Carney turned the question over in his head. He glanced out at the men on the patio. Would there be consequences for the wrong answer? Jax seemed intense, but not intimidating. Was it an act?

“I spoke to the police already,” he said, hesitating.

“I can hear a ‘but’ coming.”

Carney raised the shotgun slightly, barely noticing that he’d done it. Maybe his subconscious mind wasn’t as sure of Jax’s motivations as his conscious mind was.

“I liked her the moment I met her,” Carney went on.

“She has that effect,” Jax said.

“I didn’t want the police to find her, but I wasn’t just protecting her.”

“You were protecting yourself. Makes sense. I figure you told the police being up there at the ranch was a coincidence, but whatever deal Trinity and her boys were trying to strike with Temple, you were a broker. Maybe coming out of retirement?”

“One night only, like all the great Vegas comebacks,” Carney said. “Anyway, I wasn’t in a hurry to help the cops track them down.”

Jax leaned across the table, blue eyes alight. “So you do know where they went?”

Carney’s hands felt sweaty on the metal of the shotgun. “No. But someone else might. One of the men your sister was with mentioned a name, after the killing was done. Something about how they had to make sure they couldn’t be tracked back, or Drinkwater would have to find them a new place.”

“That name mean something to you?”

“Louis Drinkwater is a local real estate guy. Never met him, but I’ve seen him in the papers. He’s had his share of legal trouble.”

Jax stood abruptly, the chair scraping linoleum. Carney flinched, raised the shotgun, but Jax had almost forgotten he was there. The biker unlocked the slider and snapped at his men.

“Let’s go,” he said. “The night is young.”

“Drinkwater has a lot more money that I do,” Carney said. “Probably has better security, too. Maybe you oughta wait till morning.”

Jax stepped onto the patio, then turned to look back through the door. “If I get my sister home safe, we’re both gonna owe you one. Thanks for your help. And sorry again for waking you.”

I did it for her, not for you, he wanted to say. But the men were leaving and taking their guns with them, so he thought it best not to antagonize them.

* * *

Jax liked to ride late at night, when the world was quiet and dark. Even if he wasn’t riding alone, it still felt like solitude. Even more so with the dry wind blowing down from Desert Hills and Red Rock Canyon. They’d gone south to visit Carney, but now it was past one o’clock in the morning and they were roaring along the beltway with Jax in front and the other guys riding two by two. Joyce had put in a few hours at the Tombstone and then met up with them before the visit to Carney.

Headlights strafed Jax from a truck headed the other direction. He let himself drift back to Belfast, back to his first meeting with Trinity. They had recognized something in each other that had been difficult to identify. She had a core decency that he admired, but also blunt, rough edges. She wasn’t a part of the RIRA, but her family was inextricably linked to it, and maybe being raised in that family wasn’t so different from Jax’s life with SAMCRO. He’d practically been born on the back of a Harley, heir apparent to the gavel.

He’d felt a kinship with Trinity even before he’d learned they were actually kin… and they’d learned that bit of truth just in time. The connection between them had been powerful. They’d been halfway undressed and well on their way to enthusiastic, if unintentional, incest. If their mothers hadn’t interrupted, and immediately revealed the truth to avoid any chance of a second try… The memory made his stomach turn into an awkward knot, but not nearly as awkward as if the revelation had come a day later.

Jax didn’t like to think about it, and he was sure Trinity shared that reluctance. With the violence and chaos that had erupted around SAMCRO’s visit to Belfast, they hadn’t really had a chance to figure out what it meant to be brother and sister before Jax had to return to the States. He wondered if their awkwardness would prevent them from figuring that out now. Hoped it wouldn’t.

A low roar came from his left, and he looked over to see Opie riding up alongside him. Opie tilted his head, indicating something behind them. Jax cast a look back and spotted a silver BMW gliding along. He and Opie exchanged another silent communication. Was someone tailing them?

Jax slowed, letting Chibs, Joyce, and Thor pass him, and he took another glance backward to be certain of what he thought he’d seen. Sure enough, two men on bikes were following the BMW.

He saw an exit sign for Cheyenne Avenue, twisted the throttle, and blew past the others, signaling them to follow as he left the beltway. At the bottom of the exit ramp, he turned west, away from civilization instead of toward it. Opie and the rest followed him, but so had the BMW and the two assholes on motorcycles. He raced beneath the overpass and then skidded to a halt, propping the bike on its stand before taking cover. Then he drew his gun.

Opie, Thor, and Joyce did the same on the opposite side of the street. Thor moved up against the concrete foundation of the overpass, using the corner to shield himself.

Chibs skidded up beside Jax and jumped off his bike.

The BMW slowed as it rolled beneath the overpass, and the two men riding behind it throttled down. The car’s driver had seen them pull over—he couldn’t have missed it—and given their body language, the way they were taking cover, the way they all held their gun hands down at their sides, just out of sight, even an ordinary citizen would have known they were ready for a fight.

The BMW did not turn around, only rolled slowly until it stopped in the middle of the street, dead center in what would be the cross fire if bullets flew. The two guys on motorcycles—sleek red Kawasakis—halted fifty yards back, far enough that they could bolt if things turned ugly, report back to the boss.

The passenger window of the BMW slid down. In the darkness of the underpass, without even starlight to illuminate the face of the man inside, Jax could not make him out. A dome light inside the BMW clicked, and he flinched, surprised that the men inside would expose themselves like that.

The guy in the passenger seat was Viktor Krupin. He looked pale but fairly hearty considering he’d been shot in the shoulder a few hours earlier.

“Mr. Ashby,” Krupin said, his voice echoing against the concrete sides and roof of the underpass. The BMW purred, and the two Kawasakis growled quietly. “I would have thought the beating my boss gave you earlier would have discouraged you from breaking your agreement with us.”

Jax stared at him, thinking fast. Either Lagoshin had a way to track them or one of the Russians had been tailing them since the Orthodox church. Both options seemed unlikely.

“I haven’t broken any agreement,” he said, stepping out from behind his bike as he slid his gun back into his rear waistband. “And I figure if you’re up and riding around with that hole in your shoulder, it’d reflect badly on me if a couple of punches in the head kept me from doing the same.”

Krupin frowned. “You were to call me as soon as you had a lead on your sister’s location.”

Jax put up his hands. “That was the deal, but I don’t have shit. Just a string of names, people who might help narrow it all down for me. I didn’t see the point in boring you with that kinda thing. Figured once I had a location—”

“What do you have?” Krupin asked. He rested his elbow on the frame of the open window, deceivingly casual.

Jax’s whole body ached as he remembered the beating he’d received. “I’m not going to have you and Lagoshin going around beating the crap out of anyone who might have seen my sister. I want to find her, not scare her off… and I sure as hell don’t want you and Sokolov’s guys getting into a shooting match with her around.”