Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) Read online

I nodded, pleased. Randy was coming around to my side of things. “Exactly. Why don’t you come by and watch me for a while? Pretend you’re looking into some CBD balm, or gummy candies.”

  “Pippa. I don’t have a medical card. I can’t walk past the threshold.”

  But at least he was caving. “Oh, yeah. Right. Well, the Marshal Service can get you one, can’t they?”

  He nodded tersely, his lips firm. I knew what he was about to say. “I don’t like it. But I’ll allow it for now.”

  I wanted to kiss him! But I wasn’t sure what sort of relative he’d told Emily he was. He’d only come to my apartment twice from his Houston office. U.S. Marshals did a hell of a lot of traveling. “Randy! You won’t regret it. You’ll see. All I’m doing is selling different strains of marijuana, edibles and accessories. I have some ideas for developing plants that have a higher concentration of CBD—that’s the pain-killing property in pot.”

  “Whatever. I suppose if it makes you happy enough. For the record, I’m going to put down that you’re working in a pharmacy.”

  “Close enough.”

  He was firm. “Selling shampoo and condoms. Not compounding drugs. Now get back. I’ll check in on you later.”

  I knew better than to ask when “later” might be. The whole idea was that our agents, our handlers, could make surprise visits any time they damned well chose.

  But for now, Randy was allowing me to stay on at A Joint System. If I had to reinvent myself all over again with an entirely new identity in a whole new town, this would be a hella fun way of doing it. And it had the added bonus of being able to daydream about Dr. Driving Hawk, too.

  Things were finally looking up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FOX

  Santiago Slayer insisted we stop halfway through the four-hour trip to Pure and Easy, and sleep at a Best Western.

  “It does no one any good when you are not looking and feeling your best,” he proclaimed. As though a hitman had to have fresh skin in order to blow some guy’s head off. In fact, he was completely unruffled, not a hair out of place. I figured he was like those drunk people who can roll their vehicles down a steep cliff and walk away unharmed. Too shallow to get hit by a bullet, and that was fine with me. Gave me more time to figure out my plan of action.

  We stayed at the Best Western off Northern—the airport one was too noisy for Slayer.

  “There is a basketball court if you want to shoot some hoops when we wake up,” he said as we approached the lobby. He had a whole suitcase all prepared, rolling on its wheels. I, of course, was empty-handed. “Unfortunately, we will miss the breakfast buffet.”

  For lack of anything better to say, I asked him, “Do you know of any tuxedo rental places around Pure and Easy?”

  Slayer smiled indulgently at me. “Oh, planning on attending a benefit? Last year I went to the policeman’s ball in Pure and Easy. Puta madre! Guys were falling off the stage before we even got to the speeches!” He had to close his eyes and put his hand to his stomach, the memories were so overwhelming. “One cop thought he was locked in the bathroom, and started shooting his way out. Of course, it was a tiled bathroom, so the bullets went ricocheting—one nonsmoking king, please.”

  “You went to the policeman’s ball with The Bare Bones?”

  “Of course! They are benefactors of all manner of benevolent causes around Pure and Easy. It always pays to have the police”—he smiled at the front desk gal—“on your good side. As for tux rental, I know only one. I do not usually travel with my own tux, so I’ve had to use it before. It happens to be owned by The Bare Bones.”

  That would be a massive stroke of luck if that was the one I was looking for. I pretended to be uninterested now, just in case it was. “Really? Yeah, let’s shoot some hoops when we get up. No rush in getting to Pure and Easy.”

  “Yes, the red rocks are best viewed at sunset anyway,” agreed Slayer. He was actually a very amiable guy. Aside from his atrocious taste in clothes—and cars and décor and movies and probably all the arts—he was actually a pleasant fellow to pass the time with.

  Up in my room, I tore off my slouch beanie and bloody T-shirt. Before I even looked at my bicep wound, I googled for tux rental places in Flagstaff. There were three, so after checking out Pure and Easy’s, I could proceed up there.

  For the hell of it, I googled Flavia Brooks. How many of those could there be? Shockingly, I had a few hits, newspaper articles from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

  There may be a connection between a drug bust at an industrial warehouse and the investigation into the fatal shooting of twenty-nine-year-old LtC Russell Heston.

  Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raided the warehouse at Rincon Industrial Park in the early morning hours of October 29, 2015. Those arrested included Edmundo Reyes, Arturo Menendez, Hilario Octavia, and Flavia Brooks. According to police, the known cartel members are persons of interest in the December 2014 murder of Heston, a Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander and biochemist. So far the men are only facing meth and cocaine possession and manufacture charges.

  A stool pigeon. We didn’t like those in my trade, so I felt a bit better about rubbing her out. As long as I kept reminding myself my alternative was New Mexico.

  I cringed while cleaning my bullet wound in the bathroom mirror. That would leave quite a fucking scar. That was good. It would make me look nastier.

  I tried not to think about that dead Lieutenant Commander. I wondered what a woman named Flavia Brooks was doing making meth in a warehouse. From the photo, she didn’t look very Hispanic, although I could be wrong. And with flawless skin like that, she was no meth head. She was smiling, as though someone she liked had taken the photo, but showing no teeth. I could tell, though, if she had meth mouth. She didn’t.

  I enlarged the photo. It looked like she was wearing a white lab coat. What the hell? You didn’t generally need to look so professional to work in an enclosed meth lab. She clasped what looked like a clipboard to her chest, and there were test tubes and vials and general chemistry type stuff, blurry in the distance behind her. Did she have something to do with the murder of the Lieutenant Commander?

  It would probably be easiest if I buried her from a distance. Use my M24 with the scope and get on some roof across from the party rental place. Another favorite of my trade was popping someone off at a traffic light. I could call in a few guys I knew to pretend to panhandle at a light. My Harley was good for those quick getaways, and I had a variety of license plates I could swap.

  Flavia was running around free after the warehouse bust, so I imagined she used a different name now. I was overthinking this. I went down to the lobby to get some Band-Aids. I got a hip flask of whisky from my saddlebags. I knew I’d need it to sleep, as well as clean my wound, to forget about the woman I was supposed to bury. Sicarios were heartless bastards. All the others that I knew certainly were, except maybe the happy-go-lucky Santiago Slayer. I needed to become a hell of a lot more unfeeling if I wanted to stay on this career trajectory.

  The Bum Steer was about as dark and divey as you’d expect a biker bar to be, except the smoke you smelled was years old from before they changed the indoor smoking ordinance.

  “I’d rather not let anyone know who I work for,” I told Slayer out front.

  He held up patient hands. “I don’t blame you one bit. That is your personal information to share. And in turn, I appreciate if you do not steal any business from me. They want someone put on ice, that is my job.”

  “Understood.” I had plenty of work without poaching any from Slayer. And if Jones heard I was doing any rat jobs, I’d be the one in the soup pot. “I’m just here to relax and see the sights.”

  He pointed at me as we headed inside. “Which is really what you’re here to do,” he said, as though reaffirming it.

  “Of course,” I said cheerfully.

  “Well then, this is the man you want to meet!” Slayer yelled as he swept dramatically into the biker bar. I di
dn’t expect the mild-mannered, blinking guy with a pool stick in his hand. His airy red afro made him look like Ronald McDonald, and I’m the last to make fun of gingers. But really, his skin was so pale, he was whiter than Mitt Romney in a snowstorm. And way less dangerous.

  “This is Kneecap,” explained Slayer, displaying the clown as though he were a game show refrigerator. “He runs the indoor archery range that you see across the street. There is nothing better for relaxation, while scoring a bunch of bullseyes, of course.”

  I nodded. In Nogales I had done some archery during my downtime. It seemed to go hand in hand with falconry. You know, stepping through the tall grass with a quiver and bow strapped to your torso, a peregrine falcon sitting on your gauntlet. But I didn’t really want to shoot at the moment—I wanted to check out the lay of the land, so I went over to the guy playing pool with Kneecap and reached out to shake his hand.

  “Fox Isherwood,” I told him.

  The guy looked at my hand as though it were a turd. “I don’t know you.”

  He was stating the obvious. I could’ve come back with something like, “And that’s why I’m introducing myself,” but I knew to step carefully around outlaw types. Verbal debate and banter was one of my tools of the trade, but something told me to go lightly with this one.

