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Drifting in that gray fog between sleeping and wakefulness, Carney thought he heard voices. He groaned softly and slitted his eyes open. One of his animal shows played on the TV. A baby gorilla clung to its mother, and the sight made him smile, still more than half-asleep. His animal shows could be grotesque at times, and even then they were fascinating, but there was something soothing about the programs concerning bears and monkeys and apes.
Knock knock.
Thump thump.
Carney jerked in the chair, adrenaline burning him awake. He threw the blanket aside and stood, barely noticing the arthritis pain in his knees. Turning slowly, he tried to locate the source of the noise, and it came again. Thump thump. He spun, staring at the short little corridor that led into the rest of the house.
A rapping came from the back of the house, a fist on glass, urgent but not angry. Not on the verge of shattering.
Carney twisted the little iron key, opened the body of the grandfather clock, and stopped the pendulum’s swing with his left hand. With his right he reached past it and grabbed the shotgun that always sat waiting there, just behind the tick of the clock.
The knock came again as he made his way down the little corridor, giving him a chance to zero in. The sound hadn’t come from his bedroom or the bathroom or the smaller second bedroom he used as an office. There wasn’t much house out here in the desert, but how much house did an aging widower need?
He ducked into the kitchen, stared at the blinds that hung over the sliding glass door that led onto his patio. A low adobe wall ringed the patio. On any ordinary night there’d have been nothing but snakes and coyotes beyond that wall, but snakes and coyotes didn’t knock on the wall or rap on the glass. The blinds were closed. The patio light was off.
“Who’s there?” he shouted at the closed blinds, leveling the shotgun at the slider. If they wanted to kill him, his voice gave them a location. They could start shooting right now. But did murderers knock?
“Friends, Mr. Carney,” came a reply, a raspy voice—not an old man’s rasp.
Carney slid to the side, toward the stove, and sidestepped past the kitchen island so he came at the blinds from an angle.
“In my experience,” he called back, “friends don’t bang on your back door after midnight.”
“Sorry if we woke you,” that voice rasped again. “The lateness couldn’t be helped. It’s pretty urgent I talk to you.”
I guess it must be, Carney thought.
“You armed?” he called.
“Yes, sir. But none of us have weapons drawn. If we wanted to do more than talk, there are open windows.” Carney reached out and opened the blinds. Through the slats he could make out five men silhouetted by moonlight. Shotgun leveled at them, he flicked on the patio light, and the men blinked at the sudden brightness. The one in front squinted but didn’t raise his hands to shield his eyes, too smart to want to spook Carney into pulling the trigger.
“Hands up, slowly,” Carney said.
The men complied. The guy in front, blond and bearded, was the first to do so, and the others followed suit. In the back of the group, a massive red-haired man was the last, and his reluctance was obvious.
Carney studied the faces. “I don’t know any of you.”
“I know how this must look,” said the blond, the owner of the raspy voice. “My name’s Jax. I think you may’ve met my sister, Trinity—”
A memory flashed through Carney’s mind. Gunshot and blood spatter in Oscar Temple’s kitchen. The woman’s face floated across his thoughts, and he saw the resemblance. Carney’s heart had been thundering in his chest, and now it skipped a beat as the copper stink of blood returned to him.
“Irish girl?” he asked, voice raised to be heard through the sliding glass door.
“That’s her.” Muffled. Quieter.
“You don’t have an accent.”
“Different moms.” The blond man put the palm of one rough hand against the glass and gazed calmly at him. “She’s not safe, Mr. Carney. I just want to get her the hell out of here and home to her mother.”
A fine sentiment. Carney had taken a shine to the girl from the moment she’d approached him at the gun show, and not just because her accent reminded him of home. She had a raw energy that he’d admired. But that wasn’t why he lowered the shotgun.
The rough men on his patio seemed surprised when he raised the blinds all the way and unlocked the slider. He stepped back and covered the door with his shotgun, but he kept his finger outside the trigger guard. John Carney had gotten old, and his hands trembled sometimes. If he shot somebody, it would damn well be on purpose.
“Just you,” he told Jax. “Your friends can make themselves comfortable on the patio.”
A goateed man with startling scars on his face looked disappointed. “Any chance of a cup of coffee?”
Carney heard the mix of burr and brogue in his voice and smiled. “You’re not a guest. You’re a stranger who woke me in the middle of the night.”
The man beside him, pale and bearded with his hair tied back in a small knot, nodded. “He does have a point.”
Jax slid the glass door open and entered the kitchen as the other four made themselves comfortable on the patio furniture, sprawling as if they hadn’t a care in the world. They weren’t worried about him killing them with his shotgun, which told him they had no intention of trying to kill him. But he hadn’t gone to Oscar Temple’s house thinking anyone was going to die, either.
“Lock it behind you,” he told Jax, who complied without complaint.
“Can I sit down?” the man asked.
“You’re not getting coffee, either,” Carney told him.
Jax smiled, but it turned to a wince. Carney flicked on the light above the kitchen table, and now he saw the bruises and swelling on his visitor’s face.
“Rough night?”
“I’m alive,” Jax replied. “I’d like to stay that way, and keep Trinity alive, too.”
“She told me her name was Caitlin Dunphy. I heard one of ’em call her Trinity, but I didn’t put it together that it was her name till you said so. I would’ve known who you meant regardless, though. You resemble her a little. Plus, she’s the only woman I’ve run into in a long time that I figure might cause armed men to show up on my patio. How did you all get here, anyway? You got a van out front?”
“Bikes,” Jax said.
Carney almost laughed at the image of these five leg breakers riding bicycles out here with the lizards and dust devils. Then he realized the guy meant motorcycles, and his humor dissipated. Had he slept through the roar of five approaching engines? A disturbing thought. If they’d meant to do him harm, he really would have been dead by now.
He lowered the shotgun and leaned against the counter.
You’re crazy. Letting this man into your house.
Motorcycles might mean they were part of a biker gang. That made a certain sense. He’d caught a glimpse of what looked like some kind of logo on the vest that the big red-bearded bastard had been wearing out on the patio. Oscar Temple dealt illegal guns—a shitload of illegal guns—and Jax’s sister had been trying to make a deal with him on behalf of some Russians.
“You involved in the gun business, too?” Carney asked.
Jax cocked his head. “I’m told you used to be pretty involved yourself.”
“I’m not casting aspersions, lad. Just trying to figure out all the co
“The only co
“Your sister involved me already,” Carney said.
Jax nodded, said nothing more.
Carney sighed deeply and then shrugged. “She did save my life, I suppose. Though it wouldn’t have needed saving if I’d never met her.”
Jax opened his hands, palms up as if in surrender. “Question is, What are you go