And Jericho Burned: Toke Lobo & The Pack Read online

  Table of Contents

  AND JERICHO BURNED

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  AND JERICHO BURNED

  TOKE LOBO & THE PACK

  MJ COMPTON

  SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

  New York

  AND JERICHO BURNED

  Copyright©2015

  MJ COMPTON

  Cover Design by Fiona Jayde.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published in the United States of America by

  Soul Mate Publishing

  P.O. Box 24

  Macedon, New York, 14502

  ISBN: 978-1-61935-704-4

  www.SoulMatePublishing.com

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  To my husband, Steve.

  Thanks for bringing home pizzas

  and eating too much processed food

  so I can write.

  Acknowledgements

  Paula Farrell and Angelica Tamayo, beta readers extraordinaire!

  The Purples—Gayle Callen, Kris Fletcher, Carol Lombardo, Chris Wenger. I don’t know how I would manage without you.

  Jennifer Talty for the gracious use of her summer home on a nearby lake. Bliss! And wine.

  Chapter 1

  Summoned as if she were a disobedient child, Lucy Callahan stood with her sister before her crazy brother-in-law, her hands, teeth, and stomach muscles clenched. She tried to focus on her irritation with Michelle instead of the wariness Randy inspired.

  “You can’t leave,” he said, slamming his fist on his dilapidated wooden desk. “Michelle needs her family.”

  His voice was too big for his physical presence and had a mesmerizing effect on certain segments of the population, much like the Pied Piper and rodents or St. Patrick and snakes.

  The extremely pregnant Michelle pushed a lank lock of dirty hair behind her ear. Bruise-like circles under her eyes emphasized her pasty complexion. Instead of looking at Randy or Lucy, she stared at the gritty plank floor beneath her grubby bare feet.

  Lucy was definitely irritated. She wouldn’t even be in Idaho if Michelle hadn’t summoned her, yet Michelle had ignored her since she arrived. But some habits were too difficult to abandon completely, such as taking care of a younger sister.

  “Michelle needs a doctor,” Lucy said.

  “Women have given birth since Eve,” Randy proclaimed. “Michelle doesn’t need medical interference. You and the other women will help her, and my son will be born surrounded by love, not sterile scientific indifference.”

  Lucy thought Michelle’s pallor, gauntness, and apparent lethargy could use some modern medical science. Pregnant women were supposed to glow. Instead, Michelle looked . . . snuffed.

  “How about a midwife?” Lucy asked. “Is there a midwife here?”

  “Michelle needs her family,” Randy repeated. He snapped his fingers, and Michelle shuffled to his side.

  “Then she should have stayed in Boulder,” Lucy replied, furious that Michelle let herself be trained as if she were a circus seal.

  Everything about New Sinai–Randy and Michelle referred to the stockade-enclosed parcel of land as a new nation–set Lucy’s teeth on edge, starting with the palisade fence.

  At first, she’d thought her own dislike of closed spaces was behind her mounting tension. After a week of living in stomach-churning squalor and subsisting on one-step-above starvation rations, she had to admit something else was wrong. Horribly wrong.

  Then Randy insisted she call him General.

  General. He even had an army. The scruffy soldiers might not look impressive–and Lucy had watched them drill–but their firepower summoned memories of watching a similar community burn.

  She’d been a child when government agents clashed with another quasi-religious military group, but she remembered watching the televised flames and her mother’s tears for the people trapped inside. Lucy hadn’t been able to shake those memories since arriving in New Sinai and seeing exactly what Michelle had gotten herself into this time.

  New Sinai was a cult. There was no other word for it.

  Michelle had a talent for trouble. New Sinai was merely her worst mess to date.

  “Look,” Lucy said, gripping her car key so tightly the jagged ridges bit into her fingers. “I’m leaving tonight. I have a catering business to run. I’ve already been away too long. Michelle, why don’t you come with me, just for a visit?”

  “Michelle doesn’t want to leave New Sinai,” Randy said. He trailed his fingers down Michelle’s bare arm, and Lucy shivered. “This is her home.”

  Lucy stole a glance at her still-silent sister, whose face remained a mask of indifference.

  Okay. She’d try another tactic to get Michelle off the mountain and to a doctor.