  Slayer came in for the save. “I’m sorry. Forgive me for being rude. Lytton, this is Fox Isherwood. He works in, ah, the same sort of industry that I do.”

  Lytton lightened up considerably. He even shook my hand now. “Ah! That explains it. Where were you guys—at a gun show?”

  “A hitman convention,” goofed Kneecap.

  “Convention, very good one,” said Slayer, pretending to laugh. “We took off our nametags, though. No, seriously. Fox is up here on a break of sorts. He wishes to see the sights, so I told him I’d show him around. His name rings in the streets almost as widely as mine does,” he said grandly, painting a banner with his hands.

  “Those must be some pretty loud bells, then,” said Lytton, crooking a smile. “Well, you’ve got the famous red rocks around here, of course. All the usual viewing spots, but watch out for the woo-woos.”

  Slayer bent over, as if he’d misheard Lytton. “Woo? Woo?”

  Lytton leaned on his pool queue. “Yeah. This place is chock full of them. Shirley MacLaine sorts who think a UFO is going to land at certain coordinates on certain dates. The ‘vortexes,’ they call them. Don’t worry. Today’s safe.”

  “We’ve got a vortex calendar behind the bar,” said Kneecap, and I wasn’t sure he was kidding.

  Lytton said, “You also might head up Mormon Mountain and see what remains of Mormon Lake. While everyone’s waiting for a spaceship to land, hardly anyone heads up to God’s country.”

  Slayer said, “Dr. Driving Hawk is partial to it because his plantation is up there.”

  “And my house.”

  “And his gorgeous, state of the art, new mansion,” agreed Slayer.

  I assumed they were talking about a pot plantation, and that business was good. “What do you think of that proposal to legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona? Looks like it’ll qualify for the ballot,” I said.

  Lytton became heated. “Best thing ever to happen to this state, I say!” He wrenched an unseen person’s neck in his fist. “Choke the living shit out of those beaners who had a monopoly for so long.”

  “Now they’re growing opium instead of marijuana,” I noted.

  “Damn good stuff too,” Lytton had to admit regarding the H. “That Mexican Black Tar is getting popular with the elite crowd who don’t like to mainline anything. Grind it up, mix it with lactose, and boom, a sixty percent pure missile.”

  Slayer said, “I know a tech billionaire who is behind the bill. Anyone getting in on the ground level before it booms stands to gain a lot.”

  Lytton asked, “Is it Wesley Gunhammer, by any chance?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.” Slayer told me, “He made billions off apps like the one that tells you where you can use a private toilet inside someone’s house when you really need to go bad.”

  “And don’t want to use those plastic funnel things,” said Kneecap.

  I was skeptical. “Seriously? You just look on your phone, find someone’s house, and knock on the door?”

  “And they open right up,” said Lytton. “Genius, no? Or the simulated stapler you can staple things with.”

  “But not really staple,” said Slayer. “You just touch it, and it staples onscreen.”

  “That doesn’t sound too genius to me,” I said.

  Lytton said, “Well, he sold it to Apple. Along with the one that blows out your birthday candles for you.”

  Kneecap said, “And the bullseye that you touch.”

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  Kneecap shrugged. “You see who can hold their finger on it the longest. You score against everyone else playing it.”

  Slayer said, “I heard Gunhammer was making an offer to the Ochoas to buy out their plantation near Show Low.”

  Lytton nodded. “I heard that too. He’s approached me, too, that’s how I know so much about his stupid apps.”

  A couple other guys who’d been hanging around seemed to be struck dumb. “You’re not going for it, are you?” one of them asked.

  “No way in hell, Sock Monkey! Now, peon, you’re remiss in your duties. You haven’t asked our guests what they want to drink.” Sock Monkey’s leather cut boasted a patch that told us he was a Prospect.

  “Yeah, peon,” said the other guy, who probably had been a Prospect recently, thus why he enjoyed bossing them around. “Take their drink orders.”

  Slayer seemed to have been thinking about his order already, it was so elaborate. “I would like a dirty martini with Absolut Crystal, and the vermouth just wafted over the surface. Forget the olive juice, but make sure the olives are stuffed with bleu cheese.” He held his fingers to his mouth and kissed the air. He was one strange bird, but the two sweetbutts sitting at the bar were sure taken by him. They were drinking him in with their eyes.

