Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(60)

“Good.” He moved slowly inside her, holding her eyes with his. She wrapped her arms around his back and her legs around his waist, clasping him tightly to her, and, for the first time, they made love.

Even sweet, though, he still made her scream.

oOo

Isaac and Show watched Kenyon Berry and Marcus Grant, Berry’s right hand, drive off the Horde lot.

Isaac’s brain was buzzing. He turned to Show; any lingering anger he’d felt about the conversation with Lilli they’d had the day before had been blown away by Kenyon’s visit.

Though still backing the Horde, Kenyon was suspending traffic on this pipeline, diverting resources elsewhere until the pressure from Ellis was down. Ellis was making a hard push in St. Louis, too, fully annexing the Northside Knights and looking to eliminate the Underdawgs entirely. St. Louis was open war.

Kenyon’s point—a good one—was that the risk was too great for the Horde and Signal Bend, too, to keep moving product into such volatile turf. But St. Louis and points east of it represented substantially more than half the revenue the cookers, and thus the Horde, and thus the town, brought in. To the west, they had Springfield, Joplin and Tulsa. Losing St. Louis would cripple them.

That wasn’t even the worst news. His attempts to take over Signal Bend through legal channels thwarted thus far by the Horde’s success at keeping Mac Evans distracted and vulnerable property owners strong enough to resist, Ellis had apparently decided to use force instead. He was bringing the war to them. The Northsiders were recruiting like crazy, swelling their ranks. Kenyon’s intel was that they were looking to move on Signal Bend physically, drive people out. Kenyon thought they had maybe a few months before there was a turf war on the lazy streets of Signal Bend, and the enemy was bigger, stronger and richer—by orders of magnitude.

Show spoke up first. “How we handling this, boss?”

It was clear to Isaac. Nigh on impossible, but clear. “Straight on. Only way. We’re gonna need the whole town on the beam, if we have any chance. We have a little time, though. Kenyon’ll keep us apprised. First thing, we need to start guard shifts. Get men patrolling town, farm roads, all of it. We’re gonna need volunteers, and they’re gonna need some training and setup.”

Showdown nodded slowly. “We need weapons. These *s won’t be coming in with hunting rifles and shotguns. We don’t have the scratch to arm people.”

That was how Tulsa and Joplin could help—and it would keep them away from the heat, too, as they wanted. “I’ll get with Becker and Dandy. Tulsa’s running guns; I’ll get a family discount. And I’m calling Sam. Time to call in a marker with The Scorpions.” They’d done an array of favors for the international MC over the years and had never needed to call in one. Now it looked like they might need them all at once.

“You bring them in, they might bring heat from law with them. Their brand of outlaw is high profile.

Not like our penny ante shit.”

“Can’t be helped. We’re not letting the Northsiders f*ckin’ burn us out.” With that, Isaac turned on his heel and stalked back into the clubhouse. Everything was going to hell at once.

INTERLUDE: 2011



Lilli slid the keycard in and opened the door to her room at the Residence Inn. Home, such as it was.

She been back stateside for three months, out of the service for three weeks. No job, no home, no family.

Her father had had a generous life insurance policy and had left her everything, and it had all been earning interest while she was in the service, so she wouldn’t need to work. She would hate to use that money, but she couldn’t imagine joining the world again. She figured she’d just stay put.

Fuck it all.

When the incident report came back, and Big Donna checked out clean, Lilli fought it. She’d fought hard, at first. If Donna wasn’t malfunctioning, that meant Lilli had gotten her men killed. Okada. Miller.

Scarpone. And eight other men. It had taken them more than a day to get clear and recover their bodies.

Twenty-nine hours seeing their burned, hacked remains hanging from a wall.

And she’d done it. Chief had checked Donna out himself. Lilli didn’t understand what went wrong, how she could have felt trouble if there had been none. Maybe they were right. Maybe she’d lost her nerve and had some kind of weird attack. She’d gotten her men killed.

So just f*ck it all.

The light on her room phone was blinking. She ignored it; probably the front desk or housekeeping, or something. There was no one who’d call her.

Around 3am, she finally checked, just to get the damn blinking light to stop. She didn’t sleep much, but that light was getting in the way of even her slim shot at it.

It wasn’t an internal call. The message was terse. “Ms. Accardo, you can still be of service to your country. Please call.” Ms. Accardo. God, that sucked. She recognized the area code and exchange on the number as DC, but not Pentagon.

She erased it and blew it off. Every day for a week, the same male voice left the same message one time.

On the eighth day, there was a knock at the door to her suite.

A week after that, she was in training to work with the NSA.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Lilli felt the change in the air when Isaac opened the bathroom door. She tended to guard her bathroom privacy jealously. Spending years showering in the desert surrounded by men had made her really appreciate and luxuriate in her time alone in the bathroom. But he’d been on her early and often to shower together. She’d relented about a week or so ago, and hadn’t regretted it. She knew there would be regret if she didn’t set some ground rules soon, because he had become a shower vampire—expecting unlimited access now that he’d been invited in once—and she was starting to strategize ways to be in here alone.