Page 71 of Nomad

“Yes, sir,” they said dutifully. Truthfully, they didn’t mind that much. They’d both come from the kinds of families that didn’t do Thanksgiving and they were grateful for the closest thing they’d ever had to a family holiday.

Cann made Bud sit down on the sofa and proclaimed that they were all going to watch whatever movie she picked out. Partly out of wickedness and partly out of desire, she choseBeauty and the Beast.

Cann narrowed his eyes at Bud. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you aren’t a little kid.”

“I’m not a little kid, idiot. It’s a story for the ages.”

“For the ages,” he said drily. “Jesus.”

When Burn and Axel heard what was going on in the common rooms, they congratulated each other on kitchen duty.

So the bikers spent a lazy Thanksgiving afternoon watching a story about a young girl and a creature both cursed and morose. In spite of themselves, they were swept away by the story and ceased complaining until the end, when each attempted to save his reputation by renewing his objection.

“My turn,” Cann said.

To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t chooseThe Wild Bunch, orArmageddon, or even a zombie movie. He choseIt’s A Wonderful Life.

Sometime after she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, Cann picked her up, carried her to bed, took off her shoes, and tucked her in. She didn’t see him again for three weeks and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was avoiding her.

She didn’t know where he was staying or what he was doing and had too much pride to ask around.

CHAPTER Twelve

One night she was still at the bar around nine when Cann came through the door. He hesitated when his eyes met hers, but he looked away quickly. There were a lot of bikes parked outside, but things were quiet and deserted in the clubhouse. He knew something was off because Rescue was on the gate. Rescue was never on the gate.

Cann headed back toward Brant’s office. When he got close enough to see that nobody was there, he noticed the door to the conference room, “church” as some called it, was open. He stepped to the door and looked around the room. Though everybody except Rescue was there, it was quiet as a tomb, and every man to the last was looking grim.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Come on in,” Brant said, motioning toward the empty chair and looking like he’d rather chew razor blades than be where he was.

Eric got up and closed the door before retaking his seat.

“There’s no easy way to say this, brother. We found the guy.”

There was only one thing that could mean. Cann’s heart almost stopped, but his mind was whirling so fast with images of the explosion, he couldn’t think clearly. “The… guy? You mean…?”

Brant nodded. “Wasn’t another club, which is probably why it’s been a mystery for so long. We were lookin’ in the wrong place.” Brant paused and took in a deep breath looking like he felt absolute empathy with Cann. “This is gonna be hard to hear. Joe Reynosa.”

Cann’s mouth fell open in disbelief and his head began to shake back and forth. “Can’t be.”

Joe Reynosa had been a prospect the same time he and Brash had been workin’ butts down to their assholes to get patches. In Cann’s mind, Joe was a good guy who’d just busted out. Didn’t have what it took. So the club had cut him loose. That was how it worked. That was how it had always worked.

“Axel and Burn were over at Peyote Chill earlier.”

That was a bar on the far north end of Austin frequented by another club. It was the kind of club that openly pretended friendliness while hiding a shadowy agenda. One of the duties of prospects was to stop in occasionally, without colors. Just be guys getting a beer. The Peyote Chill was not the sort of place where professionals stopped for a wind down drink on the way home from work. It was rough from the front parking lot to the rear trash bins and the bathrooms needed a peroxide-Lysol mixture sprayed through a firehose at ceilings, walls, fixtures, and floors.

“He was there, drunk and talkin’. Axel and Burn didn’t know who he was and vice versa, but they do know your story.” Cann’s gaze flicked to Axel then Burn and back to Brant. “Joe was sayin’ stuff that wouldn’t make sense to anybody who didn’t know the history. The short of it is that he left carryin’ a grudge because he busted out and you didn’t. Guess that over time it festered.

“Apparently he never intended to hurt Molly and the baby. That part was an accident. He was out for you, but it went bad.” Brant paused for a second. “I guess he would have done the same thing to Brash, but Brash was livin’ here and it wouldn’t have been easy to get past security.

“So Axel and Burn paid up, went outside, and called Arnold to bring the van. Joe’d been drinkin’ since early afternoon so he was past done by dinner time. Our boys knew it wouldn’t be long before they threw him out. So they waited. Hog tied him. Put him in the back of the van. Followed Arnold back here.”

After a long time, Cann said, “Jesus,” so quietly it was barely audible.

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