Fallon, Nevada
Lora
Although Lora had never personally visited the crew in Fallon, she couldn’t help but have formed a negative impression of them. Even before Contessa had such a hostile reception there, Lora had been aware of the group’s strong anarchist inclinations. Part of her job as the admin for the queen was compiling sanitized news items about the community into a bulletin that was e-mailed not only to residents of Norseton but to many related groups’ members as well.
Every single month, she got a slew of charming responses such as “Go fuck yourselves” and “Stay out” and “Delete.”
She responded to each of those with a carefully constructed message informing them of when they’d subscribed and showing them how to remove themselves from the list.
Most stayed on because they were too nosy not to.
If she’d ever thought she’d be standing in an overgrown field with a bunch of hostile Fallonites, breathing in motorcycle exhaust, and fearing for the continued wholeness of her eardrums, she wouldn’t have bet on it.
She sighed—quietly, she’d thought—but Jody turned around and lifted a brow. “You want to wait in the SUV?” he asked without moving his lips. There were too many Fallonites within earshot, and none had recognized them yet.
Lora had thought it would be wise to approach the group somewhere where they could query as many of them as they could at once. Also, she thought it would be intelligent to speak with them someplace they could easily escape from should they need to get out in a hurry.
She didn’t doubt for a second that they would need to make a hasty escape. A motorcycle rally wasn’t an ideal scenario, but it was the best they could do on such short notice.
“I think that’d be an awesome idea,” Colt murmured. “Get in the back seat and stay down low.”
“I will not,” she said.
He cut Jody a Well, I tried look.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jody said.
The bikers circling around the dirt track slowed as the guy in the center waved a flag and lifted his megaphone. “Show-off time is over, folks. It’s a school night, so let’s run down the old and new business real quick so we can get the hell out of here.”
“Who is that?” Colt whispered.
Lora cleared her throat and stood on her tiptoes to get closer to his ear. “I believe his name is Walter Ellis. Community leader, of sorts, here. Fallonites don’t like having an organized group structure, but they recognize the need to have someone keep everyone in the loop. Too dangerous not to.”
Jody grunted. “He’s not related to me, is he?”
“No. Distant relative of Oliver’s, though. Fourth cousin or something like that.”
“Good to know.”
They listened quietly as Walter informed the group of upcoming events, the sick and shut-in in need of financial resources or visits, and so on. Then he held the megaphone up for new business. “Anyone got anything to say?” he shouted.
Lora was hoping someone would say something—that Jody wouldn’t have to walk out to a cold crowd—but the Fallonites were all restless and ready to leave.
“All right, then,” Walter said. “I guess we’ll dismiss until—”
Jody jumped the fence and raised a hand to him. “If I may?”
Sour bile suddenly inched up Lora’s throat. She placed a hand over her neck and willed the sick filling away, but she knew the only cure would be her getting into the truck and them driving to New Mexico.
“Who the hell are you?” Walter asked.
“Jody Dahl.”
“Dahl?”
“Yeah. You know the name. That Dahl. You knew my father, huh? And who he married?”
Whispers in the crowd suddenly turned into roars of discontent. Some of the people standing near Lora and Colt edged closer, shouting “How dare you come here?” and such at them.
Colt penned Lora closer to the chain-link fence, putting his body between her and the crowd and pretending nothing was amiss.
Walter scrubbed a hand down his face and shook his head. “Okay, Mr. Jody Dahl. You’ve got thirty seconds. What do you want?”
Jody took the megaphone from him. “I’ll be brief. I’m here because the all-group council is convening. The rules haven’t changed from the time we arrived in this place. We respectfully request for you to select two delegates to attend. We have numerous issues to hold hearings on, including the unsanctioned adoptions facilitated by Dan Petersen and—”
The shouts got louder, swallowing every word Jody spoke next.
Walter jumped onto a podium in the center of the track and waved his arms at the crowd. He took the megaphone from Jody and said, “Settle down. We wanted it dealt with, right? Wanted folks to get their due for messing with us? You said you didn’t trust the Afótama to handle it? Well, they’re giving us the chance to have our say. Two delegates is more than most of all the others are getting, isn’t it?”
