Show, Len, and Bart, who’d already had some serious conversations with Lilli, sat quietly and waited for her to continue, but Dan sat forward. “Hold on. Lilli, I mean no disrespect. I know you were in the Army, in the war, and I know you have that experience. Shit, I just saw you hand Isaac his ass in the ring. So I don’t mean to offend when I say what the fuck do you know about running meth? Or fighting dealers? This is turf shit, plain and simple.” He turned to Isaac. “Boss, I know you got yourself a fine woman, but I do
not
understand why she’s sitting at this table. This table is no place for a woman. It’s just wrong.” He sat back, arms crossed. His stance was defiant and strong, but Lilli could see, like a shadow behind his eyes, that he knew he’d just spit over a line. She turned her gaze to Isaac and saw his fists clenched, his knuckles whitening. His temper was going to kill the discussion. His eyes burning, he opened his mouth. But before he could speak, Lilli put her hand on his rigid fist. He closed his mouth and looked down at her hand, momentarily distracted.
She started to speak up and respond to Dan herself, but now she felt a big hand on her other arm—Show was holding
her
back. She almost shook him off, but then she recognized that Dan wouldn’t hear her now. More important than her need to establish herself was their collective need to get Dan on board. He wouldn’t hear her, no matter what she said; he needed to hear from a brother. So she sat back and gave Show the floor.
He stood. He was big, almost as big as Isaac, and he towered over the table. His voice was deep, but he was surprisingly soft spoken. Lilli had never heard him shout. He was always measured, and when he spoke, the words came steadily, as if each one had been weighed and considered before it was uttered. “You’re right, Dan. This is the first time a woman has ever sat in one of these chairs. And I think you’re right that this is a turf war. But you’re dead wrong that what Lilli knows can’t help us. All war is turf, brother. In the desert, on Main Street, it’s all turf. And this is a new day. We’re not fighting another crew for our little acre. We’re fighting a guy with ties to people in Washington D-damn-C. He’s out of our reach. Lilli says she has a way to bring him down some, or at least get him distracted. We need to give her our ear. We’re not talking about putting a patch on her back, Dan. We’re only in this room because it’s convenient. It’s not a club meeting.” He sat down as if the matter were settled. Lilli looked at Dan, who did indeed seem somewhat mollified.
Isaac did not, however, and now he leaned forward. “Show’s right, and his head is cooler than mine, but I tell you this, Dan. When I bring someone in who could help us, I don’t fucking care who it is or where they sit, you keep your trap shut and fucking listen. You don’t like the way I run things, then fucking challenge me.” Tension in the room crackled like static as everyone reacted to that.
Now Dan stood. “Don’t threaten me, Isaac. I’m your brother. I got a right to say my bit. I was right there with you that day in the woods. It was my hand on her throat, keeping pressure so she wouldn’t bleed out. She’s sitting in Wyatt’s damn chair. I voted with everybody else to send him to his maker for the way he went against the club and sold her out to Ray. Wyatt and I patched in together, but I voted aye, and I knew it was the right thing. So don’t threaten me or make me out disloyal because I got a problem with a woman at our table.”
He was talking about her like she wasn’t there. It shook Lilli hard to hear
again
about how weak and helpless she’d been that day, completely at Hobson’s mercy. She remembered every second until Isaac killed Hobson and took Lilli in his arms. She’d passed out then and come to days later. That’s how these guys saw her—that limp, bloody body. It’s how they still saw her. She hated it with a force too big to fit in her head. She was not weak. She was not.
She realized that she’d put her hand over the scar on her neck, and she jerked it away.
And now Isaac was standing, looking fit for murder. This was getting out of hand. Lilli was over it; she wanted this done. She spoke up. “Fuck, guys. I’m sure everybody’s dick is equally enormous, okay? I promise I’m not staking a claim on the damn chair. I’ll say what I came to say and leave you to your circle jerk.”
Probably not the most prudent thing to say in a room full of angry, aggressive men, but she didn’t care. She cast a defiant glance around the table, though, and saw that Len, Bart, and Show were smiling—trying not to, but smiling. Dan still looked pissed. So did Isaac, but she stared him down until the corners of his mouth lifted a little. Then he made a “go ahead” gesture, a short wave of his hand, palm upturned. But he didn’t sit until after Dan did.
