Late on the third day after the Bulls had hit the Hounds’ shipment, a kind of lethargy had set in. With no discernible movement from the Hounds, most of the outer circle of friends—the neighbors, the business associates, the more casual girls and friends—had gone home as soon as Delaney cleared them to do so.
By that Friday evening, the clubhouse was mostly family: the patches, their old ladies, their kids, the prospects, the favored girls, the closest friends. Maybe forty people in all. Finally, they had some elbow room, and Mo had spent most of the day ordering the girls around double-time. She’d had them changing sheets, scrubbing bathrooms, cooking, cleaning. Joanna and Maddie had spent most of the day in the kitchen. Willa and Jenny were on kid patrol.
The Bulls took their shifts patrolling, but Delaney had kept them close to home. He’d reopened the station the day after the hit, trying to appear as normal as possible. Simon had been glad to get his hands busy again. Sitting around, even for a day or two, with little to do but fret and wonder had done his psyche no favors.
And shit, Gunner was a mess. He’d been in the ring two or three times every day, dragging Mav in, and Rad, and even Ox in with him. Simon couldn’t think when Gun had been so frayed. All this shit needed to end, and soon.
That had been the point of blowing the truck up —the big Volkov move meant to shut this expensive, inconvenient, nuisance of a war down. Maybe it had worked. Maybe the Hounds were so caught up trying to make their loss right with their superiors, they didn’t have time to retaliate. The Street Hounds had let two million dollars of Colombian cocaine blow up. The Mexican cartel who’d packed that truck, and the Italian mobsters who’d expected that cargo, were not going to hear excuses. The Hounds were right now in a whole globe’s worth of very deep trouble.
Was it over?
Irina Volkov was no idiot. Nor was she reckless. When she acted, she acted precisely and expeditiously. Blowing up the Hounds’ cargo very likely was the Hiroshima of this war. She’d already won—which was why she’d already gone home. In her mind, her part in this was over. She’d put her plan in action; it was up to the others to enact it and deal with the fallout.
The war was very likely over.
But Simon didn’t believe for a second that the fight was over. Booker Howard, as far as they knew, was still alive. And Howard would go down kicking. If he had a way to take the Bulls with him, he would fight to do so. What more could he have to lose?
So Simon had spent this time fretting and wondering. And he wasn’t the only one.
“Hey, D?” Gargoyle called out. He stood behind the bar. Simon, sitting at the front end of the bar, saw the prospect’s attention on the video monitor sitting on the top shelf. Apollo had installed video security and alarms last fall. The alarm system had been a pain in the ass, having to remember a code when they came in on an empty clubhouse. Simon didn’t think a month had gone by yet that someone in the club hadn’t had to pay a fine for triggering an emergency call when they came in alone and forgot the passcode. Four times, it had been Eight Ball, stoned out of his head.
The code was 1975. The year the club had been founded. Pretty stupid for a patch to forget it, even stoned out of his head.
Simon saw what had claimed Gargoyle’s attention and shouted with his whole voice. “D!” He stood up. “Trouble!”
A large, high-end SUV—an Escalade or Navigator; the grainy black-and-white image wasn’t clear enough to be sure—had pulled up to the curb right in front of the clubhouse. It sat there. Maybe nothing. Maybe just somebody not from around here, who didn’t know that the curb in front of the Brazen Bulls clubhouse was for the Brazen Bulls. That wasn’t a city ordinance, but neighborhood understanding.
The SUV was white, or light colored. Its custom wheels glittered. Even on the security monitor, they sparkled in the streetlight glow. Simon hadn’t been with the guys when they’d shot up Derrick Ammons’ SUV last December, but he’d heard the story repeatedly. He also knew, they all knew, that Ammons had replaced that Navigator exactly. Same chrome spinners. Same Oxford White finish. Simon was an auto-body guy; he had all the stock colors of all the common car makes and models memorized.
Booker Howard’s second was parked in front of the clubhouse. Just sitting there.
No, the fight wasn’t over.
