by Hazel Parker
The jingling of the bell above the door alerted her to a new guest, and she set her books down to greet him.
“Welcome to the Oasis Motel,” she said, then waited for him to respond. He didn’t. He was a shorter guy with a stocky build, one who was looking a little standoffish, almost nervous. Nina fought the urge to roll her eyes. She dealt with a lot of people who wandered in here not knowing what they wanted for whatever reason, be it drugs or alcohol or just general stupidity, and she had very little patience for it. The man was wearing a leather jacket and his hair was pressed down in a way that suggested that he’d taken a helmet off. He’d probably ridden in on the motorcycle that she’d heard in the lot, though she’d assumed at first that it had been Vance coming and going again.
“I know the Kings was staying here,” the man muttered. Nina stopped flipping through the pages of her guest book and glanced up at him.
“Kings?” she echoed confusedly, then laughed. “What kind of motel do you think I run? This place is just a truck stop with beds.”
“The Rebel Kings,” he clarified aggressively. With the hasty change in tone, Nina’s attention was drawn to the fact that his hands were in his pockets, seemingly holding something that he didn’t want her to see. Her blood ran cold with apprehension and fear as worst case scenarios ran through her mind, all of which were validated when he jerked his hands out of his pockets and revealed a gun in one hand. Nina screamed and put her hands into the air like Adam had taught her to do if a gun were ever to be pointed at her. It didn’t make him choke up on his weapon even slightly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nina insisted, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible but hearing the tremble in her tone.
“Somebody come in here recently and pay in cash?” he demanded. Not trusting her voice, Nina nodded. “Give it to me.”
She moved slowly, her hands shaking too hard to properly grip the keys. She’d remembered to turn on the security cameras today, sure, but that wasn’t going to do her much good if she got shot. The man took a step toward her with the gun pointed to the side, muttering something in Spanish that she gathered to mean “do it faster” and probably a few curse words. She finally managed to fit the right key into the lock of the cash box when the door opened again, this time rapidly and with urgency, to reveal Vance standing in the doorway. She felt her body relax just a little even though he didn’t seem to have a weapon on him, but felt the panic bubble up in her once more when he pointed the gun from Nina to Vance in one swift motion.
“You get too close and I’ll shoot,” he warned, his eyes no longer on Nina, but closely watching Vance.
“Yeah, I got that,” Vance said, his tone sounding almost bored, like he didn’t even believe the guy who had a gun pointed at his chest. It seemed like a dangerous time to call a bluff, and Nina was nowhere near brave enough—or stupid enough—to do the same. She gathered all the cash from the safe, several hundred dollars between Flip and Vance’s rooms that she was almost now grateful that she hadn’t taken to the bank, because what would she have done, then?
“Here,” she announced, holding the cash out to him, “take it.” Vance rolled his eyes.
“Put the money away, Nina,” he commanded, but Nina didn’t obey. She felt frozen in place, not wanting to make either man angry with her and wishing more than anything that Adam were here.
“It’s fine, Vance, really—I’ll make it back, somehow,” she reassured with more confidence than she felt. If he was doing this to impress her, it was taking a step too far.
“This little prick was just leaving,” Vance dismissed, not backing down when the shorter man’s eyes narrowed.
“Why the fuck should I?” he asked, and Vance shrugged.
“Maybe because her boyfriend’s a cop and he’s already on his way here,” Vance suggested. “Or maybe because if you pull that trigger, if you so much as graze either of us with a bullet, the Kings will destroy you and all the rest of the Disciples, too. They’re already just itching for an excuse to get revenge for Tank, and this will be the perfect second strike. Nobody gets a third.” At the mention of Tank, Nina’s eyes went wide. She recognized the name as the one Vance had called the bartender who’d been shot, but she hadn’t really put it together that Vance was anything more than a friend or maybe a relative of the bar’s owner. The police had said that the shooting had been random, after all, and he’d seemed like a nice enough guy. She’d had no reason to believe that there was anything deeper going on, but apparently, she was wrong. The shorter man studied Vance for a long moment as if he were trying to read his mind to prove that he was lying before finally shoving the gun back into his pocket.
“Fuck you,” he spat, but clearly he either believed Vance or was afraid enough of him to back off, because he sauntered out of the office without taking the money that Nina was still holding out for him in her badly shaking hands. She stood there, still paralyzed with fear, until she heard the engine of his motorcycle start back up and peel out of the parking lot. When she could no longer hear the sound of the bike, she allowed herself to relax a little, dropping the money onto the table and bracing herself with her hands on the desk. Vance took a step toward her, pointing to her chair but not making any move to do anything but gather up the money and straighten it to hand it back to her.
“You okay?” he asked, eyeing her cautiously. She nodded.
“He didn’t hurt me,” she reassured. Her eyes were filling up with post-adrenaline tears that didn’t quite spill over but which she blinked back. “Thank you.” Vance nodded and watched her fold the cash back up and put it back into the safe.
