A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (16 page)

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who make the Lamb make thee?’”

She actually blushed. “You have so much more book learning than I do.”

I frowned. “Talk about book learning. You’re a registered nurse. Did you know that most of the universe consists of matter that science hasn’t been able to see?”

She nodded. “Dark matter. That’s you. And I’m starting to see things your way, too. You’re just a lone agent operating in a valley of doubt. I can see that your faith in your religion was completely crushed when—what happened to you happened. Why would you continue to believe in a cult that had devastated you and left you for dead?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“Maybe we act the most genuine in this valley of uncertainty. We have to rely on our gut instincts, animal reactions, basic cravings. Your incomplete framework for reality requires that you make a leap in the dark, and that’s no defeat, no flaw.”

I sat up, excited for her revelation. “Yes! I think I have
deeper
faith because I’m required to operate without this by-the-book framework propping me up. All of us”—I drew a big circle with my forefinger—“All of us Lost Boys have had to recreate our framework of belief from scratch, because everything we knew was wrong. Someone like Deloy has managed to drop a lot of the rage he used to feel against them. I haven’t been so successful. William Blake and other poets make unsure leaps into the dark. There aren’t concrete explanations for the wonders of this planet. Like me. I’m always going to be stumbling through this world, wondering if I’m doing the right thing.”

“You have the heart of a poet,” she replied while reaching over to unsnap my cock ring. “We all suffer from the ruin of childhood dreams. Most not as badly as you. I never wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be an airline attendant and travel the world. But being a nurse was more practical, and my father was willing to pay for the schooling. Mahalia got accounting school.” She shrugged, already bored.

“But now you heal people. And look damned sexy doing it.”

“May I take your order?” Deloy was at the door, waving a fork around. “How do you like your eggs?”

I shrugged. We were used to seeing each other naked, wearing stranger things than cock rings. “Over medium?”

“Same,” said Oaklyn, clearly surprised by her roommate.

Lazarus trudged in then. He plodded right on over, then jumped up on the bed. He did a belly flop between Oaklyn and me, laying his giant head on my thighs. Oaklyn scrunched his ear in her hand.

“I love this damned dog,” she said, shaking her head with wonder. “Whatever you guys did to Shumway wasn’t nearly enough retribution.”

“Did what?” Deloy asked innocently. “Once Maximus is mayor, he’s gonna have Shumway arrested for animal cruelty.”

Oaklyn stuck out her lower lip. “Good. Nothing is bad enough for that sick man.”

“And the mayor,” mumbled Deloy, but he’d already turned and headed back to the kitchen.

LEVON

A
side from seeing
Ladell Pratt hoverboarding down Watchtower Street in front of my shop, I was having a pretty good day.

Things were going great with Oaklyn. I’d taken her to dinner out on Route 9 the night before at the only nice place around. That was part of the reason we were adding a grill onto The High Dive bar. Not that it’d be nicer than the Route 9 place when done. But it’d be the only decent place to sit down and eat in Avalanche.

I had to face facts. I was a fool in love and I’d never been in love with anyone. Oaklyn had won me over—not that that was even her intention—with her exotic beauty, her scientific know-how, her thoughtful outlook on life and the universe. She was right. I’d been battling the endless grief of being thrust into frightening adulthood at a young age. And it was the battle itself, the pressures and unease, the ambiguity of my loss of faith that was ultimately my salvation. Those in Cornucopia had their beliefs set in stone. They had their infinite heaven to look forward to as long as they followed the rules. But for me, the agony of mistrust would also prod me on to a divine prosperity of my own.

Oaklyn helped me believe there was hope for me yet.

After the carpenters finished installing cabinets in my dojo and split, I checked YouTube again, as I’d been doing habitually. I wasn’t quite sure that Pratt would actually upload his blackmail video with our names as keywords. What I
was
sure about was that I’d hear about it within half an hour from
someone
, probably Dingo, and so far nothing.

