Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) (9 page)

I snorted at his description. “She’s pretty,” I allowed.

“There was something between you. When I got back with the smoothies, it was like I’d interrupted my parents rutting.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“No, not in a gross or disgusting way. You know, in the way that people suddenly jump apart, clearing their throats, looking but not looking at each other.”

We had already finished what little “rutting” we were going to do by the time Wolf arrived with the shakes, so I dismissed him as wrong. “She’s all right. I’m not sticking around, though. Once this job is done, I’m out of here.”

“Why don’t you stick around? We have Slayer on retainer but he doesn’t live here. Not sure where he lives, actually. Such a man of mystery. Who do you work for, anyway?” I remained close-lipped. “Oh, that’s right. Privileged information. I get it.”

“
I’m
the man of mystery,” I asserted, and then Pedro was coming down the road in a trashed Corolla.

It was time for me to make a phone call.

The Ochoa men stood near a large pipe that went downhill to a lined evaporation pond. I sat on the pipe, up a bit from the three Ochoa narcos. I’d put on my slouch cap and shades, and replaced my bandanna over the bottom half of my face. Lytton had said to keep our IDs from the Ochoas, so I did. I held my Springfield to prevent them from getting any closer. But I held it casually, to let them know I was on their side—doing them a favor.

I said dramatically, “As you can see, those men you thought your guys killed are still alive. And they’re threatening to tell their whole story to the police unless you tell them
why
you sabotaged their truck.” I paused. “And give them two hundred large to replace the marijuana you burnt.” That last part was Wolf’s idea. Of course I didn’t really give a shit whether or not The Bare Bones were reimbursed for their loss. I was just carrying out Lytton’s—and Jones’—assignment.

Ruben Ochoa said thinly, “
Vato,
people get fucked in this neighborhood, they don’t go to the cops—they come to me.” His bandanna was worn like a hippie headband over his fade haircut. He was shorter than me, like most Mexicans were, but his goatee and suspenders marked him as a man of position. “I respect that you came to me first with this news. Manuel. Are those the guys you hit?”

Manuel lifted his shades and bent forward, as though that got him closer to the corpses two hundred yards away. He nodded.

I said, “Well, The Bare Bones has always had a good relationship with the Ochoas. They’d like to keep it that way. They just want to know why you’re burning their trucks.” I took another risk. “Sending men to spy on their pot farm.”

At this point, Wolf randomly waved one of the dead guy’s arms. We’d positioned the bodies as though they were taking a break, leaning back against the berm that ringed the entire pond. With shades and bandannas on, you couldn’t tell they’d been shot at all. All Wolf had to do was splay himself flat behind the berm to make the stiffs look lively.

“
Joder!
” spat Ruben. “I tell you—what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” I said mysteriously. “But you can call me Zorro.” Which was, of course, “fox” in Spanish.

And Ruben didn’t laugh. “All right, Mister Zorro. I’ll be frank with you. The latest changes in marijuana reform law have led us to rethink our position as brothers in the trade. We don’t sell that much to your Pure and Easy dispensary to make much of a difference. We’re both racing to get the Gunhammer backing, or I’ve got several other sources of legit financing in mind. We both want to go straight, at least as far as marijuana goes.”

“We already
are
straight. You’re the one using all the pesticides and rerouting creeks to irrigate your roided-out plants.” This irritated Ruben. His mouth became a thin line, and he made a motion for the iron stuck in the back of his pants. “Once the inspectors start poking around your farm they’re going to find all kinds of violations. You’ll never go legit.”

Ruben pointed at me. “That’s why I wanted to find out how Lytton runs his farm. He won’t share trade secrets.”

“And why should he?”

“Because we’re brothers in arms! We’re all in this together. My man was just collecting intel, on a fact-finding mission. And suddenly he’s a ghost.”

“I wouldn’t know about that guy,” I said hurriedly, “I’m just a messenger.”

Wolf waved the other stiff’s arm now, and this time Ruben really did pull his piece. He wavered it between me and the other side of the evaporation pond. “We know someone buried him. Jorge would never leave and not come back.”

That was unfortunate that the
pinche guey
lurking around Lytton’s farm had been on a first name basis with Ruben. I held up my hands in surrender. “Look. Lytton’s worked hard to build his rep. He’s got a doctorate from MIT, and he’s been crossing hybrids for ten years. The only way you could hope to rival him with his innovative varieties is by following the same rigorous practices.”

Ruben took two steps toward me, pressing the barrel of his piece to my temple. He snarled, “I think you know what happened to Jorge. How else did you know someone was spying on Leaves of Grass?”

I’d had many a piece glued to my head in my time, but this guy seemed like more of a loose cannon than most. He definitely didn’t have all the dots on his dice. It was one of those situations where he had a piece, and I had a piece—a literal Mexican standoff. However, his barrel was closer to my brains. “Through the grapevine,
ese
!” I could’ve probably buried him faster than he could me, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance. “Those are the guys threatening to go to the pigs, not me.” I tossed my head in Wolf’s direction.

That did the trick. Ruben turned his irate, huffing face onto the sludge pond and in an instant, had blown the arm off one of the stiffs across the water. I was sure he meant to plug the guy in the head, but with that idiotic gangsta side grip he used, it was much harder to aim.

“
That’s
what I think of your fucking Eminence Front,” he snarled, referring to Lytton’s famed pot. He shot again, getting another arm. I was almost entirely sure that dirt berm would be a sufficient shield for Wolf. I was rewarded when he waggled the arm of the remaining corpse, in a wobbly sort of “fuck you” gesture.

