Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) (11 page)

“He’s injured,” said Fox, going right up and squatting beside the bird. “Too bad I don’t have my falconry glove on me.”

“Falconry?” I echoed stupidly. “What’s his injury?”

Fox turned his head this way and that, deciding. “Ah, here.” He pointed to a spot beyond the raptor. “He was eating that snake.”

“Rattlesnake?”

“No, luckily. That Desert Nightsnake has a mild venom. I think he’ll be okay but I’m taking him somewhere safe.” He turned and looked me up and down. “You don’t have any clothes to spare. Run out there and see if anyone’s got an extra shirt, jacket.”

“I’m on it.” I always wanted to say that, and now a person of authority was giving me a mission. As I raced back to the shooting line, a weird sight assaulted me. An extremely buff black man was leaning against the outside of his electric blue sports car, just watching. Some workers, operators and laborers and truck drivers, parked around that side of the building, but this guy was really out of place. First of all, what was so damned fascinating about a bunch of nerds shooting archery? Secondly, he was so obviously not a worker, with his shiny boots, mirrored shades, and enormously bulging muscles. Too much muscle. He could probably flex each pec independently of each other. Frighteningly, part of his jaw seemed to be eaten away, maybe by a tumor.

I saw Wolf was charming Tracy with a shooting lesson, so I asked Tobias, Slushy, and Sax. “I need a spare jacket. Don’t worry, nothing’ll happen to it.”

Tobias said, “I’ve got another one of these lumbersexual shirts in June’s Jeep.” I walked with him to the vehicle. “What’s it for?”

I told him about the raptor, and then an idea occurred to me. “Hey Tobias. You can track people down, can’t you?”

“I’d say I can, if my name isn’t Tobias Weingarten.”

“Good,” I said, grabbing the plaid shirt rudely. “I’ll come by later, give you the details. Thanks for the shirt.”

But Tobias, Sax, and Slushy now wanted to see the raptor, so I led a squad of men back with me to the shed. “Who’s that guy staring at us?” I asked off-handedly.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” said Slushy. “Any time
anyone
is staring at us in this game, it’s bad news.”

“I’ll just go ask him,” said Sax, splitting off from our group.

“There’s a raptor conservancy just outside of town,” said Tobias. “Maybe Fox could take the bird there.”

I forgot about Sax in the excitement of watching Fox wrap the bird and hold it to his chest. By the time I remembered, the guy had taken off. Sax said he split when he saw him coming. I was left wondering if the guy was following me or Fox. I had a feeling there would always be that question with two fugitives like us.

Fox insisted on following me down Mescal Mountain in the Jeep. So he must have seen the guy. Now he’d be wondering who the fuck the guy was after too.

FOX

I
t was the strangest thing. In the middle of a loud, rambunctious game of darts with guys named Tuzigoot and Duji at The Bum Steer, I suddenly found myself walking out the side door and up some metal steps to the next floor.

I was like a man possessed by an alien overlord.
Must…walk…up steps…
And I swear on my mother’s grave, I did
not
remember that up there was the apartment of Pippa Lofting, WITSEC witness for the prosecution.

Duji and Tuzigoot seemed to know it, though. I was wondering why all the catcalls. “Hey, Fox! Nail her for me too!” “You go get her, you foxy bastard!” “Give her a moustache ride!” That last was from Wolf Glaser. I suspected him of having many more bad euphemisms up his sleeve. He was happy because Tracy had been hanging onto his arm for a few days now since hooking up at the outdoor range. The bowl-headed Tobias was nowhere to be seen.

But once I was in the upstairs hallway, I saw a stranger at her door. I hung back, peering around the corner at the guy. His handsome face and bearing stuck a cold knife into my gut. I didn’t identify the feeling as jealousy until later. Who
was
this fucking guy? As a federal witness, she really shouldn’t be talking to
anyone
. Maybe he lived in the same building.

“Okay, I’ll check back with you in a week or so,” said the guy, turning to leave.

