Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

water cooler across the room. At her.
     
    He was leaning on his bike. Staring at her house.
     
    How had he found her? Like all the caseworkers, she kept her personal information as locked down as she could. She didn’t even have any social media accounts anymore, because they’d said in training that there was no way, even under an alias, to be sure anything she posted couldn’t be tracked. Had he followed her? But her car was still at Harry and Carole’s house.
     
    While she watched, a dark van drove through the circular glow of the streetlight. It made a U-turn, its headlights sweeping the lawns and the street, momentarily casting Tucker’s father in bright relief, and then pulled up behind his bike.
     
    He had an accomplice? Were they going to try to abduct her?
     
    She should call the cops. That was the smart thing. Just call the cops and wait, staying away from the windows. That would be the advice she’d give anyone else.
     
    Yep. That would be the smart thing.
     
    But fuck hiding in a corner of her own damn house. That was not the way she was going to start her career—cowering from people angry at her because they couldn’t take care of their children. Fuck that sideways.
     
    Instead of doing the smart thing, she did the brave thing. She opened her nightstand drawer and pulled out her .38.
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    Muse reached up and grabbed his burner off the windowsill before it vibrated off and hit him in the head.
     
    “Yeah.”
     
    “Muse, honey. Sorry to wake you.”
     
    Bibi? Since when did Bibi call his burner? And in the middle of the night? He opened his eyes and sat up. Cliff jumped off the bed, thinking it was time to get up. “Yeah, Mama. What’s wrong?”
     
    “I put Demon to bed at our house tonight, but he’s gone. He’s not picking up. I’m worried, and Hoosier’s on a run.”
     
    Muse was already yanking his jeans back on. “I got it, Bibi. I’ll track him down.” He ended the call and dialed Demon himself. When he didn’t pick up, Muse called Sherlock, the club Intelligence Officer.
     
    “This better be a fucking calamity, asshole.”
     
    “I need a 20 on Demon. He’s off the rez.”
     
    “Shit. You think he went after the junkie?” Sherlock’s voice was much clearer now.
     
    “I don’t know. I’ll head that way now, but can you do whatever you do and pin him down? He’s not answering his burner.” Not answering the burner was bad—Demon was either in trouble, or he was looking to start some. He pulled on his boots and a t-shirt, then grabbed his hoodie off the floor.
     
    “Yeah. I’ll see what I can do. Gimme a few.” And he was gone. Muse shoved the phone into his pocket.
     
    He let Cliff out for a quick piss, then called him in and gave him a ruffle between the ears. “Sorry, bud. I won’t be long.” Then he grabbed his kutte, went out, jumped in the club van he still had, and headed toward Rialto.
     
    When the new Night Horde charter had started up, they’d moved their bike shop from L.A. out into the far suburbs. San Bernardino County was a vast amalgam of tidy bedroom communities, quaint turn-of-the-last-century towns, and downtrodden neighborhoods that had mainly been given over to gangs and dust.
     
    Madrone was one of the tidier bedroom communities, populated primarily by commuters who drove the fifty miles each way to and from their career-track jobs in L.A. It had its wrong side, but for the most part, the neighborhoods and developments were neatly tended, and the residents had block parties and catered yard sales. Pinon Boulevard, the town’s version of Main Street, was mostly made up of pretty strip malls. And, positioned as it was between two mountain ranges, and with the San Jacinto Mountains not far south, the view in almost every direction, on a clear day, was absolutely brilliant. If not for that view, Muse thought the town would be nearly indistinguishable from probably thousands of middle-class communities all across