squats down on the couch.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Who are you?” she asks, giving me an amused smirk.
“I asked first.”
“I asked second.”
Anders steps closer. “Pixie asks a lot of questions when she’s nervous.”
“Then, you need to do the talking.”
“I couldn’t tolerate the thought of her starving,” he admits. “She has a younger sister and brother. I brought her food.”
“For the first time?” I ask, already knowing the answer. No way has he left her starving for weeks.
“The new guy in charge and his supporters are hoarding the food. Pixie wasn’t getting anything. I couldn’t have her eating leaves.”
“Why is she here?” Lowell asks. “Do you sneak her to your place often?”
“No, never before.”
“Then, why now?”
Anders rubs his bearded jaw and looks at the girl who is back to walking around on his couch. I suffer a terrible urge to tell her to sit the fuck down. I know her feet must be filthy. I see no shoes or other belongings in this room. The house is spotless in the way Anders always keeps it. He’s anal about that shit.
However, I don’t tell her to sit down. I’m not her dad, and it’s not my couch.
“Get to it before I’m no longer willing to listen,” I tell Anders.
“I showed up to give her food. Just bread, some nuts, a little jerky, and fruit. Nothing that might draw attention. But an asshole came running out of the woods and took a fucking shot at me. I returned fire without thinking. Then another guy came running from a different direction. He almost shot me, but Pixie jumped on his back and hit him with a rock. After that, I couldn’t leave her behind. I didn’t know what they would do to her.”
“Are those men dead?”
“The one I shot is. Got him in the face. The one she jumped was twitching when we left, and I don’t know if he made it.”
“So it’s possible he’ll survive to tell the others how you took one of their women?” Lowell asks.
“Wait,” I interrupt. “Did those fuckers know who you were?”
“Yeah, I was wearing my vest and riding my hog. It was still light out. They knew.”
“Is there any way they might have thought you were hurting her?”
“We weren’t even standing near each other. I was by my bike, and Pixie was feet away, eating an orange. Those guys came hauling ass at me. They didn’t even acknowledge her.”
Next to me, Lowell catches on to what I’m thinking and asks, “Do you figure they knew about Anders’s visits and planned an ambush?”
“The Village has never taken a shot at one of our guys before. I’ve never gotten a sense they were suicidal. What happened today wasn’t an accident. They either planned it, or those guys were told the Executioners are fair game.”
“And I think I know why,” Anders says, somehow disappearing behind us despite his size. He’s so quiet at times that I forget he’s in a room.
“Speak up,” I say, glancing at the girl who now sits with her ass on the back of the couch and her bare feet planted on the dark leather.
“Pixie, tell them the name of your new torch-bearer.”
“John of the Marks,” she says, playing with a braid in her hair.
“What?” Lowell mutters.
I see my VP catch on, just as I do. “John Marks?” I ask the girl, recalling the idiots that once ran this town.
Pixie nods. “He cooked in the sun, and his hair half escaped his head.”
Before I ask Anders to translate, her words and my memory of the last time I saw John Marks come together. The asshole sports an overly-tanned George Hamilton look. The top of his head is completely bald, but the hair around his bottom half is long and shaggy.
“How long has he been at the Village?” I ask the girl.
“He came after we came.”
“And when was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“She doesn’t use a calendar,” Anders explains. “But she moved here a few years ago. Her brother can’t be older than two, and he was conceived in the Village. That means Marks joined the cult less than three years ago.”
“And with the elders dying off, he’s made his move,” Lowell mutters. “That’s why they’re stockpiling weapons.”
Sighing, I nod. “His family spent decades wanting to take back Elko from the club. Now he thinks he’s got a shot.”
“What’s the call?” Lowell asks.
Unprepared for this turn of events, I’m not sure how to handle the Village. “We stick to what we’ve been doing. Keep them locked down. Figure out