White Hot

by Carmen Faye

  “I still don’t like it,” Sydney told her. “I mean, how did that guy, Simon, find us in the first place? Are you sure we can trust Fire and Swift? Or the others?”

  “All he would have to do, Syd,” she explained, “Is discover we changed our names, which is public record. Anyone can find that if they ask the right question. From there, checking the County Recorder’s Office would tell him that we bought the condo. It really wouldn’t be that hard to find us. We should have rented. That was my mistake. I didn’t believe Anton would go this far.”

  “So, what do we do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Syd, I really don’t. Neil said he’s not much of a tracker, and I’m even less of one. If you got any ideas, I’m open to hearing them.”

  Sydney asked, “What about hiring a detective to find him for us?”

  “We could do that, but when Anton turns up dead, our detective will probably be smart enough to put it together and turn us in or blackmail us.”

  “Yeah,” Sydney agreed. “Shit. I hate this.”

  “I’ll be there soon. You still have your key, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll be there before you. I’m only a couple of miles away now. See you there,” Sydney told her, and broke the connection.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Neil was in deep thought when he left the parking garage at the hospital and headed for the freeway entrance two blocks away. Being hunted was not something he was used to, and he hoped that he wouldn’t have this problem long enough to achieve a level of competence. Threats, in his experience, were generally in his face. Not hiding behind a bush somewhere. How to go from hunted to hunter—he had no clue about either, not in this situation. Going from victim to attacker was where his skills lied.

  As he rode north he decided that hiding was not going to be in their best interest—at least not for him. Shayla needed rest and Sydney needed Shayla. So both of them needed to remain at the safe house, but he needed to take the position of outrider.

  After a few miles of pondering he decided that he would make periodic trips to the club, and make himself available for attack. Getting back to the safe house each day was going to be tricky, so he would not go there directly, and frequently use hotels rather than returning every night. Sydney wasn’t going to like this idea, but he thought that Shayla would see the advantage of being out there as bait.

  The tactic had merit because it played to his strengths. He didn’t have the skills to hide them successfully while still maintaining a life. Sooner or later, they would be found again, and the ambush would likely succeed next time. If he could force an impromptu attack, however, rather than a planned ambush, he would be on firmer ground; he could counter-attack rather than be forced into a position of defense.

  The idea of having West or one of the others ride with him was tempting, but he knew that wasn’t going to be possible. Using them as protectors over his family was one thing, but this war with Anton was now personal—as far as the club was concerned, they were both on their own. May the best man win.

  Just as he was coming up on the 103rd Street exit, he spotted the blue 1969 Mercury Cougar Eliminator in his left mirror. It came out of the far left lane, swerved over two lanes, and was now coming up fast behind him. It was a muscle car, so the driver could be just letting it run, but Neil’s instincts—and the fact that it looked exactly like Jason’s Cougar—told him this wasn’t the case. The driver was making his move, and that move was on him.

  Cursing himself for being so distracted by the problem that he allowed the problem to follow him home, he gunned the trike and took the 103rd street exit, going from 65mph to over a hundred in the blink of an eye.

  The Cougar swerved again, getting into the exit lane and gaining speed, but not as quickly as the trike was able to. The trike had just as much horse power with its hot-rod V8 engine as the Cougar was apt to have, and all the torque, with much less weight to hinder its power. Neil knew he could lose the Cougar. He could out distance and out maneuver the Eliminator—but he didn’t want to. Odds were, the driver was Anton.

  It was too soon for Anton to have arranged another hitman, and that car was Jason’s—Anton’s previous driver, who Neil had killed. It wasn’t Jason’s fault. Jason was a prospect and had to do what the president of the club told him to do, but that didn’t matter—he was just as dead. It was just like Anton to claim the car out of impound. From what the doctor told Shayla this morning, if Anton was on enough pain pills and up on a few lines of coke, he could be driving himself.

  Coming up the exit ramp there were three cars ahead of him at the red light. Neil ran the trike down the right shoulder and then jumped the curb into a traffic gap heading east on 103rd. He didn’t want to lose the Cougar, but he didn’t want the driver to think he wasn’t trying.

  The Cougar followed suit, and took out two sign posts doing so, but it made the corner and was only a little less than a block behind him when he made the next green light, and swerved around a motor-home and past an SUV to make a left, cutting off westbound traffic to get onto 2nd Ave heading north into a residential area.

  Praying that some kid wouldn’t be running out into the street with the Cougar right behind him, he gunned his engine again and saw in his rearview that the Cougar nearly collided with a white Mazda when he made the turn, but fish-tailed out of the danger and roared up 2nd behind him.

  A block and a half ahead, the road was divided by grass covered sections for each block length, breaking for cross-streets. These green-belt mediums were nearly as wide as the lanes themselves. Neil reached between his legs and pushed the hidden panel, retrieving one of his 9mm Barettas. He slipped it under his leg on the seat and then closed the panel. The set up was good. Not perfect, but good. As long as some soccer mom didn’t decide that right now was the perfect time to go to the grocery store with her mini-van, he might even survive.

