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“Back the hell off!” he roared. “Or the decision is made!”

  The man did not move, but neither did he shoot. He kept his gun trained on Jax, who glanced at Opie and wondered how many seconds they had before another Russian moved into view on that side of the pickup. They hadn’t had a long list of choices to begin with, but the list was getting shorter with every passing second.

  “Jax,” Opie muttered.

  The Russian called his name. “Time is running out. In moments, the decision will be taken from you. My men have witnessed the opportunities I gave you. My employer won’t blame me if you die here on the side of the road. Your children will cry for you, Mr. Teller, but I will sleep well tonight.”

  Jax stopped breathing. Anger blinded him for a second or two as images of his boys, Thomas and Abel, swam into his head.

  “I will count to five,” the Russian said. “One—”

  The countdown narrowed their options to only one. Jax glanced at Opie, found his friend already looking back at him, dark anger in Opie’s eyes that matched Jax’s own.

  “Two,” the Russian said.

  Opie helped keep him focused, keep him grounded. They had been best friends so long that Opie understood him better than anyone. When Jax has lost his brother and later his father … and when Opie’s first wife, Donna, had been killed … they had relied on each other. Hell, they’d always relied on each other.

  “Three.”

  “I’ve got the asshole to your left,” Opie whispered.

  Jax took a breath, relaxed his grip on the Glock, then popped up from behind the pickup’s bed. In one smooth motion, he took aim at the Russian who’d just brought his children into the conversation and shot him twice in the chest. One of the bullets punched all the way through, fanning bright crimson blood onto the grass behind him.

  Simultaneously, Opie stepped back from the pickup, leveled the shotgun behind Jax, and blasted the guy who’d come around the side. The Russian blew backward through the mist of his own blood. The boom rattled Jax’s brains as he ducked behind the pickup again, but then he and Opie were both running into the copse of pine trees. The Russians opened fire, and the pickup rocked with scores of gunshots that plinked metal and shattered glass. By then, Jax and Opie were in the midst of the trees, and Jax had begun to count the seconds in his head. How many until they caught up? How far to the highway, running at this angle through the trees?

  Opie crashed between two pines, and Jax raced to catch up.

  “We need a ride!” Opie said.

  The clamor had died down behind them, but Jax knew that didn’t mean the Russians were departing. They would be in pursuit. He glimpsed Highway 99 through the trees, spotted an eighteen-wheeler, a whining Suzuki motorcycle, its rider all in vivid blue, and a couple of cars racing in either direction. Their best hope was to force someone to stop—no one would willingly pull over for a couple of shaggy guys in biker cuts. Might be they had to jack a car.

  And I end up right back in Stockton.

  Shit. Whatever they were going to do, it would have to happen here. Their only real choice was to outlast the Russians, stay alive until the cops showed up, and then leave it to the lawyer.

  Across this section of Highway 99, the trees were thicker. They could get lost in there, at least for a while, maybe long enough to call the clubhouse and get Juice or Phil to come and pick them up before the cops tracked them down.

  A way out, maybe.

  A bullet grazed Jax’s right shoulder, and he swore as he stumbled. He dodged left and kept running, the skin on his back prickling with the sensation that every inch was a possible target. Opie’d heard him grunt when the bullet tagged him. He turned toward Jax.

  “Keep moving!” Jax snapped, and Opie didn’t need to be told twice.

  Bullets zipped by, punching the air and shaking tree branches. They broke from the edge of the pine grove twenty feet from the shoulder of Highway 99. A big rig thundered past, sucking gravel and someone’s discarded McDonald’s burger wrapper into its wake. A bullet hit the truck’s broad side. Another took out a window in a Mustang racing along the northbound side of the highway, and the car slammed on its brakes.

  Jax thought they might just have found themselves a ride.

  Heads low, he and Opie hurtled into the road.

  Amidst gunfire and the blare of car horns, they reached the median strip that divided the highway, only to hear tires skidding behind them and voices shouting loudly in Russian. Jax spun, ducking behind the guardrail at the median, and took aim with the Glock as a silver Lexus skidded to a halt on the grassy shoulder they had just vacated.

