody, and he slumped in the chair as if he’d been an inflated man and all the helium was slowly leaking out of him.

“He dead?” Jax asked, growing frustrated.

Kirill rounded on him. “You want to take a turn? You think you can do better?”

Jax pushed off the wall.

“Jackie,” Chibs said quietly, worriedly.

Jax strode over and began to circle Luka. “You could cut off his balls, threaten to take his cock as well.”

Kirill and Oleg both blanched. Gavril only looked defeated.

Luka spat bloody phlegm at Jax’s feet.

“This guy used to be your brother,” Jax said. “I get it. Nobody wants to torture a guy who used to get you a beer when he went to grab one for himself. But Luka’s not your brother anymore. He betrayed you. Lagoshin ordered him to stick with me, follow me till I found you, and then call it in. They were gonna come here and kill all of you.”

Oleg glared at Jax. “You think we are so weak?”

Jax frowned. “Nothing weak about brotherhood. You’re men of honor. But we all know this ends with Luka dead.” He crouched down, eye to eye with the prisoner. “Hell, Luka knows that. Thing is, he’s a man of honor, too, right? So the only way he’s gonna tell you what you want to know is if you make it so he’d rather hurry up and die than hold on to that honor.”

Luka glared at him. Jax stood up and glanced around at the Bratva men, who seemed to like him almost as much as Luka did.

“It’s not about honor,” Trinity said, walking down the steps into the empty pool. She tossed her hair back and turned to Jax. “It’s dread.”

“What?” Jax asked.

“They’re takin’ their time, buildin’ up to worse, lettin’ him fill up with pain and fear,” she said, glancing at Oleg and then Kirill. “This is barely torture. It’s foreplay.”

“We don’t have time for foreplay,” Jax said.

Trinity walked to Gavril and held out a hand. “Give me your knife, Gav.”

Gavril knelt and slid up the leg of his pants, retrieving a small dagger from the sheath strapped around his calf. Trinity took it from him as she passed by, moving into the deep end of the empty pool. Jax watched her curiously. Luka sniffed in derision and spit again, disdainful of the very idea that a woman could intimidate him.

She edged past Oleg, her back to him, controlling the space between herself and Luka.

Trinity grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. Jaw tight, muscles standing out on her forearms, she pressed the knife against the skin just beside his left eye. In the morning light, Jax saw the trickle of blood drip from the wound.

“Bitch,” Luka sneered, eyes pinched closed.

Trinity dug the knife tip into his eyebrow, and Luka cried out as she sliced downward, splitting his eyelid. He tried to tear his head away, tried to use his body weight to move the chair back, but she held him tightly, and the position of the knife blade forced him not to fight too hard.

“She’s your sister, all right,” Chibs said quietly.

Jax stood away from the wall, staring at her. Trinity had grown up with the RIRA in the family, lived a life no stranger to violence and murder, but she had never been a part of that violence as far as he knew.

“Hey,” he said quietly, “don’t.”

Trinity shot him a hard look. If she understood that this blood she’d spilled had changed her, that she’d just given up a sliver of her innocence, he didn’t see it in her eyes. Jax knew she was no little girl, and he wasn’t the guardian of her innocence or humanity, but the moment still felt like a loss.

“Open your eyes,” Trinity told Luka.

The prisoner complied. Blood ran from the slit in his left eyelid, but he seemed to still have the eye. Luka stared at her, all his defiance and disdain obliterated by fear and pain.

“That’s just to prove I’ll do it,” Trinity said. “Five seconds, and I slice out your eye like I’m shuckin’ an oyster. The address where we can find Lagoshin.”

She had barely started counting when Luka blurted out the answer.

Task accomplished, Trinity let go of his hair. She handed Gavril’s bloodied dagger to Oleg and turned from the Russians, walking over to Jax. Where others might have worn a satisfied smile, Trinity had gone pale. She braced her hands against the inner wall of the empty pool and took a deep, shuddering breath.