When she could see again through the haze of testosterone, she cleared her throat. “It’s simple, really—or, no, it’s not simple, but it doesn’t take much to explain. Bart’s the hero here. I can put him with a really top-shelf hacker, one with deep experience, and they can work together to get Ellis where he lives. Literally. Get intel on his closest associates, find the weak links among them. Players like this, the weak spots are always closest. You don’t get at the big bads from a distance. You get them walking their dog or getting a coffee. To get that close these days, you need a hacker.”
Dan laughed, contempt and anger blazing out of the sound. “We’re gonna use a computer to take down the guy who’s got men chasing our kids down in the street? That’s bullshit. Isaac, come on, man!”
Lilli answered. “No. You still need your guns. You’ll still get your bullets and bloodshed. But he’ll be weaker. You’ll know things about him and how he works that he couldn’t imagine anyone would know. And maybe you’ll have a chance to hold him off. Your only chance.”
She pushed back from the table and stood. “My friend is the best of the best, and he’s already keen to help. He won’t work for free, but he’ll work on a friend rate. What he mostly needs is an exit plan for his current situation—maybe a chance to prospect for a position as an Intelligence Officer with a friendly club. You want him to help, I can put him together with Bart.” Smiling at Bart, she added, “You’re good, bud, but this guy has hacked stuff you’ve had no need to bother with. The
most
elite systems. He can show you some magic tricks that’ll knock you back.” Bart grinned at that. He had a sweet, crooked smile.
Finally, she scanned the room. The faces were mostly friendly, but the tension was thick. “Okay, that’s what I’ve got. You boys can get back to measuring.” She looked down at Isaac. “I’m going to ask a Prospect to ride me back.”
She was still angry from before, and even angrier now after this stupid meeting, so she was gratified to see the surprise register in his eyes. All he said, though, was, “Not gonna wait?”
“Nope. Had about enough of this shit for today.” She walked around him, to the door.
As she pulled it open and headed through, Isaac called out, “The van, not a bike!”
She froze. He was seriously getting pissy at the idea of her riding on someone else’s bike. Right now, after all that. Being with a biker was not always what one might call an empowering experience for a woman. Certainly not on this day. “Whatever,” she called back, understanding even as she said it that she sounded like a petulant teenager. She felt like one, too. Also not especially empowering.
As the door closed, she heard him yell, “Lilli!” She ignored him.
When she found Erik, and he happily agreed to take her, she was sorely tempted to insist they go on his bike. But she knew she’d be getting him into real trouble, probably of the painful variety, so she rode back with him in the van. To Isaac’s home. Which was supposed to be her home, too.
She wondered if it ever would be.
~oOo~
When she got back, she did some work, finishing and submitting a decoding project from her secure satellite internet connection. The internet was a fairly rare commodity in Signal Bend, as was television. There was no cable, and most of the residents couldn’t afford a dish. The Horde had a powerful dish at the clubhouse. Tuck had one at No Place, the town bar. Isaac had one at the house. For most everybody else, television was a special event. In many ways, the town was trapped in a kind of time warp.
Lilli had come into town with a laptop and satellite phone for her highly classified government contract work as a translator and decryption specialist. She used her own connection when she worked. When she finished for the day, she shut everything down and locked it up in her new desk. She trusted Isaac completely, but what she worked with was sometimes so sensitive, translating messages in Arabic and Farsi that had been snagged and tagged as possible terrorist communiqués, that she kept to protocols as much as she could. She’d let Isaac know too much, simply by telling him what her work was.
She was still agitated and angry from the confrontations at the Horde clubhouse, so she went out to work on the yard. Isaac had neglected almost everything outside, doing no more than keeping the yard around the house mowed. Lilli wanted a garden. She wanted a lot of gardens—flowers and herbs and vegetables. It was autumn, so not the right season to do much, but she’d found catharsis in coming into the yard to clean out the old beds and prepare new ones. Show’s wife, Holly, thinning her own beds, had given Lilli bulbs for gladiolas, daylilies, tulips, and irises—which Holly had called “flags”—and Lilli had been working on a big bed along the wide front porch.