  “What the hell?” Opie said, dropping down beside him.

  A guy in an old Volvo shouted and honked as he drove by, maybe not noticing the guns. Opie racked another round in the shotgun’s chamber, and he and Jax both stared at the Lexus. More Russians poured out—no mistaking those icy eyes and granite features—but instead of opening fire on Jax and Opie, they turned their weapons on the men now emerging from the pine grove.

  “Check it out,” Opie said, and gestured back to the cut-through between the side road and highway—the gap where they had left Opie’s pickup.

  A black Escalade raced along the same dirt track and slid to a halt at the edge of the highway, and more armed men jumped out.

  Another big rig roared by. Jax closed his eyes and turned away as grit pelted his face. When it had passed and he turned to look again, the gunfire had ceased entirely. Russian voices rose in warning and anger as the newcomers took aim at the men from the Humvee and the white box truck. The two groups barked challenges at one another, and a huge, bearded man who’d climbed from the Escalade came forward. The man had presence, and the body language of both groups changed as he started shouting at them all.

  “The boss?” Opie asked.

  Jax nodded. “Someone’s boss.”

  The bearded man smoothed his tailored charcoal suit and gestured southward. Jax frowned, wondering what he might be telling the other Russians, but then he heard sirens in the distance and got the gist.

  “We gotta go,” Opie said, starting to turn. They needed to be in the woods on the other side of the highway and hidden deeply before the cops arrived.

  Jax stayed to watch the Russians, who had all begun to retreat. Sensing his hesitation, Opie waited as well. The first group kept their guns out as they backed awkwardly into the pine grove, then turned and hurried back through the trees to their vehicles. Three of the newcomers kept their weapons trained on the fleeing group as the rest climbed back into the Lexus and the Escalade. In moments, all four vehicles were pulling away.

  The sirens grew louder, but with the open highway, Jax thought the police could still be miles away.

  Maybe.

  “Come on,” he said, leaping the guardrail and running back the way they’d come. He wished he could toss the Glock away but knew how foolish that would be, with his prints all over it and the cops certain to search the pine grove.

  A car swerved to avoid killing Opie, the driver laying on the horn.

  The two of them ran through the trees, Jax gambling that none of the Russians were suicidal enough to have stayed behind to finish the job when the others had taken off and the sirens were growing louder.

  Opie’s pickup remained where they’d left it, jammed against a couple of pine trees, most of the windows blown out. The engine choked a bit as Opie turned the key in the ignition, but then it growled to life, and he threw it into drive, pulled back onto the side road, and hit the gas. They were headed away from the sirens, but Jax was sure cops would be coming the other way. No way they could stay out in the open with windows blown out. “There!” Jax said, pointing to a narrow, tree-lined street on the right.

  Opie spun the wheel, and the pickup groaned and slewed in gravel as they turned onto the back road. In seconds, they were out of sight of Highway 99, driving a curving lane that climbed gently into the same hills they had left behind such a short time ago.

  Tw
o miles up that lane, they found an old logging road that had been transformed into a hiking trail. Opie drove down it until they reached an unfamiliar leg of what Jax assumed was the river they’d fished in that morning.

  Opie backed the truck up to the water, where they wiped down their guns and hurled them as far out into the river as they could. Only then did Jax take out his cell phone and call the clubhouse. Chucky answered but put Bobby on the phone as soon as he heard the urgency and anger in Jax’s voice.

  When Jax ended the call, phone clutched in his hand, he turned to Opie. “Only thing we can do now is wait.”

  Opie nodded toward the hiking trail. “You think we oughta wait up that way, in case the cops get here before Juice does?”

  Jax took a deep breath and then nodded as he exhaled, trying to make sense of the shitstorm they had just been through.

  “What was that?” Opie asked as they started walking up the trail.

  “You asking me why we’re still alive?”

  “I’m asking why double the Russians didn’t mean double the bullets headed our way.”

