Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(5)

Two rough and tumble bikers were vehemently arguing down there. One was heavily muscled with tattooed sleeves and leather cuffs. His flimsy, thinning brown hair stuck out from under a wool beanie. The other was tall, rugged, and sinewy in his leather chaps. He’d shoved the beanie guy in the chest, so his black “wifebeater” shirt was hiked up to reveal a strip of lean, white flesh.

My mouth watered.

That had to be Gideon Fortunati, not the brutal, dumb beanie guy. Had to. Just had to.

Oh, how I wanted that to be Gideon Fortunati, with his shock of reddish auburn hair, his clean-shaven, sensual face. He had long arms, too, not those stunted-looking appendages of Mr. Beanie and other Cro-Magnon men of my community. His features were shapely and well-modeled, even when shouting at his friend.

Wetness bloomed between my thighs. My heart sped up as my yearning for this man increased.

Their language had never been heard in this saintly valley, either.

“You weren’t even invited to this f*cking meeting, Breakiron! Back the f*ck off!”

Breakiron poked Gideon in the chest. “This is my run, doofus! You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me. I should be Reed Smoot, not you.”

Which was odd, because Reed Smoot was a Cornucopia member who had vanished without a word about six months earlier. How did they know Reed?

Gideon bellowed, “You were told not to come!” By this time, other brethren had gathered around the arguing men. Men resembling blue-collar workers with shirts buttoned to the neck, men with hair cut as though a bowl had been placed over their heads. I still hadn’t gotten used to Cornucopia’s sense of style. “You blazed your way through the f*cking gate without anyone inviting you.”

Kimball and I actually gasped loudly when Gideon grabbed the finger Breakiron was poking him with and wrenched it. I thought I could hear the crack of the bones—but maybe that was Breakiron’s ungodly howl. His face screwed up, his legs collapsed under him as Gideon wrenched his finger. Gideon’s jaw jutted, fire in his eyes. I’d never seen anything more manly in my life.

I was witnessing some primal, bestial scene. Gideon was asserting his authority over Breakiron, and the brethren gathered around seemed to know it. No one made a move to break it up. When Gideon kneed the screaming ape-man in the groin, it was all over. Breakiron fell to his knees, his free hand flailing, as though unsure whether to bash Gideon or protect his genitals.

By that time, Allred and Parley were on the scene, Parley with a gun drawn. At a barely perceptible nod from Allred, men lunged forward to snatch Breakiron by the arms and haul him off. I’d seen these motions of Allred’s, noticeable only by remote satellite and dogs. The men who surrounded him, though, were attuned to these signals, and as they hauled the biker back to his Harley, Allred shook Gideon’s hand.

Kimball and I looked at each other with shining eyes.

Then we remembered the empa?adas.

She yanked the oven open, and we both grabbed a cookie sheet of little pies from the counter.

“What do you think?” I asked. “I was right, wasn’t I? He’s handsomer than Granite Mountain.”

Kimball shoved her sheet in. “Prettier than Temple Square. But just like that Grillo fellow, he’s going to leave tonight and never be seen again.”

Kimball saying “never be seen again” reminded me of something. “Did you hear him mention Reed Smoot?” We’d often discussed how Reed had simply vanished. Most people say they didn’t know what had happened to him, and a few said he went to our compound in Texas. But Reed had been a high priest with four wives, one of whom had since been sealed to Orson Ream. It was all very strange. If he had just gone to Texas, why hadn’t his wives gone with him?

“Yes, I did! He said he should be Reed Smoot. Why are they pretending to be Reed? Do they have something to do with how he vanished? What are you doing?”

“Serving them coffee to go with their whiskey.” I was going to make my serving tray extra nice. I was even going to put a sprig of violet alfalfa into a vase with a contrasting spray of mulberry paintbrush. I liked wildflowers. When I was allowed outside the gates on Relief Society business, I liked to gather them.

“You sure are dolling up that tray. Using the outside sugar? How do we know these rough bikers don’t have something to do with Reed? After what happened to Field, how can you be serving him expensive sugar?”

My first husband Field had also been “disappeared,” but I thought I had more of an idea about what had happened to him, due to OSHA ordering an investigation, as it happened on the job. “Well, at first I wanted to see Gideon because I wanted to stand next to a virile man who wasn’t related to Joseph Smith. Now, like you said, I want to find out if he has something to do with Reed.”

“Mahalia! You’re getting in over your head.”

Oh, how many times had I heard that one? Yet I was still President of the Relief Society and was still allowed to personally serve Allred, for better or worse. I must be doing something right.

I knew this was a selfish and conceited thought. I scurried through the dining room and into Allred’s office before Kimball could berate me some more. If the truth was known, I doubted that Gideon Fortunati had anything to do with the disappearance of Reed Smoot. For a year or so, there had been an odd rash of people coming into Allred’s office using the names of men who had “gone away to Texas.” The truth, at least about the names, was probably not so nefarious.