Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(103)

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thank you. Keep you safe, too.”

Show hugged her and kissed the top of her head. Then, looking at Badger, he nodded toward the bikes, and they headed over together.

Cory and Nolan were outside with the families. As the men headed to their bikes, they followed Isaac’s lead, each stopping to hug Havoc’s old lady and eldest son.

As the Horde rolled out of the lot, away from their home, Badger looked back to see all the women standing in a line, holding hands. Nolan was not with them.



oOo



Today was not the day that they would face the Perros, so Badger was able to relax a little on the ride.

He used the time to think through the club’s situation and its immediate future.

They were riding to Tulsa, to meet with the full Brazen Bulls club and to finalize some details of their plan. They were staying the night in the Bulls clubhouse. Tomorrow, they would rise early and ride to Amarillo, where they would meet up with the Scorpions LA—such as they were, with their whole club in disarray. All told, there would be twenty men facing down a Perros crew in Amarillo. They would likely outnumber that crew and win the first skirmish. But Amarillo was Perros turf outright. And they were not turning back after taking out the Perros at the pick. They were riding deeper in. Going for Santaveria himself.

David Vega had, so far, come through in every way he’d said he would. The Horde’s lawyer had gone through the paperwork and told Isaac and Len that it was a good deal, and that what Vega had told them— six to twelve years, at Marion, housed together—was what he’d delivered. He’d even added the bonus of an early January intake date, giving them the holidays with their family before they went in. Isaac had signed his deal as soon as the lawyer had cleared it. Len had signed his, too, over Isaac’s vehement protests. Seaver had not yet left office, though Vega still promised it would happen. Len wouldn’t wait, though; he did not want there to be any chance that Isaac would go in alone. Now, it was left to Vega’s sense of honor whether Seaver would be forced out.

Shortly after Isaac had signed his deal, Vega let him know that Santaveria would be in Amarillo. He’d convinced the Perro boss that, with the pipelines all in trouble, he needed to meet with his men and shore up morale. Vega had also told Isaac how many men they could expect between Santaveria and the Horde.

Amarillo was a Perro Blanco hub, a nexus for several pipelines, where product brought up from Baja circled back into Perro hands for repackaging and distribution. They had a large plant, a repurposed factory, where workers who were essentially enslaved—probably delivered to the Perros in trucks with false walls —packaged drugs into decoys ranging from electronics to stuffed bears.

Over all that industry, inside and out, fifty men armed with high-caliber assault weapons kept watch.

Fifty. Against their twenty—assuming that everyone in the Horde, Bulls, and Scorps survived the first fight, and assuming that the Bulls and the Scorps stayed with them for the inward push.

Inside the factory, the Horde would find Santaveria and his four personal guards. If they could get that far. Luckily, one of those guards would be Vega himself. If they could dispatch that last line of defense between Santaveria and the Horde, then he would be at their mercy. Badger had no idea what Isaac had planned. But he wanted it to be slow, painful, and bloody.

Badger knew it was still basically a suicide mission they were on. So much had to go just right for them to have any chance at success, and nothing yet had gone right for them where the cartel was concerned. But it didn’t matter. If they didn’t get free of Santaveria’s claws, then they might as well be dead. And their women and children would never be safe.

Their children. Since a few nights ago, when Adrienne had not let him go and he’d come inside her, the thought that they might be making a child together danced always at the edges of his consciousness.

Sometimes it took the spotlight. When he watched her with Millie and Joey, for instance. He’d seen it before, that innate mothering she seemed to have, the obvious bond she had with the twins. It was seriously hot. The thought the he— he—could be a father rang his bell.

He had to get home. He had to. The Horde was due for some luck. They had paid, were paying, for their mistakes and transgressions. They were not the bad guys. They had to win this time.

They had to.



oOo



The Brazen Bulls’ clubhouse was a lot different from the Horde’s—the Horde had a huge space that had once been the home of Signal Bend Construction. The Bulls had a red brick building that seemed like it had once held four small apartments and had been converted into a single, two story facility. They were located in a rough area near downtown Tulsa, with a vacant lot that they’d turned into parking lot and patio on one side, and the garage and gas station they owned on the other. Unused to the city, Badger found that his nerves jangled at the steady noise and traffic.

As soon as they arrived at the clubhouse, they all went into the Bulls chapel and met. Isaac and Show were offered seats at the table, near Becker and Eight Ball; the rest of the Horde, and the two displaced Bulls, stood on the periphery.

Spread on the table before the club leaders was a paper map of Amarillo and its surrounding area.

Becker had marked the pickup point, where they collected the repackaged weed from the Perros and started their run from Texas to Missouri. It was clear to all in the room that Isaac, Becker, Show, and Eight Ball had been through this plan several times. As they explained it to the rest of the men, they fell into the easy rhythm of rote memory.