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“We can guarantee her safety,” Krupin said reasonably.
“No one can guarantee her safety,” Jax replied. “Not even me.” He pointed up the road toward the men on the Kawasakis. “I’m go
Krupin narrowed his eyes. Jax could practically feel him searching for duplicity. The son of a bitch knew things weren’t what they seemed, but it was clear Krupin also felt very confident in Lagoshin’s ability to terrorize people. And Jax had no doubt that sending the two bikers to babysit him had been the plan from the outset, or Krupin wouldn’t have brought thugs on motorcycles.
Someone in the car began to speak to him in Russian. Krupin snapped angrily at the man, then opened his door and stepped out. Jax saw the driver of the BMW drawing a gun. Across the street, Opie, Joyce, and Thor still had their weapons out, ready for things to turn bloody.
Krupin beckoned to the Kawasaki riders, and the two men spurred their bikes forward, riding up to stop directly behind the BMW. They wore helmets, but when they raised their visors, Jax could see that one had gray eyes and one a cold blue. Krupin introduced them as Ustin and Luka.
“You go with him,” Krupin told them. “When you know the sister’s location, report back to me.” He turned to Jax. “Once I hear from them, you will have one hour to get your sister to safety. One hour. If you are still there when we arrive, or if you warn Sokolov and his men, you will all die together.”
Jax nodded slowly. Krupin stared at him a moment. Then he climbed into the BMW and it pulled away, power window gliding up. Despite all the talk of murder, Krupin had treated the whole thing like a business meeting, and Jax thought maybe that was all any of it was to him. Business. Nothing personal.
The thought made Jax want more than ever to shoot him.
As the others remounted their bikes, glaring at Ustin and Luka, Jax walked over to Thor, who sat on his idling Harley, putting on his helmet.
“Head back to the Tombstone,” he said quietly. “Tell Rollie what’s going on. Tell him I may need backup and that I need your club on standby. Stay with him till you hear from me.”
The big man scratched at his red beard. “You don’t want me to just call him?”
“No. I don’t.”
“I guess you don’t want to tell me why.”
Jax hardened his gaze. After a second, Thor just nodded, buckled his helmet, and took off without speaking to any of the others. Jax watched him go and then turned to his Russian babysitters.
“Try to keep up,” he said, and then he started for his bike.
12
Trinity and Oleg had made love quietly, well aware of the proximity of his comrades. His brothers. After several nights of broken sleep and days of emotional exhaustion, she had curled into the comforting crook of his arm and fallen asleep listening to his heartbeat and trying to decipher the meaning of the tattoos on his chest.
In the small hours of the morning—she guessed it must be 2 a.m. or so—her eyes opened and she was suddenly, irritatingly awake. Some nights she woke with a jarring disorientation, a terrible sense of dislocation, but tonight she knew precisely where she was and why.
Really, the why was the only thing that mattered, and the answer was: Oleg.
The hotel room’s window stood halfway open, letting in the cool night air. During the day the room baked, and even after dark it could remain muggy and stifling. Now, though, it was pleasant—almost chilly. If she let herself drift, just studied the stubble on Oleg’s jaw or the taut skin of his abdomen, she could almost forget the murder of Oscar Temple and the imminence of more bloodshed.
She caressed his chest, ran her fingers along the prominent lines of his rib cage. He shuddered in his sleep, edged slightly closer to her, and a small grunt came from deep inside him. Whatever Oleg had done, in slumber he looked i
Why had she fallen for him, and so quickly?
She knew the answer, or at least part of it. She’d grown up thinking her father was a soldier named Duffy, who’d died in the service. Her real father was a man named John Teller, who’d died on the side of a California roadway. Trinity was still angry with her mother for keeping that secret. No matter what sort of man John Teller had been, she wished she had known him.
Men were a puzzle she’d spent her whole life trying to solve. Most of the men she’d admired as a girl had disappointed her in one way or another. Some had been RIRA, which had seemed noble to her when she was too young to know any better, and others had been unreliable. Drunks or gamblers. Men who liked to keep their thoughts primitive and their emotions buried.
The boys she’d grown up with spent their time in pubs, making a joke of everything. If they treated a girl sweetly, it was only to rope her in. Once they had her pregnant and dependent, it was back to the pub with the same jokes and the same lads, a game of darts and a few pints of ale. Trinity had seen it happen far too many times.
In Oleg, she had found a man with a sense of adventure and a listless dissatisfaction with daily life that reflected her own. He wanted to go, and do, and act, and he wanted her at his side as a companion, not a conquest. Oleg had a brutal honesty that struck at the core of her. His life could be violent and bloody, and certainly dangerous, but he had never tried to hide that from her. From what Trinity could see, it had never even occurred to him that he should. This was a man she could respect… a man she could love.
Love had complicated the hell out of her life.
She slid her hand beneath the sheet, began to stroke the inside of his thigh. Using her fingernails, she scratched him gently, her pulse quickening.
“Mmm,” Oleg said, and he took a deep breath as he opened his eyes. “What are you doing, kotyonok?”
“I can’t sleep,” she whispered, heart full of him. Hand full of him.
“So because you ca
Trinity gri
Oleg drew her toward him… drew her on top of him.
“Does this seem like complaint to you?”
* * *
Louis Drinkwater woke with a gun to his head. Jax stood beside his bed, mostly in shadows, and pressed the cool metal of the gun barrel to the man’s temple. He gave a nudge, then another, speaking in a low, clear voice.
“Wake up, asshole.”
Drinkwater blinked awake, scowling and wiping at the spittle on the corner of his mouth, like his maid or somebody had disturbed his sleep. It wasn’t until Jax repeated the words that the guy seemed to get it. The real estate agent froze, eyes wide and staring. His breath quickened into short, choppy gasps, almost as if he might break down sobbing. He glanced at Opie, who’d been wearing a pained grimace all through the evening’s ride, thanks to the stitches in his side. Opie bared his teeth like he might rip out the real estate agent’s throat.
“Oh, God, what do you want?” the man whined. “Take… take anything. Just… just…”
Jax took a step back, gun still aimed at Drinkwater’s skull. The sheets were soft—high thread count—and whoever had decorated the place had expensive tastes and a sterile soul. The house was a stucco minicastle complete with turret room, the home of a moderately wealthy man in a neighborhood of moderately wealthy people, not rich enough to have high fences or any significant security. Drinkwater had an alarm company sign in the front yard, but they’d been able to see the keypad through the back door; he was one of the fools who paid for the alarm system but only used it when he was away from the home, confident no one would dare enter while he was in residence.