  At the next cross-street, he angled the front wheel for a turn and pulled the handbrake, just like Dave taught him to do, giving the trike just enough fuel to send him into what stunt drivers call a “bootlegger’s turn” around the green-belt median. The engine roared, the back end swung around in a tire-destroying arch, and then he released the handbrake and gave the trike all the gas it could take to straighten out and rocketed back down the street heading south.

  The Cougar roared up on the northbound side of the street. If he tried to come across the grass partition at the speed he was going, he would skid, and likely flip—so Neil was praying the driver was that stupid. Just in case he wasn’t, though, Neil pulled the 9mm out with his left hand and got ready to fire as they passed one another.

  The driver of the Cougar was definitely Anton. Neil met his eyes as they passed. Anton, a predator and a survivor as well, had his shotgun pointed out the driver’s side window. They fired together. Neil was certain he hit the Cougar, but just as certain he didn’t hit anything valuable like Anton—but then, Anton didn’t score a hit either.

  Now that he was confident of who was chasing him, Neil tried to come up with a plan of attack. They couldn’t race around a residential area for very long without colliding with some civilian’s SUV or having the police show up in force.

  He kept the trike moving fast but didn’t speed up, waiting to see if Anton was going to make the turn. He did, but not gracefully. It plowed up onto the sidewalk, crushed over a small palm tree, and clipped a silver Toyota sitting in its driveway, then gunned the engine in an attempt to catch back up.

  Neil made a right turn onto 103rd street heading west again, back toward the freeway, going over the bridge and then back down onto I-95 south, making sure that Anton was able to follow him. Instead of going all the way down the entrance ramp, however, he jumped the curb and barreled down the embankment as soon as he was out of sight of the Cougar, coming down onto the freeway’s shoulder, behind where the ramp emptied into the main flow of traffic. There, he stopped.

  Anton’s Cougar skidded and shrieked its tires making the
turn down the ramp, geared down to pick up power and speed, and shot out into the light traffic, swerving into the third freeway lane as soon as he could. Hunting Neil. Neil gave the trike gas and followed as quickly as the bike would allow him to, but kept cars between him and Anton’s line of sight.

  Anton was cruising at 85mph when Neil caught up to him, using a Kenworth truck-and-trailer as a blind between him and the Cougar. Neil picked up speed to 110mph, got his 9mm back in his left hand, and came around the front of the Kenworth firing into the rear area of the Cougar, aiming for a hit on the passenger-side rear tire.

  His fifth shot caught the tire and it quite literally exploded into shreds of black rubber. Neil braked and pulled the bike into a reckless lane change to get behind the Cougar in the third lane while avoiding the oncoming Kenworth. Once there he fired the rest of his clip into the back window of the Cougar. Safety glass shattered and holes as big as softballs appeared in the web-cracked rear window.

  Reflexively, Anton jigged the Cougar right. The blown rear tire made him turn much harder than expected, and the car went first into a rigid slide and then into a spin, sending him right in front of the Kenworth. Neil rifled past in the now empty third lane, and then the Kenworth collided with the turned around Cougar, hitting Anton head on. The car crushed up the front nose of the Kenworth, tipped over, and was pile-driven back onto the concrete road with the horrendous sound of tearing, twisting metal.

  Neil watched for a few moments in his rear-view mirror and then slowed down to 75mph. Anton was dead. Neil needed to get off the street, hide the trike for a day or two, and get a cab back to the safe house. It was over.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Thursday afternoon, just past four, Shayla sat on the loveseat in their condo with a text book in her hands that she wasn’t reading. The pain pills made it impossible to concentrate on anything more taxing than the back of a cereal box. Taking three lines of cocaine only made her more aware that she was stoned on medication.

  She only took half of one this morning for her interview with the detectives about the shooting. She wanted to be as clear-headed as possible. They were still threatening to arrest her for obstruction, but hadn’t done so yet. Margaret, her lawyer, told her on the out not to worry about it; if they didn’t do it today, they weren’t going to bother.

  Neil, however, was now a prime suspect in the killing of Simon Grimm. All she and Sydney admitted to the detectives during the interview was Neil being there and then leaving the house when the shooting started, which was true. They didn’t offer any information about an M-16 with a 40mm grenade launcher attachment, and denied ever seeing one around the house—also true to some extent.

  Neil talked to the detectives right after they were done with her and Sydney. Neil told Shayla not to wait because he had to go to the club right after that. He assured her he would be home before three o’clock. Now, it was after four and he still wasn’t home and had not called.

  Looking over at Sydney on the couch, she found her looking right back at her. “What?” Shayla asked.

  “Nothing—but it’s after four,” Sydney pointed out weakly.

  “He usually calls,” she agreed.

