Jenna Kernan - Black Rock Guardian

Seated between him and the bar was his second man, Chino Aria, his newest favored muscle. Chino could handle most situations if he didn’t have to think or make any decision on his feet. Chino’s appeal came from his size and bulk. The tattoos on his neck and bald head helped discourage trouble.

Ty cut a direct path for the two men.

“S’up, bro?” said Faras as he came to a stop before the circular booth and table.

“That little shit, Randy Tasa, is stealing your stash, is what’s up,” said Ty. He slid into the vinyl seat beside Faras. Chasing off Randy was a risk, because his big sister, Jewell, was already in the Wolf Posse and becoming Faras’s favorite.

Chino looked none too happy at Ty’s appearance, judging from the way his mouth tugged down on his broad jowly face.

“Randy Tasa? He don’t work for me.” Faras snapped his fingers before Chino’s face, redirecting his stare from Ty to Faras. “Chino, we recruit Tasa?”

“Yeah,” said Chino.

“When were you going to mention it?”

“First night, boss. Wanted to see how he worked out.”

Ty scowled. You didn’t earn a bike like that in one night. Chino was lying and Ty wondered why. It occurred to him that Randy would make a very good spy, keeping an eye on his big sister’s business. But that was the sort of thing he’d expect Faras to pull. Perhaps he’d underestimated Chino?

Chino laid his beefy fists on the table, challenging Ty with his stare. Ty set the bag of weed on the padded bench between him and Faras.

“Yo, don’t bring that in here,” said Faras, sliding away.

“He was smoking the product instead of making sales. You get him that bike?”

Faras lifted a brow at Chino, who nodded. Faras glared. He knew how to recruit kids into the gang. Up until this minute, Ty thought the decision of when and who was recruited had rested solely with Faras. From the way he was glaring at Chino, perhaps Faras did as well.

“You picked it?” asked Faras.

Chino nodded.

Ty broke in. “Well, he tried to sell it to me for fifty bucks.”

“That little puke,” said Chino, coming awake. Unfortunately, he forgot he was sitting in a booth and so, when he stood, the bench did not move back and he collided with the table, sending their beer bottles sloshing to their sides.

Faras swore.

“Sorry, boss.”

Chino used his sleeve to prevent the river of beer from reaching Faras’s lap.

Ty tossed Randy’s cap onto the puddle of beer. “I took his bike. It’s out front.”

Faras sighed and lifted a finger to Sancho, the head barkeeper, who was always very attentive to Faras, met his gaze and pointed to the spilled beer. One of the bartenders was out from behind the hinged counter and mopping up before Chino had even sat his big fat butt back down.

“I’ll need to find a replacement,” said Faras. “Deliveries, you know.”

Ty knew there was no stopping that. But Randy had a future. He was a runner. A good one. If he was smart and lucky, he might just run out of Turquoise Canyon and make a life that did not involve allegiances to the posse. One little minnow, escaping the net. Ty felt a longing for a freedom from such allegiances, or at least to become something other than the family poster boy for wasted potential. He wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Kee had been asked to join the Turquoise Guardians right out of med school, as if it was a foregone conclusion. Gaining admission to the tribe’s medicine society was a coup that Ty coveted. But to be asked to join Tribal Thunder, the warrior sect of that medicine society, well, that was an honor above all others. Last month, they’d asked Jake to join.

“Chino, get rid of this and get me another beer,” said Faras.

His man grabbed the baggie Faras pushed at him under the table, tucked it into his jacket and slid out of the booth. Then he hurried to the bar.

Faras waited until Chino and the bartender both retreated.

“You can’t keep doing this,” said Faras.

Ty said nothing.

“It costs me money and time.”

Ty met his gaze and read the warning there. Things were serious now. With the pressure of the Russians and the tribal police bringing in the FBI, Faras was in a difficult spot. He could not afford to bring his suppliers less, to even let one little fish swim out of the net.

“That’s the last one. You feel me?” said Faras.

Ty nodded.

“And where you been? I’ve been trying to reach you since Tuesday. You don’t answer your phone or return my calls.”

Ty told himself not to move his healing shoulder. Not to give away that he’d been injured, running for his life in the woods, trying to reach the reservation and home before the Feds caught him and locked him up beside his dad. Because if Faras knew, he’d also know that Ty followed his brother to the holding house that was stop one in the surrogate operation.

“I had a delivery in Phoenix. That ’78 Nova. Matte-black.”

“Phoenix and back takes six hours.”

Ty met his gaze without shifting in his seat or offering further explanation.

Faras dragged his hand down his braid, tugged and then tossed it over his shoulder. “Listen, you asked me for a favor. You asked me to lie to my suppliers about a certain baby girl dying. I did that.”

“And you already called that favor. Sent me on a pickup. I drove Kacey Doka at your request and I delivered her, didn’t I?”

“And both those guys are dead.”

“How you figure that’s my fault?”

“It’s your brother’s fault. Colt killed them.”

“He’s not a dog on a leash. He loves Kacey.”

“Love? Don’t make me laugh. How did Colt know where to find those Russian dudes?”

“Dunno. Followed me?”

“You better hope that’s how it went. If you tipped him...” Faras sat back in the booth and looked at the ceiling. Then dragged in a long breath and exhaled.

Ty read the signs. Now he was already in the danger zone. He regretted chasing off Randy. The timing had been bad.

Faras met his gaze across the table, his eyes flat and cold. “You still owe me for the baby. I’m calling it in. Moving you to transport.”

“I delivered Kacey. That covers it.”

“Not hardly. Two more of Vitoli’s guys were killed in Antelope Lake.”

“Too bad.” Ty tried and failed to look sorry. The bastards had nearly killed Kee.

“And you were there.”

“No.”

“Says you.”

Faras didn’t know. He was fishing, putting together the pieces.

“No way,” said Ty.

“Just making a three-day delivery of a Chevy Nova. Yeah, I heard. You want that baby to stay dead?”

Ty felt trapped. His entire life he’d been trapped. By his father, by the Marine Corps, by the gang. All he wanted in this shitty world was to have the chance, like Kee and Jake and Colt, to make something of himself. But he’d made his bed at eighteen. He didn’t regret what he had done. But he never anticipated that by accepting Faras’s help back then he would be tied to the man forever and painted with the same broad brush.

He wanted out. But if he left, just got on his bike and rode, who would protect his family from these predators that lived inside their rez like a nest of vipers?

The police couldn’t do it, because they had laws to follow and they were outmatched in numbers and finances. The Feds couldn’t do it. They didn’t operate here unless invited and they flitted in and out like migrating birds while he wallowed down here in the mud.

“You hear me, Ty?” said Faras.

Ty nodded.

Faras leaned in. “I got a new operation. We’re cookin’ now. Ice.”

Ty frowned, hating crystal meth and hating even more that the posse would be in production on his rez. “That so?”