Delaney came up from the hallway, bringing Alexei with him. All the other patches came forward as well.
“That’s a Hound,” Gunner said. “Is that Ammons?”
“That’s my guess,” Simon answered.
“Okay. Shit’s about to hit.” Delaney turned to the room. He paid Alexei no mind. “I need everybody away from the windows, NOW. Get together, get downstairs. Go. GO. Bulls, load up.” As Mo went past, Delaney took her by the arm. “Arm whoever can shoot. I’m sending Fitz down with you. Fitz! Go with them, watch that door.” There was a narrow door in the basement that led outdoors and up to the back yard by a set of concrete steps. A pinch point that would require only one good guard. Fitz was good—big, attentive, and a straight shot.
Mo nodded, calm and all business, and headed toward the basement, herding the women and children with her.
“Prez,” Gargoyle said. “Somethin’s happenin’.”
All the Bulls looked back at the monitor. Two men had gotten out of the SUV. The passenger stood at the side of the truck, an M16 cradled across his chest. The driver went to the back and opened the hatch. He leaned in, but they couldn’t see what he was doing.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” Wally muttered. “What…”
Whatever they’d been waiting for, Simon didn’t think it was what the driver pulled from the hatch. A body. Small. Long hair. Dark clothes, like a track suit, maybe? Simon’s stomach spasmed. A woman. Who?
The driver set her on her feet on the sidewalk—she was alive, then—and gave her a hard shove. She stumble-ran up the walk, toward the clubhouse door.
Many things happened in the space of maybe five seconds:
Simon recognized her. That long hair was in dreads. It wasn’t a dark track suit, it was dark skin. She was nearly naked. Patrice.
Griffin recognized her. He shouted and vaulted toward the door.
Simon spun and caught Griffin before he could get to the door, muscling him into a bear hug, holding him back from charging outside unarmed to face down an M16 on the Bulls’ front lawn. “No, man! Wait!”
He looked back at the monitor just in time to see the SUV’s passenger aim that M16 and fire.
Patrice fell facedown on the sidewalk. Griffin bellowed.
The gunman jumped into Derrick Ammons’ Navigator, and it pulled away.
Griffin fought wildly. “Let me go! She’s hit!”
“Griffin, hold!” Delaney ordered. “We need to check!”
Rad called Becker and Maverick with him, and they went out the door, carefully, their guns drawn.
“Clear!” Rad called, and Simon released Griffin, who scrambled for the door so hard and fast he barely kept his feet. Simon followed his frantic brother outside.
Maverick had turned Patrice over. As Simon stepped through the doorway, he saw Griffin dive to his knees and pull her away from Maverick, into his arms. Patrice’s eyes were open, and she struggled for breath; each one she took was loud and thick. She’d taken the full burst from the M16 in her back. Blood soaked her front, too—all or most of the bullets had gone through. One had gone through the base of her throat.
All she wore was a filthy pair of panties and the tattered remnants of a tiny, rose-patterned western shirt. The top to her Crazy Rose uniform. They must have taken her at work.
Simon fixated on that little shirt—the way her elbows pushed through tears in the fabric, the blood and black filth staining the white cotton and colorful roses. Her nametag was still pinned to the shirt; the fabric it was pinned to had ripped, and it dangled loosely over her breast.
She shouldn’t have been working there. That thought circled his head, even as he understood it made no sense. He’d been worried about the clientele at the Rose treating her wrong, but the Hounds weren’t part of that clientele. Simon hadn’t seen danger from that flank; none of them had. The Rose was on the wrong side of the interstate for the Hounds. She should have been safe from them there.
That didn’t make sense. There was nowhere she could have been safe but in the clubhouse. But she’d been killed here. Right in front of them. His thoughts ran at each other, in conflict.
Nobody was safe anywhere.
Simon remembered that night, her first night at work, when she’d bailed him out of a mess with some random chick. That talk they’d had about her new job at the Crazy Rose. She’d all but called him racist for his worry.
