Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(22)

I was incensed. I could feel my eyes bulging out of their sockets. Someone was coming in the front door, but I didn’t care. “This is not a sexual issue, sir! It’s an issue of misguided power, of using that power to control people, and that’s an issue I won’t stand for!”

I flounced out then, imagining I looked all dramatic like in a movie. Those touring club bikers playing pool all stopped to stare at me, and I nearly smashed frontally into the brick wall of a man at the front door. He grabbed me by my shoulders to steady me, although I didn’t want to be steadied.

“Hey, little lady. What’re you doing out here, outside of your little prison?”

How did this giant peckerhead know who I was? Well, my dress, probably. That was usually a dead giveaway. I tried to squirm back out of his clutches and noticed his breast pocket patch said “Veep.” He was Vice President of Gideon’s club—Gideon’s superior, no doubt! “Unhand me.” Now I really sounded like I was in a movie.

He didn’t unhand me, though. His eyebrows furrowed and his tone became more commanding. “You in here talking to that fed? Sharing state secrets with him? I don’t think your beloved Gideon would be too happy to hear about that.”

I wrenched myself from his grip, all too savvy with the knowledge that what he said was true.



Guilt quickly wracked my soul, and I went around to Gideon’s hotel room. No one answered the door, so I had no choice but to continue to St. George and do the work I was out here pretending to do. I didn’t really have to visit the Shepherds of Guatemala office, but I knew it’d give me an alibi. I’d taken a giant risk going into town to see that agent, and now I felt it was all for naught. Not to mention I might have put Gideon Fortunati into a compromising position. Like, up against the wall.

I mean, of course he was selling military grade weapons to Allred. But there was something about Gideon’s demeanor that just held him blameless in my eyes. I knew he was a tough, rough biker with a shady background. I knew he’d done things I probably didn’t want to hear about.

But his kind nature led me to hold him blameless. I determined to see him again. I felt horrible for what I’d inadvertently spilled to Bronson, but it took me several more days to finagle an excuse to get out there again.

Vonda went to a teen event, then there was Family Home Night, and then a stake-wide barbecue. I couldn’t get out of any of those, and I had to make canapes for the teen event. Oh, how I wished she could become engaged to one of the sweet, innocent boys at these events! They could have a long, long engagement. Why make girls even attend if they wouldn’t be allowed to associate with these boys a year from now? Vonda was so upset about her upcoming nuptials she would barely speak to me. She knew I was blameless, but she had no one else to point the finger at, so I was it.

And then I received a text. All it said was “Have your shipment,” but I knew it had to be from Gideon’s new disposable phone. Five percent of me was excited to try out the antianxiety pills, but a hundred and ten percent of me longed painfully just to stand next to Gideon again. I went behind a tree to text back—as if anyone could see what I was typing! But that’s how excited I was to get a text from him.

Yes. Where should we meet, and when?

He texted right back. It thrilled me to the core to know he was standing somewhere at that very moment thinking of me and only me. I determined to make things all right with him.

138 Train A. Cumming Street. You tell me when.

I knew Cumming Street. It was right past Rainbow Bridge heading back toward the mountains. It was just outside of Avalanche proper in a subdivision someone had started building before Allred had moved his city in, scaring everyone off. So many of the homes were halfway built, investors fleeing in a panic they were going to be living on the outskirts of a fundamentalist enclave. Which, in fact, they would have been. Now it was a skeleton town, the only people remaining retired people who didn’t give a hoot, or blue collar folks employed in ranching. Had Gideon bought a house?

Tonight at 8.

It was a giant risk, leaving at nighttime when most or all of my Relief Society contacts were closed. So far, I’d managed to refrain from telling Kimball about my harmless little flirtation with Gideon. I knew that under duress, Kimball would spill all to Allred or Parley or whoever even mildly questioned her. She was an innocent, like most wives in Cornucopia, not hardened to the ways of the world like I was.

I told Kimball I was going into St. George to pick up a donation of clothing from someone who didn’t get off work till late. She seemed to buy it, and I breezed through Cornucopia’s gates with a lightness in my heart I hadn’t felt in years. I’d been depressed, I knew, ever since Field had died. Depressed at what happened to me then—Allred sending his minions to descend on my house, packing up all my furniture and personal belongings, never to be seen again.

My photo albums were the biggest loss. All my photos of Field and Vonda as a baby, of growing up with my sisters, skiing in Park City, my parents—everything gone. Love letters from Field, back in the day when men would handwrite things such as that. I kept asking for them, and was told we didn’t need things like that in Cornucopia. That I’d be taken care of utterly. That’s what had convinced me to cave in, ultimately. Sure, I could work as a CPA and struggle to get by as a single mother on the “oustide.” But in Cornucopia, everything was set up for me. Everything was provided for. And I could still work.