  “I can understand that, but I still need to return to Boulder. I can delay it another day, though. There’s a band playing in town tonight that I wouldn’t mind seeing. If I recall correctly, you used to like their music, Michelle. How about it? We can have a girls’ night out. We haven’t spent any time together since I’ve been here.”

  “How do you know about the band?” Randy’s tone was sharp and disapproving. “Where are they playing?”

  Lucy shifted her weight from one leg to the other. The office windows were closed, which made the small room stuffy. “I heard an ad on the radio on my way up here last week.” Not that she owed Napoleon an explanation or anything, but she’d learned early on Randy didn’t allow outside media in New Sinai, probably because reality might give the lemmings ideas.

  “We don’t mingle with outsiders,” Randy said. “And we certainly don’t frequent establishments serving alcohol. Your sister is pregnant. She needs her rest. Besides, you’re on kitchen duty tonight. I forbid you to go.”

  “Hey, I don’t drink, either,” Lucy said. “And in case you’ve forgotten, I don’t li
ve here, and I don’t answer to you.”

  Michelle mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “Yet,” and every millimeter of Lucy’s intestines knotted.

  “Fine,” Lucy said. “If Michelle isn’t up to a little sisterly bonding, I guess I’ll pack my stuff and hit the road.”

  Not needing his permission, she turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Randy said.

  His tone was conversational, not commanding, so she paused.

  He studied her as if he could read her mind.

  Lucy didn’t like the unholy gleam in his bloodshot hazel eyes or the perverted smirk curling his lips.

  “All right,” he said after a moment of edgy silence. “You can go out tonight. But driving in the dark can be dangerous, if you’re not used to the road–all those twists and turns, and it’s very narrow. I wouldn’t want you to get lost or hurt trying to find your way back. I’ll send someone with you.”

  Lucy inched away from the men who’d escorted her to the dance hall. They clung like parasites, but the only way Randy had allowed her to leave New Sinai was with his leeches attached.

  Bill Danby, one of Randy’s confidantes, clamped her elbow.

  She gestured toward the ladies’ room with her bottle of lemonade. He couldn’t follow her into the bathroom.

  “We gotta talk!” Bill yelled in her ear, as they squeezed through the crowd.

  No, she needed to get out of this bar. Coming here had been a huge mistake. The dance floor was jammed with writhing bodies. Toke Lobo and the Pack drew an enormous crowd, and Lucy didn’t do well in crowds.

  “You don’t talk to a woman, even if you’re married to her,” Reuel Johnson, her other escort, said. “You tell her what to do. I don’t envy you this one. She don’t look biddable.”

  Well, Lucy didn’t like Reuel any more than he liked her. His wife ran the cookhouse at New Sinai, so Lucy had seen more than enough of him while volunteering her culinary skills in a vain attempt to improve the cult’s diet.

  Reuel eyed her, squinting against the smoky air. “Glad I was already married when I joined the army, else I’d a gotten stuck with her. Good luck. You’ll need it. When’s the ceremony?”

  Lucy ignored him and focused on getting out of the crowd.

  “We’re getting married tomorrow,” Bill said.

  Lucy stopped. The din in the bar affected her hearing. It sounded as if Bill had said . . .

  “The General gave her to me because he trusts me, and she’s part of his family,” he said. He preened in his desert camouflage T-shirt. “It’s an honor to be marrying her.”

  Acid boiled from her stomach into her throat. “I’m not Randy’s to give.”

  Bill tightened his grip on her elbow. “He’s watching out for you, same as he does any other female, and since you’re his sister-in-law, he’s obligated. He has to lead by example.”

  She should have seen this coming.

  She swallowed her panic. “Sorry, Bill.” She shook her head and kept inching toward the restroom. “Can’t marry me without my signature on a license, and that’s not going to happen.”

  “You don’t have any say. The General ordered us to marry.”

  She’d been at New Sinai long enough to understand.

  She had to escape. Tonight. Rescuing Michelle had to wait.

  Stoker Smith caught his first whiff of his future as the band finished their set.