“Sounds good, Randy,” she said.

I took the stairs two at a time, then straddled my scoot in the parking lot. The guy loped—yes, he actually
loped
, he was that leggy and graceful, like a runway model—to some bunkmobile of a Toyota.
Randy
. His asinine name matched his idiotic car, and my
sicario
soul threw daggers into the side of his head as he drove off.

It was only then I realized I was jealous. I had
one
makeout session with a girl, and I was
jealous
? Of some guy named
Randy
? I never wanted a hookup, and certainly not with a mark. I could somehow squirm out of killing her without making myself look
too
bad, but a fling? What the fuck was wrong with me? I had advised her to create her own story. Well apparently I was busy creating mine without the consent of my own ego.

Pippa’s impish nose got to me, I told myself. The fact that we’d both adopted literary surnames must mean something—or nothing. I liked that, although she should have been laying low and keeping a low profile, the sassy girl had taken the bull by the horns and gotten a job more to her scientific liking. Her Texas drawl, as though she had marbles in her mouth, got to me. She was a strong, brash woman who somehow also needed my protection.

And I was supposed to kill her.

I knew I should just select one of the Bone Lickers, “sweetbutts” who hung around The Bum Steer hoping to have their ego boosted by being reamed by a biker. I got off my scoot to go back inside and grab Wolf, tell him we needed to do some more surveilling around the Ochoa ranch. But my phone chimed with a call I was required to answer.

Ortelio Jones.

“
Ese
, Fox!” He was either high or had just made a shit ton of money. “Just checking in. Want to see how the tuxedo rental business is going.
Órale!
”

I had a story all prepared. “I haven’t been able to find her, but meanwhile I’ve been given an assignment by a powerful motorcycle club up here. It involves the Ochoas.” I knew that would sidetrack Jones.

“As in Ruben Ochoa?
Qué cabrón!
”

“The one and the same. We’ve got eyes on them, but if you want me to hit a couple, it’ll take a few days because their security is very tight.”

Ortelio Jones wasn’t so full of chuckles anymore. He seethed, “
Si
. I want you to hit that
gilipollas
Ruben Ochoa. And his
pinche guey
son Abel too. I’ll text you some photos so you get the right guys.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I had to grin mechanically and nod at Tuzigoot and a singer named Russ Gollywow, exiting the club to get on their scoots.

“OK, done. Now I want you to keep looking for that slut whore Flavia Brooks. How many tuxedo rental businesses can there
be
?”

“Got to go.” I thumbed the red hangup button. It was common in our trade to hang up like that. Other work sometimes snuck up on you, and you had to stop talking immediately.

I sighed deeply. I’d bought a little more time, and could possibly earn more stripes if I hit those Ochoas. Do both Jones and The Bare Bones a favor. But eventually Jones would come back to the little problem of the mouthy Flavia Brooks who had dared to squeal on a cartel she’d somehow become involved with. I was getting drawn in by Pippa Lofting’s story. I always said “it’s impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.” I wanted to know how she’d gotten mixed up with the Joneses making meth in Corpus Christi. Were they holding something over her head? Her sister’s safety, maybe? That was their method.

“Hey! Fox! Are you coming with us on the Winnemucca run day after tomorrow?” yelled Tuzigoot, about to start his engine.

“Takes about twelve hours to get there. Bands, twats and pot!” yelled Gollywow.

A motorcycle rally? It had never really occurred to me. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” But instead of going in the club to get Wolf, I started back up the clanging metal stairs to the second story of the Victorian building.

Safely inside the hallway, I texted Santiago Slayer a photo I’d taken of that enormously bulky operative, his mouth corroded from doing Krokodil. He had stuck out like a rusty nail in a kid’s playground, not even bothering to hide the fact he was eyeballing either me or Pippa.

Do you recognize this guy? Because he seems to be following me.

Slayer didn’t immediately answer, although I knew from Facebook he’d been at a party in Flagstaff the night before doing jello shots topped with Froot Loops.

