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  And that’s who Steel God was sleeping with right then and there.

  Lafitte sat up, feeling like a slack ass. If Steel God went down, the rest would take it out on Lafitte. He went to fling off the quilt, but Kristal’s hand pressed against his chest. His heart beat way harder than it should’ve. She hissed Shhhhhh and patted and eased him back against the mattress.

  “She’s not going to do anything tonight. It’ll be a while. And I’m not all that sure she’s wrong.”

  What he’d been waiting for. Kristal playing both sides, which made perfect sense. It wasn’t his place to squeal on her for that. Steel God even admired her for it, told Lafitte when he first signed on that smart people were valuable out in the wilderness. They’re interested enough in surviving to know who to stand with: “Good way to check the club’s temperature. Just watch the smart people, who they’re talking to, all that.”

  She rubbed her leg against his stomach, laid her head on his chest. “Listen, I’m saying he’s like the old king from Lord of the Rings. You see that?”

  “Fantasy shit. Not my thing.”

  “Well this old king got under the spell of a bad advisor, sent by the evil wizard? It turned him all comalike, making him depend on this bad advisor even over his own children. So then the hero busts in and chases off the weasel, which makes the old king young again. See?”

  What the hell was she talking about? “Keep going.”

  “Maybe God’s getting too old for this. Too sick. He needs people he can trust to help keep him safe, but what if he’s too stubborn to see that? What if he had a hero to chase away the cobwebs in his head and convince him to let someone else take over? It’ll have to happen eventually anyway.”

  Yeah, Kristal was smart, all right. A goddamned politician. The problem with her plan was that it assumed the men of the MC would feel okay with something like that. These guys relied on the old ways, the law of the jungle—when the alpha male got too old to fend off the young lions, they took over by force and banished the old fart, left him to fend off the scavengers on his own.

  Lafitte huffed, wanted to see if she would keep going.

  She did. “I’m saying that over the next few months, just point out that maybe he needs more help than he used to. Be a little overprotective. He’ll get it.”

  “And crack my skull.”

  “No, he’s smarter than that. He’s going to wonder, sure. But you’re a rock. The only reason you’d hide something from him is if you thought it would fuck him up. So he’ll think that and try to figure it out on his own. By then, you’ll have more day to day control, so—”

  “Kristal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t you just leave? Don’t you plan on leaving anyway?”

  She lifted her chin. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Jesus, come on. No, not that. All this sounds so complicated. What do you get out of it?”

  She squirmed, made sexy little noises. Lafitte’s ass throbbed, the cold and the exhaustion getting to him. Kristal said, “Well, it would be nice to ride with the leader of the club, you know? Be nice to.”

  Lafitte grinned. That old song Leader of the Pack spun through his head. Those old gangs, nice and clean like in the Brando movie. Yeah, so much less complicated back then. He liked Kristal like this, scheming. A lost cause and a bad idea, but still scheming none the less. Reminded him of a friend back in Minnesota, young woman Kristal’s age. A woman who died to protect Lafitte. She was killed by a Homeland Security agent. Lafitte had a chance to take that guy out. One trigger squeeze and a pointblank shot. But he couldn’t do it. Maybe next time.

  He liked Kristal enough that night to stroke his hand down to her hip, ease it under the waistband of her skirt. Was going to suggest more when he heard something. Not really heard so much as sensed. Like a mosquito, or was it a bee. Buzzing, definitely.

  “You hear that?”

  Kristal said, “Hm?” She covered his hand with hers, urged him on.

  “No, there’s something.” Stopped, started again. “Hear it?”

  “It’s like a cell phone on vibrate. Have you got a cell phone?”

  He sure as hell did. A thin little number he kept in the pockets of his jeans. Only two people had the number, and in the eighteen months since one of those people had handed the thing over to him, it had never rang. Until right then.

  He was out of bed, the world not at all cold any more, scrounging for his jeans in the moonlight. Kristal sat up and bunched the quilt around her shoulders.

  “You never told me you had a cell phone,” she said.

  “I never use it.”

  “Then why do you have it?”

