Today & Tomorrow by Susan Fanetti Read Free Book Online Page A

dead, he didn’t even give him a second look. Instead, he did a check for his brothers and found new cover.
     
    Gunfire and shouting fill the air, but Nolan’s survey of the scene told him that the Horde were wiping up the field with the Rats. They hadn’t stood a chance. He grinned. This ambush might finally shut this Rats charter down. And if the rest of them knew what was what, they’d take their lesson and sit down. Because the Horde had La Zorra and the Águilas cartel behind them.
     
    They’d been coming back from a border run drop when Hoosier had pulled them off to take a call. Dora Vega, known as La Zorra, the leader of the Águilas, had had intel for them: a Dirty Rats meet with one of their suppliers. The cartel had taken care of the supplier, ensuring that the Rats would be alone at the location and expecting friendly company.
     
    Looking at the bodies on the ground now, with the fight over and the Horde beginning to mass in the center of what was nothing short of a battleground, Nolan thought they might well have wiped out the charter.
     
    Hoosier scanned the bodies at their feet. “Head count.”
     
    “We’re whole, Prez,” Bart answered. “All accounted for. Deme took a knock to the head, but he’s up.”
     
    “I’m good,” Demon called out. Nolan turned and saw him and Muse coming from inside the building. One whole side of Demon’s head, to his shoulder, was red and wet with blood, but he was moving like he was okay.
     
    Hoosier looked him over. “J.R.’ll need to sew you up when we get back. You good to ride?”
     
    “Yeah. I’ll stick something in my helmet, soak up the blood.”
     
    Hoosier nodded, but not like he was agreeing with Demon’s plan. More like he was distracted and barely acknowledging that words had been spoken. “What we just did could force a truce with the whole Rat organization. Or we just declared war on them all. Let’s hope for the first one, because the second one’s a fuckin’ mess.”
     
    Again, he looked down at the reddening dirt. “Alright. Let’s get this here mess cleaned up. Muse, you head home with Deme—keep him close. Nolan, A, Jesse, Lakota—start digging. Shovels’re in the van. The rest of us, let’s prep the bodies.”
     
    He kicked the arm of the body of a fat, older Rat with a long, chaotic, grey beard and longer, more chaotic grey hair. The charter president, Manson. “I want his kutte. Burn the rest of them with the bodies. Make it snappy.”
     
    Nolan went to the back of the van, set his weapon down, shed his Kevlar vest, and got to work.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    It looked like Hoosier was getting what he wanted. The Horde and the Rats were setting up a meet for a truce—one that included leadership from all players. There were a lot of moving parts. In the meantime, a cease-fire was in effect.
     
    Nolan had never served in the military, but sometimes it seemed to him there wasn’t a lot of difference between military and one-percenter culture. Maybe that was why, or because, so many men in kuttes were vets.
     
    While those negotiations were underway, things were quiet around the club. A couple of days after that last fight, Nolan was hanging out in the Hall, co-opping a shooter game with Sherlock. His phone buzzed in his pocket during a battle; he ignored it until they got through it and could pause. Sherlock went to the john. Nolan pulled his phone out.
     
    Analisa. Usually she texted, but this had been a call. There was a voice mail. He stared at the notification, spinning his ring on his finger, trying to decide what to do. He hadn’t returned a text from her in two days.
     
    He wasn’t avoiding her. Not exactly. He didn’t want to avoid her; he missed her. But the past month had been intense in a bunch of ways, and his head was fucking with him.
     
    He’d seen her five times in the month since he’d met her. It felt like not enough and too much. He liked her. A lot. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that