Jax put a hand on her back. “You all right?”

Trinity took another deep breath. “If I can keep from pukin’ my guts up, I’ll be right as rain.”

* * *

Trinity hurried along the corridor, headed back to her room. The real estate agent had not wanted the water to the hotel turned on, but he’d supplied the surveying map, and Pyotr had managed to do it himself. By the time the water department noticed, they would long since have departed.

Just now she could have kissed Pyotr. There were days when a shower—even a cold shower, which was all they had—could save your life. Her face felt flushed, and she couldn’t seem to unclench her fists as she turned the corner. When she saw the door to her room, she managed to exhale, then shuddered in revulsion at the thought that the stale-smelling, dusty hotel room could offer her such reassurance. The building seemed to be closing in around her.

“Trinity!”

She spun, fists still clenched. Oleg had followed, and now he strode quickly after her. Two doors away, almost made it.

An argument had been brewing between them—she’d kept secrets, he’d thought he knew her—but she couldn’t have that conversation right now.

“You knew it was important, your relationship with Jax—”

“He’s my brother.”

“You knew it would complicate things for us.”

“I didn’t know how much, but, yeah, I knew. Do you blame me for keeping my mouth shut when I was falling in love with you?” She ran her hands through her hair. “Honestly?”

Oleg reached out to touch her cheek, lifted her chin. “And if you have to choose?”

Trinity’s breath quickened. She cocked her head, trying to mask her alarm. “Are you going to make me?”

“If you had to,” Oleg said, “who would you choose?”

Trinity gave a small laugh and shook her head. Her life back home had sometimes been troubled, sometimes lonely, and sometimes dangerous, but to her it had always been a beautiful life. School, working in the bakery and later in Keegan’s Pub, seeing her friends, and fighting with her mother. There were churches and cobblestones, and on a nice day there were musicians busking all through the city. Beautiful.

There was beauty here as well. The badlands and the mountains. At night, even the lights of Las Vegas had a brittle beauty. Trinity had believed that she and Oleg could make a beautiful life, but she felt apart from it now, as if the only loveliness she could see was through the barred windows of some prison cell.

“A man who loved me would never ask me that question,” she said.

Oleg nearly growled. She saw him fighting within himself, the grim Russian demeanor in conflict with his feelings for her.

“A woman who loved me would be able to answer it,” he replied.

“You bastard…”

He reached for her, but she shook his arm off. “All I’m asking is… if it came to that…”

Trinity pointed a finger at his face, bared her teeth. “He’s my brother, which makes him the only thing my father ever gave me. He’s family.”

A brutal silence descended upon them.

They heard the shush of clothing and a heavy footfall, and they turned to see Jax coming around the corner at the end of the hall. He stopped, meeting Oleg’s gaze in an open challenge, and Trinity wondered how much he had heard.

“You got a minute?” he asked.

Oleg scratched at his stubbled chin. “She’s got all the time in the world.”

He turned to walk away, but Jax called him back. “I was talking to you.”

Chin high, Oleg regarded him coolly. “Go on.”

“Me being here complicates things for you,” Jax said. “I recognize that. Kirill and I have an understanding. At the end of this thing, we may not all be friends, but we’re not gonna be trying to kill each other. I get the impression you and I need an understanding of our own.”

Oleg wetted his lips. “Putlova recruited Kirill. Kirill brought me into the Bratva, freed me from an ugly life. I had great respect for Viktor Putlova.”

Trinity watched her brother’s face. His features betrayed nothing, were as smooth a mask as Oleg’s.

“I respected Putlova, too,” Jax said. “But it’s hard to keep respecting a guy when you’ve got a knife in your back. Or at your throat. Trinity loves you, so I’m gonna promise you something. All my cards are on the table. My only agenda is to make sure my sister is safe. I know you want that, too, Oleg, but I have to ask… are all of your cards on the table?”