“We gotta get her inside, call for help,” Rad said, and Simon dragged himself out of his ill-timed reflection. “D—this isn’t something Willa can handle.”
“I know,” the president agreed. He dug his cellphone out of his kutte.
Simon didn’t think there was anybody to call who would be help. It was already too late to help her.
Griffin tried to stand with Patrice in his arms. He couldn’t manage it. Simon stepped up and took her. Jesus—she was covered in bruises, too. And burns. How long had they had her? What had they done? When Griffin was on his feet, Simon handed her back.
That quickly, for just the seconds he’d held her, his shirt had soaked with her blood. His arms, his hands. So much blood.
“Griff…Griff…” she moaned, the name burbling up from her ruined throat.
“I’m right here, baby. I’m right here. You’re okay now.” Griffin carried her into the clubhouse and headed for the pool table. Somebody—one of the prospects, maybe—had anticipated the need and cleared the balls from the felt.
Before Griffin could get her to the table, she began to shake and flail with wild force. So much force that Griffin couldn’t hold her, and he went to the floor with her. “Oh fuck! No, Tricie! Baby, please!”
“Wally! Get Willa!” Rad shouted. No one else knew what to do. Delaney stood with his phone in his hand. Patrice seized for fifteen or twenty seconds, maybe. Each second seemed an hour.
When she stopped, she was gone. Just gone. Eyes open, mouth open, bloody foam oozing over her chin.
The clubhouse froze in that diorama of horror. No one moved. No one spoke. Nothing.
Finally, Maverick’s voice broke the hold. “Look what they did to her.”
They’d all been looking. Around the thick wash of her blood, they could all see that she’d been beaten. She’d been burned—Rad or Eight would know better, but Simon thought it had been a blowtorch, applied repeatedly and liberally to her arms, her legs, her stomach.
Why would they hurt her like that? They’d tortured her. Had they been trying to get information from her? Had she known what they wanted to know? Had she told them? Even if she had, she’d obviously held out a long time. She’d been loyal to the club—it was the only explanation for her hurt. And her death.
“Why would they do this to one of their own?” Dane asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Griffin dropped Patrice’s body from his arms and leapt to his feet. He grabbed the VP by the kutte, both hands taking wads of leather. Griffin was bigger than Dane, taller and broader. He was much younger and significantly stronger. He shook Dane like a rag doll, roaring right in his face, his voice at the obvious limit of its volume and intensity. “SHE’S NOT ONE OF THEIRS JUST BECAUSE SHE’S BLACK! YOU FUCKING RACIST BASTARD! SHE’S ONE OF OURS! SHE’S MINE! YOU SON OF A BITCH! FUCK YOU! SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE, WITH US! WE DID THIS! WE DID THIS!”
Every syllable punctuated a massive shake that Dane couldn’t seem to fight off. Delaney and Rad let Griffin go for a few endless seconds, then Rad went for him. Griffin, caught in mad grief, seemed to sense the SAA coming for him. He charged forward, shoving Dane along, making him run backward before him. It looked like they were headed for the pool table.
Dane’s shuffling feet got tangled up together, and he tripped, falling backward, bringing Griffin along with him. They topped toward the floor.
But they’d almost made it to the pool table. When Dane fell backward, he cracked the back of his head on the edge of the table. The two men fell to the floor in a heap, and Griffin, still shouting, now incoherently, rose up to his knees and cocked his arm back.
Rad tackled him before he could land a punch. He pinned him down. “Enough! Griff, don’t make me hurt you!”
“Oh, fuck,” Gunner muttered. “Oh, fucking motherfuck. Dane!” He ran to the VP.
Simon saw what Gunner had seen. Like an array of dominoes, the rest of the members saw it, too, and reacted.
Dane was dead. He lay on the clubhouse floor with his eyes open and lifeless, fresh blood making a halo around his head.
“MOVE!” Delaney shoved Gunner aside and dropped to his knees. “Find a pulse! I need a pulse!” Their president pressed on his best friend’s throat, picked up his arms, felt his wrists, lay his ear on Dane’s chest. “No! No! Goddammit, you bastard, no!”