It looked more and more like Shumway was going to grant my business license. I thought the Elks Lodge incident had let him know the extent to which we were willing to go. I installed cameras around my house—and especially my backyard where Lazarus sometimes had to stay—just in case anyone decided to creep around again. But all had been quiet. I even called City Hall, where an assistant told me my license application was on the Community Development Director’s desk for approval. I was hopeful because it had made it that far, past fucking Shumway, who was still out sick after his mysterious food poisoning.

Closing up shop, I put the leash on Lazarus for the short walk to The High Dive. It really wasn’t necessary, but you never knew when that pervert Pratt would come rolling down the street on his fucking skateboard and Lazarus would jump up and flatten him. Not that I didn’t relish the thought. But I was a businessman now and had to be careful of lawsuits.

I was in a pretty elated mood until I got within a stone’s throw of the clubhouse and saw Pratt zooming away from it. “What the fuck?” I said to myself and Lazarus. We sped up our pace, banging in the swinging front doors.

Unleashing Lazarus, I bellowed at Dingo, now standing behind the bar with his laptop lighting up his face. “What the fuck did that jackoff want?”

Dingo held up a hand, asking for patience. Deloy, Gideon, and Dust Bunny all stood in a half-circle around him like ballet spectators in the footlights. I was there to take over the bar while they held chapel. Part of that job was protecting the clubhouse from douchemonkeys like Pratt, and I felt I’d fallen down on the job.

“It’s okay,” Dingo called, not taking his eyes from the screen. “He just stopped in here to harass us about adding the grill extension without proper permits.”

“Oh, is
that
all,” I said sarcastically, stepping behind the bar to see what was so fascinating.

“Dingo found something,” said Gideon, moving back to let me crowd in. “He’s positively identified this specific shadow of the darknet as belonging to an alias of Ladell Pratt. Whoever uploaded these videos was also the one who took them.”

“Live and in person,” said Dust Bunny.

I saw that Deloy’s eyes were shining with tears.
Oh, motherfuck, did that striptease video finally go viral?
What I saw were just more of the usual darknet images Dingo had been perusing. Videos and stills of young men masturbating or penetrating themselves with implements—nothing we hadn’t seen or done a thousand times before.

But Deloy was upset, so I asked softly, “What’s wrong?”

His finger shook when he pointed at the screen. “That’s Kenyon Stout, Levon.”

The name rang some vague bells, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. “Yeah?”

Deloy’s lower lip was trembling and his eyes brimmed with tears. I put an arm around him. It was Dingo who answered me.

“Kenyon Stout was our age in Cornucopia. He was…closest to Deloy. Kenyon and one other kid are the only Lost Boys we haven’t identified as being alive somewhere, on the street in Bountiful, in the underground network, in prison or rehab. They’re the only two we can’t find.”

I felt like I’d been stabbed in the stomach.
Those two unidentified bodies out at Gideon’s mine.
“Are you thinking…” I couldn’t even give voice to it.

Dust Bunny nodded. “One and the same. The unidentified mine bodies have been there about five years.”

Deloy stuttered, “And Kenyon looks as he did five years ago on this page.” He finally sobbed, his mouth an upside-down
U
, misery washing over his innocent face. He used something he’d been wringing in his hands to cover his face.

Dust Bunny cried out and snatched the thing away from Deloy. “Don’t! You’re getting snot all over it!”

I yelled, “What the fuck, Dust Bunny? Can’t you see he’s fucking upset about his friend?” I tried to snatch the thing back, but Dust Bunny was sprinting out the other side of the bar, waving the thing.

He called, “This is DNA evidence! I’m getting a Ziploc bag.”

I drew Deloy down to the end of the bar, away from the laptop. I held him by the shoulders and bent down, like he was a kid I was comforting. Which he was. “What was that thing Dust Bunny took?”

“It was…it was…” I had to take a bandanna out of my pocket and hand it to Deloy, he was blubbering so badly. He swiped at his eyes and sobbed, “Kenyon Stout’s beanie! I’ve been keeping it all these years as a reminder of him. My
only
reminder!”