“He only came here because of Flip and me, so I owed you,” he half-apologized.
“What did he mean by all that, anyway?” she asked. “What are the Rebel Kings?” Vance’s face betrayed no expression as he turned on one boot heel to leave the office.
“I was bluffing when I said that your boyfriend was on his way,” he reminded her, “so you should call him. Make a report, even though I don’t think he’ll be back.” He stopped with one hand on the door. “If you really want to thank me, though, then you’ll leave me out of the story.” Nina nodded. The security cameras would show that Vance had been here, but they wouldn’t have any audio, so she was sure that she could make up something that would keep Vance’s business out of the police report. The doorbell jingled again on Vance’s way out and she let him go without stopping him even though she had a lot of questions and knew that only he could give her answers.
Nina liked seeing Adam in his police uniform and he knew it. In a small town, it wasn’t as if he had much else to do that day, so when she’d called the station to report the attempted robbery, he and his partner had come down quickly to check everything out and make sure she was okay. She’d reassured him that he hadn’t hurt her, but she had to admit that she was still shaking, so she’d allowed him to sit with her and to calm down a little with a cup of water before she got into the story.
“Are you ready, yet?” Adam’s partner Silas asked. He was much less patient than Adam in general, or so he’d told her, but Nina felt that he was being especially unsympathetic with her because Adam was being so kind. Adam glared, but Nina just nodded to spare him the trouble.
“Okay, Nina. Start from the beginning,” Adam coaxed. He had shifted into work mode—gentle and understanding, sounding like someone that could be trusted with even an incriminating secret. Silas, on the other hand, was stoic and impatient, a good counter to Adam’s good-cop persona, and she knew that was why they worked well together.
“There’s not much to tell,” she admitted. “It happened pretty fast. I heard a motorcycle outside, then some guy came in and pointed a gun at me. He told me to give him all the money that was in the cash box.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I started to give it to him,” she said. “But then a guest came into the office and he—he scared him off.”
“He scared off a man wi
th a gun?” Silas asked skeptically. “What did he say to him?” Nina shook her head, keeping Vance’s request in mind.
“He just told him that he’d already called the cops and that they were on their way,” she half-lied. “I don’t think he was really prepared to do anything but demand the money and leave.”
Adam nodded. “That’s mostly what happens in these kinds of robberies,” he agreed. “The gun might not have even been loaded. Usually, it’s just poor tweakers trying to find enough money to get their next fix and if you fight back, they’ll run away. It’s good that you weren’t the one to call him on it, though. It’s better to be safe than sorry. You did the right thing.” He reached out and took her hand comfortingly, stroking it for a minute with his thumb before Silas sighed loudly and irritably.
“Did you get a good look at the guy?” he demanded, readying a pad of paper and a pen.
“I’ve got security feed of him,” she replied. She moved the cursor on her ancient computer monitor to view the screen and opened up the folder that auto-saved the security camera footage, scrolling backward through the day until she got to the robbery. She printed off a few screen-capture photos from the video and gave them to the men to include in the report so they could keep an eye out and see if he matched any other criminal descriptions, but neither of them looked particularly hopeful.
“Since you’ve never seen him before and he was on a motorcycle, he probably isn’t from around here,” Adam admitted, “and the likelihood that he’ll come back is pretty slim. On the bright side, that means that he probably won’t cause you any more trouble, but of course, it’d be nice to have been able to get the guy.”
“I understand,” Nina said. “Nobody was hurt, so I’m grateful. As long as he doesn’t show his face around here again, I’ll count myself lucky.”
“We’ll still put some feelers out around the station,” Silas added, “just to make sure that nobody else has filed a similar report. I’m sure Adam will keep you updated.”
Adam pushed himself up off Nina’s desk, where he’d been sitting to talk to her, and turned to leave with Silas, but a thought stopped him at the door.
“You’re sure that he and the biker guys that’ve been staying here for the past week don’t know each other?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. Nina nodded emphatically.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure,” she confirmed. “Vance is the one who scared him off, after all. He wouldn’t have intervened at all if he was going to get something out of the robbery, right?”
Adam nodded slowly—it made sense, of course, but that didn’t always mean that something was true. Though Nina had never had a problem with the bikers who blew through town every now and again, Adam detested them. For her, they were just good business, as they usually only interacted with her when they were looking for a place to stay the night and she didn’t usually care if they were a little rough or rude or flirtatious, so long as they weren’t driving away other customers. Sometimes it was even a little flattering to get so much attention, though she usually didn’t view it as anything more than a lazy attempt to get a discount. For the police, however, the bikers were an omen: they were losing control. The city could become a hotbed for drug deals and, if they didn’t nip it in the bud, there was going to be very little that they could do about it without risking their lives, their families, and the safety of the people that they were supposed to protect. Nina tried to respect and understand that as best she could and didn’t argue it too much when Adam complained about her customers. It had resulted in a few fights, since her motel was contributing to the bikers’ ability to thrive here, but they’d learned, like they’d learned with most of the things they disagreed upon, to avoid talking about it as much as they could so that they didn’t argue. And that worked. She loved him and he loved her. They didn’t need to tell each other everything.