  “Think something happened at the club?” Sydney asked.

  “I was more worried about the cops. Why the club?” she asked.

  “Well, he did kill the president,” Sydney offered.

  “That was more or less a duel, though, wasn’t it? I mean, West said the club was wasn’t involved. Right?”

  “Not being involved and forgiving him are two different things, aren’t they? We’re not involved with the police but if they killed an innocent kid then we wouldn’t be forgiving, would we?” Sydney explained.

  “Anton was neither innocent nor a kid,” she said with more certainty. “Aren’t you stretching things just a little?”

  “Well, why the cops? It was self-defense, wasn’t it? You were shot first,” Sydney told her.

  “Then Niel ran him down and broke his neck,” she offered. “The man was running and unarmed at the time.”

  “So what? He shot you,” Sydney continued.

  She thought about that for a while, and then shook her head. The drugs were fucking with her thinking. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “When is it self-defense and when is it murder? Is there a time limit? Can Neil kill that man six months from now and still claim self-defense? I don’t know.”

  “Did Margaret stay with him? I didn’t see,” Sydney asked.

  “No, he has his own lawyer. Someone he’s worked with before. Someone tied to the club, I think.”

  “Then maybe we can ask Margaret,” Sydney offered.

  “No, I don’t want to bother her. She was really good for us today. Let’s just wait until five o’clock. Then we’ll start making calls,” she proposed.

  Sydney looked at her book and then closed it, saying, “Well, alright, but I’ve been looking at the same page for an hour now and couldn’t tell you a fucking thing about what it says.”

  “I’m stoned,” Shayla said with a small smile. “I’ve flipped a few pages, but can’t really read a thing. Just looking at pictures.”

  “Want to snuggle?”

  “I can’t, baby. My shoulder still hurts,” she told her.

  “How about nude sunbathing?”

  “Now?”

  “Why not?”

  “Alright. Let’s take some beers out there with us,” she said. “This bandage is ugly, though. You sure you won’t mind?”

  “Won’t bother me at all. I’ll be looking at your tits,” Sydney said with a playful smile.

  Just before five o’clock they heard the door open and quickly came back inside from sun bathing. Neil was hanging his leather jacket in the downstairs closet.

  They dumped their warm beers and then got fresh ones, with Sydney grabbing one for Neil, who sat down on a stool at the counter and thanked her. He took a long drink and then nodded his head. “That’s good,” he said.

  They waited for him to say something else, and finally Sydney prompted, “Well?”

  “Well what?” Neil asked.

  “Well what? Neil, it’s almost five. You said three. Fuck you, alright? What happened?” Sydney said, her voice rising a little.

  He smiled. “Sorry. No, everything is alright. Just have some thinking to do, that’s all.”

  “Alright? What does that mean?” Sydney pressed. “Are the cops after you for this murder or what?”

  “No, no, they were never after me for that. They wanted to know about the grenades,” Neil answered.

  “What did you tell them?” Sydney asked.

  “What grenades?” He said with a grin. “I told them I didn’t even have a gun. They didn’t have any witnesses that saw me with a gun. They have two that saw me chase Simon down and break his neck, but both were very clear that I didn’t have any weapons on me.”

  “So, they aren’t interested in your for anything?” Shayla asked.

  “No, not really. I read in the newspaper today that the trucker is alive and only banged up. Nothing broken, I guess. He’s already out of the hospital. He said that it was a guy on a motorcycle, not a trike. I guess with everything going on, he just figured it was a motorcycle. No one poked their heads out at Anton’s house while I was there, according to Selene, so no witnesses for that either. The place nearly burned to the ground, so no physical evidence for bullets or grenades at that place. Basically, I’m clear. They’ll still harass me a bit, I’m sure, but there’s no case.”

  “Where’s your motorcycle?” Shayla asked.

  “In storage,” he told her, and took another drink.

  He didn’t seem to be all that worried, but she asked, “What about the club?”

  “Well, that’s kind of why I’m late. I stopped at the beach for a while and did something thinking, and didn’t come up with anything,” he told her.

  “Thinking?” she asked.

  Neil shrugged and then looked at his beer bottle like it was
suddenly very interesting, then he said, “It’s a little confusing. Apparently the general thought is that I should be president now. There were over fifty members at the club, and we closed it down from the public while we met. There was some talk and some finger pointing, but nothing solid or based on anything except beer talk, so that shit stopped. Then, by show of hands, West asked if I should be president, and just about everyone raised their hand.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” she asked.

  “Not really. I want to tour, and do my music, not run the club. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with running the club. I mean, I know when something is wrong, but I’m not sure what would be right.”

  Shayla thought about this unexpected turn of events. It had been so long since anything right happened, she didn’t recognize the sensation. “Call West,” she told him. “Call West and tell him that you want him to be president, you vice president, and the rest of the men that were here in the living room for you can be officers. A change of guard.”