Текст книги "Sons of Anarchy. Bratva"

Автор книги: Christopher Golden

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“What about the old man?” Aaron asked, nodding toward Carney.

Temple smiled beatifically. “You armed, John?”

Carney frowned. “’Course I am. I’ve got that old Beretta you gave me when I turned seventy.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Temple said.

Aaron shrugged. “All right, then. No wire, and no other guns. But that one has a knife,” he said, pointing at Oleg.

Temple smiled that devilish grin. “’Course he does.” He glanced at Oleg. “You look like a knife man, Ivan.”

Oleg chuckled softly.

Temple’s mask slipped a moment. “I say something funny?”

“Nobody calls us Ivan anymore. Ronald Reagan has been out of office for a long time,” Oleg said.

Trinity sighed. Okay, Temple was an asshole, but when you wanted something from an asshole, you had to let him peacock around acting like King Shit. She glanced at Carney, who stood only a couple of feet from her. The old man looked nervous as hell.

“You’re in my house,” Temple warned. He rested his right palm on the gun handle jutting from the holster on his right hip. “I guess I’ll call you whatever I want, particularly since you didn’t offer up your names.”

Carney took a step away from Trinity, marking himself out as separate from her and her friends.

“Listen, I did my part,” he said, his voice a tired rasp. “I made the introductions. But you’re all a little too wound up for me, so I’m gonna be on my way.”

Trinity’s skin rippled with gooseflesh as if a malign presence had just entered the room. She didn’t believe in evil spirits the way her grandmother always had, but she certainly believed that bad intentions carried a weight, an aura that could be felt.

“You sit tight a second, Carney,” Temple said. “You brought these folks here.”

“Can we get down to business?” Trinity asked, raising her hands in supplication. “All we want is a fair price, and we’ve heard you’re a man who deals fair.”

Temple exhaled. He glanced at Aaron, who seemed to deflate a bit, and most of the tension drained out of the room. Oleg and Gavril relaxed visibly, but Feliks didn’t move any farther away from Aaron.

“What are you looking for exactly?” Temple asked.

Carney hummed to himself, looking at the floor, pretending he wasn’t involved in an illegal gun deal.

“MAC-10s. Tec-9s,” Oleg said. “Mix and match. We need a dozen, plus twenty handguns. Hollow-tip rounds, if you can get them.”

Temple whistled appreciatively as he scraped chopped vegetables onto a plate and walked over to the simmering pot. “You guys have quite a Christmas list. That’s a lot of guns just for the four of you.”

No one said a word. Temple dumped the vegetables into his stew and then went back for the big plate of chicken.

“I can get them,” he went on.

Antoinette stepped back into the kitchen. Temple glanced at her, and the woman gave a tiny tilt of the head.

Trinity didn’t like that head tilt, or the way the left side of Temple’s mouth lifted in an almost imperceptible smirk. Something had just passed between Antoinette and her employer, and Trinity ran back through the past couple of minutes in her head, trying to figure out what she had missed.

“How soon can you have ’em?” she asked, as if she hadn’t felt the change in the room.

Temple scraped the chicken into the pot and then adjusted the level of the flame.

“Something’s got me wondering,” he said. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I’m curious what sort of shitstorm you’re all in that you’ve got to come to me. Let’s face it, most of the guns ghosting their way up and down the west coast of this country came through Irish or Russian hands at some point, so why not go to your own people for this?”

Trinity felt cold. “Like you said, Mr. Temple. It’s not your business.”

The smarmy, condescending look returned to Temple’s face. The bastard had snake’s eyes and a predator’s smile.

Antoinette’s pocket buzzed once. The kitchen had fallen silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the clock, and the buzz was loud enough that everyone in the room glanced over at her.

Everyone except Oscar Temple.

Trinity stared. Why wouldn’t Temple react to the buzz of Antoinette’s phone, the sound of a text message coming in? Unless he’d been expecting the sound—waiting for it. Suddenly all the talk made sense, as did the way Antoinette had slipped out of the room.

Swearing under her breath, Trinity darted left, slipped behind John Carney, reached up under the back of his jacket and drew the gun the old man kept holstered there. Antoinette barked a warning even as Carney cried out in protest, but she nudged the old man aside and leveled the gun at Oscar Temple.

Aaron swore and reached inside his jacket for the pistol holstered at his armpit. Feliks was in motion as he drew the gun, ripping it from his grasp and then slapping him so hard that Aaron crashed into the wall and slid down to one knee, shaking his head to try to clear it. Feliks followed him, cracked the gun across the bridge of Aaron’s nose, smashing cartilage. Temple seemed too calm. Antoinette went for her own gun, but the rancher gestured for her to be still.

