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The headlights picked out the shape of the Wonderland Hotel. Oleg tapped the brake and guided the car around the back of the building. The Wonderland had one tall wing and one short one, which met at the two-story lobby structure. Another section of the hotel stuck out the back in a T shape, which allowed for the rooms along the rear leg of the T to be invisible from the few cars that made their way along Jackrabbit Ridge. Gravel crunched beneath the tires as they pulled up in the midst of the five other vehicles parked there.
The door to one of the abandoned hotel’s rooms opened, and Kirill emerged with a pistol and a bottle of beer. Perhaps forty-five years old, Kirill had skin so leathery that its lines seemed more like scars. He kept his remaining hair buzzed tight to his scalp, and he had icy, blue-white eyes that never smiled, even when he himself might laugh. Louis Drinkwater—who’d told Trinity everything she knew about the area—was a local real estate agent who owed Kirill Sokolov many favors and owed the Bratva tens of thousands of dollars. He’d given them the keys to the Wonderland Hotel. Sokolov didn’t trust Louis, but Trinity did. The real estate man had more than his share of sorrow, but he didn’t strike her as a coward.
Still, they kept watch. Someone would have been on guard in the front, hiding behind darkened windows. Kirill would have known they were coming, but still he had the gun. It was impossible to be too careful.
They should have been more careful with Oscar Temple.
Kirill watched them as they climbed from the car, his brow furrowed. He said something in Russian. Trinity heard Feliks’s name and knew what he was asking.
“In the trunk,” Oleg replied.
Kirill swore and cast his beer aside, striding toward the car as Oleg went around to the back, keys in hand. Trinity refused to look, marching toward the room she and Oleg had been sharing. She halted before she reached it and forced herself to turn and watch as they opened the car trunk and Kirill clapped his hands to the sides of his skull.
Grieving for his brother.
No one brought up the fact that they’d managed to get the guns. It was important—it might give them the edge they needed to survive, maybe even win—but Kirill Sokolov didn’t care about guns just then. He leaned against the car, lay his head back, and stared at the stars.
Trinity wasn’t close enough to see if he cried.
The Wonderland Hotel had been their refuge for weeks, but none of them had expected to be buried there.
* * *
On long rides, Jax couldn’t help thinking about his little brother Tommy. With the sky spreading out in front of him and the road whipping by beneath him, he could hear Tommy’s laughter. There’d been many times when Jax, six years older, had been appointed guardian and protector for his brother while JT had worked on restoring a vintage Harley he’d picked up somewhere.
Gemma would be making di
At six, Tommy had died of a congenital heart defect. It was the family flaw—Gemma had it, too.
Jax didn’t do a lot of ru
Three headlights cut the darkness out on that ribbon of highway. Jax, Opie, and Chibs had been riding for a couple of hours already, and they wound along two-lane blacktop that curved through pine forests, up hills, and into canyons. Later, they would ride through desolate badlands that had a rugged beauty all their own, but long after dark in the middle of a workweek, these roads could be just as desolate. Quiet and peaceful.
He felt the weight of the gun at the small of his back and knew that quiet and peaceful were good. Less chance of trouble.
Opie rode on his left and Chibs on his right. When a car or truck appeared coming the other direction, Opie dropped behind them, but vehicles had been few and far between for the past three quarters of an hour or so. Opie had been his best friend pretty much all his life. He had a gentle soul and a savage heart, able to find mercy where others could not and to be merciless when a line had been crossed. Jax worried about Opie—the loss of his first wife had broken something inside him—but when shit turned ugly, there was no one he’d rather have at his back. Chibs had survived ugliness and tragedy, too. A son of a bitch named Jimmy O had given him the scars on his face, stolen away his wife and daughter, and made it impossible for him to stay in Ireland and keep drawing breath. Jimmy O was dead now, but somehow betrayal had made Chibs understand loyalty better than anyone else.
Jax had unwavering faith in both men. Out here, flying, these guys were his brothers now. He trusted them with his life.
* * *
Kirill asked Trinity to say a prayer over his brother’s grave. They stood there, nineteen Russian men and this one Irish girl—no longer such a girl—and lowered their heads. In the moonlight, the dirt on the arms and faces of those who’d dug the grave made them look like orphans out of some grim, modern Charles Dickens tale. They didn’t have much use for God. They were gunmen and leg breakers. Since the moment Oleg had begun introducing Trinity around to his Bratva when they’d been in Belfast, she had tried very hard not to wonder what their worst crimes might have been. Drug smuggling, certainly. Murder? Some of them, she was sure. They were hard men, and some of them seemed like cruel men, but to Oleg they were family, and if she wanted him, she knew that they were part of the package.
Quietly, her voice carrying in the reverent hush that the small hours always created, she said the Lord’s Prayer. When she’d finished, they all said, “Amen,” almost as if they meant it. Most of them were godless, but she’d found that even those without faith still wished their loved ones a safe journey through whatever might come after life.
“Feliks was a man of few words, so I won’t disturb the quiet with a lot o’ my own,” Trinity said. She glanced at Oleg and then at Kirill, whose expression had never been more like stone. There would be no tears from this lot. “He had courage and dignity, and he defended his brothers with his life. God keep him.”
For several seconds they all stood there, staring at the freshly turned soil. The wind blew, and somewhere a loose shutter creaked in the dark like the squeal of a frightened rat. They had dug the grave in the scrubland behind the motel, fifty yards back from the cracked, empty swimming pool.
Kirill realized she wasn’t going to say anything more and cleared his throat of whatever thickness of emotion had lodged there.
“The traitors have taken another life,” he said, speaking English purely for her benefit.
He’d mourned in his native tongue, but now he clearly wanted to include her, and it touched her deeply. For a long time she had been nothing but Oleg’s woman to them, but now that they were at war, she had become family, for better or worse.
“Krupin and the others might not have been at Temple’s ranch, but it was for them Temple acted. For Lagoshin. Feliks’s blood is on his hands. Another of us dead because Lagoshin wants the Bratva business in this part of the world for himself. We have… What would they say here? Rules. These men have betrayed us all. They have murdered those who should be their brothers. We have been forced to strike from the shadows, to hide our heads because they have numbers and weapons we could not match. But now that has changed.”