They left the stucco castle by the back door. Joyce and Chibs waited there with their two Russian babysitters. The two Bratva pricks had wanted to come inside, but Jax had refused to allow it. Drinkwater would be more reluctant to give up the location if he knew for sure that he was sentencing his Russian buddies to death. At least that was what Jax had told them, and with the tension between the Kawasaki Russians and Jax’s guys, they wisely declined to argue.
“Well?” blue-eyed Ustin demanded when Jax and Opie came out the back door.
Jax bumped shoulders with the Russian as he walked by, heading for the bikes. Chibs and Joyce were already there, waiting with Lagoshin’s other thug, Luka. Ustin caught up to Jax and Opie as they were climbing onto their bikes.
“Where are they?” Ustin demanded, lowering his voice an octave and attempting to intimidate them.
Jax strapped on his helmet. “I told Lagoshin the plan. I’m going in after my sister. When we get there, you won’t need to ask the address. He promised me an hour, and that hour starts ticking the second you call him. Just follow me. You can call him when you see the place.”
Luka sniffed imperiously, as if he’d smelled something revolting. “You don’t trust Lagoshin?”
Jax winced at the bruises on his face and the way every breath hurt, thanks to the kicks he’d taken to the chest.
“You’re joking, right?”
He kick-started his Harley and twisted the throttle, tearing out of the parking lot. Chibs, Opie, and Joyce had been ready and followed him out. It took the Kawasaki Russians a few seconds to get themselves together, but they caught up fast enough. Jax had no intention of trying to lose them—not when they could prove valuable to him.
Dawn was still many hours away, but Jax could practically feel it creeping up. Too many pieces were in motion, not just Lagoshin’s and Sokolov’s crews, but SAMNOV and the cop, Izzo, not to mention Carney and Drinkwater, whose daughter would find him in the next ten to twelve hours, if not sooner. The night air grew heavy around him. Normally, riding was freedom, but in the small hours of that night it felt claustrophobic to him. Caution could only take him so far.
Two miles from Drinkwater’s house, on an access road that led along the property line of a dried-up ranch and back toward the beltway, Jax pulled off onto the shoulder. Dust swirled up around his Harley. He pulled off his helmet and dismounted. One by one, the others followed suit, ending with Ustin and Luka. The Kawasaki Russians looked pissed when they ripped off their helmets, although the difference between joy and fury would be hard to discern on those unforgiving faces.
“What you doing, man?” Ustin demanded, marching up to Jax, hand drifting behind his back, trying to decide if he should pull his gun. “You try an’ cut Lagoshin out, you know what’s gonna happen.”
His accent was Russia by way of LA gang-speak, like he’d learned English from watching bad cop shows.
Jax held his hands out at his sides. “Don’t be stupid. My sister’s in the middle of all this. You really think I’m gonna risk her life if I can help it?”
Opie and Chibs stood in the road, watching for approaching cars, but this time of night, nobody would be out driving this dusty ranch road unless they were up to no good. Joyce had stayed next to his motorcycle, an anxious look on his face. Jax was being unpredictable, and it was very clear that unpredictable scared the shit out of Joyce tonight.
Ustin pointed at Jax. “Why we stopping, then?”
“I changed my mind. Lagoshin sending his men in after these other Russian pricks might work in my favor. Provide a distraction. Go ahead and call him.”
A thin smile touched Ustin’s lips, snide enough to be sinister. He nodded.
“Smart man,” the Russian said, and he dug out his cell phone.
Jax drew and shot him twice in the chest. The gunshots boomed across the dried-up ranch, so loud it almost seemed to be the noise that blew Ustin backward in a fanning spray of his own blood. His cell phone spun in the air and hit the ground almost at the same instant he did. The smell of blood and gunpowder swirled around them.
“Son of a bitch!” Joyce cried. “What are you—”
Luka roared and lunged toward Jax. Opie and Chibs reached for him, knocked his gun away before the barrel could clear his waistband, and drove the gray-eyed Russian to the dirt shoulder. Opie slammed him twice against the ground and then stood back, picked up Luka’s gun and pointed it at him.
Opie glanced over at the guy Jax had killed. “Ustin…”
“Don’t say it,” Chibs said.
Opie grinned. “We have a problem.”
Luka stayed on the ground but let loose with a torrent of what could only be Russian profanity.
“Jax, what are you doing?” Joyce asked, shaking his head and staring, slack-jawed, at the dead Russian. “We had a plan—a good plan that would have protected Trinity. Now Lagoshin’s going to kill you both!”
Jax stood over Ustin, watching blood run out of him and pool in the dirt. Crimson turned black in the moonlight.
“Either Lagoshin sent hitters to Charming to try to take out SAMCRO, or Kirill Sokolov did,” he said. “Do you know which one?”
Joyce scowled. “Of course not.”
“Me either,” Jax replied, with a glance at Opie and Chibs. “I show up where Sokolov’s people are and they figure out who I am—maybe Trinity’s told them she’s my sister, I don’t know—they’re gonna kill me. That is, if they’re the Russians who want to destroy SAMCRO.”
He wandered over to Luka, bent, and did a quick search, taking away the Russian’s cell phone and a small knife strapped to his leg. Dirt rose up from the hard-packed shoulder, the grit getting into Jax’s mouth.
“I bring them our friend Luka,” he went on, “and maybe they listen long enough for me to get Trinity out of there. Bringing Luka to Sokolov shows goodwill, and maybe if they poke him a bit, they can make him tell them where Lagoshin’s holed up. Everybody wins.”
Joyce just shook his head, backing up. He glanced at Opie and Chibs as if expecting their support. “This is crazy. Stupid.”
Ice spread through Jax. His upper lip twitched as he let the mask he’d adopted fall away, and he sneered at Joyce.
“Figured you’d feel that way, considering.”
Joyce went silent and still. Stared at Jax. “What are you talking about?”
He glanced around, saw Opie and Chibs watching him with expressions as cold as the one Jax wore, and started shaking his head. “I don’t know what you think—”
“Now’s not the time to lie,” Chibs said. “We’ve no patience with it.”
Joyce went pale. All emotion leeched from his face, and he turned again to Jax. “I’m just looking out for you and your sister, man.”
Anyone who saw Jax in that moment and didn’t know him well might have been forgiven for thinking he smiled just then. A flicker. The expression, however, was one of disbelief.
“Don’t make it worse by being a pussy, Joyce. You had the balls to turn on your brothers, take money from the Russians… at least have the balls to face the music now that it’s here.”
“I didn’t, though… I would never…”
Opie held Luka’s gun. He raised it, aimed at Joyce’s head. “Someone told them we were headed to Drinkwater’s house.”
“That could’ve been any of the guys! Thor, Hopper, even Rollie. Shit, man, Baghead is a basket case!”
Jax shook his head. “Only it wasn’t any of them. I should’ve known it back at Birdland. You were so clued in about the Russians, where and when they’d be there. Started trouble with ’em because you figured you could. You’d dealt with them before. Guy wearing a cut has to be stupid or damn sure he’s not gonna eat a bullet if he’s gonna start trouble like that. Something seemed off then, but when Krupin rolled up on us after the visit with Drinkwater, I knew it had to be someone from SAMNOV, and you’re the only one who makes sense.”