“Alright,” Adam finally said, “well if something else comes up, call us. We’ll try to have someone patrol around here as much as we can, but if you feel unsafe in the meantime, you can text me and I’ll be here in a heartbeat.” Nina kissed him on the cheek and waved goodbye to Silas as they left. Honestly, she didn’t feel unsafe, but it wasn’t because of the heightened police patrol or the fact that her boyfriend and his gun were just a phone call away. It was because Vance was still checked into the motel and sleeping just a few doors down from her office.
Knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to focus for the rest of the night, anyway, and that she was more than likely not going to get another guest checking in within the last 45 minutes of being open, Nina decided to cut herself a little slack and close up early. She’d be able to work better from her own home, she thought as she gathered her bookwork into a canvas bag and locked the door behind her. She glanced around the parking lot to ensure that she was safe and realized that she was completely alone. The few guests that she had in the motel were sleeping, preparing to leave early the next morning, they’d told her, and Vance was in his room. She was confident that he wasn’t asleep just yet, but that didn’t deter her from allowing her curiosity to get the better of her for a moment as she looked at his motorcycle from across the parking lot. She should get going, she knew, but she never really had a chance to examine it up close, since he was gone during the day and she was usually working in the evenings. She looked around once more, reassuring herself that he wouldn’t know if she just got a little bit closer to check out the bike, and walked over to it. She’d only be a moment, after all.
While Flip’s chopper had been red, with the high-up handlebars, Vance’s bike was sleeker. It was black and always shining like he’d just waxed the metal. She allowed herself to get close enough to see each part of the bike, from the fuel tank to the leather seat, so she could look for some kind of sign that he was actually in one of those biker clubs like that robber had implied. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, really. Though she was fairly familiar with motorcycles as her dad had taken up building and riding one after he’d retired and she’d done her best to feign interest in the shop-talk he always wanted to share with her, she didn’t know a damn thing about the clubs. They’d always just been something that Adam talked about hating rather than a real entity; a statistic, not a reality. Perhaps Vance would have some kind of insignia on his bike that would give away his affiliation, or maybe he even had places specially customized for drugs or weapons—
“If you want a ride, Red, all you’ve got to do is ask,” Vance’s voice startled her from behind. She normally hated that nickname, since her hair had always been the first thing that people noticed about her, but it wasn’t so unbearable when Vance said it. She was flushed from embarrassment at being caught.
“Sorry,” she apologized before she could stop herself, “I was just looking.” Vance chuckled lowly and shrugged, shaking his head.
“I don’t blame you,” he agreed. “It’s a good-looking bike.” Nina nodded, reaching out to run her fingers along the cool metal but stopping herself before she did. “You know anything about motorcycles?”
“My dad used to build them,” she shrugged. “He rode a little, too, before he died. He always wanted to tell me about his motorcycles, but I was never too interested in what he had to say as a kid. I guess I just like looking at them because they make me think of him.”
Vance took a few steps forward and patted the seat of the bike as an invitation, and she laughed out loud.
“Absolutely not,” she denied, earning herself a smug smirk from Vance.
“Why not?” he asked. “I won’t start her up or anything. It’s just like sitting anywhere else.”
“I should get home,” she tried to deny, but when he crossed his arms skeptically, seeming like he was just waiting for her to change her mind and cave. She didn’t want to; mostly she didn’t want to simply because of how much he expected her to.
But still… It couldn’t hurt just to sit down for a second. Truth be told, she’d always wanted to. As much as her father had wanted to talk t
o her about motorcycles, he’d wanted even more to keep her away from them. Perhaps that was why she was so curious. She’d asked him a few times if he could teach her to ride, or even just take her on the back of his while he went riding, but he’d always told her that it was too dangerous. Her father had wanted to tell her all about building them, but he’d wanted to keep her as far away from the final product as possible. In the end, he’d been right: they were dangerous.
“Alright,” she finally gave in. She set her canvas bag down on the asphalt and slowly, cautiously stepped up to the bike, brushing the metal with her fingertips. She ran her fingers from the fuel tank to the handlebars, taking in the angle of them, upfront and comfortable-looking.
“My dad always had the handlebars like Flip’s,” she observed. “The ones that you have to reach up to hold.” Vance smiled.
“I’ve never liked the apes as much,” he admitted, “but I’ve gotta admit, they look damn cool. They’re hell on your arms and shoulders after a few hours. Flip’s always complaining about it.”
She laughed as she sat sideways in the seat, not yet confident enough to fully commit. Vance wasn’t having that: she was either in or out, and now she’d gone past the point of no return. He tapped her shoe with his boot to encourage her to step over to the other side and straddle the thing, which she finally did. It was bigger than she thought it’d feel, but not dauntingly so—her legs could reach the footrests, if only barely, requiring her to stand on her tiptoes.