Oleg hesitated, glanced at Trinity, and a veil of aggression seemed to fall away from his face. “Yes,” he said, “all the cards.”

For a second, Trinity thought they might shake, but Jax did not extend his hand, and Oleg only nodded and turned away, striding along the corridor until he reached the turn in the hall. She heard the sound of the metal release bar on the exit door, then listened as it thumped shut.

“That went well,” Jax said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

“I think it did, actually,” she said. “He may not want to respect you, but I think he’s startin’ to. Harder to hate a man if you know him.”

Jax laughed softly. “Yeah, that’s not really been my experience.”

“Regardless, we’re allied now, all of us. Once Lagoshin’s out of the way, all of this fear will end.”

For half a second, Jax stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head. His doubts aside, she believed that this alliance would be propitious. Awkwardness lingered between them, but it was quickly being replaced by a deep kinship. Jax had made it clear that he had her back, no matter what, and though she’d spent her life learning to deal with men who disappointed her, she had begun to believe in this man. Her brother.

Trinity told herself she would never have to choose between her new life and her old one. She could almost believe it.

15

Thor felt a hand shaking him. He felt the crick in his neck and the ache in his spine and tried to twist himself into a more comfortable position. The hand shook him again, like God had reached down into his dreams and rousted him. He pulled away, determined to cling to sleep, but as he moved he slid off the sofa cushions that he’d laid out on the floor of the poolroom in a makeshift bed, and just that two-inch drop to the ground was enough to make his eyes pop open.

“Up and at ’em, thunder god,” Baghead said, worried sincerity in his eyes. His breath could have peeled a century’s worth of paint off a barn.

“Bag…,” Thor managed to say, too tired for any imaginative profanities. He pulled away from that hideous breath. Glancing around, he found the hair band he’d taken off the night before and used it to pull his red mop into a topknot, keeping it out of his face.

In the midst of this, Bag kept putting his hand out. Thor blinked and realized his friend was trying to give him something.

“Phone’s for you,” Bag said.

Thor squinted, rubbed his eyes, and glanced at the door. Was it morning yet? Had the sun come up? Sure as hell didn’t feel like it could be morning.

He took the phone. “It better be fucking good o’clock,” he said. “Who the hell is this?”

“It’s Izzo,” a raspy voice said. Someone else who didn’t like being awake at this hour. “Trust me, I’m not happy to be talking to you, either. Something I figured you and your MC would want to know.”

Thor felt a tightening in his chest. He glanced up, saw Baghead watching him intently with those mad little rat eyes of his. “Get me coffee, Bag.”

Thor watched Bag retreat from the room. He had to go around Antonio, who’d been sleeping on the floor but who now raised his head to gaze blearily around the room. Jax had sent Thor back to the Tombstone the night before with a request that Rollie keep them ready to move, which meant every member of SAMNOV in the area had bedded down in the rooms at the back of the bar. Baghead had been sleeping in the other crash room with Mikey the Prospect, who was a nineteen-year-old ex-football star, and a short brute with a shaved head and blond eyebrows that they all called Clean.

“You call just to breathe heavy?” Thor asked.

“I thought you were still talking to your buddy,” Izzo said. “Guy sounds half-crazy, by the way.”

“Maybe both. You’re stalling, man. Tell it.”

Thor could hear Izzo sigh over the phone, almost as if the cop was afraid to speak the words that would come next. The sound was chilling.

“Little more than half an hour ago, we got a call from a guy out doing his morning bike ride. Found two bodies on the side of a remote road in North Vegas, runs through an old family ranch that was foreclosed on a couple of years back.”

A small wave of nausea undulated in Thor’s belly.

“One of the dead guys is a Russian. Our gang task force ID’d him as one of Lagoshin’s men. The other is your man Joyce.”

Son of a bitch. Thor exhaled, the news a gut punch. He and Joyce had argued over the years, even brawled more than once over the sweet little Korean girl at the bakery with her tattoo fetish. But the MC made them brothers, and he knew Joyce would have taken a bullet for him, and vice versa.