“Son of a bitch,” Aaron growled, starting to rise as he wiped at the crimson flooding from his nose.

“No, stay there,” Temple instructed, sneering at the man who’d been his bodyguard. Trinity had the feeling he was fired.

Oleg and Gavril were staring at Trinity like she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. Paranoia could be an insidious thing—she’d seen it in others, but never in the mirror.

With his mustache and his brand-new, fake-cowboy clothes, Aaron looked ridiculous there on the floor, like a 1970s porn star past his prime. All the threat had hissed out of him like helium from a punctured balloon.

“Want to explain yourself, girl?” Temple asked.

Trinity ignored him.

Feliks handed the bodyguard’s gun to Oleg, then darted back along the corridor to retrieve their guns from the table in the foyer. Seconds later he reappeared and gave Gavril back his own pistol.

“I trusted you,” Carney said, staring at Trinity.

“Wasn’t us you shouldn’t have trusted,” she replied, hating the weight of the old man’s gun in her hand and the way her skin prickled with awareness of what a bullet could do.

“Antoinette,” she said, making her way around Temple while keeping him in her sights. “Take the mobile phone out of your pocket.”

The darkly tanned woman fished out her cell and handed it over. Trinity made sure Oleg and the others were covering Temple and his sidekicks and flipped open the cell phone. The text had come from a local phone number—no contact name—and consisted of four words. Stall. Fifteen minutes out.

Trinity read the text aloud.

“Shit!” Oleg muttered, glancing at Gavril. “Krupin?”

The name made Antoinette flinch. Trinity felt her stomach lurch. She pointed the gun at Antoinette’s skull, pressed it into her dark hair, and nudged, wondering when she had become so hard. All her life she’d had this sort of violence around her, but most of the time she’d been inside a kind of protective bubble. Never a part of the violence.

Now she jabbed Antoinette’s skull with the gun barrel again. “Who sent that text? Who’s on the way?”

Carney let out a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry… I can’t be here. I’ve got to go.”

He started toward the corridor, jittery and shaking his head. Feliks moved to block his path, and Aaron used the distraction, lunging to his feet and crashing into Feliks, trying to strip the weapon from his hand.

Trinity swore, an instant of panic freezing her in place.

Oleg opened fire on Temple, who dropped behind the kitchen island as he drew his gun. Gavril faded left, trying to get a clear shot.

Antoinette grabbed Trinity’s wrist, twisting to throw off her aim. Trinity pulled the trigger, and a bullet punched the ceiling, raining plaster down on them. Antoinette drove her fist into Trinity’s kidney and then into her armpit, tried to take Carney’s gun from her. No, no, no. Her thoughts whirled, heart pounding. It was all falling apart.

The bitch grabbed her face and pushed her backward, slammed her into a rack of cabinets, rattling dishes inside. Antoinette slammed her head twice more, fighting for the gun, and Trinity lost her grip. She felt it as her fingers opened, knew what it meant—that any second the woman would put a bullet in her, and she would die. They would all die. Oleg would die, and she couldn’t have that.

Gunshots boomed in the kitchen.

Trinity spun away from her. Smelled the spices from Temple’s delicious stew. Grabbed the handles on the big pot with both hands and flung the simmering, burning broth into Antoinette’s face.

Her skin steaming and bubbling, the woman screamed and dropped the gun. Trinity dove for it. Her fingers closed around the cool metal, and she rolled into a sitting position and took aim at Oscar Temple’s back. He was hiding behind the kitchen island, but she was on his side, nothing to protect him from her.

Temple didn’t hesitate. He started to turn.

Trinity pulled the trigger twice and missed both times. The shots made him flinch, made him draw back as splinters flew out of the kitchen island. The flinch cost him a vital second or two, and then Gavril was there. He shot Temple in the forehead, snapping his head back as blood and brain matter sprayed the cabinets behind him. Gavril shot the old man in the chest as he collapsed.

Antoinette kept screaming. Her face and eyes were raw-red and covered in broth as she lunged for Trinity. Oleg shot her—in the head. The bullet went in through her temple and never emerged.

A pause. A breath. Even the clock and fridge seemed to have fallen silent in that moment between moments, and then one more shot rang out.