  He found his jeans. The buzzing had stopped. He freed it from the pocket, saw that the message light was on. He flipped it open, scrolled for missed calls. Only one, and it was from Layla, the dispatcher at the sheriff’s department he had worked in before making his life a total mess. Only she and the sheriff could call him, and only in an emergency. A specific emergency, really.

  “Who was it?” Kristal said.

  “Someone telling me to come home.”

  TWO

  Maybe the weather down South was nicer, the food as fine as he’d always heard, and maybe the money was sweet, but it was still the worst promotion ever. Luckily Franklin Rome had been able to pick his own purgatory—New Orleans—but he knew good and well that his being pulled back into the FBI from Homeland Security after the beating he took from Billy Lafitte in Minnesota was meant as punishment, regardless of the fancy title “Assistant Liaison for Domestic Terrorism” and the office that was larger than the shotgun house he was renting on the edge of the French Quarter.

  Not just the beating, but the fact that he got carried away in pursuing Lafitte at the expense of other leads. His gut told him he was on the right track. Lafitte was the key. No matter how the Bureau twisted the evidence to make it look otherwise, even after the little band of wannabe terrorists, once captured, said Lafitte was definitely not one of their members, Rome still had that gut feeling he trusted more than his own senses. After all, a good magician can fool you. Rome was tired of getting fooled.

  When the “promotion” came, Rome saw the sleight of hand in that, too. No way they could demote or dismiss one of their top black agents without a lot of scrutiny and politics coming into play. So they promoted him and offered him a choice of locales, as long as none of them were Minnesota or Washington D.C. Fine, sure, that was part of the game he signed up to play. His turn at bat, he chose New Orleans. They asked why. He said he loved jazz. Said his wife would love the restaurants. Turned out she loved the abundant rum and the drag shows more, still punishing Rome for running off to Minnesota while leaving her bored in Washington D.C., and then for backhanding her once after he’d returned to her constant complaints. He’d tried to apologize, desperate to repair the damage, but she ignored him and kept on sipping Hurricanes.

  The truth: Rome chose New Orleans because Lafitte’s ex-wife lived in Mobile, Alabama, only a few hours drive east. If anything would bring that traitorous fucker out of hiding, it would be putting some pressure on the Missus. It worked wonders the first time he’d tried it on Lafitte in an interrogation room back in Minnesota.

  Rome was driving over to her place to have a one-on-one now that his hand-picked agents had made first contact after a few months of research, trying to find an airtight way to bring her in on this without tripping the alarm of the watchdogs. Even the appearance of him taking another shot at Lafitte might get him “promoted” even further. Maybe questioning the ex-wife, Ginny, would ruffle some fur, but he was sure they’d minded their dots and crosses. He found the case through the back door—Lafitte and his partner, Paul Asimov, had been suspected of killing a gang leader back before Katrina, but there was no body, no evidence. It was as if the banger just vanished. Another cold case, and Rome had recruited some go-getters he manipulated into loyalty, pretending he had no idea about the connection to Lafitte,
then asking his people to chase leads on the down-low.

  So far, so good. Green pines all along the interstate, much more lush than the Midwestern prairie. And the balmy weather lasted right on through most of the fall, so the whole thing was working out much better than he had expected.

  His cell phone rang. His right-hand man, Agent McKeown. Rome answered, “Yes?”

  “Sir, I’ve just received a call from our source up North. He thinks they’ve started trying to reach our subject, probably last night.”

  “Fine, good news. Any details?”

  “Apparently they weren’t able to get him on the phone. Had to leave a message.”

  “And we didn’t get the number?”

  “Not yet.”

  Rome had figured it out. After the yahoos in Yellow Medicine County had squealed to D.C. about what Rome was doing with Lafitte, they let the bastard go. First thing Lafitte did was scout out where Rome was staying and nearly kill him. Whatever it was that kept Lafitte from pulling the trigger—attack of conscience or Hand of God—Rome hoped it meant his way was the right way.

  Then the brass yanked the reins, ordered him to cease and desist. But what they couldn’t do was keep a young deputy who had FBI dreams from talking to Rome.

