Band of Brothers
DEAN: I’M sorry, you and my brother WHAT?
Marcus: Wait, how soon will you be here? All the parents are gone for some sort of lawn bowling thing at the local park. Should I send them for ice cream or send them to Canada?
Val: Romeo and Julian of Bakersfield. Heh.
Anthony: Can we all focus? What do we do with these kids?
Dean: Hiding them at the ranch was a good call. Let me deal with the parents. Val, wtf are you right now anyway?
Val: On my way back from Seattle. Rory’s in town, though. Anthony, maybe you should tag your father into this.
Dean: When do you have to be back in Seattle?
Val: Next week, why?
Dean: Because I have a wonderful awful idea.
Anthony: Are you going to clue us in?
Dean: No, because first we need Reg’s help on all that illegal electronic equipment in Mom and Dad’s den. Me and Marcus gotta make some calls.
Marcus: No, we don’t.
Dean: Okay, I gotta make some calls.
Marcus: Fuck. That means we both gotta make some calls.
Dean: You could claim plausible deniability, but you’re living in my parents’ basement like a loser. BTW, I’d take the lift up and get ready to pretend to play dumb. One of the things fake ICE can do is call REAL ICE and have them show up to make your life interesting. Bring your badge.
Marcus: Sure. It looks like the snake is gonna poop anyway. It’ll be fine.
Anthony: Hallelujah, I feel so much better knowing snakeshit is coming my way.
Val: My God, Junior, you’re fitting in just fine.
“So,” Reg asked, “what do they say?”
Anthony glanced up from his phone and found that, true to his word, Reg had taken some back roads and some frontage roads and one shortcut through somebody’s farm easement, and they were now approaching his parents’ property from a completely different direction.
“Your brothers?” Anthony snorted. “They have a plan. It involves us getting the kids into hiding and you helping Dean contact somebody on your unregistered electronic equipment in the den.”
Reg grunted. “Damn Bailey. I mean, I knew he was going to tell Dean about all of it, but I thought he’d give me more time.
” Dean’s boyfriend had adopted the Royal family just like Anthony had—all in.
But Bailey was busy finding a new job and an apartment and moving his possessions from Texas so he could be with Dean, which meant they tried to leave him out of the family chats unless it directly involved him.
Lucky Bailey.
“Well, at some point you are going to have to tell your family about why it’s there,” Anthony said. “You could always practice on me, right?”
Reg gave him a sideways glance and grunted. “It’s stupid. You know that, right?”
Anthony stared at him for a moment, taking in his calm, his strength, his quick thinking, all in the last hour.
“You say ‘stupid’ whenever you’re talking about stuff you like or stuff you do,” he said after a moment, feeling the hurt keenly.
“When are you going to learn that I’m not interested in stupid? ”
“Wha—” Reg’s voice squeaked. “What are you interested in?”
Anthony breathed out carefully, thinking if subtle hadn’t done it in the past three months, he was going to have to go with bold. “You, Reg. I’m interested in you.”
A wonderful shade of crimson washed Reg’s pale throat and the tips of his ears, and he swallowed. “Oh,” he rasped. “Okay. I… erm, can we talk about this later?”
“Don’t mind us,” Reynaldo said from the back seat. “We’re going to need something to distract us from being chased by bad guys with guns.”
“Definitely,” Ilia said, sounding sad. “Man, I need to get word to my mom that Lem’s in town and he’s seen me with—are you really Gael Barrera’s son?”
“Yeah,” Reynaldo grunted. “Sorry. I was really loving art club, too. All I ever learned back home was electronics and Mexican history and war strategy and math. I was so looking forward to gouache this year.”
“What’s gouache?” Anthony asked Reg.
“It’s an opaque watercolor with a binding agent,” Reg recited. “It makes some really awesome paintings, but it’s kind of pricey. It’s why we were doing the fundraiser tonight.”
“Ah,” Anthony said, very cognizant that they had moved into much more pressing life-or-death events, but also sad for this kid, who apparently hadn’t asked to be born into one of Mexico’s most dangerous cartels. “One thing at a time, Reynaldo. Today, we live. Tomorrow, we paint.”
“And sometime next year these guys are gonna kiss,” Ilia muttered.
Reynaldo snickered, and Anthony let out a slow breath. “I am courting him,” he said, stung by this as he shouldn’t have been.
“That’s sweet,” Ilia responded. “But you never know when ICE is gonna show up and cockblock you, you know?”
“Oh God,” Reg muttered and turned even more purple. “Can we not talk about me and Anthony for a minute? Guys, I need to tell you about the secret passage under the house.”