Aaron struggled to free himself from beneath Feliks, who had just gone hideously limp. The broken-nosed bodyguard pushed out from under the huge Russian. Blood poured out of a hole in Feliks’s neck like it might never stop. Shaking, Aaron tried to bring his recovered gun up to defend himself but Oleg reached him, kicked him in the face, and then did it again. Aaron howled as his shattered nose was pummeled, mashed bloody against his face. Trinity thought she heard his cheekbone crack.

“Shoot him!” Gavril roared. “He killed Feliks! Put all the bullets in him!”

“No!” Oleg snapped. He kicked Aaron again. “On your feet, khuy!”

Aaron staggered as he rose, one hand against the wall to keep from collapsing. Feliks had hurt him badly, but now Feliks was dead. Trinity hated it all, but she wouldn’t lie to herself. Aaron deserved whatever Oleg and Gavril did to him. They had come here to make a fair deal, and they’d been betrayed.

Oleg had a fistful of Aaron’s hair and jammed the barrel of his gun against the bodyguard’s gore-streaked throat.

“You know where the guns are in this house,” Oleg said. “Tell me no, and I shoot you in the leg. Then I stomp your balls until they burst.”

Trinity’s stomach roiled.

“You’re gonna kill me,” Aaron said, his voice trembling.

“It’s what happens when you’re on the wrong side,” Oleg said, jamming the gun barrel harder against his throat. “But you take us to the guns right now, not another word from you, and you die with both balls and both eyes still where they belong. No pain. One bullet. Quick.”

Aaron deflated, all hope leaving him, and nodded once. He started toward the back corridor where Antoinette had gone to make her call.

“We’ve got maybe ten minutes,” Gavril said. “Less if anyone heard gunshots.”

Against the wall, John Carney shifted and let out a small sob. Trinity, Oleg, and Gavril all turned to look at him. Broken and shaking, he stood there crying old man’s tears.

“Gavril,” Oleg said.

Trinity knew the tone, knew what it meant.

“No,” she said.

Oleg frowned, glancing at her, his gun now aimed at Aaron’s back. “Trinity.”

Letting the old man’s gun hang by her side, Trinity walked over to Carney and stood in front of him. She didn’t look at him, afraid to meet his eyes.

“This man did nothin’ wrong. He’d put this life behind him till we asked him to do us this favor. I’ll not allow you to kill him for it.”

Oleg hesitated. Lips pressed together in a white line, he thought it over, but Trinity knew how it would end. The brutality he’d threatened Aaron with… he’d have done it all but gotten no joy from it. Violence was a tool for Oleg, but he didn’t have a killer’s heart, and he believed in people reaping what they’d sown.

He gestured toward Carney. “Go and sit at the table. You’ll leave when we do.”

Silently, Carney went to the little round table in the kitchen, dragging out a chair.

Aaron started to turn, maybe to make a fight of it again. Oleg struck him in the temple with the gun.

“Walk.”

The bodyguard walked the first of his final steps. Oleg and Gavril followed.

Trinity knew they could have used her help to carry the guns they were about to steal, but she pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from red-faced John Carney. He wiped his tears and looked at her with doubtful eyes.

Carney glanced over at the corpses of Temple and Antoinette, and his expression darkened. She thought for a moment that she saw in him the hard man he’d once been.

“Oscar dealt the cards, lass,” Carney said. “He used to say, ‘The house always wins,’ but he was a fool to think it. Sometimes the house loses. Sometimes the cards go the other way, and the house gets burned to the ground.”

5

Jax held his son Thomas in his arms and pressed his nose against the boy’s head. Thomas wasn’t a baby anymore, but his head still had that baby smell, reminding Jax of his most important role. His sons were his world, his reason for breathing. People talked about the measure of a man, but to any man with children, the only real measure was in the eyes of his kids. If someday they learned the things he had done for the club, for brotherhood, and to try to build the future he wanted for them… he hoped they would understand why. But the more time passed, the more he realized that giving them that future mattered more than them forgiving him for what he had to do to get them there.

Laughter and the sound of splashing came from the bathroom. He kissed Thomas on the head and nudged the door open. Tara Knowles knelt beside the tub, washing the hair of Jax’s older son, Abel. They both looked up at him—his old lady and his boy—and their smiles tugged at him. Abel’s hair was full of suds, and Tara had been sculpting it into strange curls and waves, showing Abel in a hand mirror.

“Hello, Daddy,” Tara said.

Abel tried to throw a handful of soap bubbles at him but they didn’t go far.

“I’m headed out,” Jax told her.