  “That first bunch wanted us dead because they think we killed Putlova,” Jax said. “Maybe the second bunch didn’t like Putlova as much as the other guys did. Maybe we did those guys a favor.”

  “I thought we had solved our Russian problem,” Opie said, his boots scuffing the ground as he walked. “At least for a while.”

  “It’s a tough economy, Op. A job opens up, every asshole and his brother rushes in to try to fill it.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  Jax smiled. “If we’re smart enough, we steer clear and hope the morons kill each other.”

  3

  John Carney saw the redhead coming from fifty yards away. Not that he was a perv or anything. Hell, he hadn’t been on the prowl for twenty years, not even after his wife, Theresa, had left him back in ’04. Carney’d had a girlfriend or three, but always someone he’d met through friends. No online dating for him, and he certainly wasn’t going to pick up women in bars.

  Bars were off-limits if he wanted to keep his fifteen-year chip in his pocket. Sober life might get boring at times, but boring was preferable to dead.

  The Summerlin Gun Show had seen a dip in business the past few years, but he continued to set up out of loyalty to Oscar Temple, the fellow who’d run the thing from the beginning. This year Carney’s loyalty had paid off—the first two days of the Summerlin show had brought booming business. Americans had been growing paranoid about their right to bear arms being curtailed or taken away entirely, and any time that happened, business picked up. Nothing helped gun sales like talk of gun control.

  They were in an open field on Oscar Temple’s ranch, just at the western edge of Summerlin proper, spitting distance from Red Rock Canyon in one direction, and not too far a drive from downtown Las Vegas in the other. Ground zero for tourists and easy enough to find for gun enthusiasts.

  The redhead didn’t look like your typical gun enthusiast. And now that she’d come a little closer, he realized she wasn’t precisely a redhead. More of a strawberry-blonde. Lovely hue.

  She moved through the crowd like a shark, barely browsing the tables and tents as she studied the faces of the dealers more closely than she did the weapons they had for sale. Sunshine turned her hair into a reddish-gold halo. Her bottle-green tank top and tight, faded jeans showed off a shapely figure, but Carney noticed the confidence and determination in her walk more than the fullness of her breasts or the swing of her hips. At fifty-five, he certainly wasn’t beyond appreciating a lady’s attributes, but he’d always appreciated a formidable woman—even if she looked like she was barely more than a girl.

  The strawberry-blonde stopped at Hal Burlingame’s table, rapped on top of a glass case to get the old man’s attention, and cocked her hip as she asked him a question. Her smile was a mask of sweetness that appeared only as he turned toward her and vanished just as quickly when she had her answer.

  Burlingame turned and pointed to the rows of gun dealers.

  Only when the strawberry-blonde turned and spotted Carney—and smiled that same masquerade grin—did he realize Burlingame was pointing at him.

  He frowned in puzzlement as the young woman strode toward him. Customers were perusing his wares, and a guy who’d been asking him why he didn’t have a Barrett M82 .50 caliber sniper rifle for sale had started complaining about the government’s infringing on his rights, but Carney ignored them all.

  The cute little thing sauntered up to him, but the saunter didn’t fool him. This wasn’t a girl who sauntered.

  She turned her right hand into a finger pistol, and pointed at him as if she might shoot him with it.

  “You’d be John Carney?” she said.

  Even in those four simple words, he heard the Irish accent, and it took him back. His parents had been from Carrickfergus, just up the coast from Belfast, and he still had a bit of a brogue himself.

  “I’d be him, yes. What can I do for you, miss?”

  Lass, he told himself. If he still had any of the old Irish left in him, he’d have called her lass.

  Her smile was deadlier than any of the guns at his table.

  “Mr. Carney, a friend told me that you could help me, and I surely hope he was right. A lot’s ridin’ on it.”

  For the first time, Carney noticed the two men moving through the crowd behind her, cruising without shopping, just as she had done. They were hard men, almost as young as the Irish lass, with flinty eyes and thin lines for mouths. Cops? he wondered. Or the opposite?

  The urge to warn her bubbled up in his chest, but then he saw that she’d noticed him looking past her—seen the flash of alarm on his features—and seemed unconcerned.

