Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(82)

I want to show you something.” Kneeling on the barstool, she opened the book flat on the bar and carefully turned the pages. The book seemed to be alphabetically arranged, showing watercolor images of common wild animals. She got to the Bs and stopped, pointing to an animal. “Look, Badger. That’s you.” Drawing her finger under the word ‘badger,’ she continued, “Baaah-duh-jer. But you don’t look like that at all.”

“Thanks, Gia. I don’t think so, either.”

“I like your name, though. Badgers are cute.”

Ignoring the laughter of his brothers, Badger winked at the little girl who was now scowling at the men around her.

She turned the next page. “Here, Daddy. Look.”

The page showed four different bears: black, brown, Grizzly, and Kodiak, three with cubs, the Grizzly standing upright. Isaac looked over his daughter’s shoulder. “Yeah, G. Bears.”

Gia huffed irritably. “But look. Like the puppies.”

Isaac looked again, his hand resting over Gia’s neck. “Yeah, they do look a little like bears.”

“I think the one you like looks just like this one. Koh-duh-eye-ak.”

“Ko-d ee-ak,” Isaac corrected her. “Yeah, I see that. Good eye, squirt.”

“Ko-d ee-ak. Kodiak. Do we get a puppy?” Gia closed the book and turned to her father, her eyes wide and serious. Badger thought he would hate to ever have to say no to that face. Especially since Gia was an absolutely epic tantrum-thrower.

“We do. We’re taking the one you think looks like a Kodiak home with us.”

Without warning, Gia sailed from her knees right into Isaac’s arms. He caught her with barely a flinch.

“Yay, Daddy! Yay!” She grabbed his beard and kissed his cheek. “His name is Kodiak. You can call him Kodi for short.”

“Maybe we should ask your mamma and Bo if they have ideas for a name.”

“No. His name is Kodi.” She squirmed. “Okay. Put me down.”

Isaac did as he was told, and Gia ran over to the puppies. He watched her for a minute, then turned back to his brothers. “Jesus Christ. She’s just starting kindergarten, and already she’s smarter than me. I’m gonna have to lock her up when she hits her teens. There’ll be no managing her.”

Suddenly, Lilli was behind him. “Maybe if you tried, you’d have some success. I hear we have a puppy?”

Isaac turned and pulled her close. “Uh, yeah.” He grinned. “I love you, baby.”

“Uh huh. You housebreaking him? Training him?”

Isaac just kept grinning, his eyebrows up innocently.

“Right.” She gave his braid a tug. “You owe me, love. I’ll be collecting soon. You’ll need protein and carbs today, I think.” Then she turned and went back to the family cluster over by the couches, leaving the men to themselves.

“Speaking of unmanageable women…”

At Tommy’s muttered crack, Isaac fired a furiously dark look his way. “Watch yourself. The line’s behind you, *.”

“Sorry, boss.”

Isaac stared long enough to make Tommy squirm, then said, “I have news. We’re all here, so let’s go.”



oOo



From beyond the walls and closed doors of the Keep, the Horde could hear the laughter and happy cries of their children, answered by the yips of their new pups. The lighthearted mood that had suffused the Hall came with them as they took their places at the table. Isaac was still smiling as he picked up the gavel—a new one since that meeting in March, when, arguing with Badger, he’d thrown the club’s original gavel into the wall and broken it beyond repair.

When he struck the gavel, though, his face realigned into solemnity. “To order, brothers. We got things to talk about. Nothing we have to leap up to deal with right now, but all of it deadly serious. First— Santaveria contacted me. He’s calling in his pet bitch for a special job. And I think the window we’ve been waiting for is open—or we gotta bust through that f*cker, because we’re not doing the job.”

Badger remembered nothing about being shackled to a wall, Havoc dead at his side, while Santaveria ‘met’ with Isaac. But he knew that the Perro boss thought he’d brought Isaac and the Horde to their knees.

In the past year, though, he had not called on them to do anything but the weed run—and, of course, to stop planning against him. They had not done the latter, though they had been more careful and circumspect —and thus much slower—in trying to plan. In fact, working only with the Scorpions LA, and under heavy cover, they hadn’t managed to make a workable plan yet.

Len asked, “What’s the job? We should vote?”

Show answered—not surprisingly, Isaac and Show had already discussed it. “He wants us to take out the Brazen Bulls at the next weed pickup.”

“What do you mean, ‘take them out’?”

Isaac turned and faced Badger as he answered his question with a question. “What do you think it means?”

“He wants us to take out a whole f*cking MC?” Len’s jaw had literally dropped. “Why the f*ck?”

“He’s not exactly forthcoming with the details. We’ll vote—of course we’ll vote. But my vote is a loud f*ckin’ ‘nay.’ Becker is a friend. We’ve been skimpy with our trust lately, but he’s still a friend, trapped in the cartel snare, same as we are. And the Bulls are a little single-charter club like us. I do not want to take them out in the service of that piece of filth. So if we buck Santaveria, that’s our hand played, one way or the other. Next weed run, we fight. Whether we can win or not. Ride or die.”