“Told you this guy’s more interesting than he looks,” Reynaldo said, and Reg gaped like a fish.
Anthony took another liberty and touched Reg’s arm gently. “I think you look very interesting,” he said, and Reg whimpered.
“This day is not going like I planned,” he said.
“How did you plan for it to go?” Anthony asked, genuinely curious.
“I don’t know,” Reg said, slowing down for the corner that would take them to the long road that bisected what had used to be a farm but was now a series of properties with ranch houses, each one between four- and five-acres square.
Anthony had heard Reg’s parents had bought their house for a song back in the early nineties, and while it wasn’t pretty, it was big enough to raise seven children and provide shelter for what had felt like half the county at one time or another.
Not fancy land—Bakersfield was part of the big flat spot that was the California Central Valley.
Far off in the distance were mountain ranges.
Beyond them to the west was the ocean. To the north was the woods.
To the east was Nevada. And to the south was the myriad confusion that was Los Angeles.
But in the center, there was lots of flat land, much of it threatening to sink even deeper into the earth’s crust if there was another prolonged drought.
But the people of the Central Valley were tougher than that, Anthony had always thought with pride, and as he glanced at Reg in exasperation, he wondered how much of Reg’s toughness came from growing up in this hard land.
“You don’t know?” he prodded.
“Dinner?” Reg said hopefully. “I wanted dinner. Some TV maybe? There’s a good documentary on Netflix about Frida Kahlo.”
Anthony found himself smiling. “Sounds promising,” he said.
Not that he cared about Frida Kahlo one way or the other—but Reg would care, and when Reg cared about something, well, you never knew where you could end up.
Could be Frida Kahlo, could be running from a Russian Bratva with Romeo and Julian in the back of your hybrid.
“Another day,” Reg said, swallowing.
Anthony made a hum of assent, pleased, and in the back, one of the boys—probably Ilia, who seemed like the most forward—snorted in disgust.
Anthony half-turned in his seat to send the boy a killing look.
“Seriously?” Ilia mouthed, uncowed.
“He’s shy,” Anthony retorted, thinking this could be a teachable moment.
Ilia rolled his eyes heavenward and threw himself against the back seat of the vehicle like his biggest imposition all day was dealing with stupid adults and their stupid love lives.
“Oh shit,” Reg murmured, pulling Anthony’s attention to the front of the car. “See that?”
The valley was flat enough that the dust being kicked up was a long way off—ten miles at least—but the massive quantities of dust indicated a lot of big vehicles.
“Plan?” Anthony asked.
“Text Dean,” Reg said. “Tell him and Marcus I’m pulling up behind the cottage, and we’re going to have to invade Connor’s privacy for a minute.”
“I don’t think he’ll mind,” Anthony replied. “You got the keys?”
“Yeah, in case they need me to swing by and walk Catherine.”
Bailey and his father had needed to make a couple of trips back to Texas to wrap up their business, and caring for Catherine the Great had been a family project.
“Where is she now?” Anthony asked apprehensively. “With the folks?”
“Yeah. Park time is everybody time. Get ready.”
Reg swung the car left in front of the gated driveway of his parents’ ranch house.
In front of the gate was a wide flat spot—usually visitors parked here and went in through the gate—but through the gate lay a long driveway, part of it going to the garage in front of the house and part of it swinging around to a more private drive in front of the pool and the mother-in-law cottage on the other side of the yard.
The mother-in-law driveway was newer and paved, so using it had the double bonus of not kicking up dust or leaving a trail, as well as providing a rather hidden carport in which to park.
Anthony hopped out of the passenger seat and swung open the gate, then closed it behind the car before jogging to the back entrance of the cottage.
By the time he got there, Reg was fitting the key in the lock and leading the boys through. “The kitchen,” he said. “Into the pantry.” He closed the door after them and ushered everybody through a neat little apartment.
Connor Dodge favored Old West paintings—lots of cowboys, but real cowboys, not John Wayne clones.
Real cowboys were African American and Mexican and Native American, with a few wizened white faces thrown in, and Anthony approved.
He also liked the battered leather furniture and authentic Native and Mexican blankets thrown across the backs of the couches and chairs. But no time for decorating tips now!
Through the back door into the small, neat kitchen, and there—there was the pantry. “Open the door and grab the ring on the floor,” Reg said. “It opens up into a stairway into a hidey hole under the houses.”
“Houses?” Reynaldo asked, before Ilia opened up the stairway and turned on the light so he could see his way down.