Authors: Jamie Jeffries
Almost as big a hurdle was where they’d live. Dylan had talked about getting the boys out of Dodge, but that was before he discovered his heritage. Would he want to stay now? They hadn’t talked about it since Wanda’s revelations. Alex had promised him she would make up her mind before he brought his brothers home about being with him. He hadn’t said it, but she assumed being with him meant marriage and mothering his brothers after his mom was gone.
Suddenly, their homecoming seemed imminent, and there was too little time for her to consider every angle. She was going to have to go with her gut. Alex hated that phrase. Wasn’t that what everyone did, ultimately, when there were too many variables to make a reasoned decision?
At least she could talk to him about moving away from Dodge and where he might want to go. Was he committed to the Park Service, or were there other places where he could use his skills? She thought there were National Parks near bigger towns where she could pursue her dreams as well, but would that suit him?
There were too many questions, too much for her to remember, when she had over an hour to let her thoughts wander on her commute home. She thought again about getting a little digital recorder. Now it looked like an essential item to have. She would ask her dad for one for Christmas. One more thing to remember.
Frustrated at her failure to come to any decisions, Alex deliberately turned her thoughts to what she could do to help Dylan and Wanda. Since research was her forte, she decided that digging into whatever she could find on the internet about the cartels, especially
Los Reyes del Desierto
, would be the best help she could give him. Maybe talk to a few law enforcement people for the perspective of someone who had direct experience.
It was strange her dad hadn’t covered much about them in the paper, if they were that active in town. Hell, she could be talking to cartel people all day long and she’d never know it. She hadn’t seen many scruffy, shifty-looking Latinos in town. Plenty of Latinos, but they dressed like everyone else, were well-groomed, drove the same kinds of cars, and sent their kids to school. Would cartel members send their kids to school?
Alex had reached the point of paying more attention to her inner dialog than the road when the intersection between Interstate 8 and Arizona highway 85 came up. This was her turn; she’d be home in forty-five minutes. Her dad was probably still at the Rattler. He usually was, on her school nights, these days.
She wasn’t in the mood for a burger, and Jen didn’t have much else that resembled dinner on the menu. Alex decided she’d have a bowl of canned soup when she got home, and then get started on the research she needed to do on web traffic.
TWENTY
8:00 p.m.
Dylan realized that his first mistake was not looking behind the Stars to see if motorcycles were there and to get an idea who was inside. His second one was walking in alone.
Light was dim inside the unfamiliar bar, but he got the impression of quite a few people inside. He’d already had his limit of one beer at Jen’s, so he didn’t have a good plan for what came next. If he had a companion, he could have ordered water and the server would have assumed he was the designated driver. Since he didn’t, he tried the next best thing, a Coke.
“A Coke,” said the server, making it sound like a ridiculous request. Several people turned around and looked at him and, as the server walked away, one of them came over to Dylan’s table and sat, uninvited. The guy had to be pushing three-hundred, but he was tall enough the weight didn’t make him look sloppy. The long, tangled gray hair and beard did, though. Dylan had never seen him before.
“Maybe you didn’t know, sonny, but this is a bar. If you aren’t old enough to drink, you should probably go somewhere else.”
Dylan considered his uninvited guest for a moment, before offering a mild reply. “Something wrong if a guy just wants a Coke? It quenches my thirst better.”
At that, more people turned, and some of them began laughing. The guy at his table leaned forward, jabbing the table with his forefinger to make his point. “It’s a pussy drink. Let me get you a beer, buddy.”
A hush in the laughter gave Dylan the idea that his next answer would be important, though he didn’t yet understand what was happening. “Uh, sure. A beer sounds great.” He’d nurse it along. “Coors Light?” he asked.
A loud guffaw from several people meant he’d made another blunder. What the hell was this? Had he stumbled into a frat party? Taking a good look at the man sitting at his table, he reconsidered that. The guy had to be pushing three-hundred, but he was tall enough that the weight didn’t make him look sloppy. The long, tangled gray hair and beard did, though. Dylan had never seen him before.
“I’m Dylan Chaves,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. The big man just looked at it. Finally, he took it in a paw that resembled a bear’s and squeezed Dylan’s hand until Dylan thought the small bones might break. “JT,” he said.
“Nice to meet you, JT,” Dylan said, feeling a bit more comfortable. “I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
“You live in town?” JT asked.
“Just recently moved back. I grew up here. Thought I knew everyone.”
“You must not be a big drinker,” said JT. “I bought this bar six months ago.”
Dylan concealed his surprise that the other man owned the Stars. He wondered what had happened to the previous owner, who he remembered as being old and frail when Dylan was in high school.
“Fred die or something?” he asked.
JT apparently found that amusing, as he emitted another guffaw, echoed by his posse who now surrounded the table. A server slammed a pitcher of amber-colored beer on the table, followed by a tall mug that was almost as big as the pitcher. JT poured down the middle as a head formed, and stopped just in time.
The beer in front of Dylan was at least twenty ounces, he estimated. One and a half over his limit. And the pitcher still had some in it. He picked up the mug, raised it in JT’s direction, and sipped. The flavor was good, he had to admit, but it was a much stronger brew than he ever allowed himself to drink. With his mother’s alcoholism and the general difficulty his people had with handling alcohol, he didn’t take chances.
“Drink up, Dylan Chaves,” shouted JT, giving another belly laugh the rest of the patrons echoed. With no other choice but to try to get out without fighting, Dylan took a larger drink. He’d have to sleep it off in his pickup, probably, or maybe call Alex when she got home. If he finished the mug, much less the pitcher, he’d be in no condition to drive. Something was going on here he didn’t understand, and wouldn’t likely understand if he didn’t keep his wits about him. But JT was making it impossible for him to do that. He needed to work it out before the beer hit his brain cells.