Jody nodded grimly.
The Fallonites had the largest group other than the one in Norseton. Their delegation would hold clout, even if their opinions weren’t the majority. Tess was innately petty, but she’d be fair. She would hear their remarks and thoroughly consider them.
Jody took back the offered megaphone. “There are also other issues on the docket relating to Afótama concerns that must be, by code, heard by the council. I’m sure you’ve heard rumors by now of some of the upheavals in our community. You can have your chance to help us resolve it.”
He handed the megaphone back for good and mouthed, “Thanks, I’m done,” to Walter.
“All right, so, who’s gonna go?”
Lora looked around to see who’d hold up his or her hand to volunteer, but there was just jeering, shouting. They thought it was all a game. She wished they hadn’t had to invite them, but they were an injured party. They were due satisfaction.
A laughing woman in buttery yellow leather pants and a cropped black concert tea climbed halfway up the fence and put up her hands. “I’ll go!”
Walter sighed into the megaphone. “You jokin’? Come on. I get it, folks. You don’t want to make it easy for them, but don’t waste these folks’ time, all right?”
“No, really,” Kelly said, smiling. “I’ll go. I’d be glad to.”
“If you’re going there to start shit with Oliver—”
“I’d never do such a thing. I’m over it.”
Colt gave Lora a querying look. It took Lora a moment to put the pieces together in her head. “I believe she’s some relative of Oliver’s late wife.”
“I take it they didn’t get along.”
Lora grimaced. “Contessa may have decked her the last time she was here.”
“Fuck.”
“If she volunteers…”
“Jody can’t really reject her.”
“Exactly.”
“All right, then,” Walter said wearily. Even he sounded like he thought her going to Norseton was a bad idea. He couldn’t stop her from going unless many others volunteered, in which case they’d have to vote on delegates. But no one else was volunteering.
“Come on,” Walter pleaded. “We gotta have more than one. Don’t squander the chance. As I said, I’ve got no skin in the game, and I probably couldn’t take off work anyway. Is there no one?”
For the first time in the hour since they’d arrived, the group went silent.
Walter shook his head and turned to Jody. “Well, we got you one. I guess you could make do, huh?”
“I-I’ll go,” came a weak voice from the back of the crowd. The group turned collectively to see who it was.
“Did I hear something?” Walter asked.
“I said I’ll…I’ll go.”
A woman made her way slowly, clumsily through the crowd and approached the fence. Slightly taller than average. Mousy brown hair. Around fifty or so. Freckles across tanned cheeks.
Staring at the ground, she gripped the fence. “I’ll go.”
Walter put his head back and groaned. “Seriously?”
“Why not her?” Colt whispered.
Lora shrugged. She certainly didn’t recognize her.
“If everyone’s okay with sending two conflict-of-interest delegates to the council, I’m not gonna talk you out of it. We all set?”
Everyone murmured yes and started moving toward their vehicles, but not without poking a few jibes in Colt and Lora’s direction before they went.
Jody spoke a bit longer with Walter, then looked toward the woman at the fence—not at Kelly who was still perched halfway up and had thrust two middle fingers toward Jody, but the other delegate.
Jody made his way over to the fence, brow furrowed. He looked at her. She looked at him. Neither said anything.
“Jody?” Lora asked.
“This…” he said low as though he couldn’t risk anyone else hearing, “is apparently my aunt. Dahlia.”
His aunt.
“We were…roamers. Got…separated,” she stammered. “Me and Keith. Didn’t know where he went. Then I knew. But I couldn’t go there. Not even after.”
“After he was killed.”
She cringed. “Was all I had.”
“You should have come.”
She gave her head a hard shake. “Wouldn’t fit.”
“You don’t fit here, either. Norseton would have been better. You would have had family, at least.”
She gripped the fence so tight her knuckles turned white. She stared at her hands like she hadn’t before given thought to what he’d suggested and couldn’t fathom being there.
If Lora had had family somewhere, she would have done anything to get to them. She would have been so desperate.
“We got separated,” the lady repeated, and something inside Lora’s head screamed out like a siren.
Like she should act—like there was danger.
We got separated.
