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CHAPTER ONE
Eight Ball pulled his Fat Boy up to the wide country gate at the end of this newly graded gravel road and keyed in the code. After a moment—as always,justlong enough that the doubt began to form that he’d mis-keyed the code—the cantilevered gate swung open, and he rode through.
At once, he was surrounded by a garden so huge and lush that Becker, Eight’s best friend, had always called it ‘Sage’s jungle,’ in honor of his wife, who’d spent the past fifteen or so years creating it. Both sides of the long gravel drive were lined with sunflowers, several different kinds, arrayed like schoolkids for a class photo, with the tallest in the back.
Behind those was a line of young aspens on both sides. Behind the aspens, a true forest ran wild, where the kind of trees natural to this part of Oklahoma had been allowed to grow in their own way.
Most of this decent chunk of land had been allowed to stay wild. Until you got closer to the house, where Sage’s jungle really got going. There were a dozen or so fruit trees and two giant vegetable beds, just about every kind of flower Eight could name and probably hundreds he could not, in every color and shade imaginable. Pea gravel curled around the different beds, and flagstones made sturdier paths connecting the buildings—the sprawling house, Beck’s workshop and garage, Sage’s garden shed, a redwood gazebo, the kids’ playhouse, the aboveground pool with the wide redwood deck surround.
Now, as the September afternoon had aged, low sunlight pushed through the woods and dusted gold fragments over it all.
The Beckers had four kids, twin girls and two boys. Emily and Anne were sixteen, John was thirteen, and Michael was twelve. The days of brightly colored plastic toys being strewn across the grounds were largely behind them. Now it was bicycles, dirt bikes, scooters, and skateboards, dropped on the grass or leaning against a wall.
Eight had grown up in the country, on his aunt and uncle’s farm, and he didn’t think he had one good memory of his childhood. He wouldn’t live in the country now if every city in the world were suddenly sucked into the earth and there was nothing but country to live in. But at the Beckers’, he could almost see the appeal.
For years, Eight had ridden down this drive and grinned as he’d crested the last rise and come upon the house. There had never been any denying that a vibrant, happy family lived here, and it gave him some peace to see it—so much peace that he didn’t mind he’d never have it himself. He’d always been pretty sure he didn’t want it anyway—and more sure he couldn’t make it work if he had it. This kind of contented, settled life was not, and never would be, in his wheelhouse.
Today, however, as he pulled his bike up to the garage and dismounted, he was struck by the quiet. For the past year, quiet had permeated this home and this family, and it made the whole world seem broken.
He walked up to the nearest garage door and peered through one of the windows. A thick spiderweb was taking over a corner. It had the look of a black widow web; Eight would tell Sage about it and offer to take care of it.
Beyond that web sat three vehicles, under covers and standing alone like ghosts: Becker’s Dyna, his vintage Indian, and his late-model Chevy truck. He understood why they sat there, untouched, but it made the year-old hole in Eight’s chest burn to see them this way.
To the left of the covered truck, behind the middle door, was another vehicle under cover. The ghost its tarp made was oddly shaped; the car beneath it—a 1973 Mustang convertible—had been frozen in time halfway through a rebuild. Beck had meant it to be his daughters’ sixteenth birthday present.
He’d been killed before he could finish it.
The excited baying of a beagle interrupted Eight’s somber moment, and he turned in time to lock his knees as Sugar reached him at full speed and jumped.
He caught her and smiled as her sopping wet tongue lapped all over his face. “Hey, girlfriend,” he said. “Glad to see you, too.”
Sage was crossing the yard, moving considerably more slowly than the dog, so Eight had time to finish the slobbery greeting and put Sugar on the ground. She zoomed off to find trouble, and Eight focused on the woman walking toward him.
Beck’s widow was too fucking young to be a widow—or a mom with teenage kids. She was only thirty-seven. She looked even younger, because her style was not typically mom-ish. She was heavily inked from her feet to her jaw, even had a bit of ink on her face. She wore her dark hair boyishly short these days, which showed her zillion silver earrings, as well as the flaming heart tattoo with the crown, sitting below her right ear. She’d been the Bulls’ queen for years. That role was still hers, as far as Eight was concerned, but he knew she didn’t want it anymore.
Eight had given Becker several tons of shit over the years for the twenty-four-year age gap in that relationship, but it had worked, nearly seamlessly, for sixteen years—and would have worked for decades longer, if the world were fair. But it was not, and now Sage had no husband, her kids had no father, and Eight Ball had no best friend.
“Hey, Eight,” Sage said as she came near enough to be heard without raising her voice. She was so little, barely more than five feet, and skinny. She’d been a little more filled out before, each kid adding a few pounds, but she’d lost a lot of weight in the last year. She wore faded, ripped jeans and an old Misfits t-shirt—pretty standard Sage Becker wardrobe.
Her big brown eyes looked tired. There was some age there, these days.
“Hey,” he answered. He didn’t like hugging, but he felt like he should offer Sage one. After a moment in which he tried to work out if he would hold out his arms, she came close and brushed one small hand over his forearm—a move designed to let him off the hook, hug-wise. After all these years, she understood him pretty well.
Relieved, he grabbed her hand in his ugly old paw and gave it a squeeze. The bull ring on his middle finger glinted dully in the sunset. That ring had once been Becker’s, until his funeral, when Sage had given it to Eight. He’d worn it every day since.
“What are you doin’ here?” she asked. She plucked at one horn of that big ring.
“You weren’t there today, and you weren’t answering your phone. I wanted to make sure you and the kids were okay.”
Today marked exactly one year since the day the Brazen Bulls and the Night Horde had fought the Perro Blanco cartel and killed Julio Santaveria, the Perro boss. In that bloody fight, the Bulls had lost Becker, their president, and Terry Capewell and D.C. Oates, two longstanding patches.
Now Eight was the Bulls’ president, something which, as recently as a few years ago, everyone in Tulsa and a lot of people beyond it—including Eight himself—would have considered laughable.
Several years back, when Simon Spellman, Beck’s first VP, went into the joint on an arson conviction, Becker had caused some controversy by tapping Eight Ball to take over the VP seat. Nobody but Becker—including Eight himself—thought it was a good call. Eight’s reputation as a meatheaded asshole was well established. But Becker had seen something in Eight that Eight had worked the next five years to make true.
Now his president, his best friend, his fucking lifeline, was dead, and it was on Eight to make sure he didn’t make a mess of Beck’s legacy.
That unanimous vote suggested his brothers now thought he could manage it. He sure as fuck hoped they were right.