Before Simon fully understood that the club’s vice president lay dead on the floor, a shot rang out, and Rad fell back. Griffin stood, holding Rad’s Glock, aiming at Delaney. Everything froze again.
The clubhouse phone rang, and that started the scene again. Nobody paid mind to the phone, but the sound broke the stasis. Rad held his belly; blood poured through his fingers.
Griffin had shot him. Shot a brother. Simon pulled his Beretta. At the edges of his sight, he saw other Bulls get hold of their guns as well.
Now, Griffin was aimed at Delaney. “You did this. All of this, it’s the club.” His voice shook. His hand, holding Rad’s piece, shook, too.
Delaney rose to his feet. “Griff, son, you need to take a breath here. Put the gun down. It’s not to late to pull this back.” The president’s voice shook, too.
With a sour, hopeless laugh, Griffin answered, “Look. Just look around and see what you did. Of course it’s too late.” He put his other hand around his wrist and steadied his aim on their president.
Simon loved Griffin. They’d been brothers in the club for years. Griffin was a good guy, mellow and amiable, easy to like, never a pain in anybody’s ass. His grief had turned his sense inside out. But he had a loaded gun aimed at their president’s head, he’d already shot Rad and killed Dane, and Simon didn’t hesitate. He aimed and fired, and Griffin fell back, a faint wisp of smoke rising from the hole in his temple.
He’d aimed to kill, and he hadn’t even considered any other shot.
The room burst with movement all at once. Ox ran to Rad. Maverick went to Griffin. Eight Ball and Becker ran outside. Wally ran toward the basement, calling Willa’s name, and Simon had a dim recollection that he’d been sent to get her what seemed like eons earlier.
Simon simply reeled back until his ass hit a barstool. He sat, still holding his gun, trying to force his mind to understand all that had happened in—he checked the Jack Daniels clock on the far wall—less than ten minutes since Gargoyle had called out the SUV on the monitor. His eyes drifted back to Patrice’s broken body.
Was Griffin right? Had they kept her out of their protection because she was black? No, no. It was because of her uncle, because she’d been connected to Hounds turf and they hadn’t known. She hadn’t told them. That was why they couldn’t trust her. But why had they thought her connection to her uncle mattered? He wasn’t a Hound. He’d just been a guy who’d lived and worked in Greenwood. A black neighborhood.
Booker Howard had started that school her uncle had worked at. There was some kind of connection. There had to be. There had to be.
But they’d only assumed it. They’d never gone looking for real proof. And now there she lay, tortured and murdered by the very people the Bulls had worried she was connected to.
The racial line was stark in Tulsa, ever since—or probably long before—a big race riot in the Twenties, when white Tulsans and even the Tulsa police force had stormed through Greenwood and killed three hundred black men and women and wounded hundreds more. They’d burned the whole neighborhood, something like thirty blocks or more, to the ground. Fire. White fire on black lives.
Jesus Christ. Burning the school had been a colossally stupid move.
They should have known. Nobody had talked about that riot until a few years back, the seventy-fifth anniversary. The state legislature had commissioned a task force to investigate it, and that had put it in the papers for a while. That was the only reason Simon knew about it at all.
Everyone was aware of the divide, of course—the northern part of the city was predominately black, and the southern part predominately white, with small pocket neighborhoods, like the Bulls’ own, where the population was more diverse. They were all aware of it, but they didn’t really think about it. It was something that just…was.
Even fighting this war with the Street Hounds, Simon hadn’t thought of them as a black gang, not consciously. They were simply the enemy, on the other side of the fight.
He’d have said his brothers were the same—but then, since they’d burned the school, things had been said. What Dane had said, his last words on this earth, indicated that he, at least, had thought of Patrice as not one of them, and not because she hadn’t kept Griffin’s flame.
What was going on in the club? Who were they?
