Trinity felt as if she’d turned to ice. She stared at Kirill. “You’re just gonna stay here? The rest of us need to go, right now, and back them up. We have enough guns now. They need—”
“Stop.” Kirill took a long drag, then flicked his cigarette onto the cracked concrete. “They are all the way on the other side of the city. By the time we reach the church, whatever is going to happen will have happened. If it is not a trap, four men will be enough to cause problems for Lagoshin. If it is a trap and we all go, then they will kill all of us, instead of only four.”
He pushed off, rusty chains creaking, and began to swing again.
Trinity stared, feeling hollow inside. Only four, he’d said. But one of those four was Oleg.
“Breathe, Trinity,” Kirill said. “Whatever comes, it is out of our hands right now. In this moment, at least—when we can do nothing and we do not yet know the consequences—we are free.”
The swing set squeaked and squealed. She felt as if she ought to speak, to protest. Once again she thought she heard something howl in the distance.
She exhaled. In some perverse way, Kirill was right. What happened next was not within her control. Slowly, she pushed backward and then raised her feet, letting herself swing forward.
Breathing, for now.
* * *
They parked the Harleys a block from the church, away from the nearest streetlight. The sky to the west was lit up with the neon brilliance of the Vegas Strip, but here on what the locals called the alphabet streets, there were no jackpot winners. Some houses had been kept up well or recently restored, an attempt to drag the neighborhood into the light, but others had cracked or boarded windows, cars on blocks in the driveway, and badly peeling paint. Tourists wouldn’t come here, and in Jax’s experience with neighborhoods like this, the police wouldn’t bother to swing by very often either.
“Stick with the bikes,” Jax told Chibs. “If there’s trouble, you make the call. Joyce, you’re with Chibs.”
Joyce made a little noise about the order, but Jax ignored him. He and Opie headed for the church without looking back. If things went to shit, Chibs would either wade in, bullets flying, or he’d withdraw and make sure word got back to Rollie—and to SAMCRO—that the situation had changed. Jax wanted to keep the Russians in the dark about who they were dealing with, but if things went so badly wrong that he and Opie ended up dead on the curb, the Sons of Anarchy would go to war. Every member of the Bratva in Nevada—both factions—would meet Mr. Mayhem.
“Joyce ain’t happy,” Opie said as they approached the church steps.
“He can leave anytime he wants,” Jax replied.
The Russian Orthodox church had been beautiful once. The domes still gleamed gold, and the crosses on top of those were stark white, but the building looked faded and tired, as though it had surrendered to its own abandonment. Long planks had been hammered across the front doors and cardboard NO TRESPASSING signs hung there, torn and dusty. Jax couldn’t decide if the houses that were kept up indicated a neighborhood on the road to recovery or a last handful of homeowners fighting a losing battle, but it seemed the patriarch of this particular church had given up a long time ago.
“His lead was good,” Opie said. “Birdland got us here.”
“The lead was good, yeah, but he nearly pissed it away, not handling that waitress better back at Birdland. Didn’t inspire much faith.”
Opie glanced around, watching the street. Jax studied the front of the church, just in case there were men hiding in its shadows. He felt the comforting weight of the gun tight against the small of his back.
“We need all the backup we can get,” Opie reminded him.
Jax shook his head. “Joyce is a wild card. Too easy to tip your hand with a guy like that around.”
Headlights appeared at an intersection two blocks up—a black sedan. It turned the corner and slid toward them, and the headlights went off as it drew up to the curb a hundred feet from the church. A hulking SUV followed the same path and pattern, dousing its lights before it pulled up behind the sedan.
“Here we go,” Opie said.
The drivers did not turn off their engines. Three men climbed from the sedan, five from the SUV. Jax glanced across the street at the trees in the park, then around at the roofs of neighboring houses, and he wondered if there were other eyes watching them. As far as these Bratva men were concerned, he and Opie were just civilians with a mutual interest. For the Russian Mafia, there were no repercussions to killing a couple of civilians who stuck their noses into Bratva business. They’d destroy the bodies or just make them disappear, and they’d do the same thing to any witnesses foolish enough to agree to testify against them.
Jax flexed the fingers of his right hand. He would have felt a lot better with his gun in hand instead of tucked against the small of his back.
“Hey,” Opie said quietly. “You okay?”
Jax nodded. Opie had reason to be concerned. There had been times when Jax’s temper had gotten the best of him, and now would be a bad time for him to let it off its leash. But Opie also should have known better. When Jax came face-to-face with men like this—cold-blooded bastards who thought they had all the leverage in any conversation—an almost reptilian calm descended on him. His anger never went away, but it hid in the shadows, biding its time.
The Russians mounted the wide, cracked stone steps of the church. They fanned out, surrounding Jax and Opie in a half circle. The man in the center stood about five-five and had his head shaved down to stubble that matched his chin. He didn’t seem like a natural leader, but the proud, upward tilt of his chin said otherwise. To the left of him and one step back was a much taller man, late forties but in murderous physical condition, with pockmarks on the right side of his face that had been left behind by shotgun pellets instead of acne. His bodyguard, Jax figured.
“Name,” the little stubblehead said.
“Jack Ashby,” Jax replied. “And this is—”
Stubblehead grinned, never taking his eyes off Jax. “His name doesn’t matter. Is you who are looking for this woman, yes?”
Jax felt the cold serpent of that reptilian calm slither into him. “What about you? Does your name matter?”
Stubblehead nodded as if in appreciation of his brass balls. Then he turned to the guy with the shotgun scars. “Hurt him a little.”
Opie tried to get in front of Jax and all the Russians moved at once. Jax put up a hand to push Opie backward, then stood facing Stubblehead and Scarface with his own chin raised defiantly.
“You heard the man,” he said, staring at Scarface’s black shark eyes. “Hurt me.”
The big man—six foot three and built to inflict pain—took a step up and plowed a fist into Jax’s skull as casually as if he’d waved hello. Stars exploded behind Jax’s eyes, and he staggered to the side and up another step. Scarface went to follow him, but Stubblehead put up a hand.
“My name is Viktor Krupin,” Stubblehead said.
Head ringing, Jax smiled thinly. The son of a bitch hadn’t cared about giving up his name, only about Jax’s having the balls to demand it. Opie’s jaw was set, chest rising and falling, ready for a brawl, and Jax mentally noted how funny it was that Op had been concerned about his temper. Back where they’d left the bikes, Jax could see that Chibs had a hand on Joyce’s shoulder, keeping him in place. That was good. Chibs would do as he’d been asked, trusting that Jax knew what he was doing. Maybe until it was almost too late.
“I thought we were gonna meet someone named Lagoshin.”
Krupin sniffed. “Mr. Lagoshin doesn’t waste his time with street trash.”
Jax glanced around, made a show of noticing how many Bratva men had come to this little meeting on the church steps. He wanted Krupin to see that he recognized bullshit when it was spoken to him. Lagoshin might not have come to the meeting, but he’d taken it seriously, or he wouldn’t have sent all of these goons.