  “So who tipped them off down here?”

  “Not sure, sir. If I had to guess, I’d say the wife’s mother. I think she’s always kept a channel open, because of the kids.”

  “You can go at a moment’s notice if needed, right?”

  McKeown paused. “Won’t that look suspicious?”

  “Plenty of cover. I’ve got it all worked out.”

  “We could wait for him to come down here.”

  The agent’s protests bugged Rome. Or maybe McKeown was asking for all the details because he was recording Rome, looking to make his mark in the Bureau that way.

  Rome said, “Agent McKeown, you do remember why we’re doing this, correct? And you do remember why I chose you?”

  That quieted McKeown. Rome thought he heard a little beep on the other side. Maybe the agent turning off his recorder. “Sure, always.”

  “You watch, and then you follow. I want to know where he is every second of his trip down here, who helps him, what sorts of hotels he stays in at night. That makes sense, right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’ll be with his wife. Try not to call unless it’s urgent.” Rome hung up. Sniffed. Little pissant wanted to play games? Rome had discovered that McKeown was having an affair with a ferderal judge’s wife. A little May-December action, as she had twenty-one years on him, but she’d spent most of those years in gyms and spas, it looked like. The judge was growing suspicious, put a private eye on his wife’s trail. The private eye took his photos, as pornographic as anything behind the counter at your corner convenience store, but then tried to extort the wife. McKeown went to shit, drinking way too much and threatening to blow his career by going after the PI.

  So the agent confided in Rome, who had been looking for a few people he could trust to help him out with his “hobby”. No problem, Rome told the guy. I’ll clear that right up if…

  Long story short: the PI ended up with a broken jaw, a camera in pieces, and a promise from Rome that if the PI said or hinted or even thought of telling anyone about the judge’s wife, he’d end up lost in the system, moving from prison to prison, a man without a name. And damned if it didn’t work.

  Yeah, McKeown. Don’t forget who saved your ass.

  In Minnesota, something like this would’ve depressed Rome a little, having to worry about your right-hand man flipping you off. But down South with the sun filtering through pine needles, he felt energized, kind of like Superman. McKeown? No match at all.

  *

  Rome arrived at Ginny Lafitte’s apartment complex in Mobile, found the right building, and climbed out of the car. He looked up to see her waiting outside on the second floor balcony. She stood with arms crossed tight, lips pressed tight. Rome read the body language—scared and angry all rolled into one. Pretty much the proper response to having a couple of Feds show up at your house and tell you they’re investigating the possibility that your ex-husband killed a man when he was on the police force in Gulfport, Mississippi, and that if you, Ms. Lafitte, know anything about this and haven’t spoken up, well, we hope we don’t have to pursue charges.

  Angry and scared were good, Rome thought. Both made people say things they otherwise wouldn’t. Plus, he was going hoping that she’d hold a grudge over Lafitte getting her older brother killed. Sheriff Graham Hoeck had been kind enough to give the disgraced Lafitte a job as one of his deputies after the post-hurricane debacle. Lafitte ended up pulling him into his personal vendetta against a few grassroots Islamic terrorists whom Rome swore had recruited Lafitte, and this vigilante crusade was him trying to cover his ass. Hoeck died in a cheap hotel room in Detroit, blown up by a suicide bomber. Lafitte and his girlfriend, in the same room at the time, came out barely scratched. Sure, he had nothing to do with it. The official record reflected that Lafitte had tried to save Hoeck. Rome knew better, and hoped Ginny Lafitte did, too.

  He buttoned his suitcoat and made his way up the walkway, up the stairs, until he stood face to face with Ginny Lafitte, her arms still self-hugging, probably giving herself bruises. He held out his hand. She unlatched, shook it.

  Rome smiled. “Thanks for agreeing to see me. And I’m sorry about the way my fellow agents approached you. Really, there wasn’t any need for threats. No, I’m sure we can handle this pretty quickly and painlessly.” Waited a moment, then added, “I’m sorry for the loss of your brother. I worked with him briefly. He was a first-rate lawman.”

