Zig and Pitbull sat at Ali’s kitchen table. Slider was still in critical condition in the ICU. Most of the other guys had been killed in the shootout. Pitbull had been hit, but it had been relatively minor; the ER docs had patched him up, and then he and Zig had managed to give them the slip before Sheriff Hennesy got to the hospital to question them. “We gotta fly, Shakespeare,” Pitbull said, his eyes resting nervously on Ali. Big change from how he’d eyed her before, and it made Alejandro want to laugh at the same time that he wanted to rest his forehead down on the table and cry. To complicate things further, Turk had fallen into a coma. He’d made his preference known for Alejandro to take over as President when he was gone, but without the official transfer, he felt somewhat uncomfortable wearing the title of Prez. “We can’t stay here.”
Alejandro shook his head. Ali kept silent, passing out cups of coffee and putting cream and sugar on the table, and Karen had raided the fridge and started frying bacon and eggs, making toast, and chopping eggs for hash. “We can’t just turn this community over to the Diablos Verdes, either,” he said. “We’re no saints, but they’re killers.” He thought for a while, trying to clear the happiness out of his mind so he could focus. It was amazing, being with Ali, hearing her say that she was going to stick with him and find a way, no matter what happened. It left him feeling fuzzy, soft, smiling. That wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed to be the rock-hard soldier who had tattooed his exposed chest rather than call a girl and tell her that he loved her. He needed to be strong.
“I say we give them the drugs,” he said, finally.
Pitbull and Zig exploded up from the table, both of them shouting and cursing. He stared at them, like Turk would have done, until they subsided down into their chairs. “It’s just us. We’re decimated. How many of them were there, Zig?”
Zig grumbled. “‘Bout ten, maybe twelve, by my count.”
“They destroyed us. Even if we call up to San Antonio, and more guys come… They’re the weekenders, the casual guys. They’d be slaughtered. I want this to end, and I don’t want any more blood on my hands.” He let the silence play out, and then he said the truth—what he knew they’d both hear. “Crocket’s old lady was enough. That never happens again.”
“But if we give up the drugs, Shakespeare—” Pitbull started, and it was Zig who put his hand on Pitbull’s arm, stopping the flow.
“It’s Prez now, Pitbull.” He turned his eyes back to Alejandro. “I know Turk had been talking about cleaning things up for a lot of years now. Maybe this is a chance to make that happen.”
“But the rest of the guys—”
“The ones who were making money off it are dead, or sitting here at this table. Slider will go either way, you know that. He’ll go along to get along. So I need to hear it from you. Do we clean things up with the Diablos, protect our community, and run the club Turk would have wanted? Or do we go in there, guns blazing, and die for nothing?”
He knew the argument they could make, the argument he could have made just a few weeks before. Die for nothing but honor, and honor was everything. Only maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there was something to having more than just your honor. To having something—someone—at the end of the day who could wrap you up in their arms and tell you they loved you and take you to such blazing plains of glory that you thought maybe your heart would stop.
Maybe there was something to that.
He watched as Pitbull ran through the options in his mind. Zig was already with him, watching him steadily, but Pitbull needed to take some time. He’d been in the club almost as long as Alejandro had, and it was going to be a change, thinking of him as Prez and not just as another guy in the club. And that was fine; Alejandro would give him the time he needed. As long as he came around eventually.
He jumped a bit when he heard Ali’s soft voice behind him, her hand touching feather light between his shoulder blades.
“Say you turn everything over to the Diablos,” she said, and he watched as Pitbull and Zig turned to look at her. “Suppose you do, and you let them take over. What do you know about the Deputies in the Sheriff’s office?”
Pitbull shrugged. “They’re decent guys, with families. They put up with Hennesy because they don’t see an alternative. If they get one, get a chance to stop it, I think they’d be happy for it. Especially if one of them got the star instead of Hennesy.”
Ali nodded, and Alejandro could see her thinking as she stood there, staring off. “And if Hennesy were gone, and we had some actual law protection in this town, the Diablos would need to find another place to cross the border. Am I right?”
Alejandro saw where she was going, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, baby, they would.”
“All right, then. You men figure out what to say to the Diablos without getting yourselves killed. I’ll deal with Hennesy.”
He glanced back at his men, and saw them both grinning. “You gonna make her official or what, Shakespeare?” Pitbull asked.
“Yeah, Prez. We gonna start calling her Prospect next?”
He reached back and twined his fingers through Ali’s. She put on her thickest southern belle accent and giggled. “I just don’t have a thing to wear with a leather vest, boys, but you’re so kind to think of me.”
Pitbull and Zig laughed hard, and Ali joined them, a rumble coming up from her belly that felt more honest than anything he’d ever seen from her. Well, outside of the bedroom, anyway. He mouthed the word “mine” at her, and she nodded.
“All right, boys,” he said, turning back to the decimated remains of the force that had come to Arroyo Falls just a few months ago to sort out what should have been a simple handover. “Let’s start planning what to say to the Diablos.”
***
When everyone had eaten their fill, Ali excused herself. There were a few things she’d need to take care of before she could put her plan into action.
The first call she made was to Travis Lathrop. It killed her to say it, but the program was done for. Maybe somewhere else, she would’ve been able to expose what Bobby had done and show the townsfolk that the Padres Knights were good men, at the core, and rebuilt what she'd lost. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not here. There were too many memories. And a lot of them were good memories, strong memories, proud memories. Of growing up with her grandmother, of being loved by that old woman until the day she died. But some of them were of Bobby assaulting her, of losing her sense of self so fully that she'd almost married a man she didn't love, and of her parents pushing her to do it so that they could rise in the social standings of South Texas. And she couldn't do that. She couldn't be that woman any more.
The check Lathrop had given her had a phone number on it. She tried that first, and when she got his voicemail, she left him a simple message. "Mr. Lathrop, this is Ali Owens. I wanted you to know that my circumstances have changed, and I'm going to tear up this check. I'm not going to be able to move forward like I'd hoped. Thank you for your faith in me, sir, and I hope that everything goes well for you. Thank you." And she disconnected the call.
She had to spend a moment wiping away her tears before she could dial the next number.