Now I remembered where I’d heard the name Kenyon Stout. He was the boy Deloy had been caught making out with. I thought he’d vanished from Cornucopia shortly after Deloy was booted, too. As usual, everyone just assumed he’d been sucked into the vast underground network of Lost Boys, maybe leaving the state and going beyond our radar.

“Oh, Jesus, Deloy. That’s fucking rough.” I tousled his hair like a father would do. “Now, we don’t know Kenyon is the guy in the mine. How long will it take to get DNA proof back on the hat?”

“My lab takes five working days,” Dust Bunny called out. He zipped the plastic bag efficiently and placed it into a small cooler. “Should be back this Friday.”

I petted Deloy’s shoulder. “There, you heard him? Five days.” As though that was any more soothing. It just meant Deloy had five more days to suffer not knowing if his childhood crush had been murdered and tossed into a mine.

Deloy struck my hands away. “I can’t take this anymore, Levon! We suffer in silence! We
try
to better ourselves, to improve our lives, and we just get kicked in the head for it. We undergo the trials of a child of God and every time we turn around there’s some self-righteous, hypocritical asshole trying to smite us down!”

Deloy was right. I’d felt it before. I’d felt the futility of trying to do right. In fact, sometimes it seemed it was only when I
was
trying to “do the right thing” that everything fell to shit. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

“Listen,” I roared at the men. Sledgehammer, Maximus, and Yosemite Sam had drifted out from chapel, probably wondering where their quorum for the meeting was. It appeared we’d taken the meeting out into the bar. “This is
bullshit
. How much longer are we going to lie here like sitting ducks just taking it up the ass from these motherfuckers? They poisoned my dog, they’ve published innuendoes about me and Deloy, they’ve threatened our businesses, and now it fucking looks like they’ve
murdered
at least one of us?”

“I stand with Levon,” shouted Sledgehammer. “I don’t like it when anyone makes a fucking fool out of me.”

“I second that,” bellowed Yosemite Sam, always up for anything belligerent.

Gideon held both hands in the air. “Whoa, whoa. First of fucking all, we don’t
know
this it’s Deloy’s friend in the mine. Let’s wait for DNA results before running around like fucking chickens with our heads cut off. I agree this fucktard mayor is one partridge short of a family. I agree we need to use whatever’s at our disposal to get rid of him. But second of all, we’re
businessmen
. We can’t just go busting into City Hall with guns blazing. It’d be the ruin of us and our businesses. We have to think tactical.”

For some reason, Dingo was giggling. “Like Mayor Pratt’s Segway. That’s very tactical.”

I didn’t know what that meant, so I yelled, “How far has ‘thinking tactical’ gotten us, Gideon?” I was going up against the MC Prez and I knew it, but I guess
I
wasn’t “thinking tactical” at the moment. My brain was in my heart, and all I knew was Deloy had been injured to the core, and I was lashing out like a mother hen. That was in my DNA, to protect my men. “He’s threatening Deloy, he’s threatening me, I mean how far does he have to take it before we just bury him?”

“I’m all for burying him,” Sledgehammer called out calmly.

Gideon came out from behind the bar, taking control of the room. “I hear what you’re saying, Levon. I really do. The fucked thing is we’re playing a political game here, a strategy of chess. Maximus just announced his run for mayor. Judging from the feel of things, we’ve got a
lot
of support in this town. We were thinking of doing a campaign tour, getting the lay of the land outside of Avalanche. We’re betting there are lots of people against the fundies in outlying towns. They can’t vote of course, but we can get the word out that we’re going up against that juggernaut.”

Everything Gideon said made sense. I felt powerless, and I wanted to take the power back. Oaklyn had saved the day with Lazarus by figuring out the xylitol had poisoned him. Sure, I’d sent Shumway to the hospital, but it had been a devious Deloy who had given the mayor Montezuma’s Revenge so bad
he
went to the hospital too.