The skinny Russian stood over Luka. “Stand up.”
Luka glared at him, not wanting to do anything to hurry himself toward his fate. After a moment, though, the stalemate ended, and Luka managed to get his knees under him and rise.
“We good?” Jax asked the skinny Russian.
“Good enough,” the Russian replied with a slow nod. He grabbed Luka and twisted him toward the hotel, directing him at the lobby doors.
Trinity emerged from the hotel before Luka reached it, another Russian behind her. Opie thought she looked rough, not unhealthy but uncared-for, as if she’d just come off a long ride—and maybe that wasn’t a bad comparison. Her hair was a mess. She wore jeans and a thin sweater that clung lovingly to her, but her feet were bare. The Russian behind her took her hand as they passed Luka and the skinny man, who were headed the other way.
Chibs climbed down from the pickup, moved out to one side, his hand hovering near his gun. Opie didn’t figure Trinity’s appearance for trouble, but they couldn’t be too careful.
Trinity and Oleg walked until they’d reached Jax. Oleg glanced at Chibs and then at Opie’s gun but didn’t attempt to reach for his own. The lobby windows were dark, but inside there would still be men aiming guns at the truck—Oleg knew his visitors wouldn’t try anything stupid.
“Hello, Trinity,” Opie said, nodding warily.
She smiled. “Opie.” Then she introduced him and Chibs to Oleg as if they were at a damn cotillion instead of the parking lot of an abandoned hotel full of Russian gangsters.
The gun felt suddenly light in Opie’s hand, as if it wanted to float upward all on its own. “What’s the story, Jax?”
With Oleg and Trinity looking on, Jax went to Chibs and held out a hand. Chibs handed over his Glock, and Jax slipped it into his rear waistband. He held out his hands like a magician proving he had nothing up his sleeves and turned to Oleg.
“This going to be a problem?”
Oleg shook his head, expressionless. Noncommittal.
Jax seemed to take that as a positive sign, but Opie wasn’t so sure.
“Chibs, you and Op take the truck back to where we stashed your bikes,” Jax said.
Opie froze. “Not a chance.”
Jax stared at him. “You want to leave the bikes out there?”
“I’ll go,” Opie said. “Chibs can stay.”
Chibs shook his head, obviously not liking this plan any better. “How are you gonna get the bikes into the back of that pick up on your own?”
“I’ll dig around, find something to use for a ramp. I’ll figure it out.”
Jax hesitated, but he didn’t argue, and Opie knew why. This might not have been a very good plan, but it was the only one they had.
“Half an hour,” Opie said, making sure Oleg and Trinity heard him. He went around to the driver’s side of the truck, convinced they were making a mistake. If what the Bratva wanted was Jax Teller dead, he had just served himself up on a platter. That was a damn big if.
As he drove away, Opie kept glancing at the figures in the rearview mirror until they vanished in the retreating darkness.
“This is stupid,” he muttered, thinking they should’ve just knocked Oleg out, grabbed Trinity, and thrown her in the truck. Granted, she didn’t look like she wanted to leave, never mind that they probably wouldn’t have made it to the truck without being shot. He told himself it would be all right, that they weren’t even sure which side Sokolov’s men were on, but he was sure that he did know.
He pressed harder on the accelerator, flying through the night as a predawn glow lit the eastern sky.
* * *
Trinity forced herself to breathe. Scant minutes ago she’d been dreaming, and now she found herself all too awake. She rubbed at her sleepy, itchy eyes and studied the tense uncertainty that filled the space between Jax and Oleg. The sky had turned the perfect indigo of predawn, black fading to the deepest blue, and the stars had begun to vanish as if the coming day snuffed them one by one.
“We need to talk,” Jax said. He had a laconic nature, the kind of man who thought people ought to be able to intuit his designs and desires.
“Jax—”
“It wasn’t easy, tracking you down,” he went on, with a quick glance at Oleg and Chibs. “This situation… it’s got a fuse burning at either end. I’ve got some things to say, and you should hear ’em now, before whatever’s gonna happen happens.”
“I didn’t need you here, Jackson Teller,” she said, her Irish brogue thickening with her frustration. “I’m perfectly capable of takin’ care of myself.”
Jax pressed his lips into a thin line and cocked his head. She imagined that he’d envisioned himself as some kind of white knight riding to rescue the damsel in distress. Whatever danger his arrival might have put them both in, she did feel safer having him nearby. But she wasn’t going to admit that to him.
“You’re tough, Trinity,” he said. “But you’re not bulletproof. I came a long way. All I’m asking is a few minutes to talk.”
Trinity nodded slowly. “Give me a second.”
She took Oleg by the hand and led him away, off toward the southern end of the parking lot, away from Jax and Chibs. Away from anywhere the members of Oleg’s Bratva might overhear. His eyes were still hard and sharp as flint, and he gazed at her as if she were someone he only vaguely knew and did not like very much.
“Trinity,” Oleg said.
She punched him in the chest. Did it a second time.
Oleg reached for her wrist, but she dropped her arm away.
He blinked. “You knew we had business with SAMCRO—”
“And I didn’t want it to be our business. I’m a Belfast girl. I’ve never been to California. Jax and me, we share a father. Wasn’t too long ago we’d never laid eyes on each other. I didn’t want you and me to be about SAMCRO any more than I wanted it to be about the Real IRA or the Bratva or any of the other brotherhoods whose loyalties might interfere with our loyalty to each other. Now I see your eyes turn to stone when you look at me, and I want to slap your stupid face.”
With a sigh, he ran his palms over his skull, dipping his head toward her. Oleg groaned.
“We could’ve killed your brother,” Oleg said softly, and when he looked up again, his eyes were full of sorrow. “You don’t want this to be about other people, but what if we’d killed him? Would the history between SAMCRO and my people still not matter?”
Trinity stared at him. She had her back to Jax and Chibs, but she could feel them watching her with Oleg. This should all have been simple. She shouldn’t have to choose between family and love. Truth was, she didn’t know Jax very well, and her feelings about her father and his legacy with the Sons of Anarchy were complicated at best. But her mother had raised her to put family first, above all.
“It was your people who went after him?” she said quietly.
Oleg shifted, glanced toward the hotel.
“What now?” Trinity asked.
“Now we see if Kirill thinks killing Lagoshin is more important than finding out what really happened to Viktor Putlova, the man who used to run Russian interests in this part of the world.”
Trinity shivered. The eastern horizon bled yellow and gold, colors heralding the imminent arrival of the sun. She put her hand on Oleg’s chest, right where she had punched him, and spread out her fingers.
“He’s my brother,” she said.
Oleg nodded, but then he turned away so that she could not read his eyes.
“Don’t be long,” he said, more to Jax than to Trinity, as he walked toward the lobby doors. “If you want to hear what Luka’s got to say, you should come inside while he’s still alive.”