Lori Armstrong - Merciless

Christ. Talk about paranoid. But my defense of my employer and Shay would only piss him off, so I bit my tongue.

“So I serve him. He’s been in here once when Saro showed up. They ignored each other, although the brooding G-man was awful damn interested in Saro’s new recruits.”

“And here I hoped Saro had given up his evil ways after his brother was murdered.” I sipped my beer. “Is Saro recruiting in here?”

“Doubtful. He’s only been in a half-dozen times in the last five months. But he don’t have to do much to recruit anyway. People line up to get in with him, even after all the shit that went down. People you’d never expect.”

That comment caught my notice. “Like who?”

“Like punks with no other job choice. Like idiots who have a falling-out with their family.”

I frowned. He wouldn’t give me names; he expected me to guess. Or he expected me to know. Except I didn’t have insight on the inner workings on the Eagle River rez. I never had. The one person who had that knowledge, Rollie, was currently pissed off at me. Rollie was pissed off at everybody, it seemed. Me. Verline. His son.

Wait a second. My eyes met John-John’s. “Junior Rondeaux?”

He nodded.

“Holy shit.” Jesus, I was an idiot.

It hit me, then, the seriousness of my rookie mistake, keeping the information Mackenzie Red Shirt had given me about Junior Rondeaux to myself. It could have tremendous impact on this case, since Junior had ties to that murderous bastard Saro, and to Arlette. Turnbull would have every right to dress me down when I finally came clean with him.

John-John leaned closer. “Why’s this so surprising to you?”

“Because I tried to track Junior down yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Some of that pesky fed stuff you don’t wanna know about and I can’t tell you about anyway.”

He shrugged. “Well, you ain’t gonna find him in here because he’s banned.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

“What did he do to get blackballed?”

“He’s a Rondeaux.”

“That’s it?”

John-John glanced away and then refocused on me with eyes as hard as concrete. “I know you’re friends with Rollie. But he ain’t no friend of mine or my family. I’d lose customers if him or any of his spawn stepped foot in here. So they ain’t welcome. Ever.”

“Rollie knows this?”

“Yep.”

“But… you let him in when Geneva’s group talked me into running for sheriff.”

“They didn’t give me a choice.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this Rondeaux clan ban when I worked for you?”

John-John ignored me and walked to the end of the bar.

Goddammit. I hated not knowing shit like this, even when I told everyone to leave me out of their family dramas. For years Rollie had made barbs about John-John’s psychic abilities. And about Sophie being uppity. I don’t know why I hadn’t drawn the parallels that there was bad blood between him and the whole Red Leaf family. I’d always chalked it up to Rollie being an ass.

I spun my bar stool toward Hope.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you know why the Red Leaf family and the Rondeaux family are enemies?”

She picked at her thumbnail before she met my gaze. “No. And that’s not me protecting Jake. He won’t talk about it, Sophie won’t talk about it. But it seems to be more a problem between the Pretty Horses and the Rondeaux. The Red Leaf kids and grandkids got caught in the middle.”

Sophie had two kids-Penny and Devlin-with her first husband, Von Pretty Horses. After he died, she remarried Barclay Red Leaf, and they had three sons: Del, Jake’s dad; Terry, Luke and TJ’s dad; and Ray, who’d fathered a half-dozen kids before he’d passed on, leaving the small Red Leaf Ranch, adjacent to our ranch, to Terry. I’d never met Del or Ray. They’d both died by the time Sophie came to work for us.

“Even now that I’m married to a Red Leaf, they won’t discuss family matters if I’m around,” Hope said.

“But you’re family to them. Hell, I’m practically family to them.”

Hope shook her head. “Not in their minds.”

Maybe it was beer causing the sudden ache in my belly. “Is that because so many of them have worked for us for so long?”

“That’s part of it. Sophie is different to me when we go over to her house. She… snaps a lot. Not at me. Then she and her grandkids start speaking Lakota, and I can’t understand. It makes me uncomfortable.”

That piqued my anger, but I also realized Hope might be a wee bit paranoid. “Do they treat Joy like an outsider, too?”

“No.” Hope reached for her beer and sipped. “Still, because of… that and some other stuff, Jake’s even suggested to Sophie that she retire from workin’ for us.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard Sophie’s response to that. Do you think-”

Out of the blue we heard, “Hope Gunderson? Is that you?”

Hope faced the woman bellied up to the bar next to her where Lefty had been sitting. “Betsy? Omigod! What are you doing here?”

A lot of squealing and hugging, and then my sister disappeared into the back room with her old high school friend.

And once again, I was drinking alone.

After five minutes, the rush of people up to the bar sent me outside for fresh air. In hindsight I should’ve snuck out the back door. My one complaint about Clementine’s has always been the lack of lighting in the parking area. It’s a bitch even for people who don’t have my night vision problems.

I jammed my hands in my pockets and glanced up at the sky. No stars. No moonlight peeked through the thick cloud cover. I half expected to feel snowflakes hitting my face, the temperature had dropped so drastically since this morning.

I paced, mind racing, and I’ll admit none of my thoughts were very flattering to the Red Leaf, Pretty Horses, or Rondeaux families. But I wasn’t so deep in thought that I wasn’t aware someone moved between the parked vehicles off to my left.

Of all the times not to be carrying. I called out, “I know you’re there.”

No response.

“I’m not in the mood to play hide-and-seek.”

No response.

Screw this. I started to back up, slowly, facing forward, hoping like hell I didn’t stumble into a hole and fall on my ass before I reached the bar door.

A shadow solidified into a man. He moved toward me, both his hands up in the air, his head covered by a hood so I couldn’t see his face.

“Stop right there. Keep your hands where they are and identify yourself.”

He stopped. “It’s Junior.”

“Junior… as in Junior Rondeaux?”

“Uh-huh. I heard you was lookin’ for me yesterday.”

“How’d you know I was here?”

“I got my ways.”

Somebody was spying for Saro at Clementine’s. “So Junior, you were just waiting out here in the cold hoping I’d come out alone so you could jump me.”

“I wasn’t gonna jump you. Doncha think I learned that shit don’t fly with you last time? When you held a fuckin’ gun to my head.”

“You armed?”

“Nope. Left it in the car.”

“You alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Drop the hood. I feel like I’m talking to Kenny from South Park. ”

He used one hand to slide the hood back.

I took two steps closer. I’d seen Junior Rondeaux one time. During our lone meeting I’d used my gun barrel to shove his face into the dirt so I really didn’t remember what he looked like. Junior didn’t strike me as handsome. He looked nothing like Rollie. He resembled any number of the young Indian men on the reservation; pockmarked skin, prominent nose and cheekbones. His unkempt black hair hung past his shoulders. He topped my height by four inches, but with his baggy clothes I couldn’t tell if his build was lanky, muscular, or flabby.