“Nobody here would take care of me,” the woman said. “I had to get along on my own. They don’t bother me really. I’m here, but not.”
We got separated.
Lora found herself moving—to eliminate. That was what she was supposed to do. She had to take care of this, and then she could go back to Norseton and resume her duties. She hated disorganized things and knew there had to have been a beautiful mess waiting for her.
She pulled Colt’s gun from the holster at the back of his waistband, pointed it at Jody, and started squeezing the trigger. “We got separated,” she said.
Jody didn’t even move. Didn’t put his hands up. Didn’t shout. He just stared at her, even as her index finger tightened on that useful little lever. “Are you going after my little sister?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Oh. I see. And Nan?”
“Anyone in the way.”
“All of our daughter’s family, yes?”
“What?” She scoffed.
She wouldn’t do such a ridiculous thing. Why would she take away any relations her baby would have, knowing that she herself had none?
“Who’s she been around?” Jody’s aunt asked.
Was Lora supposed to get rid of her, too? The instructions in her mind seemed incomplete as though the plan hadn’t been thought far enough out.
Bringing Norseton down was the goal. No one had given any care to the blood in Fallon. Evidently, they’d miscalculated somehow.
Her moment of confusion was enough for Colt to slowly push her hands down so the gun’s barrel was pointed to the ground.
“Were those the words?” Jody asked quietly. “We got separated?”
“She been hypnotized somehow?” Dahlia asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I’ve seen lots like her. Most folks never shake it off. That’s why I ask who she’s been around. Man used to come out here looking for folks who hated Norseton.”
“A man named Magnus?” Colt asked.
“I think so. Hard to remember. So many folks come out here trying to start something.”
“I’m sure they do. He’s got to fill his cult somehow, hmm?”
“What’s…happening to me?” Lora whined, and Colt released the magazine on the gun and pried the weapon out of her fingers.
“Fight it,” Jody spat, reaching across the fence to grip her shoulders. “Just fight it. We’ll get you home, and we’ll get that shit out of your head. Now that we know what the words are, we can help you.”
Her hands were twitching at her sides, alternately forming fists to hit him with and hanging loose. She was thrumming with agitation and sick to her stomach.
“Oh God,” she whispered and then turned to run, to vomit, but she couldn’t get far.
Dahlia held Lora’s hair away from her face as she retched and patted her back. “It’s okay. I’ll keep you from hurtin’ him, okay?”
“I don’t want to hurt him,” Lora cried. “I have to.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t have to, okay? Don’t listen to none of that crazy stuff.”
“It’s hard.”
“I know.” Dahlia patted her back some more. “But you see how he trusted you? Didn’t even flinch. You just…do the same for him. That’s all.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I know. T-that’s what that old…Magnus man is countin’ on. I could have killed him, you know.”
“When?” Jody asked, obviously eavesdropping.
“Lots of times, I bet. Nobody here cares about me. I’m mostly an outcast. They don’t watch. I watch, though. I would have killed him for you if I knew. He ain’t worth nothin’ noway.”
There must have been something incredibly wrong with Lora’s head because she was seriously finding that ridiculous statement sweet.
“I’ll go give the council information to Kelly,” Colt said, moving backward away from their little cluster. “Then we can get the hell out of here. Maybe get Shea on the line and see if she can start working her psycho-babble magic on Lora over the phone?”
Jody already had his cell in hand. “Yep.”
He put his phone to his ear and looked at his aunt. “I need to know everything you know about Magnus or anyone who you think might be him.”
“Right now?”
“As soon as possible. Where do you live? We’ll take you home and then get you out to Norseton for the council meeting.”
Dahlia gestured to the late-model station wagon parked at the far end of the field. “R-right there. Home sweet home.”
“Shit.”
Lora thought the same. The paternal aunt of the Afótama clan leader lived in a thirty-year-old car on the fringes of civilized society.
Somehow, that seemed expected.
She looked to Jody. “So, should I just—”
“If it helps you to step away for me for the time being, I understand.”
Nodding, she did just that. She walked away, but handed him the foldable knife, mace, and stun gun from her dress pockets first.
She supposed that was what love looked like, even if she did want to kill him.