Tara stood and reached for Thomas, who stretched out his arms for his mother. Jax kissed the boy’s head and handed him over. Tara smiled again, and it lit up her angular features. Her face could turn a man to stone if Tara was displeased with him, but she had a dark beauty that made him reach up and trace the contours of her face.

“Be safe,” Tara said, kissing him even as she took Thomas in her arms. “You come back to me.”

“Don’t I always?” he asked with a grin.

“If you know what’s good for you.”

The lightness of the conversation hid a darkness beneath it. Tara didn’t want him to go—not with just Chibs and Opie to back him up—but she wouldn’t tell him to stay, either. Jax had not shared the details with her, only that Trinity was in danger.

Tara had wrapped her arms around him, pressed her body against his to remind him what he would be missing while he was gone, and knitted her brows as she stared into his eyes.

You have to go, she’d said. I love you for that. But you never knew she existed until half a year ago. Don’t die for her.

He didn’t plan to, but they both knew the risk was there. For everyone, yeah… and moreso for the people in their world. The life they’d chosen meant he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth on a regular basis. One of these days, the jaws were gonna chomp.

Jax went to the tub and splashed Abel, who kicked and splashed him back. He kissed Tara and Thomas again, then turned and left without looking back. He picked up a small bag by the door—just a change of clothes and a few things—and went out, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Chibs and Opie were little more than shadows in the driveway as Jax stepped outside. Their bikes were familiar silhouettes, comforting ghosts awaiting new life.

Opie lit a cigarette, the flame momentarily illuminating his face. Jax approached them as the moon slid out from behind a scrim of clouds.

“You set?” Opie asked.

Jax went to his bike. “She understands.”

Opie shook his head, reminding Jax of a bear. “Wish Lyla did. Maybe Tara can talk to her.”

“I’m sure she would if you want.”

Opie exhaled cigarette smoke. “She’s gonna have to get used to it. She thinks we’re going to end up in Vegas with a roomful of whores.”

Chibs stepped between them, threw an arm around each of them, and grinned the devil-may-care grin that always seemed to lift the spirits of his brethren.

“We get this sorted out, maybe we save that bit for the return trip,” he said.

Opie smiled, took another drag on his cigarette, then dropped it to the pavement to grind it out. At some unconscious signal, the three of them moved toward their bikes. Jax had the sack with his gear slung over his shoulder, and now he slipped the second strap over his other shoulder. He wore a leather vest similar to his cut, but this one had no markings—no patches or symbols of any kind. Chibs wore a threadbare old denim jacket with an olive drab T-shirt beneath it. Opie had a plain navy sweatshirt with its sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Without their cuts—with no link to the club—he thought they all looked naked.

“You sure this is the right move, Jackie?” Chibs asked, smoothing his goatee as he sat astride his Harley-Davidson Dyna Street Bob. “Traveling without showing our colors?”

Jax nodded. “We can’t pick sides till we know which side tried to kill us.”

“Clay seemed pretty unhappy about it,” Opie noted, reaching for the handlebars.

The plan had not pleased Clay—that was certain. He didn’t like the idea of the club being three men down for days, didn’t like them going out essentially undercover, and most of all, didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t control whatever unfolded in Nevada. If it had only been about Trinity, Jax figured Clay would have bitched even more, but he at least acknowledged that the trip ought to help give them a better idea of what the hell the Russians were up to.

“Clay knows it can’t be avoided,” Jax said.

Chibs kicked his bike to roaring life. Jax was about to follow suit when headlights washed the driveway in yellow gloom, and he turned to see his mother pull up in her black Cadillac XLR-V. She left the big vehicle idling at the edge of the property and climbed out, slamming the door before striding across the yard toward them.

“Boys,” she said, her voice almost lost beneath the growl of Chibs’s engine.

Opie and Chibs both nodded at her. Opie might have said her name, but Jax was barely paying attention. He sat on his Harley, one hand on the throttle.

“You didn’t have to come see us off,” he said.

Her lips pursed in something like a scowl. “I came to see my grandsons.”

Gemma Teller-Morrow looked damn good for her age. Her brown hair had blond highlights and auburn streaks. She had a hell of a figure and enough of the beauty of the girl she’d once been that much younger men would look at her twice—and maybe keep looking—until her eyes drew their attention. Once they looked her in the eye, most guys turned away, unprepared for a woman so in charge of every moment of her existence. She worked hard to keep hidden the never-healing wounds that life had given her. Jax had seen them, though. He knew them well.

He also knew that those wounds made her more formidable instead of less. Gemma had raised him by example. No one understood her as well as Jax did, not even Clay. She knew why he had to go to Nevada and wouldn’t stand in the way, as much as she hated it.

