Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(4)

“Military weapons, M16s, AK47s, MP5 submachine guns, lots of assault rifles,” Allred was telling Parley.

I had to dally until they brought up this Gideon Fortunati guy again. I didn’t care if he was an arms dealer. People had to resort to some low, amoral things in this life of travails. While, of course, I advocated peace—I had constantly received inspirations that I needed to stay in Cornucopia, remain placid, and protect what remained of the bosom of my family—I wasn’t one to deny a man the right to make a living. And, I suppose, the fact that he was an outsider piqued my interest too. I needed constant reminders of the life outside, reminders that there were other ways of doing things.

“Where’s he getting them from, the Mexicans?”

Allred spewed a thin stream of cigar smoke. “I don’t know and I don’t care, Brother Parley. He’s the middleman so we’ve got no connection to them beaners.”

“Or those pinkos, whichever the case may be.”

“Russkies, pinkos, my point is, I don’t care the origin. Mr. Fortunati’s made sure they’re all clean.”

“No serial numbers on any of the irons?”

“None. Leastways, there’d best not be.”

Parley asked, “If there are so many, why don’t we sell some?”

Allred drew his head back like a lizard. I’d seen that look many a time before, right before he struck. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his head even seemed to take on a reptilian shape. “Sell? And risk being connected to an arms shipment?”

Parley fluttered his hands. “Never mind, Prophet. We need all the protection we can get here in Cornucopia.”

“You bet your ass,” the lizard said. Then he looked up at me. I was aimlessly polishing a silver sugar bowl with the hem of my apron. “Ain’t you got nothing better to do, woman? Why you want to be listening in on the conversation of men, anyway?”

“I wasn’t listening,” I protested innocently. “As you know, Prophet.” But I put the silver bowl down and made my demure exit.

Parley yelled after me, “Sister Mahalia. We want them little meat popovers. Nice and glazed!”

He meant empa?adas. Being a mixed race, part Latina woman myself, it irked me when people couldn’t use the correct name for things.

I was frustrated, too, that I hadn’t heard more about Gideon Fortunati. I shuffled back to the kitchen in my sensible shoes. On the outside, I hadn’t been forced to wear this restrictive, dull garb. After five years of looking exactly like every woman in Cornucopia, I still wasn’t used to it.

“Kimball,” I told my friend, “they want those extra glazed. Here, you keep crimping them. I’ll beat some eggs.”

But I guess I was sighing heavily while beating the whites with a fork, because Kimball soon asked, “They say anything about that Mr. Fortunati guy?”

“No,” I said, with more force than was necessary. “And it’s driving me up a wall. I have a feeling he’s handsome.”

“You said he’s in a biker club, right? He probably looks like that Mr. Grillo guy who came last year to sell arms.”

“Oh, Lord!” The bowl nearly slipped out of my hands, I was so aghast. “That Mr. Grillo guy was a nasty condom breath! His filthy pants were sagging low, he smelled like motor oil and something worse, and his hair looked like a greasy Medusa. No, thank you! I had to spray the chair with Lysol for days after he left.”

“Oo.” Kimball pretended to be shocked at my use of “condom breath.” She’d been born here twenty years ago and had never known any other way of life. But she read widely, as did I, so I knew she wasn’t really shocked. She was Allred’s thirty-ninth wife. I was his fortieth. “Yes, he was a nasty customer, all right. But remember that tungsten salesman from near Salt Lake? Now he was something to look at.”

It was racy, discussing outside men like this, but we liked to do it. I was President of the Relief Society, organizing donations to the needy, and Kimball was my counselor or Vice President. I loved her like a sister, having left my biological sisters behind on the outside. “Oh, that Mr. Lawler was one giant stud. I’ve never seen a belt buckle that big. Guess everything’s bigger in Texas. Here, let me swipe your fluffy pockets.”

We giggled like idiots as I slashed the empa?adas with a pastry brush. I even smiled to myself when I heard the remote buzz of a motorcycle’s tailpipes approaching Allred’s mall. My eyes flickered to Kimball and we grinned wickedly. My husband Field—sorry, my first husband—had owned a motorcycle. Not a Harley, more like a rice rocket, but still, we used to enjoy “canyon carving” out in Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, and all the natural wonderlands of Utah. Things were so much different then, on the outside.

Oddly, a different bike’s engine joined in, creating a stereo roar as they approached. Two bikers? This would definitely be the highlight of the month. I hurried my pace with the brush as the two bikes cut their engines out front. There weren’t too many vehicles per capita inside Cornucopia, so it was always easy to get a parking spot anywhere. However, I dropped the brush when the loud barking of two men started down there.

“Shiz!” Not bothering to stick the little pies in the oven, I rushed to the window, Kimball close at my heels.

And saw a sight that had never taken place inside the walls of Cornucopia.