  Sock Monkey looked like he’d mixed for Slayer before. “Got it. And you?”

  I would perhaps be taking someone out later that day, so I said, “Coke is fine.” Couldn’t afford to make any more errors.

  “No,” said Lytton, getting back to our prior conversation, “I’d never sell out to a corporation. Can you imagine, Human Resources coming up with dress codes? All their fucking chemists getting up in my shiz? Corporate retreats where you play those asinine trust games?”

  “Renaming your brands?” suggested the recent Prospect. “Young Man Blue becomes McBlue. Eminence Front of course is McFront. Eyew. Who’d want to smoke that?” His expression changed. “Actually, me. I’ll be right back.”

  Lytton shook his head at the former Prospect. “That’s Wolf Glaser,” he explained to me. “He’s a little…different.”

  “But a good man to have in a hard place,” Slayer pointed out.

  “Anyway,” said Lytton, “my wife June is going back up the mountain shortly if you want to follow her. She can show you some turnouts, some dirt roads that no one uses, if it’s solitude and quiet you want.”

  That did sound fucking good, actually, but it didn’t fit in with my game plan. “I think I’ll check out the vortexes if you don’t mind.” One of them probably led me past the tux rental shop.

  I nearly ate my words, though, when the side door opened and a bosomy, down-to-earth girl entered. Man, she was banging hot. My cock even started to plump, watching her boobs jiggle in their underwire encasings. She had some biker ink, but her Birkenstocks betrayed her as a sensible gal. Then she kissed Lytton, and I had to look away. Getting caught up with women was never part of any game plan, anyway.

  Lytton introduced her as his wife, June. I took my Coke from Sock Monkey as Lytton told me, “June’s going back up to our plantation. She basically runs it for me, so I can be more hands-on in the dispensary.”

  �
�But the new girl’s working out real well,” said June. “I want Lytton to take some time off, maybe even a vacation with me.”

  “As if that’ll happen.” Lytton grinned.

  “It will. This gal’s got a degree from Davis in plant biology, so she knows her shit. In fact, I’m bringing her up there now, if you don’t mind, baby. She has some ideas for new CBD hybrids that are blowing my mind, and she wants to see the grow.”

  Biochemistry. My mind instantly went to the test tubes and chemistry-type stuff in the background of Flavia Brooks’ photo. Slayer had told me the Pure and Easy tux rental was owned by The Bare Bones MC. It was entirely possible that—

  Bingo.

  The side door opened to reveal a rectangle of light. I knew before even seeing her features that this short but curvy silhouette belonged to Flavia Brooks.

  My destiny.

  “June, can I get a bottle of water to go here?”

  My mark.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PIPPA

  “Sure, just ask Sock Monkey. He’s the bartender,” June told me.

  Leaning on the bar, I lifted my chin at the Prospect. “’Sup?” I’d developed a casual way of speaking while being held with the Joneses. Since being freed, I’d enjoyed the sun and wind, bicycling, Krav Maga, and even snowboarding again. But I still talked like a thug. My bar order, however, wasn’t. I had to follow June in my own cage so I could come back later to my tiny apartment and—well, lately I’d taken up knitting. That was something Flavia Brooks had never done. Flavia was a tomboy. A gritty, tough-as-nails scientist. But Pippa Lofting had to keep a low profile. “Bottle of water. Unopened.”

  Behind me, I heard June tell some men, “Pippa has been experimenting with developing a hybrid that has lots of CBD and very little THC. This, obviously, could be very attractive to people who are allergic to the properties of THC.”

  “Obviously,” said Lytton as I walked over to their pool table. “That would be great to offer a purer form.”

  Two unknown guys were with Lytton. I’d grown used to assessing people at a glance. Believe you me, being held captive by the Joneses, every assessment turned out to be “he’s a worthless bone-headed moronic criminal.” These guys were different, though. Maybe they weren’t even Boners. The tall, dashing Latin guy had wavy, highly glossy salt and pepper hair. His ingratiating smile revealed capped teeth. And his white belt and shoes placed him firmly in the 70s, maybe his fondest glory days. But he seemed nice, and I shook his hand first.