  So they were with her.

  His brow furrowed. Whatever this girl was, she carried trouble with her. She carried the charm and the painful beauty of his heritage on her every word, and he knew right then that she wasn’t worth it.

  But he nodded anyway. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She looked around in a way that made it clear she hoped to speak to him without being overheard. The jackass looking for a .50 caliber sniper rifle had wandered away, mumbling, and so Carney led her to the back of his booth, the rear corner of one of his tables.

  “I’m told you can introduce me to Oscar Temple,” she said.

  Her pale skin shone brightly in the sun, and the light splash of freckles across her nose only added to her beauty. But when she mentioned Oscar, he saw the hard set of her jaw, and the confidence in her eyes slipped just like the mask of her smile, revealing fear and desperation. The mask returned an instant later, but Carney had seen behind it.

  “What’s your name, love?” he asked.

  “Caitlin Dunphy,” she said, in a tone that told him she was lying and that she didn’t care if he knew it.

  Carney swallowed hard and glanced around, worried now about who might be watching. Even the flinty-eyed men who were obviously her backup were not openly looking at them. Don’t do it, he told himself. You’re legit, John. Pure legit.

  If Caitlin Dunphy wanted his introduction to Oscar Temple, there would be nothing legal about whatever conversation followed. He ought to stay far, far away, tell the girl he couldn’t help her.

  But Oscar had been very good to him over the years, and he’d want whatever business the girl was bringing his way.

  And, God help him, John Carney had never been able to say no to an Irish girl.

  * * *

  Even in its early days, the city of Charming, California, had been uniquely suited to become home base for a motorcycle club. Most locales would have been less hospitable, troubled by the reputation biker gangs had for chaos, violence, and criminal pursuits. Once upon a time, gold rushers had settled into agriculture and the lumber business, founding a small community based on true pioneer spirit. After the San Francisco earthquake, scores of city folk relocated in search of a simpler lifestyle, but it wasn’t until the en
d of World War II that these different factions melded together and built a piece of true Americana.

  The people of Charming had two philosophies. One was, Live and let live, reflecting the pioneer spirit of the original settlers. The other was, Don’t shit where you eat. Maybe not in those words, but with the same effect. Charming did not like chain stores or shopping malls. Most of the real estate developments were homegrown—their investors from Charming—and most of the businesses downtown were mom-and-pop operations. Through the tumultuous second half of the twentieth century, Charming had changed very little, and that was just how folks liked it.

  SAMCRO had been in town for more than thirty years, running Teller-Morrow Automotive Repair nearly as long. The original partners in the business—John Teller and Clay Morrow—had been two of SAMCRO’s First Nine, and when the Sons of Anarchy became involved with the illegal gun trade, T-M was the legitimate front for those operations. For years the chief of police, Wayne Unser, had looked the other way, and the locals considered the club upstanding members of the community.

  That had been getting harder and harder over the past couple of years. Chief Unser had retired, and the entire Charming Police Department had been eliminated, with local law enforcement falling to the county sheriff. Now SAMCRO had gotten involved in the drug trade, and its relationship with Charming had begun to unravel. As president of SAMCRO, Clay Morrow had been grasping at the frayed strips of that unraveling bond, but for every one he managed to tie back down, two more tore loose.

  It had really begun to piss him off.

  Clay sat at the head of the enormous conference table in the Chapel. Chain-link fence topped with barbed wire ran the perimeter of the auto-repair yard’s property. In the middle of the yard were the garage, office, and clubhouse. With the bloody-scythed reaper carved into its meeting table, the Chapel was the beating heart of SAMCRO, and by extension every Sons of Anarchy charter in the world.

  “Where’s Juice?” Clay asked, shooting a dark look at Bobby Munson, the rotund, bearded, graying Elvis impersonator who had become the conscience of the club. For years, Clay had considered Bobby one of his greatest assets, had trusted him for his cool head and his ability to see all sides of an argument. Recently, those same traits had become inconvenient for Clay, and now he felt the urge to blame Bobby for everything.