by Lena Bourne
I’m coming up empty, I don’t even need to see the persistent shaking his head.
“Maybe Snake,” I finally say. “He was an old-timer about Griff’s age. He didn’t have an official title and wasn’t one of the execs, but him and Griff were always together. Kinda like they were best friends from way back. He was a tall, lanky guy, with really long silver-grey hair. He always wore it in a ponytail down his back. It reached almost to his ass.”
I realize I’m describing Snake to them, so they’ll know if they killed him yet or not and stop talking.
“I saw him around,” Ace confirms. “But he seemed to be just part of the background.”
“Yeah, he seemed that way to me at first too,” I say. “But then I realized he was spending a lot of time with Griff. Maybe he’s snitching now?”
The president locks eyes with the men he brought, and a silent question only they seem to hear floats among them. The tall, calm guy and the one built like a tank shrug, while Ace inclines his head as if to say, Maybe.
“The bar is gone, it went up in an explosion a couple of nights ago,” the president says.
“I would’ve loved to see that,” I blurt out before I can catch myself.
The pained, nearly identical cringed expressions on their faces tell me I should have kept my mouth shut.
“The clubhouse is deserted now too, and apart from a few with families who opted to hide out at their homes, we don’t know where they’re hiding out,” the president says. “Do you?”
“That’s easy,” I say perkily. “Griff bought up this old abandoned miner’s town about twenty miles south. Piston was always going on about how cool it was, and that it was haunted. He even took me there once, and I was sure he’d finally fuck me and we’d be a thing afterward, but no, he just wanted to sit there in the dark, waiting for the ghosts to show up since it was supposed to be haunted. Like I said, he’s a little kid. Anyway, he told me it’s a place for all of them to hide out if they ever needed to. I bet they’re there.”
The president gives me a very encouraging, yet still very piercing look. “Do you remember where it is? Can you take us there?”
I nod. “I think so. It’s called Last Post, or Cave Post, or something like that, and it’s right along the old road, the one we rode to the motel on,” I say, turning to Colt. “You know?”
He nods and his eyes aren’t as soft for me as they were before his friends showed up. He’s looking at me differently and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Good, I hope.”
“All right, here’s what’s gonna happen,” the president says. “We’ll go back and get a car, then pick you two up at that motel she’s staying at. Lucky Star, is it?”
Colt seems taken aback by the question, but recovers quickly and nods eagerly.
“We’ll be there in two hours,” the president says. “Then you’ll lead us to the town.”
Colt nods and so do I. Then the men mount up and ride off.
“That went well,” I say to Colt once the cloud of dust they’re creating swallows them up. “Didn’t it?”
He nods. “Yeah, it seemed to.”
His eyes are still very serious and appraising, and I have no idea why. I smile and he doesn’t. Instead, he mounts his bike.
“Come on, get on,” he tells me. “I’ll take you to get something to eat.”
“And drink,” I joke as I climb on.
He nods but doesn’t chuckle. Something shifted between us and I don’t know when or why, but I know it wasn’t for the better. For the first time, I’m happy to blame my budding insanity for misreading the situation. At least I really hope this feeling of disconnect where there was always an amazing connection between us is just in my head.
We found a small burger place near the motel. It’s a small mom and pop kind of place that looks like it’s been around since the 1950s, with a black and white tiled floor, booths with comfy burgundy benches and grey topped tables, and a counter that takes up most of the longest wall. The cook is leaning through the window to the kitchen that’s behind the counter, chatting with the three locals nursing beers around the dark wood counter. But they stopped talking when we entered and are staring at us like this is the first time they’ve seen humans as I lead us to the booth that’s farthest away from them. I hope this doesn’t mean the food’s not fresh.
The waitress walks to us slowly, holding a large, clear plastic pitcher of water. The sound of the tiny ice cubes inside it rattling inside it is the sweetest music I’ve ever heard.
She pours and I drink the first glass of ice-cold water without stopping for breath. I extend it for a refill and she eyes me like I’m not right in the head as she pours. She has short curly blonde hair, which is in dire need of a touch-up, both in style and coloring. The crow’s feet around her eyes are pronounced and deep, and her lips are so thin I barely see them. She’s not a happy woman, and it looks like it’s a permanent state of affairs for her.
Colt asks for a refill too, and she puts the pitcher down on the table none too gently.
“You two knock yourselves out,” she mutters and added, “What will it be? Besides water?”
Colt orders a burger with fries, and I opt for just fries and a salad, which gets me another weird look from the waitress.
“Make it a large salad,” I say pointedly and not even that meanly, but she looks away, a little embarrassed, meaning she got the point to get the hell out of my face just fine.
“You got a tongue on you, that’s for sure,” Colt says after we both had our fill of the ice water.
“You mean just now?” I ask. “Or with your boss?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call him my boss,” he muses, grinning at me. “But yeah, both.”
“I’ve been on my own for a long time. I know what’s what and I get things done,” I say. “Like I told you, I had to take care of my mom for years after she started losing it and I’ve learned not to take shit from nobody.”