Ruben shot at that body. Again, he got an arm, so he kept shooting. A leg. Another leg. Just the berm. An arm. Oh, a head.

Trying to calm Ruben down, I said, “You definitely gave them outlaw justice. I’ll give your message to Dr. Driving Hawk. You’d like to open up a dialogue.”

“
There’s
my fucking dialogue,” growled Ruben, plugging the berm a few more times for good measure.

“I’ll tell him you refuse to pay for his burned shipment,” I said with the utmost respect. I could’ve taken him out now, he was so preoccupied with taking his anger out on a pile of dirt. I hoped Wolf had given up playing puppet master by now and was crawling back around the side where we’d parked our rides behind a shed.

Ruben lifted his chin at his two associates. “
Ir a buscar los cadavers
.”
Go get those bodies.
The two guys trotted off, and Ruben shoved his piece down his pants. You tell Lytton I’m sorry, but this means war. It’s every man for himself out in this desert, eh?”

I nodded. I actually couldn’t agree more. I stuck my piece back into my 501s, too, and shook his hand. “I’ll pass the word along.”

“We’re good,” said Ruben.

We went our separate ways. The fact still remained that Ochoas had buried three Bare Bones men, not just once like normal narcos, but now twice. And he’d destroyed a shipment of grade A pot that had been destined for Phoenix dispensaries.

From the shed I could see Wolf continue to crawl on hands and knees along the berm. I waved an arm at him to hurry up. He ran half-crouched the rest of the way.

“Oh, man! I am
so
going to impress Tracy with what I just did!”

I was actually impressed, too. I jammed on my lid and started my scoot. “We’d better rip it out of here. Ruben’s about to find out those guys were already dead.”

PIPPA

W
e were walking out to our targets to collect our arrows when I dared ask Wolf Glaser what had happened the other day.

I mean, I knew better than to outright
ask
anyone associated with The Bare Bones what was going on. That was a given. It was a man’s world for better or worse, and sometimes I didn’t even dare ask Madison or June what was up. Men rushed around whispering in each other’s ears or making signs with their eyes. They gathered in separate groups to talk about stuff I was certain was more interesting than what we women discussed.

But today I had the nerve. It had been four days since Fox had lifted me up to grab the arrow in the wall. I hadn’t seen him, even though I’d been hanging around The Bum Steer, Leaves of Grass, and now I was up behind their enormous airplane hangar, The Citadel. Fox simply wasn’t around, and it was not my place to ask about him. Had he accomplished his task for Lytton and gone back to—wherever the hell it was he came from? My hunger for him had ballooned into a painful jones that had me thinking about him every five minutes. My work was fascinating, learning the particulars of the pot trade. But even a lesson on feminized clones didn’t distract me for more than four minutes, and my mind was back on his muscular ass, the carved ripple of his abs, the meaning behind the Ezekiel verse on his back.

“There was something Fox said about an explosion?” I said meekly. I was too weak to pull my arrows from the hay bales—hell, I was a
biochemist
, not an athlete—so I had to use this rubber clamp thing to yank them. Even then, I was straining so badly I had to put my knee against the target.

Wolf frowned. “Explosion?”

I lowered my voice. Slushy and a real buff, macho older guy named Sax were taking their arrows out of two more bales ten yards farther than ours. “The other day, at The Hip Quiver. Fox said there was an explosion, and the two of you ran off.”

“Oh. That.” He sauntered over, sticking his arrows into his own hip quiver that was slung jauntily around his waist. Then he babbled like a boy on Christmas Eve. “Yeah, it was something! One of the Leaves of Grass transport trucks exploded! Well, it didn’t
spontaneously
explode. Someone firebombed it to sabotage our weed shipment. Just to be assholes. It was
acramazing.
” To add to my hot and bothered mood, Wolf easily whipped my six arrows from the bale like taking candles from a cake. He grinned ear to ear as he handed me the whole sheaf.

“Oh. So I guess you guys…
finished
whatever you needed to do?”

Wolf lost the grin, and huffed. “Just ask what you want to know, woman. We like plain talk around here.”

“Do you? I mean, every time I accidentally ask a question about Lytton, or Ford, or even about August who isn’t even a member of the motorcycle club, I get hit with this stony stare. Like I was asking for a backdoor into a terrorist’s cellphone logs.”

“You want to know where Fox went.” Wolf started walking back to the shooting line, and I had to jog to keep up. “Just speak plain English! Women never fail to amaze me with their roundabout, backstabbing, completely
obtuse
—”

“Yes,” I cried to get Wolf back on track. “That’s what I want to know. I don’t really care about your business. I want to know if Fox is still around.”

“I thought as much. You know, women and cats will do as they please. Men and dogs should just relax and get used to the idea.”

“Actually, in this case it’s the men who are doing as they pl—”

“Ah, women are like a scaly wall, unable to be climbed!” Wolf froze, his fist accusing God of wrongdoing. “Wait. Women are like a fortress you cannot destroy. Wait.”

“Tracy again?” Slushy and Sax had returned their arrows to the arrow holders, so I followed suit and took my bow off the rack. “Maybe you should date someone else, Wolf. Get your mind off Tracy.”

“Who said it was about Tracy? Weren’t we talking about Fox? You know, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

I paused, about to nock an arrow. “Why buy a pig just to get a little sausage?”