Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (10 page)

I mean, of course he was selling military grade weapons to Allred. But there was something about Gideon’s demeanor that just held him blameless in my eyes. I knew he was a tough, rough biker with a shady background. I knew he’d done things I probably didn’t want to hear about.

But his kind nature led me to hold him blameless. I determined to see him again. I felt horrible for what I’d inadvertently spilled to Bronson, but it took me several more days to finagle an excuse to get out there again.

Vonda went to a teen event, then there was Family Home Night, and then a stake-wide barbecue. I couldn’t get out of any of those, and I had to make canapes for the teen event. Oh, how I wished she could become engaged to one of the sweet, innocent boys at these events! They could have a long, long engagement. Why make girls even attend if they wouldn’t be allowed to associate with these boys a year from now? Vonda was so upset about her upcoming nuptials she would barely speak to me. She knew I was blameless, but she had no one else to point the finger at, so I was it.

And then I received a text. All it said was “Have your shipment,” but I knew it had to be from Gideon’s new disposable phone. Five percent of me was excited to try out the antianxiety pills, but a hundred and ten percent of me longed painfully just to stand next to Gideon again. I went behind a tree to text back—as if anyone could see what I was typing! But that’s how excited I was to get a text from him.

Yes. Where should we meet, and when?

He texted right back. It thrilled me to the core to know he was standing somewhere at that very moment thinking of me and only me. I determined to make things all right with him.

138 Train A. Cumming Street. You tell me when.

I knew Cumming Street. It was right past Rainbow Bridge heading back toward the mountains. It was just outside of Avalanche proper in a subdivision someone had started building before Allred had moved his city in, scaring everyone off. So many of the homes were halfway built, investors fleeing in a panic they were going to be living on the outskirts of a fundamentalist enclave. Which, in fact, they would have been. Now it was a skeleton town, the only people remaining retired people who didn’t give a hoot, or blue collar folks employed in ranching. Had Gideon bought a house?

Tonight at 8.

It was a giant risk, leaving at nighttime when most or all of my Relief Society contacts were closed. So far, I’d managed to refrain from telling Kimball about my harmless little flirtation with Gideon. I knew that under duress, Kimball would spill all to Allred or Parley or whoever even mildly questioned her. She was an innocent, like most wives in Cornucopia, not hardened to the ways of the world like I was.

I told Kimball I was going into St. George to pick up a donation of clothing from someone who didn’t get off work till late. She seemed to buy it, and I breezed through Cornucopia’s gates with a lightness in my heart I hadn’t felt in years. I’d been depressed, I knew, ever since Field had died. Depressed at what happened to me then—Allred sending his minions to descend on my house, packing up all my furniture and personal belongings, never to be seen again.

My photo albums were the biggest loss. All my photos of Field and Vonda as a baby, of growing up with my sisters, skiing in Park City, my parents—everything gone. Love letters from Field, back in the day when men would handwrite things such as that. I kept asking for them, and was told we didn’t need things like that in Cornucopia. That I’d be taken care of utterly. That’s what had convinced me to cave in, ultimately. Sure, I could work as a CPA and struggle to get by as a single mother on the “oustide.” But in Cornucopia, everything was set up for me. Everything was provided for. And I could
still
work.

I’d been correct when I’d pictured the house at Train A. Cumming Street. It was ultra-modern even by 1995 standards. The living room at the front was a half-moon of floor-to-ceiling windows, and now they were all lit up with no blinds obscuring the view. From the living room, one could walk out onto a deck and look out at the fiery valleys leading up to the heights of Zion.

Gideon was standing out there now, smoking a cigarette. He must’ve seen my truck, being practically the only vehicle parking at the curb on the entire street, but he didn’t wave or anything. I practically skipped like a girl to the front door. He opened it before I could ring the bell.

“Hi.” Now he was smiling, and it seemed to me he’d spruced up a bit for me. Maybe that was just my imagination, my desire to feel wanted, flattered. And how spruced up can a biker get when his only choice of attire is the leather vest and jeans?

Still, it was
not
my imagination that he’d at least washed his clean-cut face with soap. “Hi, Gideon. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this for me. You don’t know how hard it is to get prescriptions out in Cornucopia. They really frown on us going to any doctor at all.”