“Except the Sinners,” he mutters, finishing off his second glass of water and pouring more for the both of us.
“I did my best not to,” I say, unsure where this conversation is going, but I don’t think it’s any place good and I don’t know why.
“You did good back there with Cross,” he says with a grin. “Your info was solid.”
Somehow I feel like the only part he thinks I did good at was the info part, not something else, something that’s nagging at him, making him distant, making us strangers after all we’ve already shared. But I could very well be imagining it. I don’t have the best grip on reality. So I won’t ask either.
“So how’s your mom now? Is she any better?” he asks.
I shake my head, glad for the change of subject and distraction. “I doubt it. I haven’t visited her for a while. She’s in this depressing, run-down asylum about an hour out of Vegas, and every time I go there, I come out feeling insane too. She just sits there and stares at the walls when I do come. She doesn’t even know I’m there, so I only go very rarely.”
“Sounds sad,” he says, kinda woodenly.
“It’s all in how you look at it,” I muse. “I’ve decided a long time ago to just have fun and do only what I want and what feels good. Life’s too short for anything else.”
The look he gives me is so sharp it cuts. But it’s gone the next second.
“So what’s your story?” I ask kinda sharply too, because that look threw me.” I told you mine, but I know next to nothing about you.”
“Except that I’m from Nebraska and don’t ever want to go back,” he says with a chuckle.
“Except that, yeah,” I say.
“It’s not a nice story. My dad’s a total meth head. He’s not even fifty and looked eighty the last time I saw him. He started out cooking and selling, but then he started using it. My mom left us when I was ten because of it, and I haven’t seen her since, and my father’s a mean son of a bitch. I try not to think of him too much. He might be dead, for all I know.”
&nbs
p; He’s playing it cool, talking like all that is water under the bridge for him, but his eyes say different. They say he really, really wants to have a better and happier story to tell. I wish that for the both of us.
He’s shredding the napkin and I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. I reach over the table and take hold of his hands.
“Between the two of us, we’ve got a pretty sad mess of a childhood, don’t we?” I say and smile. “How about we promise each other it’ll be better from here on out. Right here and now. Let’s make that promise.”
He looks at me skeptically and searchingly, like he’s trying to see if I’m telling him the truth. I am, and I reinforce it by smiling even wider. It finally paints itself onto his face too, making it shine bright and fresh and like a dream come true.
But it doesn’t last, because the waitress makes us break apart so she can set our food down.
The rest of our meal passes in a much friendlier way. I get no sense that he’s judging me, and I end up getting a second plate of fries and a chocolate milkshake because I seriously misjudged how hungry I actually was. By the time I tell him it’s because he’s made me burn so many calories last night, he’s all mine again and I can’t wait until we’re together again, alone in the moonlight, making love.
The president—Cross—and Ace return right on the dot, two hours later to pick us up from the motel. They arrive in a beat-up looking, dark blue pickup truck with tinted windows and no distinguishing marks on it, unless you count the dents and rusted parts. But I bet no one sees those, since all hard used pickups look like this one.
They put me in the back with Ace, while Cross and Colt sit in the front. It’s so none of the Sinners will recognize us in case they are in the town and watching, Ace explains once we’re all seated.
“OK, so which way?” Cross asks, his eyes piercing me even though he’s looking at me through the rearview mirror. Weird how that works. But the guy doesn’t scare me, not really. He just demands a high level of fearful respect and there’s no not giving it to him
“It’s better if we go to the Sinners’ bar first,” I stammer. “I know the way from there best. I don’t know the rest of this town very well, so I’d just get us lost if I tried to figure it out.”
Cross shakes his head. “That’s out of the question. We’re not going anywhere near that place. Try harder.”
I swallow, wishing I could. But I left the bar a grand total of three times. One of those was with Piston to go see the ghost town, and the other two times were visiting the nearby mall with Stormi. Normal life was so far out of my reach, while we were held there, I didn’t even want a taste of it, because I wanted it back so bad.
Colt is looking from me to Cross kinda protectively.
“You said it was along the same road we took to get to this motel,” he says, trying to help. “Was it in the direction we took?”
“I don’t know, we went over a field that time,” I stammer, still trying really hard to remember the route me and Piston took that night.
“There’s basically just the dirt road passing the bar,” Ace says. “Did you go down it to the left of the bar or to the right?”
“The left,” I say. “I know because it’s the opposite direction to than the way to the mall. Then we made another left onto the main road. And then just straight.”
I’m as sure as I can be about this, but I’m not completely certain. It was a long time ago, and my mind was on other things, I wasn’t watching the road very closely.
“It’s further down this road then,” Ace says after thinking about it for a while. “It’s gotta be.”
I hope so hard that he’s right because I’m not sure about anything anymore.
“It was surrounded by hills, and just a dirt road led to it, I remember that,” I supply. “And there was a tall rusty gate on the entrance to it, and I think a barbed wire fence around it. Piston had to unlock the gate so we could go in.”
Oh, man, this information I have is so useless. We’re just gonna ride smack into a bunch of Sinners, and then they’ll finish what Crow started before I killed him. What the fuck am I doing in this car.