  She nodded, flicked her eyes around. If she didn’t know about the gangbanger Billy shot, she sure as hell knew something else that would be worthwhile to him. She wore her hair back, a few strands spitting out here and there. He could tell why she didn’t style it. Her hand was shaking like she was a human jackhammer. Bags under her eyes. Probably a nice looking Southern belle on any other occasion. Today she was doing her best to look washed-out and nervous. Why else would she wear an Auburn University hoodie sweatshirt when the temp here in November was still damn near eighty?

  “Come on in,” she said, then she turned for the door to her apartment, tried to get a grip on the knob. Her fingers slipped off. She tried again, yanked her hand back ike she’d been shocked. Cradled her finger. “Damn. Broke a nail.”

  Rome grinned, made a reassuring hum, then reached for the door. “Let me get that for you.”

  THREE

  Steel God wanted to get out of the farm house around sunrise before anyone noticed they were there. He’d chosen this place wisely, secluded from the closest neighbors by long stretches of barren field bordered by windbreaks of trees that still hadn’t lost all their leaves yet. He had his people leave two at a time at thirty minute intervals and told them they’d meet at sundown at one of their “safe zones” about seventy miles south. He also told them they needed to push their hogs for a mile before starting them up. They pissed and griped, but in the end they did as they were told.

  Lafitte waited, not sure how to tell God or Kristal, not sure they would understand. If they didn’t understand, he was prepared to fight his way out. The message had been simple: Your family. Call now. He couldn’t call back, not without giving away the game to whoever might be looking for him.

  He’d already infuriated Kristal, turning into a typical biker instead of his usual friendly self when she asked why he had a cell phone, and if he was still a cop, and why wouldn’t he answer her. He had said, “If you need to know, I’ll tell you.”

  “I think you tell me now or I go tell God.”

  He knuckled her. Split the skin near her eye a bit. Not much. Her face glowed red where he’d struck. The rest of it boiled. Those eyes, man, he was afraid to fall asleep.

  But what the hell else could he do? He took her by the wrist, bent down, whispered, “I don’t need you. If need be, I
can get rid of you tonight and no one would ask any questions. Or if they did, not out loud. You want to know? You earn my goddamned trust.” Tightened his grip. She yelped. “But if you ever threaten to squeal on me again just because you aren’t in the know, I’ll do things to you worse than what we watched happen to Red Gator. Do you understand me?”

  Kristal breathed in sharply through her nose, but she finally nodded. He let go of her wrist. Lafitte hated himself for saying it, and it was much more likely he’d just let her off at a small town somewhere way the hell off the major roads and tell her to get gone, go find a better life. Too smart to be this stupid. It might not matter anyway. He’d be far down the road by nightfall and she could tell Steel God whatever the fuck she wanted, since Lafitte was going to tell him first.

  Before falling asleep, Kristal had rolled back towards him, draped a leg over and rubbed his crotch with her thigh. “You might as well fuck me one last time, because you ain’t getting any of this ever again.”

  Whatever. He told her, “I can’t get it up. Go to sleep.”

  Next morning, Kristal was quiet but not exactly angry. She asked how he slept, asked if they could stop for a bowl of chili somewhere today.

  Lafitte waited until he had dressed. He checked the cell phone again. Another message, same as the first. Kristal watched him put it back into his pocket. Not a word.

  “Babe, you need to ride with someone else today. I think Richie Rich is free, pretty harmless.” He was a new kid in the group, a five-foot-three trust fund baby with a temper. Real name was Trey Baum, and he’d gotten kicked out of his fraternity at San Francisco state, came looking to join a biker gang. Steel God rescued him from some Mongols who would’ve kicked his teeth out, broken his legs, but he let the kid fight off a couple and take some blows first. Tough little bastard. Richie didn’t have an old lady, and since Steel God had elevated the status of women, he couldn’t force anyone to sleep with him. A couple of young broads had their eyes on him, but they loved watching him squirm too much to give him release. If Kristal rode with Richie, it would make those bitches snap to attention. Consider it a favor. A parting gift.