“What’s it looking like?” he asked.

“You know it doesn’t work that fast,” Izzo replied, some of his natural growl absent from his voice. “Crime-scene guys are still there. Forensics will take their time.”

“Not what I asked you, man. You know Rollie’s going to want to know, so tell me… what does it look like?”

The phone went silent, so flat it seemed like he’d lost the call. Then Izzo spoke again.

“Definitely other people involved. Fresh tracks from a truck and a bunch of bikes. Three bikes were there. One’s a Harley—I’m guessing Joyce’s—but the other two are Japanese rockets, and I know you MC guys wouldn’t ride those bitches even if your mamas asked you nicely.”

“Two bodies but three bikes?”

“What I said,” Izzo muttered. “Detective on the scene thinks the Russian shot Joyce and then someone else tagged him for it. But the scene’s still hot. Got nothing else for you right now.”

Thor took a deep breath. He heard a grumbled voice in the corridor and the creak of floorboards under substantial burden, and he glanced up to see Rollie standing in the doorway with Baghead hiding behind him like a third-grade tattletale. Antonio had pushed himself up to lean against the wall.

Rollie had gone deathly pale.

“Call me when someone needs to ID the body, and let me know when we can pick him up,” Thor said, the words sounding callous even as he spoke them.

He ended the call without a good-bye and sat a moment, gripping the phone so tightly it hurt his hand.

“Joyce?” Rollie asked, his body filling the door frame.

Thor nodded, then laid it out for him exactly as Izzo had explained it. When he’d finished—and it only took seconds, so little time to sum up the end of a life—Rollie slammed a hand against the door frame. A dark intelligence glittered in his eyes, reminding Thor how often people underestimated SAMNOV’s president. Rollie acted like he was everybody’s friend, a big amiable bear of a man more interested in obscure movies and even more obscure beers to put on tap at the Tombstone. But the man was president of the North Vegas charter of the Sons of Anarchy for a reason.

“No word from Jax or his guys?” Rollie asked, staring at the floor, his hands clenched into fists.

“Nothing,” Thor said. “I left him three messages during the night.”

The room seemed to shrink, the floor to tilt. The air felt strangely heavy.

“You know what I’m wondering?” Rollie asked.

“You’re wondering why Jax sent me back here last night instead of just calling you,” Thor replied. “I figured maybe it was personal.”

Rollie huffed like a bear unhappy with its dinner. He turned to look into the hallway, where Bag twitched and scratched himself as he waited.

“Baghead… wake everyone right now,” Rollie said. “I want them up and moving in ten minutes.”

“Moving where?” Antonio asked, still rubbing at his eyes. “What are we doing?”

Rollie shot him a frigid glance. “I’ve got questions,” he said. “You guys are going to find me answers.”

“Where do we start?” Antonio asked.

“You start by finding Jax Teller.”

* * *

Izzo sat in the faux-leather reclining chair in his family room with a tumbler of spiced rum and pineapple juice in his left hand. He’d dropped his cell phone on his lap, and now he stared at the gleaming colors of his wall-mounted flat screen and wondered how this business with the Russians and the MC was going to shake out. He still paid alimony to his first wife, and his second—a blackjack dealer named Sarajane—liked shopping even more than Izzo liked booze or pussy. He was starting to think that a second alimony might be less expensive than his second wife.

Something made him glance down, and he realized his cell phone had been buzzing for a while without his noticing.

“Izzo,” he said, picking up.

“It’s Thor.”

“I just hung up with—”

“Last night I brought that guy to you,” Thor said. “You gave up John Carney’s name. Rollie wants you to head over to Carney’s and ask him what he told the guy.”

Izzo drank again. Sweet fire in his throat. He’d had a pleasant buzz going before he’d gotten the call about the dead bodies on the ranch road, and now this. Why the hell did he keep answering his phone?

