Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,8

her, I don’t really expect an answer. For now, until we get back and settled, it’s tabled, but you know I’m going to bring it up.”

“If anything, I hope she can cook or you’re in for a rough month if that’s what you’re counting on her to do.” Cipher broke into silent laughter and the guys all couldn’t help but join in. Doing their best not to get too loud, lest she hear and think we were making fun of her.

“Right, anything else then?” I asked and they all shook their heads.

“We knew you were up to something,” Deacon declared. “You never do anything for no reason.”

I nodded carefully. “No. No, I do not,” I agreed.

Chapter Four

Marisol…

I held nothing but disdain for the three men around the table, left out here with me – and so I ignored them.

How they weren’t in jail with the rest of the men from this group of the club was beyond me. Perhaps the police didn’t have enough evidence against them. Just the other four.

I knew them. They used to bring the medicine, but they also had started to charge more and more each time. Sometimes, we had to go without. Sometimes, that made my people sick. It was frustrating, and I understood why Miguel had thought to go to the police, but he was Abuela’s man to deal with. Instead, the four men who were in jail now had killed Miguel and his whole family – his wife, Anita, and their two little ones.

It was why they were in jail now, and if they talked, it could put a stop to the medicine. I worried for my brother; was afraid he would die. We couldn’t afford the medicine at the pharmacy. It was far too expensive.

I walked around the barroom, my eyes skimming the photographs of the gringos on the wall, their hair wild and unkempt, greasy in some photos, and their eyes bleary from too much drink. Some of the photos were Yakima County Sheriff, some were Tribal Police, and I had to think that more than a few were for riding their motorcycles while drunk.

My mind wandered to Maverick, and the men who had replaced these ones last year… He was different. They all were. Hard, yes, with their air of don’t fuck with me the same as the men from this region – yet something was different. Their male gazes… appreciative more than lascivious.

I didn’t feel dirty when Maverick looked at me. Unlike the fools behind me now, cracking semi-crude jokes like I didn’t know that they were talking about me.

Then again, I knew when to keep my mouth shut. It was a very real possibility they didn’t think I spoke English. Joke was on them. My father may have been an illegal immigrant, but both I and my brother were born here.

My mother was also Hispanic, but American like me. Her parents had immigrated like my father had.

She was a teenager when she met my father, who was in his early twenties. She got pregnant with me, and they’d married and had been happy. They were overjoyed when they got pregnant with my brother, even though they had intended to stop with me.

My brother was born, and we were happy… but then my father had his fall. He hit his head and had died before help could arrive. My mother was devastated and turned to drugs to numb the pain. She overdosed and the rest, as they say, was history. Both my brother and I were given to our Abuela to raise.

The door opened and the men came out of the room Maverick had called the chapel, though there wasn’t any sort of religious iconography that I could see.

“Marisol,” he said. “Come in here a minute, would you? I want to talk to you.”

I let my gaze sweep the faces of the men who had come out, but their expressions were carefully neutral and gave me nothing.

I hitched my backpack higher on my back and gripping the straps so my hands wouldn’t shake, I went forward – past the table where the three men sat and past Maverick and into the room.

He shut the door behind us, and my spine tingled, a bead of sweat sliding down my spine as I tried to turn calmly.

“You don’t think much of them, do you?” he asked.

“I liked Miguel, Anita, and their two boys,” I said simply.

Maverick’s jaw knotted with something like regret and I frowned slightly.

“Nothing like that is ever going