“Was the town visible from the road?” Cross asks.
“Yeah, a part of it was, like one side of it was, but not the actual gate,” I say. “We should stay away from the gate, otherwise they’ll see us.”
Cross and Ace share an amused look. “We’ll make sure we’re not seen,” Cross assures me as he puts the truck in drive and takes off. “You just keep your eyes on the road and see if you can recognize any of the landmarks to tell us we’re near.”
“OK,” I say and turn my head to better see outside.
But that was easier promised than done. One shrub looks exactly like all the others lining this road and, besides, it was full dark when me and Piston rode this way. If it was even this way. I’m not sure about anything anymore.
But Colt is giving me very assuring looks and smiles each time I glance at him. So I am sure that whatever else happens, we’re in this together all the way. Man, I hope that lasts forever, because I really, really want it to.
The drive continues in silence, which for me isn’t pleasant at all, since with each mile I recognize less and less of the countryside. I must’ve sent them down the wrong way. I must’ve.
And that could very well be a death sentence.
They’re Devil’s Nightmare MC, according to the backs of the cuts Cross and Ace are wearing.
And that club is not to be messed with. It’s the club Piston and Horse were attacked by the night that Ace saved their lives. Now I’m thinking that was all staged. Does Stormi know who Ace really is? He’s a member of Devil’s Nightmare MC, and they have a long-standing reputation of being merciless and ruthless killers for hire. So’s Colt. But I can’t dwell on that, not now.
I’ve proven myself useless to them, and I’m afraid to think about what they do to useless people. What if Cross decides I’ve been lying to him and sent him on a wild goose chase? What does he do to people like that? Monarch would kill a person he thought was disrespecting him on sight. Horse and Piston were forever feeling slighted, as was Griff. None of them hesitated to punch or kill for it. What then?
My panic is so high I’m getting nauseous and I’m already rehearsing the apology I have to deliver now. I have to convince Cross that I wasn’t just making this stuff up, that I really thought the ghost town was this way. Should I start speaking now? We’ve been driving a long time, much longer than the ride me and Piston took. Or does it just seem that way, because I was so happy to be out of the bar that night, on the back of a bike, going fast? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I should say something…
The setting sun behind us suddenly glimmers off metal roofs in front of us. There rows of houses, about ten per row are visible from the road, their roofs glowing orange. And one of them, the big house built slightly above the rest of the town on an elevation with the hill behind it, as though looking down on it, is reflecting the orange of the setting sun all over. The last time I was here, the light of the full moon was doing the same thing, only everything was bright silver then.
“That’s it!” I say. “We found it!”
I’m breathless because I’ve been holding my breath in fright and panic for so long. My heart is still hammering in my chest, but not in a bad way. I did what I told them I’d do. Now they’ll let me go, now they’ll let Colt and me spend as much time together as we want to. Now I’m truly free.
Cross slows down as we approach the town. It was only clearly visible from that bend in the road where I spotted it, and we get no glimpse of it again until we reach the dirt road that leads to it.
“This is the way to the gate,” I tell them once we do.
Even to my untrained eye, the fresh tire tracks in the gravel leading up to it are clearly visible.
“I think they are here,” I mutter.
“Seems that way, but we need to find a spot to observe the town u
nseen from and make sure,” Cross says. “How big is the town, do you remember?”
“It’s not huge,” I mutter, remembering how Piston insisted we ride slowly down every street with the lights off to watch for ghosts. “Maybe like a hundred houses and like a bunch of streets off the main one. But everything was pretty tightly packed together.”
“We’ll head for the hill, see what we can see,” Cross says and accelerates again.
We meander for a while, getting lost, and turned around on the hill before we finally find a spot Cross is happy with.
“Let’s go,” he says, turning off the engine, grabbing a two getting out. Ace gets a large black bag from the back of the truck and slings it over his shoulder.
The sun is still giving off some light, but it’s faint. We creep along the dusty, rocky soil, finding our way among the short shrubs that are pretty green despite the scorched terrain. I’m trying not to think of snakes as I follow Cross and Ace with Colt just behind me.
About five minutes later, Cross stops behind a pile of rocks and motions for us to get behind him. He’s found a great spot. Most of the town is visible from up here, and I bet we’re well hidden from view by the rocks and the fact that we’re so far away that the people moving around are tiny.
“See if you two recognize anyone,” Cross tells Ace, who pulls out two sets of binoculars from the black bag he’s carrying and hands me one.
Colt has to help me focus mine, because I’m not sure how to do it. I’ve used a pair of binoculars maybe twice in my life, if that many.
But once I can see, I spot Lisa and her flaming red hair right away. She’s sweeping up the sidewalk in front of one of the buildings along the main street, not looking very happy about it at all. That’s right, bitch. You forgot how to work while me and Stormi did everything around the clubhouse and bar.
The venom of the thought surprises me. But then again, Lisa did go out of her way to make my life miserable at the bar.
I recognize some of the guys approaching the place Lisa is sweeping in front of, which I assume is their new bar.