“The sun just came up, and I haven’t been to bed yet,” Izzo rasped, swirling the ice in his drink. “Let me get a few hours’ sleep and kiss my wife. Carney won’t want visitors this early anyway.”

He could hear Thor breathing, heard him curse quietly.

“Joyce is dead. You think we give two shits how much sleep you got or whether Carney is feeling friggin’ hospitable? I’d go over there myself, but you’re a cop. The old man’s less likely to shoot you. If I show up at his door right now… Look, Rollie wants you to do this. Whatever Carney told him, we need to know. Right now.”

Right now.

The trouble with having a second job that involved illegal dealings with violent criminals was that you could never call in sick.

Izzo downed the rest of his drink. Suddenly the pineapple juice had started to taste sour in his mouth. Couldn’t be the rum.

“On my way,” he said, setting his glass down. He thumbed the button that ended the call. “Asshole.”

The drive to John Carney’s place took a little over half an hour. Izzo passed joggers and bicyclists trying to get some exercise in before the day heated up any further. He saw a woman running with her dog, the beast too small to keep pace with her without struggling, and he fought the urge to roll down the window and shout at her.

At Carney’s place, he pulled into the driveway and sat a moment, watching the house. It seemed very still, very quiet. You couldn’t be a cop as long as Izzo had without developing some intuition. His told him the place was empty, but it made more sense to think that Carney was still sleeping.

He stepped out and gently closed the door, then walked to the garage. Carney’s old Cadillac sat inside the gloomy space, dust motes spinning in the light streaming in from the small windows in the garage doors.

Izzo went to the front door and knocked, but the sound came back hollow. Nothing moved inside, no curtains were drawn back. The house itself seemed disinclined to creak. Most houses seemed to breathe, but not this one.

He drew his gun, pulse quickening. Moving around the side of the house, he looked in windows as he passed. In the back, he saw broken glass on the patio and then turned to see the shattered kitchen door.

“Shit,” he whispered, quickening his pace.

He didn’t have to go any farther than the door. The diffuse morning light reached through the window above the kitchen sink and the jagged shards of glass jutting from the door frame. That golden glow cast a sepia tone across the floor and the tipped-over chair, revealing the sprawled corpse of John Carney. Izzo spotted a single bullet hole in his temple and a pool of drying blood that made a deep scarlet halo on the floor around his head.

Whatever the old man had told his visitors, Izzo would never know.

* * *

Jax hesitated before calling home, but it had been too long since he’d spoken to Tara, and he wanted to hear her voice before the day’s violence began. No way of knowing if he’d still be standing by nightfall.

She answered sleepily after the third ring. “Hey. You’re up early.”

The tightness drained from Jax’s body, and he felt himself smile. “Sorry. Been a long night, and we’ve got a long day ahead.”

“You find Trinity?”

“Yeah. I just left her and her boyfriend.”

“What’s he like, this Russian?”

Jax weighed the question. “Jury’s still out. Seems like a stand-up guy, but being in his life could get her killed.”

Silence on the phone. Jax felt like he could hear the world breathing, there on the line.

“You still there?” he asked.

“That’s the same thing people say about me,” Tara said. “And the life you lead.”

Jax had been standing by the window in his temporary hotel room. Morning sun shone through the glass, and the small boxy room had begun to heat up. Now he went to the bed and perched on the edge, staring thoughtfully into a no-space in the middle of the room.

“I’ve made you promises, Tara,” he said quietly, glancing at the door, not sure why he didn’t want to be overheard. “I’m gonna keep ’em. We’re getting out of it—all of us. You, me, and the boys.”

“Be safe.”

Jax bit back the words that tried to make their way to his lips—fighting the truth. How could he tell her that as long as SAMCRO was part of his life, he would never be safe? The MC was his family, looming larger in his life than anything else, almost a third parent, but it was going to kill him one of these days. He did not intend for that day to be today.

“What’s happening there? The boys okay?”