Gemma kissed him on the cheek, took his forearm, and squeezed once, not at all gently.

“Don’t take stupid risks for Maureen Ashby’s little bitch.”

Jax shook his head. “I’ll see you in a few days, Mom.”

Gemma walked off, her heels clicking on the driveway as she approached the front door. Tara would not be happy to see her, but Jax couldn’t run interference any longer. They had to get on the road. He kicked the Harley to life and felt immediately at ease. On the back of that bike, engine snarling, road unfurling beneath him… that was where he belonged.

Jax rode out of the driveway with Opie and Chibs in his wake.

Just one stop to make before they headed to Nevada.

* * *

Connor Malone had never liked his office. It was the place where he was most vulnerable. At his desk, he felt that at any minute law enforcement might break down the door and arrest him. He never answered the phone without his skin prickling with paranoia that his conversations were being overheard.

Instead, he took most meetings in pubs and diners, at dog parks and boxing clubs… even in a run-down barn on an Indian reservation. He’d read somewhere that a man who courted trouble couldn’t be surprised when it followed him home.

Ah, wee Connor… ye’re nervous by nature, his ma had always told him.

And yet somehow, as nervous as he was, Connor had worked his way up in the Irish Republican Army to become right-hand man to Gaalan O’Shay, who ran the RIRA’s operations on the west coast of the United States. Should have made him nervous as hell, but it was never the work itself that unsettled Connor—it was the knowledge of how quickly it could all go tits up, landing him in prison or with a bullet in his back.

Lately he’d been more anxious than ever. The illegal gun trade was enough risk, but now their arrangements with the Sons of Anarchy involved the Galindo cartel, which meant drugs. American culture’s love of guns was romantic, which meant many citizens would rather look the other way than worry about illegal guns. But Americans’ love for drugs was more like carnal lust, and they were ashamed of their addictions and more eager to point a finger.

The word had come from Belfast—the deal had gone through. Gaalan didn’t trust Jax Teller, thought of him as volatile—unpredictable—as much for his temper as for the streak of righteousness that went through the younger man. Connor liked Jax well enough, but Clay Morrow had always been easier to read. Clay’s motivations were clearer, not muddied up by doubt or moral hesitation.

Jax Teller had called an hour earlier, and Connor suggested they meet in a booth at the White Horse Diner, a spot just off the highway in Morada, not far from Charming. Connor liked the place because they served breakfast twenty-four hours a day and because the tired truckers and exhausted parents and manic children never gave him a second look, no matter whom he might be meeting.

He shoveled forkfuls of southwestern omelet into his mouth and kept glancing at the door. He’d chosen a booth at the back out of reflex, though he’d have preferred to sit by the window. He didn’t expect the Sons of Anarchy to come riding up to the plateglass window at the front of a diner and open fire—they might be lunatics, but they weren’t stupid—still, caution was a good habit. The sort of thing that kept a nervous Irishman alive.

He took a bite of toast, a sip of tea, and then glanced up to see Jax and Chibs moving toward him through the diner. Connor frowned at their attire—strange to see them without their cuts—but the absence of the familiar SAMCRO vests served to make them less conspicuous, which pleased him.

“Connor,” Jax said as he slipped into the booth, “thanks for coming out.”

“It sounded important,” Connor replied.

Chibs glanced around, eyes seeking trouble, then slid into the booth beside Jax. “Hello, Con.”

“Filip,” Connor replied with a nod.

Chibs glanced at the meal on the table with an expression that was not quite a smile—more like a memory surfacing. “Breakfast three meals a day.”

“My doctor advises against it,” Connor replied. “We’re not as young as we used to be. But I spoil myself now and again. You gonna order something?”

Connor asked as he put a forkful of omelet into his mouth.

“Tempting as it looks, I just have a question for you,” Jax replied.

“One question? You couldn’t have asked over the phone?”

Chibs shot him a withering glance. “No.”

Connor understood. Jax wanted to look him in the eye while asking. It troubled Connor to think they viewed him as someone so easy to read. Maybe it was true—maybe he was a bad liar. He promised himself he’d work on that.

“So ask,” Connor said.

Jax rested his hands on the cracked linoleum tabletop. “Where do things stand between your bosses and the Russians?”

Connor could hear his mother’s voice in his head again, reminding him what a nervous child he’d been.

“I’m not sure what you’re askin’.”