  His spine tingled as he inhaled the scent of something sweet and wonderful, like a mountain meadow in spring; something female and green, that hit his nose like a bronco kick to the gut. As he tried to separate the layers of fragrance mingling in a potpourri of perspiration, stale beer, and the perfume marinades in which the honky-tonk angels had soaked, he realized there was another element lurking in the atmosphere of the bar.

  Fear.

  She was terrified.

  She needed him. Now.

  “Come on, Stoker,” Tokarz de Lobo Garnier–Toke Lobo to his fans–said. “Break time.”

  Stoker switched off his electric keyboard and threaded his way through speakers, equalizers, Luke’s drums, and the other paraphernalia of the band to the edge of the chicken-wire enclosed stage.

  “She’s here,” he murmured to Tokarz. “And she’s in trouble. I need to find her.”

  “Who’s here?” Tokarz asked.

  “My mate.”

  Lucy latched on to the end of the line snaking toward the ladies’ room. Bill crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. He watched her with bright, buzzard-like eyes, as if he expected her to bolt.

  Bill Danby wasn’t stupid—not completely, anyway.

  She was trapped, all because she’d responded to her sister’s cryptic invitation.

  She turned her back on Bill. He couldn’t follow her into the restroom, and she had a date with its window.

  More bodies squeezed into the hallway. Lucy clung to the shreds of her tattered self-control. People were crammed in so tightly, if she fainted, no one would know, because she wouldn’t fall to the floor. A fire marshal would have a fit.

  In another minute, so would she, especially when the line of women was pressed closer to the wall so the band could pass.

  Lucy recognized the lead singer right away. His white Stetson and six foot four, two-hundred-plus pound body were hard to miss. Female catcalls and offers of sexual favors didn’t hinder his progress.

  The keyboard player, in his enormous black hat and flowing pastel paisley shirt, brought up the rear of the line. He walked slowly, checking out the women from the safety of the shadow his hat cast over his face. He paused every so often, as if examining the goods on display. When he reached Lucy, he stopped.

  Although she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt his gaze, as if he peered straight through to her soul. He leaned closer, stealing what little air space remained. Heart sprinting and lungs compressing, she wrestled the panic-attack. This wasn’t the time for her claustrophobia to launch itself. She huddled closer to the wall, trying to escape his hovering presence, trying not to be too obvious as she gasped for breath.

  “What’s your name?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  The women around her fell silent.

  Blood pounded in her ears. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Oversized stud-muffins never paid attention to her.

  But he took her hand and brought it to his mouth. His lips were soft, his breath hot. Shivers sprinted on her spine. He touched his tongue to the center of her palm, and her bones melted like icicles in a rainforest.

  This couldn’t be happening, not to her. First Bill Danby declared he planned to marry her, and now this semi-famous musician was hitting on her.

  Escape.

  The man had scrambled her brain cells for a moment, but here was her chance to get away from Bill, from Randy, from all the weirdness back on that mountain.

  “Lucy,” she whispered. “My name is Lucy.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Lucy.” He tugged on her hand, and like a helium-filled balloon, she bobbed in his wake.

  “Hey! What about me?” several females protested.

  “Let go of my fiancée!” Bill’s tone was hostile.

  Lucy quickly weighed her options. “Don’t you dare let go,” she said, her voice shaking. No matter what the band had in mind for her, it couldn’t be worse than Randy’s scheme to marry her off to one of his minions.

  Bill stepped in front of the keyboard player, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. “I said, unhand my intended.”

  “Is there a problem?” the bass player asked, his huge blond mustache undulating as he moved his mouth.

  “Nope,” the keyboardist replied. “Everything’s perfect.” He grinned, showing lots of white teeth. Nice teeth.

  “I’m goin
g to wipe the floor with you,” Bill said.

  As if by magic, two more of Randy’s men appeared.

  Lucy was fascinated in spite of herself. She wasn’t the kind of woman over whom men brawled, but it looked as if that’s exactly what was going to happen here. Too bad the Pack were musicians and no match for Randy’s paramilitary human weapons.

  The keyboard player thrust her behind him as he turned to face the four goons. “She’s with me,” he said.

  “Like hell,” Bill replied. “Lucy, get your ass over here. We’re leaving.”

  Lucy stayed where she was. Something about the way the keyboard player carried himself bred hope. He was better than the bathroom window.