“It is not,” said Eva through gritted teeth.
The man smiled at her discomfort and moved his hand up to trace her clenched jawline. “Then you can deliver a message for me to the real owner. You tell him Ramirez will be back to speak with him very soon about a business arrangement, and I would find it unspeakably rude if he does not show his face a second time.”
Eva said nothing. She couldn’t find any words to spit at this man. Tears stung the back of her eyes and she focused all her energy on keeping them hidden.
He removed his hand from Eva’s face and abruptly turned away from her. He sauntered back out around the bar and toward the door. “Until we meet again, señorita. Don’t forget the message. And for your own good, I wouldn’t tell anyone else we were here.” The silent man held open the door for Ramirez and they both disappeared out into the dusty morning sunlight.
The door shut hard and Eva felt her body’s tension collapse. Her legs began to shake. She shuffled until she felt the stool underneath her and sat down. Tears began to pop out of her eyes even though she wasn’t crying. Through the blurry tears, she could see the barflies looking up from where they had hunkered down, staring at her with wondering, cowardly looks.
Just a few minutes later, Charlie came in from his work in the yard and went straight for the fridge in the bar’s back room, talking obliviously about the roughness of the job and the stubborn oak branches. When he wandered into the bar room and saw Eva, he paused mid-drink of Gatorade and came over to her.
“Hey, you look sick. Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
Eva felt like her blood was taking its sweet time pumping again, getting her brain working. Seeing Charlie broke the last of the spell the fear of the moment had cast on her. “I’m okay. But some… some men just came in here…”
Charlie looked around, confused, at the same barflies that had been there since ten a.m. “What men? Did they hurt you?”
“Two men—they wanted to speak with the owner. I told them it was me and they refused to believe me. They…” Eva thought of the fingers on her arm and face and shook her head. “I don’t know what they wanted, but something’s not right. They said they were going to come back tonight to speak with the owner, that it was very important.”
“Uncle Owen didn’t say anything about expecting business,” said Charlie.
She looked toward the closed door of the bar. “I don’t think Uncle Owen was expecting them, either.”
~ FOUR ~
From the blackness of absolute unconsciousness, Will heard the distant blaring of a high-pitched alarm. He tried to ignore it, tried to push it away into the swirling dark and return to silence, but the insistent rhythm continued without pause. His brain latched onto it and drew him out of sleep like a moth to a flame, and he groaned out loud as his body was pulled back into consciousness. Several parts radiated with throbbing pain, including his head and his fists, with his stomach growling with unabated hunger. Most urgently, he had to pee like a fucking race horse.
With his eyes half-open in the late morning sun, Will stumbled to the bathroom and relieved himself before he dropped back onto his messy sheets. He tried hard to fall back into sleep, but it was no use. His brain was awake.
He lay there in bed, his forearm over his eyes to shield them from the light. His thoughts drifted in and out of a haze that still felt a little drunk. Nonetheless, memories from the night before rattled around his skull like trapped rats, scratching at him, refusing to be ignored. Blurry eyes examined cut marks on his knuckles as he stretched his sore hands. They were still smeared with dried blood from the bar fight. The scars would soon be new additions to a growing patchwork of injuries he’d earned in the last couple years.
Will took a deep breath. From the half-open window above his bed came a cool, dewy breeze that made his skin feel relieved. He could smell someone’s Sunday morning baking in the air and the scent triggered an immediate sadness in him that almost overrode his shame.
After a few minutes he forced himself to roll over and take a swig of water from the bottle he kept perpetually filled on his nightstand. He drank half of it, and then pawed around for his phone, which he had again failed to plug into the charger before he fell asleep. He found it in the pocket of his jeans, crumpled up on the floor, ignored since he split from his MC brothers the night before.
Twelve unread texts and two missed calls; all of the texts were from Jase, as was one of the calls. The other missed call was from his president, Henry. Chief Black Dog.
The dull ache of shame spread through Will’s chest. He thumbed his screen to quickly scan Jase’s texts, messages that started only half an hour after he left Will and the bar fight, and grew increasingly angry and worried as the night had progressed.
You’re gonna drive right off the edge if you don’t get your shit together.
I sure as hell hope you went home. I’m not bailing your ass out of County in the morning.
Are you fucking kidding me? Can’t even text me back? What the fuck is wrong with you??
You better not be a goddamn minute late tomorrow.
Will toggled through them absently before tossing his phone onto the floor. Right now, the MC was gathered up to host an end-of-summer community breakfast, one of the many positive PR moves that Henry implemented on a regular basis to make sure LeBeau’s citizens remained happy and loyal to the club. Douglas brought out his enormous barbeques and overlaid them with griddles to cook up pancakes, bacon, and sausage for anyone who wanted to stop by. They laid out picnic tables and blankets, hired magicians and jugglers. Henry took a rare audience with members of the general public. Tommy Castillo, one of the younger members, had gone out of his way to learn how to make balloon animals for these occasions, and the kids adored him for it. Even Ghost found a way to adapt his decidedly unfriendly life skills by leading the older kids in water gun battles. It made the MC look softer than they were, and gave them a chance to make sure the town’s loyalty to them was strong, so they would forgive the next inevitable gunfight or explosion.
Will imagined that Jase was probably standing next to Douglas at the grills right now, wearing some apron with a stupid joke over his cut, trying to pay attention to flipping hotcakes and checking his phone at the same time, waiting for Will to call. Or maybe Jase wasn’t waiting anymore. Will was hours late. Jase had to be a fool to think he was still coming.
Will knew he would draw some deep ire for missing the event today, and not just from Jase. But he didn’t care. That tiny ache of shame in his gut was wholly drowned by the tide of anger that washed in when he thought about Henry and the MC. For the last two years, he had tried with every fiber in his being to overcome and forgive what had happened. But it was like Will had no control anymore—not over himself, and not over the events that happened to him.
The scent of baking in the air got stronger, and Will felt tears on his face. He wiped them away with anger. Like a cruel joke, the inferno that consumed his grandmother and her shop had smelled of cinnamon and sugar, smelled of her baking, and now he couldn’t stand the scent. It made him think of fire and pain.
As intrusive thoughts of the blaze tried to surface in his mind, Will pushed back, clamping them down hard with another memory: the look on the faces of the men who had set the fire as he pumped a bullet into their brains. Three of them. He could still remember them, kneeling on the gray concrete floor of the abandoned factory, mouths gagged, eyes full of hate and fear. His MC brothers and the hierarchy of the cartel had watched him take his vengeance. In the name of alliance and mutual benefits, a deal had been struck after the bakery fire, giving the cartel transit through the mountain pass with the MC’s blessing and protection, so long as they never set up shop in LeBeau or Howlett directly. Amended to that, Henry had demanded they turned over the arsonists for the innocent blood they shed.