“Abel has a low fever. Nothing to worry about,” she said. “Some kind of virus that’s going around.”

“Good thing his mom’s a doctor,” Jax said. “I’ll see you all in a couple of days.”

A few seconds ticked by in which Jax knew Tara was busily missing him as much as he missed her. Things had changed between them while he’d been in prison. Tara had been hardened by his absence, and he couldn’t help thinking she was keeping something from him. Something that troubled her deeply. He kept waiting for her to tell him.

“Would I like her, this sister of yours?” Tara asked.

“I figure chances are fifty-fifty. Either she’d be the sister you never had, or you’d want to kill each other. Neither of you puts up with bullshit.”

“Two alpha females in one room can get tricky.”

Jax grinned. “That what you are? An alpha female?”

“Come home and I’ll show you.”

He laughed quietly. “Couple of days, babe. Then I’m all yours.”

“Okay,” Tara relented. “I hope I get to meet Trinity.”

A knock came at his door. “Babe, I’ve gotta go.”

“I love you. The boys love you,” Tara said.

“Kiss them for me,” Jax told her. “See you soon.”

He ended the call as he went to the door, not bothering to draw his weapon. They were in the lion’s den here, among people who had tried to kill him and Opie, totally exposed, but he had to count on them having mutual interests right now. They wouldn’t do anything stupid—he hoped.

Jax drew the door open to find a wary looking Chibs standing in the hall, one hand on the butt of his gun.

“Opie’s back with the bikes. We’re all set,” he said, and then gestured over his shoulder. “And you’ve got a visitor.”

Oleg stood behind him with a gleaming black assault rifle in his hands. Jax’s thoughts raced as he wondered how fast he could drop his phone and reach for his own gun. Then Oleg held the assault rifle out to him. “Call it a peace offering.”

Jax blinked, tossed his cell phone onto the bed, and took the assault rifle. Incredibly lightweight and shiny black, it had a long, curved magazine.

“What is this?” Jax asked. “Never seen one.”

“Nine-millimeter TsNIITochMash. Subsonic bullet speed. Silencer. It will punch through body armor at four hundred meters. Very new and very difficult to smuggle into this country, but Oscar Temple had several of them.”

Jax felt the light weight of the gun in his hands, testing its balance. He preferred a handgun and knew from the glint in Chibs’s eyes that he would have liked this monster for himself, but it would have been an insult for him to pass it on. Oleg was trying to break the ice between them.

“Thank you,” Jax said, and meant it. “I’ll put it to good use.”

Oleg nodded, unsmiling. “I’m sure you will.”

He began to turn away, but changed his mind and glanced up at Jax again. “Kirill will not say it—particularly because of the strife between our people and your club—but we are both glad you are here. The reinforcements will be helpful. Perhaps these mutual interests we have will make us friends.”

“Or at least not enemies,” Jax said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Oleg nodded grimly, completely missing Jax’s attempt at humor. Russians, he thought.

“Listen, Oleg, about one of our ‘mutual interests.’ You know Trinity has to stay behind today. She won’t like it, but—”

“It will make her furious,” Oleg agreed, “but she must at least suspect it. You could leave one of your people here with her, but we will need every man when we go up against Lagoshin.”

“She’ll be all right here?” Jax asked.

Oleg smiled, turning his grim features boyishly charming for a moment. Jax could see, then, the ordinary guy beneath the Bratva strongman.

“We will be busy killing all those who could threaten her,” Oleg said. “None of them will be alive to cause her trouble.”

“All right, then,” Jax said.

Clutching the assault rifle in his left hand, he reached out with his right. Oleg took his hand, and they shook, a pact not unlike the one Jax had made with Kirill, but more personal.

“Let’s see what other toys you guys picked up from Temple,” Jax said. “Then we’ll go give Lagoshin his morning wake-up call.”

* * *

Rollie was in his bar, wolfing down a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, when Thor came trudging out from the kitchen.