Holly was the first—the only, really—woman in town Lilli thought might be something of a friend. They didn’t have a lot in common; Holly was a stay-at-home mom with three girls, and, since she’d married Show, she never went farther from Signal Bend than the occasional trip to Springfield. But she was kind and had a decent, dry sense of humor. She’d been a Horde old lady for something like fifteen years, and, though she was obviously not a fan of the club, she seemed happy to help Lilli understand the culture. A day like today was a clear reminder how much help Lilli needed in that regard.
She dug in the porch bed energetically this afternoon, setting in bulbs for spring blooming. Usually physical exertion kept Lilli centered, or got her there in those rare instances when she was losing her cool. Well, those instances had once been rare. Not so much anymore. She felt less level these days than she could remember feeling ever before. Even when her dad died, she’d maintained. She’d done what needed to be done and moved forward. Now, she felt edgy most of the time.
When there was nothing more she could do outside, she went in and washed up. She fed the kittens—one of Isaac’s mousers had dropped a litter several weeks ago, and they’d just been weaned. She had to feed them on the side porch, because they rarely wanted to be in the house for long, but she’d installed a pet door in the kitchen so they could come and go at will. She’d never had any kind of a pet before, and she loved those furry little mischief-makers. Everything they did was adorable. Isaac? Well, he was coming to terms with the idea of cats in his house. He wasn’t much of a pet guy, but he seemed to like her interest in the cats.
He’d never even named the mousers. She’d named everybody, the kittens—two black and white boys, a solid black boy, and two calico girls—and the mousers, after Dickens characters. The kittens were Pip, Tim, Dodger, Biddy, and Estella. Mom, a little ginger tabby, was Miss Havisham. Not that the snoot cared in the slightest whether she had a name. The other mouser, a huge black tom and very likely the baby daddy, was Fagin. He steered clear of people. There was another cat roaming around, Isaac said, but Lilli had never seen him or her.
When she filled the bowls and freshened the water, all of the kittens came rolling onto the porch, mewing at her and crawling over her feet, so she sat cross-legged on the floor and got in some quality time. Havi, the mama, came up the short steps and sat at the edge, watching, occasionally licking a paw and sweeping it over her whiskers. Sitting on the floor with kittens crawling on her, feeling the pinpricks of tiny claws kneading her arms, Lilli finally began to feel a little calmer. The kittens got to a part of her she didn’t really recognize. She hadn’t figured that out yet, but she loved having a lap full of them.
She sat for awhile, looking out over the yard. The summer had been hotter than normal, and the fall warmer, so the leaves turned late, and the yard was burnished with autumn color. The big sugar maple was on fire with brilliantly red leaves, the late afternoon sun streaming through. It was pretty here. And quiet—the only sounds natural, animals and rustling foliage. She liked it. It was getting late, though, so she lifted sleeping Stella and Dodger from her legs and went back into the kitchen. She figured she should probably make some dinner. She didn’t know when Isaac would be home, but he was rarely very late without calling.
~oOo~
She was deep into chopping vegetables for stir fry, her mind turning the day at the clubhouse over and over. She didn’t have the guys’ respect. All they saw was a woman lying limp, her clothes in tatters, at the feet of a predator. Even Isaac now saw her as someone to protect, someone who’d stand behind him, not beside him. God, she hated that. The more she replayed the day, the more agitated she got. The knife was flying through carrots and peppers and onions.
And sweet Jesus, here she was cooking fucking dinner, waiting for her man to get home. God, she was even barefoot! All she needed was to get knocked up—which Isaac was dying for—and she’d be living the cliché. What the fuck had happened to her life?
She wasn’t paying enough attention, and finally the big knife went right through her forefinger, slicing off a sliver from the tip.
Motherfuck
! It hurt like hell, and she dropped the knife and stuck her finger in her mouth. Her chaotic, angry thoughts already had her tense; now, her finger stinging and bleeding freely, she just snapped. She hacked at the big wooden cutting board with the knife, then just threw it all, knife and board, with its piles of chopped vegetables, across the room. Still not satisfied, she cleared everything off the worn old prep table. Two of the kittens had stumbled inside through the pet door; now they beat it back out to the porch.