Simon raked his hands over his head and shut down those thoughts. There was a rabbit hole beneath them he couldn’t fall into. There was too much happening right here, in front of him, real, tangible trouble, and he couldn’t wrap himself up in such an enormous philosophical question. He’d lose his shit.
He’d killed Griffin. Jesus Christ, he’d killed Griffin. Bodies littered the party room floor, and two of them were Bulls. Three dead bodies. One an innocent woman. Two dead Bulls. One wounded, maybe fatally.
If this was Booker Howard’s last gasp, it was a fucking hurricane.
Simon focused there. It didn’t fucking matter what race Booker Howard was. He was the enemy.
“Delaney?” Gargoyle’s raised his voice to a shout, but the tremor in it was unmistakable nevertheless.
“Yeah, kid,” Delaney answered wearily.
“I got Chief Novak on the line.”
Again, the clubhouse went quiet, and everyone turned to the bar. Gargoyle was a big guy, not remotely shy or tentative—in fact, a little on the scary side—but right now, he was obviously thoroughly freaked out.
“Dammit,” Delaney growled, walking toward the phone. “He say what?”
“No, sir.” He handed the phone to Delaney.
“Jim, yeah. What’s up?” The shift in Delaney’s tone from at-the-edge-of-his-cliff to hey-how’s-it-going struck Simon as bizarre and impressive. But then the conversational ease disappeared completely. Delaney’s brows drew in tightly. “What? … Fuck! Fuck! … Okay, thanks. … Yeah, I will.” He ended the call and slammed it back on its base.
“Ox! Eight! Beck! Signet is burning. Three alarm blaze.”
Signet Models. Maddie’s business. It had been empty the past few days, since the Bulls had blown the truck. The Hounds knew she had private security; they’d already attacked the place once. Had they thought she and her girls would stay outside the lockdown? Had they meant women to be caught in this fire?
“Gotta get Maddie,” Ox snarled and ran for the basement. Willa and Wally came into the room just then, and Willa ran to Rad.
Becker got out of her way and grabbed Ox. “Hold, brother! What if it’s a trap—pulling us away from home? Maddie’s safer here. It was good you called her in, now keep her safe.”
“They’re going for the women. The ones they think they can get to,” Maverick mused. “Patrice, Maddie…” He spun toward Gunner. “Gun, call home.”
Simon’s Beretta nearly dropped from his hand. Oh God. Deb.
“Fuck!” Gunner leapt to his feet, but Simon had already snatched the phone off its base. By the time Gunner crashed into him, he’d pressed six numbers. He finished dialing and tipped the phone so Gunner could hear, too.
A long stretch without connecting. Then a short, undulating tone. We’re sorry, we cannot complete your call at this time…
Gunner roared and snatched the phone from Simon’s hand. He threw it across the room. It slammed into the wall and broke apart. The pieces fell on Griffin’s dead body.
Simon stared at Patrice’s bloodied, beaten, burned body. Her tortured body. His head had nothing in it but the black roar of fear.
“Go,” Delaney said. “Gun, Si, Apollo, Slick. Get out there, bring them all in. Gun—you hold it together. No help to your girl or your kin if you lose your shit.”
~oOo~
Fire. That was their payback. Fire.
Fight fire with fire. The phrase churned through Simon’s mind, overturning everything he knew.
When the Bulls arrived, there was almost nothing left of the Wesson farm. Firefighting crews were still on the scene, but they were packing up. Before Simon and his brothers stopped their bikes, it was obvious that the fight here at the farm, for the farm, was over.
Simon’s mind wanted to take everything in at once but couldn’t put the information anywhere once he had it. His brain simply cluttered with images, like a jumbled box of old snapshots.
The house was a blackened skeleton. The barn. Deb’s greenhouse. The garage. Sam’s truck. Deb’s station wagon. Leah’s little Sunfire. All of it destroyed. The air reeked of burned metal and rubber and wood. Smoke and fire, ash and water. Only an intentional fire would have created such complete devastation.
As if there’d been any doubt.