Rollie turned, figuring he was ready to leave, but he spotted the cell phone in Thor’s hand and froze.

“Tell me this isn’t more bad news, bud.”

Thor shrugged. “Well, it ain’t good news. The old guy Izzo put Jax onto—John Carney—is dead.”

Rollie swore and smashed a fist down on the bar. The fork he’d been using bounced off the wood and spun to the floor at his feet.

A dark thought swept through him. “You were with them when they talked to Carney?”

Thor nodded. “You know I was. It all seemed fine. Not to mention that Carney had kept information back from the cops that might’ve put them onto Trinity. I know what you’re thinking, but Jax had no reason to go back and hurt this old man.”

“All right. Go track down an address for the real estate guy Carney gave up to Jax. What the hell was his—”

“Drinkwater.”

“Him.” Rollie nodded. “Meet me out back. We’ll let the others search for Jax or some Russians. You and me are gonna take Bag, Mikey, and Bronson over to see this Realtor and see what he knows.”

Rollie took one last bite of his toast and then rubbed a finger over his teeth. He shoved back the stool he’d been sitting in and headed for the back hall.

“What if Drinkwater’s already dead?” Thor asked.

Rollie paused, glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, I’m expecting to find him dead. Seems to be the theme of the morning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from him.”

16

Jax sat in the passenger seat of a black Audi, the interior of which smelled like cigarette smoke and body odor. No new-car smell for Ilia, the Russian behind the wheel. In the backseat, Oleg kept a gun jammed up against Luka’s rib cage and snapped questions at him in Russian that Jax figured amounted to “right or left?” Luka was their human GPS this morning.

The air conditioner buzzed, turned all the way up, but for Jax all it did was chill the smoky, dank interior of the car. The Audi should have fit all four of them comfortably, but he felt claustrophobic. He’d hated having to leave the Harley behind. Worse than that, he despised having to sit idly in the passenger seat while Ilia did the driving. He didn’t know the Russian, had no idea how Ilia would respond if things went to hell. Oleg wouldn’t have put him behind the wheel if he hadn’t been a capable driver, but Jax kept opening and closing his hands, wishing for the grips on his Harley and the comforting freedom that came along with it.

He said nothing.

Whatever fate awaited him and Trinity today, he’d committed to it. No way to back out now. The assault rifle Oleg had given him waited in the trunk of the car.

A loud engine roared beside the Audi, and he glanced right to see Opie riding alongside. Opie peered in the window, just making sure the Russians hadn’t decided to put a bullet in Jax’s head now that they had him in the car. Jax nodded once and Opie dropped back behind the Audi to ride side by side with Chibs. The stitches Rollie had put in Opie’s side seemed to be doing the job, keeping the graze along his ribs closed, and his color had improved. He’d be in pain, but he’d manage.

“Your men look out for you,” Oleg said.

“Not my men,” Jax corrected. “They’re my brothers.”

Ilia glanced at him but then returned his focus to the road ahead. Jax thought he could practically hear Oleg thinking in the backseat.

“I understand,” Oleg said at last. “It is the same with us.”

Luka scoffed and started to say something. Oleg struck him in the head with the butt of his pistol, and Luka grunted, almost whining, then fell silent.

The Audi’s tires seemed strangely loud on the road. The morning sun blazed down, baking the hood of the car and the tinted glass windshield, and Jax knew the day would be a scorcher. Why a girl from Belfast would think she could find happiness in Nevada, he had no idea.

In his pocket, his cell phone buzzed. As he reached to retrieve it, he realized it wasn’t his phone at all. He carried his in another pocket; this one belonged to Luka.

The text message came from someone called VK. Two words: Check in.

“Your friend Krupin wants you to check in,” Jax said.

They kept driving. Oleg forced directions out of Luka, but there were hesitations that concerned Jax. They moved past a ranch and through a tract-housing development until they reached the outskirts of Las Vegas proper. Hotels and casinos loomed in the distance, silhouetted by stark sunlight.