A small wave of nausea undulated in Thor’s belly.
“One of the dead guys is a Russian. Our gang task force ID’d him as one of Lagoshin’s men. The other is your man Joyce.”
Son of a bitch. Thor exhaled, the news a gut punch. He and Joyce had argued over the years, even brawled more than once over the sweet little Korean girl at the bakery with her tattoo fetish. But the MC made them brothers, and he knew Joyce would have taken a bullet for him, and vice versa.
“What’s it looking like?” he asked.
“You know it doesn’t work that fast,” Izzo replied, some of his natural growl absent from his voice. “Crime-scene guys are still there. Forensics will take their time.”
“Not what I asked you, man. You know Rollie’s going to want to know, so tell me… what does it look like?”
The phone went silent, so flat it seemed like he’d lost the call. Then Izzo spoke again.
“Definitely other people involved. Fresh tracks from a truck and a bunch of bikes. Three bikes were there. One’s a Harley—I’m guessing Joyce’s—but the other two are Japanese rockets, and I know you MC guys wouldn’t ride those bitches even if your mamas asked you nicely.”
“Two bodies but three bikes?”
“What I said,” Izzo muttered. “Detective on the scene thinks the Russian shot Joyce and then someone else tagged him for it. But the scene’s still hot. Got nothing else for you right now.”
Thor took a deep breath. He heard a grumbled voice in the corridor and the creak of floorboards under substantial burden, and he glanced up to see Rollie standing in the doorway with Baghead hiding behind him like a third-grade tattletale. Antonio had pushed himself up to lean against the wall.
Rollie had gone deathly pale.
“Call me when someone needs to ID the body, and let me know when we can pick him up,” Thor said, the words sounding callous even as he spoke them.
He ended the call without a good-bye and sat a moment, gripping the phone so tightly it hurt his hand.
“Joyce?” Rollie asked, his body filling the door frame.
Thor nodded, then laid it out for him exactly as Izzo had explained it. When he’d finished—and it only took seconds, so little time to sum up the end of a life—Rollie slammed a hand against the door frame. A dark intelligence glittered in his eyes, reminding Thor how often people underestimated SAMNOV’s president. Rollie acted like he was everybody’s friend, a big amiable bear of a man more interested in obscure movies and even more obscure beers to put on tap at the Tombstone. But the man was president of the North Vegas charter of the Sons of Anarchy for a reason.
“No word from Jax or his guys?” Rollie asked, staring at the floor, his hands clenched into fists.
“Nothing,” Thor said. “I left him three messages during the night.”
The room seemed to shrink, the floor to tilt. The air felt strangely heavy.
“You know what I’m wondering?” Rollie asked.
“You’re wondering why Jax sent me back here last night instead of just calling you,” Thor replied. “I figured maybe it was personal.”
Rollie huffed like a bear unhappy with its dinner. He turned to look into the hallway, where Bag twitched and scratched himself as he waited.
“Baghead… wake everyone right now,” Rollie said. “I want them up and moving in ten minutes.”
“Moving where?” Antonio asked, still rubbing at his eyes. “What are we doing?”
Rollie shot him a frigid glance. “I’ve got questions,” he said. “You guys are going to find me answers.”
“Where do we start?” Antonio asked.
“You start by finding Jax Teller.”
* * *
Izzo sat in the faux-leather reclining chair in his family room with a tumbler of spiced rum and pineapple juice in his left hand. He’d dropped his cell phone on his lap, and now he stared at the gleaming colors of his wall-mounted flat screen and wondered how this business with the Russians and the MC was going to shake out. He still paid alimony to his first wife, and his second—a blackjack dealer named Sarajane—liked shopping even more than Izzo liked booze or pussy. He was starting to think that a second alimony might be less expensive than his second wife.
Something made him glance down, and he realized his cell phone had been buzzing for a while without his noticing.
“Izzo,” he said, picking up.
“It’s Thor.”
“I just hung up with—”
“Last night I brought that guy to you,” Thor said. “You gave up John Carney’s name. Rollie wants you to head over to Carney’s and ask him what he told the guy.”
Izzo drank again. Sweet fire in his throat. He’d had a pleasant buzz going before he’d gotten the call about the dead bodies on the ranch road, and now this. Why the hell did he keep answering his phone?
“The sun just came up, and I haven’t been to bed yet,” Izzo rasped, swirling the ice in his drink. “Let me get a few hours’ sleep and kiss my wife. Carney won’t want visitors this early anyway.”
He could hear Thor breathing, heard him curse quietly.
“Joyce is dead. You think we give two shits how much sleep you got or whether Carney is feeling friggin’ hospitable? I’d go over there myself, but you’re a cop. The old man’s less likely to shoot you. If I show up at his door right now… Look, Rollie wants you to do this. Whatever Carney told him, we need to know. Right now.”
Right now.
The trouble with having a second job that involved illegal dealings with violent criminals was that you could never call in sick.
Izzo downed the rest of his drink. Suddenly the pineapple juice had started to taste sour in his mouth. Couldn’t be the rum.
“On my way,” he said, setting his glass down. He thumbed the button that ended the call. “Asshole.”
The drive to John Carney’s place took a little over half an hour. Izzo passed joggers and bicyclists trying to get some exercise in before the day heated up any further. He saw a woman running with her dog, the beast too small to keep pace with her without struggling, and he fought the urge to roll down the window and shout at her.
At Carney’s place, he pulled into the driveway and sat a moment, watching the house. It seemed very still, very quiet. You couldn’t be a cop as long as Izzo had without developing some intuition. His told him the place was empty, but it made more sense to think that Carney was still sleeping.
He stepped out and gently closed the door, then walked to the garage. Carney’s old Cadillac sat inside the gloomy space, dust motes spinning in the light streaming in from the small windows in the garage doors.
Izzo went to the front door and knocked, but the sound came back hollow. Nothing moved inside, no curtains were drawn back. The house itself seemed disinclined to creak. Most houses seemed to breathe, but not this one.
He drew his gun, pulse quickening. Moving around the side of the house, he looked in windows as he passed. In the back, he saw broken glass on the patio and then turned to see the shattered kitchen door.
“Shit,” he whispered, quickening his pace.
He didn’t have to go any farther than the door. The diffuse morning light reached through the window above the kitchen sink and the jagged shards of glass jutting from the door frame. That golden glow cast a sepia tone across the floor and the tipped-over chair, revealing the sprawled corpse of John Carney. Izzo spotted a single bullet hole in his temple and a pool of drying blood that made a deep scarlet halo on the floor around his head.
Whatever the old man had told his visitors, Izzo would never know.
* * *
Jax hesitated before calling home, but it had been too long since he’d spoken to Tara, and he wanted to hear her voice before the day’s violence began. No way of knowing if he’d still be standing by nightfall.