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“One question? You couldn’t have asked over the phone?”
Chibs shot him a withering glance. “No.”
Co
“So ask,” Co
Jax rested his hands on the cracked linoleum tabletop. “Where do things stand between your bosses and the Russians?”
Co
“I’m not sure what you’re askin’.”
“Bullshit,” Chibs muttered, brows knitted in consternation. “Don’t piss about, Con. We haven’t the time.”
Intense as they were, unpredictable as ever, these guys wouldn’t do anything to upset their arrangement with the RIRA. Co
He knew that, but he didn’t know it.
One of these days, that uncertainty—the fury simmering inside Jax Teller—was going to get a lot of people killed. Co
“As far as I know,” he said, “there are no ties between us and them. Not now.”
Jax leaned over the table, brows rising, blue eyes fiercely intent. “A bunch of Russians forced me and Opie off the road, tried to kill us in broad daylight. A second group showed up and drove ’em off. They’re killing each other, Co
Co
“If this comes up later,” he said, “you and I never had this conversation.”
Jax nodded. “Agreed.”
Chibs gave a small nod as well, prompting Co
“Bratva went to Belfast lookin’ for a deal. You’ve got that right,” Co
Jax narrowed his eyes unhappily. He glanced at Chibs and then cocked his head as he looked back at Co
“Thanks for that. All I wanted to know,” he said. “Shit was happening back then, kind of chaotic, so I understand Roarke and the others considering alternatives. But the arrangement between Belfast and SAMCRO is solid now. If the Russians come back to try again once their situation stabilizes, that door is closed.”
Co
“I’m saying our arrangement is clear,” Jax replied. “If the subject comes up, you make sure you let Roarke and the others know.”
“I can’t do that, Jax.”
Chibs had his fists on the table. They tightened as if he wanted very much to use them. “Why not?”
Co
He turned to signal the waitress for a coffee refill. When he looked back, Jax and Chibs were leaving. They didn’t bother to say good-bye, and Co
6
Moccasin Road ran east to west across the northern edge of Greater Las Vegas, mostly through gray-brown scrubland with more cactuses than houses. At its western end, the hills of Red Rock Canyon rose upward, changing the view from isolated alien landscape to something approaching true beauty. Jackrabbit Ridge was the sort of lost and lonely road that Hollywood had taught Trinity to expect to find all over Nevada, dusty and lined with prickly brush. When she’d first come to Nevada she had been disappointed to find it much more civilized than she had anticipated, but in recent weeks she’d learned just how much of the state remained wild and inhospitable. Las Vegas might be close enough to show its garish lights at night, but out here they might as well have been lost in the desert.
Jackrabbit Ridge had a handful of houses along it, mostly occupied by people who wanted to stay off the grid and away from the prying eyes of the federal government. They drove pickups and American-made SUVs festooned with flags and testimonials to their love of hunting and guns in general. Farther toward the national park there were side streets whose signs had long since been knocked down or stolen, so she did not know their names. There were some homes similar to the ones on the main road—although just thinking of Jackrabbit Ridge as a main road gave it far too much credit—but there were also two startlingly suburban-looking developments of single-family homes. Some of them were occupied, others abandoned or never sold, and more than one had been left half-built when the local economy proved unable to support middle-class dreams on Jackrabbit Ridge.
Trinity glanced out the window. They’d ridden in silence, she in the passenger seat and Oleg behind the wheel. Gavril had gotten in back and spent most of the ride with his head leaning against the window, striking the glass every time they hit a bump or a pothole. The air inside the car felt haunted by the unspoken awareness of the dead man in the trunk. Feliks had been their friend—to Oleg and Gavril he had been close to a brother—and they could smell his blood in the car, slipping up through the air vents somehow or just seeping through the backseat.
Numb, Trinity put a hand on Oleg’s thigh just to tell him he wasn’t alone. He didn’t pull away, and that was good. These men were supposed to be cold. In the past, when she’d implied that Oleg might be allowed to have emotions, that he didn’t have to be the hard-edged thug that Kirill Sokolov and the others wanted him to be, he had pulled away from her. She knew his heart—knew without a shred of doubt that he had a soul and a conscience—but she also knew that the Bratva was his life, his world, and his brotherhood. It was all he knew, and he measured himself by how much his brothers needed him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
In the backseat, Gavril’s head banged the window. They hadn’t hit a bump or a pothole.
Outside the car, the moon and stars made a ghost land of the desert, and Trinity thought that was only right. It felt to her that they were all ghosts out here, that there was no real difference between the living and the dead.
Pretty soon that might not be far from the truth.
They hit a bump and something rattled in the trunk. The corpse of their friend wasn’t the only thing back there. They had the guns.
Trinity would have thought the price they’d paid for those guns was too high, except without them they would all have been dead soon enough. Now, with the weapons and ammunition they’d taken from Oscar Temple, they had a chance.
In the distance, she could see what remained of Storyland. Built in the 1980s, it had been a minor amusement park aimed at small children, full of shoddy attractions based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Mother Goose and Hansel and Gretel figured prominently, and, from what Trinity had learned, the attractions had included a track for antique cars, spi