Pippa looked supremely surprised to see me. “Oh,” she just said, blankly. Like I was the last person she expected to see darkening her door. She wore a light summer dress, like the one she’d worn when she’d humped my thigh behind the ordnance shed. She was one steamy firecracker. Could we have something strictly physical? She might be mad when I inevitably left, but at least she’d be happy I didn’t bury her.

I had to ask, “May I come in?”

“Sure! Sure, sure.”

The inside of her apartment was about what you’d expect from the WITSEC program. A few items from Ikea decorated the space with such sparsity it just
screamed
“federally protected witness.” At her flimsy desk of particle board sat a closed laptop, a skein of knitting yarn and needles, and a book about the Dust Bowl.

“What wound up happening with that red-tailed hawk?” she asked.

“Oh!” That had completely slipped my mind. “Right. I took it to the raptor rescue just north of town. They said it’ll take about a week for it to improve, but the poison isn’t strong enough to kill him.”

“You seem to know a lot about birds.”

“Do I? Well, actually, an associate of mine taught me the art of falconry.” I was peering through her Ikea curtains onto Bargain Boulevard to make sure that bruiser with the decomposing jaw wasn’t following us again. “It was something we did in our spare time.”

“Oh, so that’s not something from your…your old persona.”

“My existence in New Mexico? No, that’s new. Like I take it, knitting isn’t from your old persona.” I almost said “Flavia Brooks” until I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know about that name.

“Hardly. I was into snowboarding and Krav Maga like I am now. They said those are generic enough things for the new me to do. But of course they wouldn’t let me take one rock from my three mineral cabinets. I loved collecting rocks. Apparently
that
would be an enormous dead giveaway.”

It was actually nice to talk freely with someone in the same, totally bizarre predicament as me. “Sax, the guy shooting archery with us, he runs a rock shop here in town.”

“Right. I heard that, but I don’t dare go by it, you know?”

I knew. “I used to love to draw. I drew all these designs. See?”

How could she
not
see? I had two whole inked sleeves, all of which had been done in Nogales since running from New Mexico. Just another feeble attempt at disguising myself.

“Those are beautiful. This one says—”

I drew the loose armhole of my muscle tank aside to display my pec. My nipple puckered when she leaned in close to read.

“Mea culpa.”

“Right. This acknowledges that what I did in New Mexico was my fault.”

“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t anything totally heinous. I don’t know. I just have a feeling about you. I know you’re a
sicario
and all, but I don’t think you mean anyone
harm
. I know that sounds stupid. I’m not explaining myself very well.”

She looked adorable, as though toeing an invisible line on the floor. I said, “I think I know what you mean. Like, I’m convinced you didn’t do anything completely heinous in Corpus Christi.”

“Not at all!” she cried, stepping close to me. She raised her little fists to my chest, and I thought she was going to grip my tank top, to breathe her hot breath on my pecs again. My cock lengthened at this thought, and I took hold of her shoulders to steady her. But she was just giving emphasis to her words. Her eyes were frantic. “I did
nothing
but fall in love with the wrong person, this despicable Coast Guard officer who used me, then turned me over as a prisoner to a drug cartel to pay off a debt.”

I didn’t let go of her shoulders. “So you were…” I had to play dumb, as though I hadn’t seen the newspaper article. “You were arrested along with some cartel people, and turned yourself in in exchange for your testimony.”

“Yes, exactly. These fucking asshole monsters,
monsters
is what they are, had me holed up in this warehouse for a whole fucking year knowing I knew chemistry and could cook meth for them. I didn’t see a fucking ray of sun for a whole year, all because this asshole Lieutenant Commander was selling stem cell research to some Mexicans—that’s how it started!”

I stroked her hair soothingly. I sincerely didn’t want her to relive what was obviously a traumatic time in her life, but I was curious to know. If she truly
had
done something horrific, killed some children or something, I should probably rethink my approach, and just finish her off. “So what went wrong?”