Sons of Anarchy. Bratva

Thor sank the seven ball in a corner pocket and glanced up. “There’s Izzo.”

Joyce snickered. “Izzo, man, you can’t trust that guy. He’d sell his mother for a line of blow.”

“We don’t want his mother,” Jax said. “But he does sound like a man we can do business with.”

* * *

They met up with the cop in the parking lot of a defunct home-improvement store just south of Nellis Air Force Base. Jax put his bike up on its stand as the echoes of its engine died on the wind. He sat astride it for a few seconds as the throbbing pain in his chest and head subsided.

After a moment, he dismounted and forced himself to stand up straight.

“You all right?” Opie asked, coming toward him.

Jax cocked an eyebrow at him. Opie’s features were pale and drawn from the blood he’d lost, but he seemed remarkably well for a guy who’d been kissed by a bullet a few hours earlier.

Chibs killed his Harley’s engine and climbed off just as Thor circled round to them. He had led them here and then taken a quick ride around the building to be sure they would be alone. Jax had always liked Thor Westergaard. With his imposing size, he seemed an unlikely candidate for chef, but he conducted himself with a calm, methodical style that belied the motorcycle-club lifestyle. Now Jax could see that Thor brought the same Zen aura out into the real world. They’d never been under fire together, but Jax had a feeling that Zen calm would carry over.

“Where’s your cop friend?” Opie asked.

“Izzo’s not a friend,” Thor said. “But he has his uses.”

They heard tires on pavement and the low murmur of an engine. Headlights illuminated the corner of the abandoned home-improvement warehouse… and then went out. The car came around the building slowly, almost crawling, and Jax and the others stood away from their bikes a little, making sure that the moonlight would be enough to allow Izzo to see them.

The car’s headlights flickered, letting them know the driver had seen them. It neither slowed nor sped up, only rolled toward them until, at last, it puttered to a halt. In the darkness behind the windshield, Jax could see the burning tip of a cigarette. The orange glow flared a moment as the smoker inhaled.

The driver’s door opened. The dome light inside the car did not go on—the man was used to meetings in dark places where he didn’t want to draw attention. He left the car ru

“If it ain’t the mighty Thor,” the cop drawled, cigarette hand dangling at his side. “And friends. Which one of you is Iron Man?”

“You missed your calling, Detective,” Thor replied. “I’m sure there’s a spot for you on stage at Caesars.”

Izzo offered a pained smile, waiting. Thin and jittery, he needed a haircut and a shave. Thor and Rollie had explained that he was a detective with the Las Vegas vice squad and that he dipped into the product of his arrests more often than not—hookers, drugs. He wasn’t the sort of cop who wanted to be a kingpin, just a guy who couldn’t control his taste for the forbidden.

“Mike Izzo, meet some friends of mine,” Thor said at last.

“No colors on you boys,” Izzo said, gesturing with his cigarette toward their clothes. “No gang affiliation?”

“Sons of Anarchy isn’t a gang, Detective,” Thor said.

“I know, I know, it’s a ‘motorcycle club,’ but these guys ride motorcycles, too.”

Jax gave a shrug—small, but enough to make his body remind him of Lagoshin’s fists.

“We’re not the joining type,” he said.

“They’re friends of mine,” Thor said, as if that explained it all. “My friend here is searching for a missing family member and thinks some of her associates might be co

Izzo cocked his head, eyes narrowing. He smoked and exhaled through his nose.

“You’ve got interesting friends,” he drawled, but he nodded. “Trouble is, I don’t know shit. Homicide’s not my beat.”

Jax stiffened. Had they wasted their time with this cokehead?

“You sing this song every time, Mike,” Thor said. “We both know you’ve always got your ears open, hoping to hear something you can sell or trade.”

Izzo flicked ash off his cigarette. From the way his nostrils flared, he hadn’t liked Thor’s observation much.

“Maybe that’s true,” he said, “but this is fresh. Happened yesterday.”

Jax glanced at the others. Chibs looked pissed, turned and spat onto the cracked pavement. Opie seemed to have been drifting, barely listening, maybe because of the blood loss, but suddenly he perked up.

“Who found the bodies?” he asked in his familiar low rumble.

Izzo stared at him. “You boys don’t look too good,” he said, turning to study Jax. “And you look like you got your ass handed to you. What are you really after?”

“We told you the truth, man,” Jax said, hands up. “We’re not bringing trouble. We’re trying to get my sister out of it.”

Izzo nodded knowingly. Vice detective in Las Vegas, he’d seen more than his share of sisters in trouble.

“Wish I could help,” he said. “Not least because I could use the scratch Thor and his boys would pay for information. But the investigation is just ramping up. I can give Rollie a call at the Tombstone if they turn up anything. What I can tell you is that Oscar Temple’s in the gun business—sponsors the big gun show out there in Summerlin—and homicide figures it was a side deal gone wrong.”

Chibs glanced at Jax. “Illegal guns?”

Izzo scratched at his stubbled chin and took a drag on his cigarette. “I know, right? People breaking the law. Can you imagine?”

Jax cocked his head to one side, trying to figure the cop out. “You never answered my friend’s question.”

“Sorry, right,” Izzo replied, waving toward Opie with his cigarette. “One of the dealers from the gun show, an old friend of Temple’s, went up to the house to have coffee or something after he’d packed up. Found the bodies.”

“This gun dealer, does he have a name?” Thor asked.

“He’s an old dude. Older, anyway,” Izzo said. “Irish guy, I think. Last name is Carney.”

Thor stiffened. “John Carney?”

Izzo dropped his cigarette, crushing it under his shoe. “You know the guy?”

“Heard of him,” Thor admitted.

Jax watched Izzo’s eyes and realized the detective was thinking precisely what he’d been thinking—that if Thor knew the old man’s name, maybe John Carney hadn’t gone up to Oscar Temple’s house for coffee at all.

“I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything,” Izzo said, digging out his keys as he returned to his car. He paused just inside the open door. “You make sure you do the same. I could use a little career boost.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Thor told him.

None of them believed it, not even Izzo.

11

John Carney had slept poorly ever since the death of his wife. Over time he’d developed the habit of falling asleep in the recliner in the living room, bathed in the flickering blue light of the television. Living in Arizona required air-conditioning, but his backyard opened up to nothing but scrub and distant hills, and it could get awfully cold at night. He kept the windows of his little adobe house open and covered himself with a thick blanket, never taking his slippers off. Past the age of fifty, his feet had begun to feel cold pretty much all the time. And he’d left fifty in the rearview mirror quite a while back.

Tonight he moaned and shifted in the chair, rising up from the shadows of dreamtime, cobweb memories of a nightmare clinging to him. He frowned and rubbed his eyes, sleepily contemplating the possibility of leaving the chair and actually sleeping in his bed for once. Instead, he pulled the blanket up to his neck and nestled deeper into the chair. The ghost of his dead wife occupied that bed, and he figured it always would. Whenever he tried to sleep in there, he felt her presence. No, that ain’t it, he corrected himself. He felt her absence.