He shut the door behind me. “You look beautiful.”

What?
Had I just heard correctly? I scanned his face for any clue. He just had this enigmatic smile as he led the way up a flight of stairs to the living room. There was a wet bar there holding nothing but a bottle of whiskey, but Gideon took a beer from a small fridge.

“Soda pop?” he asked me.

“How’d you know? You must’ve noticed we’re allowed to drink in Cornucopia, but I personally don’t.”

“I noticed.” He handed me a 7 Up. “And this is what you ordered the other day in the bar.”

“Oh.” That reminded me of my shame—that I’d overstepped my boundaries and told a goddamned federal agent some things I shouldn’t have. “Things have been rough lately.”

“That why you were meeting with an ATF agent?”

So
that
was why he’d called me here. He could’ve easily given me the medication by meeting me at the High Dive or even just some street corner, a drive-by hand-off. I set down my pop and went to stand by the window. The sun was just setting, washing the canyons in nearly fluorescent shades of orange and pink. I had never ceased to be amazed by the beauty of southwest Utah. “Yes. Since you’re a good friend of Bronson Carradine, you probably heard that they’re sealing my daughter to an elder in the church. She’s only fifteen and it upset me greatly. I wanted to know if Bronson could do anything about it. I was angry with Allred and other elders. I wanted vengeance, I guess you call it.”

“
What. The. Fuck
.” Gideon came to stand behind me. It was dark enough that I could see our reflections in the ceiling-high glass, like two ghosts who had come to revisit the flaming mesas of their happiest days. He stood so close behind me I could feel his body heat. His hand hovered over my shoulder as though afraid to touch me. I remembered him putting his hand over mine while we sat at the bar table. It was the closest, most sexual touch I’d received since my husband had died. His hand just resting on mine sent pangs of lust shooting directly to my sex, almost as though he was licking at my very core. Later that day, I’d not even had to barely touch my tiny vibrator to my clitoris before I’d exploded in an almost religious blast of climax.

“Yes,” I said, weary now. The subject had burdened my mind so heavily over the past week. “Next month she’s set to be sealed to him at the Court of the Patriarchs. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

He said softly, “Unless you take her and run.”

I looked up at the reflection of his face. His eyes met mine in the glass. “But how? Anywhere we go, he’ll hunt us down and drag us back, like he did when Field died.”

“Stay here. I just bought this house. No one’s coming to drag anyone away from any house of mine.”

I sputtered. “But—”

He spun me around as he sat on the arm of a couch. The house was understandably bare of furniture and I sort of liked it that way. Just a couch, a couple of lamps, a coffee table, for now. He took both my hands in his, forcing me to stand between his outspread thighs. I hadn’t been in such an intimate position with any man other than Allred in five years. The novelty of it made my heart race, made the inner walls of my labia expand like they were filling with blood.

“But nothing. Does your church not allow divorce?”

“Well, yes, but…”

He frowned. He was even more handsome when showing concern for someone. “But what?”

“But no one’s ever divorced The Prophet.”

“Surely someone must have. He’s got what? Forty wives? Odds are that at least a couple of them can’t stand his fucking evil, twisted, perverted fucking guts.”

I had to giggle at that. “Well, probably. But I think I hate him the most.”

“Besides, you’re not legally married,” he needlessly pointed out.

“Right. Which means it’s not a legal issue, it’s more of a question of power, of control.”

This seemed to concern him most of all. Standing, he took my chin between his fingers.
Shiz
, he was tall. Or maybe I was used to the five-foot-eight Allred standing this close to me. “Nobody has ever had the upper hand with me. I’m a rebel, pure and simple, to the bone. Got me in trouble in the military. Got me in trouble with my club.”

“And it’ll get you in trouble with Allred.”

He broke my gaze and looked over my shoulder. Maybe he was so used to being a rebel, it was only now occurring to him that stealing me and Vonda away could result in the loss of his mine job, his arms exchange business, his new house. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

“But I may have already blown it.” The urge to unburden myself of my shame was too great, and I moved away from Gideon. “When I was talking with Bronson Carradine, I accidentally may have—well, okay, I
definitely
told him that you were selling arms to Allred, and—”

He spun around to face me. “
What
?”

