Page 4 of Deacon

We’d also watched who pushed back.

The whole town knew the word cartel and kept it behind their teeth. We knew there were strangers among us doing things we were supposed to turn a blind eye to. The Unholy Few were the only ones not doing that.

The men in the club were strangers to me. Preacher had come in once for a birthday cake for Holly and stood at the counter looking like he’d rather take a bullet than pick a frosting color.

And then there was Deacon.

All I had was his usual order. Green chile rolls. Change in the jar. A way of looking at me that made me lose my place halfway through a sentence. A few hundred conversations about nothing, across a counter.

But he was the one face in that clubhouse I could walk toward. Whatever my father was mixed up in, I knew it wasn’t going to end well for anyone, let alone him.

I started the car. This was stupid. Monumentally, fucking stupid. Nice girls from the bakery went home at eight o’clock at night and got a good night’s sleep.

I turned left anyway.

The clubhouse sat at the far end of town in the old miners’ union hall. Brick, ugly and lit up like the only place in Salvation still open. Bikes lined the lot behind the fence. Somebody laughed, loud and rough.

A young guy sat on a stool by the gate, a prospect patch on his cut and a phone in his hand. He stood up fast when my headlights hit him.

I rolled the window down. My hands were shaking, so I held onto the wheel.

“Help you?” He sounded doubtful.

“I need to see Deacon.”

He looked at me. At my car, with its Salvation Harvest Festival sticker on the back window. At the flour I only now noticed was still on my jeans.

“He expecting you?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“Tell him it’s Chelsea,” I said. “From the bakery.”

The prospect stared at me a second longer, then turned away and put the phone to his ear.

I sat there with the engine running and my heart going hard against my ribs, and I told myself it was fear.

Mostly, it was.

CHAPTER 2

DEACON

Iwas forty bucks up on Havoc and one shot from making it sixty when my phone went off in my back pocket. I missed the eight by a foot.

“Tough break,” Havoc said, already reaching for the rack.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Everything counts. Pay up.”

The screen said Gate. I answered still looking at the table, figuring somebody’s truck had died on the road out front again.

“There’s a woman out here asking for you.” The prospect sounded confused. “Says her name’s Chelsea. From the bakery.”

“Chelsea?” It came out loud enough to turn heads.