The crisped carcasses of chickens dotted the seared yard, little mounds of blackened feathers. All of Deb’s chickens had names, like pets. Simon thought of Dandy, the asshole rooster. And Tilly, the hen who’d been sitting on a nest of eggs.
If the chickens had been loose, then it had been daylight when this had all gone down. Before she’d called them in for the night.
Wondering about their three horses, Simon turned to the pasture. He saw none of them. Had they been put up in the horse barn already? Would they find their burnt bodies in what was left of their stalls? Or were they back in the wooded part of the pasture, afraid?
Where was Deb? Leah? Sam? There was an ambulance on the scene; Simon ran for it, hoping to find her sitting on the back, maybe with a blanket over her shoulders, though the night was hot, the air heated from the blaze.
He stopped in his tracks when he saw what lay behind the ambulance. Two body bags. Both of them full.
Gunner shouted “NO!” and shot forward, diving for the closest bag.
“Hey!” one of the paramedics yelled, but Simon grabbed his arm.
“This is his house. His dad and sister. And his old lady—three people live here.”
Gunner unzipped the bag, and Simon’s body clenched, head to toe, against what he was about to see…but he didn’t recognize the man in the bag. White guy, brown hair, stubbly beard. Singed but not badly burned.
“Who…”
Gunner shook his head and went for the second bag. Again, Simon clenched, but maybe…When the paramedic flexed his arm, Simon realized he’d had the guy in a death grip, and he let go.
The second bag opened, and Gunner wailed. Simon couldn’t see, but there was so much sorrow flowing from his brother’s mouth that tears welled up in his own eyes. With feet made of lead, his body filling with icy dread, he stepped close enough to see.
Sam Wesson. Burned horribly, but still recognizable. Half his head gone, shot away. His white mustache dyed blood red. Didn’t take CSI to know what had killed him. At least it had been quick. Fire wouldn’t have been quick.
Fire would have been slow, terrifying, and painful. Where was Deb? Where was Leah?
He thought of Patrice. They’d tortured her. They’d taken her. Spinning back to the paramedic, he said, “Two women live here. Where are they?”
“Just finished the sweep.” A firefighter came up. His head was bare, his face ruddy and wet from effort, and smeared with soot. “There’s nobody else here. You family?”
“This is my dad,” Gunner said. Fuck, Simon had never heard so much pain expressed in so few words. “My dad. This is my dad.”
“I’m sorry, son,” the firefighter said.
The enormity of this destruction was too much to deal with wholesale. Simon focused on the most crucial, most desperate, most immediate point and used that to settle his head. Deb wasn’t here. The ruin of her wagon was, and Leah’s coupe. All their vehicles were here, but the women were not. The Hounds had taken them. They might still be alive, but they were not safe. Not by a long shot.
Patrice’s broken body lay across his consciousness.
He crouched on the other side of the bag that held Sam Wesson’s body, and he set his hands on Gunner’s shoulders. “Gun, Deb and Leah aren’t here. They didn’t get burned up, but they’re not here. Their cars are here, but they are not. Do you understand?”
Gunner’s eyes went hard, and his face set stonily. He went perfectly calm, all at once, from despair to determination in a blink. “Every one of those motherfuckers is going to die.”
He stood up. With Apollo right with them, they headed back to their bikes.
The bareheaded firefighter stepped into their path. “Wait—we need—”
They ignored him, but Apollo called, “Slick. Stay here. Don’t say anything stupid. Make sure they take good care of Sam. Stay close to people, don’t get hung out on your own. Keep your eyes open, kid.”
Slick nodded and trotted toward the center of the action.
When they got to their bikes, Apollo said, “I called D. They’ll be ready when we get there. I know the Hounds’ holdings. There’s only two sites they’d have them, and I think I know where they had Patrice.”
“What? How?”
“Patrice had oil on her shirt and in her hair. Crude oil.” He fired up his bike. Gunner and Simon followed suit, and they flew up the driveway, leaving tall plumes of gravel, and the destruction of Gunner’s family home, behind.