“Bullshit,” Chibs muttered, brows knitted in consternation. “Don’t piss about, Con. We haven’t the time.”

Intense as they were, unpredictable as ever, these guys wouldn’t do anything to upset their arrangement with the RIRA. Connor knew that, just as he knew they wouldn’t risk violence in the middle of a diner when there were small children just two tables away.

He knew that, but he didn’t know it.

One of these days, that uncertainty—the fury simmering inside Jax Teller—was going to get a lot of people killed. Connor didn’t plan to be one of them.

“As far as I know,” he said, “there are no ties between us and them. Not now.”

Jax leaned over the table, brows rising, blue eyes fiercely intent. “A bunch of Russians forced me and Opie off the road, tried to kill us in broad daylight. A second group showed up and drove ’em off. They’re killing each other, Connor, and they’re doing it on American streets with illegal guns. This conflict is gonna be bad for business, ours and yours. So maybe rethink your answer. I know the Russians sent a delegation to Belfast a while ago. I wanna know if anything came of it. I’ve got two factions shooting at each other and at members of my club. I wanna know which side the Irish are on.”

Connor took a deep breath. On his plate, the remnants of his omelet were beginning to get cold, but he’d lost his appetite.

“If this comes up later,” he said, “you and I never had this conversation.”

Jax nodded. “Agreed.”

Chibs gave a small nod as well, prompting Connor to forge ahead.

“Bratva went to Belfast lookin’ for a deal. You’ve got that right,” Connor said. “From what I hear, they were on the verge of something that might’ve proved inconvenient for you lads, but when word reached Roarke that the Bratva had splintered, that ended it. Belfast won’t get involved with the Bratva until the power struggle’s over and the dust has settled.”

Jax narrowed his eyes unhappily. He glanced at Chibs and then cocked his head as he looked back at Connor.

“Thanks for that. All I wanted to know,” he said. “Shit was happening back then, kind of chaotic, so I understand Roarke and the others considering alternatives. But the arrangement between Belfast and SAMCRO is solid now. If the Russians come back to try again once their situation stabilizes, that door is closed.”

Connor scratched the stubble on his chin. “You askin’ me or tellin’ me?”

“I’m saying our arrangement is clear,” Jax replied. “If the subject comes up, you make sure you let Roarke and the others know.”

“I can’t do that, Jax.”

Chibs had his fists on the table. They tightened as if he wanted very much to use them. “Why not?”

Connor dropped his fork onto his plate and sat back. “I already told you, Filip… as far as anyone else knows, this conversation never happened.”

He turned to signal the waitress for a coffee refill. When he looked back, Jax and Chibs were leaving. They didn’t bother to say good-bye, and Connor was just happy to see them go. He picked up a half-eaten slice of toast and took a bite, erasing the past few minutes from his mind.

6

Moccasin Road ran east to west across the northern edge of Greater Las Vegas, mostly through gray-brown scrubland with more cactuses than houses. At its western end, the hills of Red Rock Canyon rose upward, changing the view from isolated alien landscape to something approaching true beauty. Jackrabbit Ridge was the sort of lost and lonely road that Hollywood had taught Trinity to expect to find all over Nevada, dusty and lined with prickly brush. When she’d first come to Nevada she had been disappointed to find it much more civilized than she had anticipated, but in recent weeks she’d learned just how much of the state remained wild and inhospitable. Las Vegas might be close enough to show its garish lights at night, but out here they might as well have been lost in the desert.

Jackrabbit Ridge had a handful of houses along it, mostly occupied by people who wanted to stay off the grid and away from the prying eyes of the federal government. They drove pickups and American-made SUVs festooned with flags and testimonials to their love of hunting and guns in general. Farther toward the national park there were side streets whose signs had long since been knocked down or stolen, so she did not know their names. There were some homes similar to the ones on the main road—although just thinking of Jackrabbit Ridge as a main road gave it far too much credit—but there were also two startlingly suburban-looking developments of single-family homes. Some of them were occupied, others abandoned or never sold, and more than one had been left half-built when the local economy proved unable to support middle-class dreams on Jackrabbit Ridge.

Trinity glanced out the window. They’d ridden in silence, she in the passenger seat and Oleg behind the wheel. Gavril had gotten in back and spent most of the ride with his head leaning against the window, striking the glass every time they hit a bump or a pothole. The air inside the car felt haunted by the unspoken awareness of the dead man in the trunk. Feliks had been their friend—to Oleg and Gavril he had been close to a brother—and they could smell his blood in the car, slipping up through the air vents somehow or just seeping through the backseat.