Dylan smiled, lifted his mug again in a silent toast to JT, and risked a look around. His eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and he could see there were at least a dozen men who could have been JT’s brothers, though some were less massive than he was. The clue was in their sleeveless leather vests. Their patch was a rendition of a devil with a top hat. Los Diablos was emblazoned on a curved patch that underlined the rather dapper-looking devil.
Motorcycle club, just as he’d thought, and worse, outlaw MC, from the look of it. No Latinos, but the mixture of white and black looked about equal. Almost all, even the whites, sported dreadlocks or the tangles JT wore. Maybe dreadlocks under construction. One of these guys had undoubtedly been the guy Dylan had followed here a few months ago. He didn’t see the Latino who had driven the Jeep, but it was pretty clear what he’d walked into.
And it seemed they knew him. How much trouble was he in?
No one made an aggressive move toward him, and JT lost interest in him before his beer was half finished, though Dylan didn’t dare walk out without finishing - and paying for - the entire pitcher. Maybe they’d leave him alone after hassling him a little bit. He sipped at his beer, hoping that if he drank it slowly enough it wouldn’t hit him so hard. When his mug was almost finished, JT walked by again, tipped the rest of the pitcher into it, and then leaned down, resting his hands almost into Dylan’s space at the table.
“What brings you here, Ranger Chaves?” he asked.
“Just lookin’ for a drink,” Dylan slurred, forgetting he tried to order Coke at first.
“That so? Well, we’re kind of particular about who we drink with, Smokey. We’ll let it slide this time, seein’ as you’re such a good customer. But, you may want to stay at your own bar after this.”
Dylan nodded, saluted JT with his glass one last time and tried to drain the rest of the beer, spilling some he couldn’t swallow fast enough.
“Stick to Coke, lightweight,” JT laughed. “I’m going to have a couple of the boys escort you home, ‘cause you seem to be a little confused.”
“Tha’s awright, I’m-a sleep it off in the truck,” he said.
“No, that won’t work, Smokey. We don’t allow loitering. You can drive home, just take it slow.”
With no other choice, Dylan paid his tab and walked out with two Diablos, one on each side of him. He climbed into the pickup and fumbled with his keys a bit before starting his pickup. Two Harleys followed him out of the parking lot and all the way home, with him driving about ten miles an hour and drifting all over the road. He sighed in relief as he pulled into his spot in the driveway and waved at his escort. It wouldn’t occur to him until much later that the motorcycle gang now knew where he lived.
TWENTY-ONE
9:00 p.m.
Alex was right about her dad not being home when she got there. She opened a can of tomato soup and put it on the stove to heat while she made a grilled cheese sandwich. It was only nine, not too late to call Dylan, but she didn’t get an answer. She left a short message, “Love you, need to talk.” That shouldn’t scare him as badly as he’d scared her with that ‘I need some space’ business. Wondering where he was, she set her bowl of soup and sandwich on the table and poured a glass of milk.
As she ate her dinner, she jotted down the ideas she’d been thinking about on her drive home, putting a big star beside the ‘ask Daddy for digital recorder for Christmas’ item. One of her talents was a natural tendency to organize information, which would help her in her chosen career tremendously. Her list turned out to be very well organized, as she wrote down each item in order of priority.
Under ‘Dylan’, she wrote
talk to him about where to live
,
check out parenting book from library
, and
what about religion and heritage?
These were subjects for people who were serious about their relationship. She was far more serious about Dylan than she’d meant to be, it seemed. All the more reason to get her ducks in a row about school, the blog, and the newspaper.
Since Dylan hadn’t called her back by the time she was through eating her dinner and putting away the mess she’d made, Alex went into her room to get started on her homework. Tomorrow and the weekend promised to be busy between helping Dylan, getting ready for Nana and Aunt Jess to arrive for Thanksgiving, and doing the research she’d been assigned for her extra credit.
The house was too quiet, so she set her iPod to shuffle and blasted some music as she created a spreadsheet for photography class on types of cameras and their capabilities. Around eleven, her dad came in and asked her to turn the music down. When she saw what time it was, she turned it off instead and got ready for bed.
It had been a long day but tomorrow was a light one, and she expected to see Dylan tomorrow afternoon. She felt good — productive and content — as she drifted off to sleep with her phone set to vibrate. It didn’t wake her when Dylan called at midnight. He left a message, but she couldn’t understand a word of it when she listened to it the next morning.
TWENTY-TWO
Friday, 6:30 a.m.
Dylan expected the hangover the next morning. At breakfast, Ange took one look at him and began laughing, until he clapped his hands over his ears and made a pained face that alarmed her.
“What did you do? No, never mind, I know what you did. I guess the question is why?”
“It isn’t what you think, Ange...” he began.
“You mean you
don’t
have a hangover?” Her sarcasm was tinged with humor.
“Oh yeah, I have a hangover, but it’s not my fault.”
“Oh, so someone forced you to drink too much?” More sarcasm. He wished she’d just shut up and let him tell the story. Not that she was likely to believe it with that attitude.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, they did. I had a choice between drinking a pitcher and getting my ass kicked by a bunch of bikers.” He screwed up his face, and gave her a defiant eyebrow lift. Now she could scoff as much as she wanted.
“No shit? Bill’s been wondering about those guys.” Bill was Ange’s boyfriend, a deputy sheriff, but a good guy as far as Dylan knew. Not like that ass-hat Kevin Thurston.
“What’s he been wondering?” he asked.