I spoke faster now, just spilling it all in one fell swoop. “Yes, I definitely mentioned it, but only briefly, in passing, and then I took it back and said that what I meant to say was
barns
, you were selling him
barns
or some such stupid thing, oh God, Gideon, if I could only take it back! It was the most asinine thing I’ve done in years—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“—and I tried to mitigate it by saying you were selling Allred
farms
or something, I can’t believe what a mother hugger I can be sometimes, sometimes I just want to shoot myself—”

“Mahalia! It’s not important. I can deal with Bronson Carradine.”

“—because I can be such a jackwad sometimes and—”

He shut me up with a kiss.

Yes.

A kiss.

The most sensual, thoroughly erotic kiss of my entire life.

And yes, I’m counting Field.

Gideon was gentle, at first. It was almost chaste and innocent, the way he squeezed my shoulders in his grip and slanted his mouth across mine. I was still talking, so my mouth was in a ridiculous position, and the shock of the kiss made me freeze up.

He persisted, kissing me through my surprise and pressing his body to mine. One of his hands released my shoulder, sliding down my back to my waist, where he gripped me, pulling my hips to his in a sudden jerk. Oh Lord, was he lean and mean. He was just one mouth-watering, sinewy hunk of masculinity. Since I was almost naked under my cotton dress, I could actually feel the hard slab of his abdomen against mine.

I didn’t resist one iota. His mouth was hot and delicious, tasting of beer. He slipped his tongue between my lips, just the tiniest tongue-tip of a lick to my teeth. I nipped him back like a placid, drowsy puppy, feeling deliciously naughty and bad.

Then my entire body jerked.

I found myself standing about four feet away from him, over by the couch, staring with burning, accusing eyes while wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Shut the front door,” I whispered.

“God! I’m sorry!” Gideon held out his hands as though shopping for melons. “I didn’t fucking mean—”

I realized that by wiping my mouth off, I was signaling to him that I found him distasteful. And the opposite was the truth. “No! It’s fine, Gideon! I just mean, I was unprepared for—it. The—it.”

He laughed incredulously at me. “The kiss, you mean? Jeez, you can’t even say the word.”

“The kiss!” I said boldly, like a southern belle standing up to a smuggler.

He laughed at the ceiling now. “It’s all right, Mahalia. I shouldn’t have done that, even though you’re not legally married to anyone at the moment.” He even scratched his tight, flat stomach lazily, laughing at me!

“Well, yes,” I agreed. “You’d be in even more trouble with Allred if he knew about that.” My eyes dropped, and I couldn’t help note the big, pulsing bulge in the crotch of his jeans. He had chains attached to belt loops, and switchblade holsters, holders for his cell and maybe a Taser or two, dragging the tight jeans down a bit. My eyes followed the delicious line of hair that arrowed down from his navel, and he saw me looking, and he laughed again.

“Do you think I really care what Allred Lee Chiles thinks of me?”

“Well, you
should
care. You should care a lot, Gideon. Maybe you don’t realize the extent of his power. But he’s not just some whackjob stuck in this tiny corner of Utah. His power runs far and wide, maybe even down to your Bullhead City.”

He shook his head. “Nah. That’s where the Assassins of Youth hold sway. That’s our backyard, not a playground for a bunch of nut jobs.”

Classifying me and my sister wives as “nut jobs” irked me. Like him, I considered myself a rebel. I stood up for myself, if no one else did. “Like John Keats, I find myself straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness without knowing if my ideas are correct.”

“The poet?”

So he
was
somewhat educated. “Yes. I was just reading him. He wants to know if even in his ignorance he can be free from sin. That God might be amused with his mindless bumblings. ‘Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine. The commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.’”

“Are you calling me common?” He quirked a grin.

“I mean you’re just human. We’re seeing through a dark mirror right now, and want to be taught the mysteries of our souls. He says our reasonings may be all right, even if wrong. ‘For the same reason an eagle is not so lovely a thing as a truth. Do you not think I strive to know myself?’”