Crash

by Elana Johnson

  “Did you hear anything?” her mom asked. “Maybe someone else came to pick him up.” She stirred her tea slowly, pressing on the tea bag.

  Julie did the same, trying to remember the last thing she’d heard before she’d fallen asleep. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. Lucas had left thirty minutes ago, so she hadn’t been asleep long.

  “I just heard my friend leave on his motorcycle,” she said. “I don’t even know if Lawrence was still here or not.”

  “Maybe you could call your friend,” her mom said.

  “I don’t have his number, Mom. It was in my phone.” Of course, Julie had gotten Lucas’s number in a questionable way once before. She could look him up in the hospital system again, but she’d have to be at the hospital to do it. And there would be questions about why she was there, off-shift, using the computer. She’d have to wait until tomorrow, when she went in to work.

  At the same time, something told her that she had a legitimate reason to get Lucas’s number this time. Her brother’s life could be in danger.

  Then you should call the cops, she thought. They’d be able to track down Lucas Miner.

  “Maybe the neighbors saw something,” her mom said.

  “And you’re going to go ask them?” Julie looked at her mother as she raised her steaming teacup to her lips.

  “They know you, right?” Her mom looked at her with eyes the size of dinner plates.

  Yes, her neighbors knew her—especially since she’d been walking a hundred-pound dog. And “walking” was a term Julie could only use loosely. Riley had gotten away from her numerous times, and none of the neighbors were all that happy about the Daniff romping through the neighborhood.

  She once again had the idea to call the police, because they could conduct interviews with the neighbors that might actually yield results.

  Lucas’s handsome face flashed through her mind, and she didn’t think he’d like this method for contacting him any more than the first one she’d used. Of course, he didn’t know she’d searched through the hospital database to find his number, and she didn’t want to tell him that.

  Secrets, ran through her mind. It wasn’t the greatest way to start a relationship, but then she wondered what she and Lucas even were. It wasn’t like they’d officially defined their relationship with a label. Yet.

  With her thoughts ping-ponging all over the place, she could barely focus. She stirred her tea, trying to align everything inside her.

  Lucas was a member of the Sentinels Motorcycle Club. She’d heard of them before, because she had grown up in Forbidden Lake. She knew they did a lot of good for the community. But she didn’t know if they had an office or a phone number she could use to get in touch with him.

  “Maybe we could track my phone,” she said, putting the idea of calling the police on a shelf in her brain for now.

  “Can we?” Her mom’s hope shot up to the ceiling, and Julie knew her mother wouldn’t want to involve the cops. She was a private woman, and she didn’t like the neighbors knowing their gossip. Julie had heard her lie point-blank to her friends about Lawrence a couple of times over the past six months since he’d disappeared.

  “Let me get my laptop.” Julie kept her sigh way down deep in her throat while she went down the hall to her office. She sat in the desk chair and opened her laptop, navigating quickly to her cell phone provider’s website.

  She knew within a minute or two that she didn’t have the capability to track her phone. She could add it to her plan for another ten dollars a month, and she let the sigh out then. It wasn’t about the money. She had the ten dollars.

  She just wasn’t sure this was going to solve the problem. Lawrence was still gone. What was her mother going to do? Drive to the location of her cell phone and confront him?

  Julie wanted to. She wanted to berate him until he understood what he’d put their parents through. What he’d put her through. Her younger brother. His dog. She hadn’t known the intricate way all of their lives had been entwined with his until he was gone.

  “Julie?”

  “I can do it, Mom,” she said. “It’s going to cost ten dollars, but I can do it.” She clicked the button to add the feature to her plan, and a few seconds later, a map opened on her screen. “It’s tracking it.”

  Her mom leaned over toward the laptop, her desperation and anxiety scenting the air in Julie’s office.

  “Let’s see….” Julie tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “It looks like he’s at the library.” She pointed to the pinging red dot on the screen, clicking on it. “Yes, look at that address. Isn’t that the library?”

  Her mother nodded, straightened, and clutched her coat closed as she zipped it up again. “Let’s go.”

  Exhaustion pulled through Julie, but she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t send her mother out into the winter night on a wild goose chase alone. So she backtracked to her bedroom and pulled on a pair of sneakers, along with a hoodie. She layered a coat over that and went outside, where her mother waited in her car.

  At least it was already warm inside. They didn’t speak as her mom navigated the few miles from Julie’s house to the library. The parking lot sat empty, as the library had closed already.

  “I don’t know,” Julie said. “I have no way to look at it now.”

  “It looked like it was around the back,” her mom said, pulling through the drive-through lane where people could drop off their books without getting out of their cars. At the back of the building was a small loading dock, but no cars. No motorcycles. Nobody.

  “I’m going to call it,” her mom said. “You get out and see if you can hear it.”

  “Okay.” Julie got out of the car, her heart pounding. The library sat in the middle of downtown Forbidden Lake, but the darkness seemed pervasive, and she had no way of knowing who or what lay beyond the reach of the street lamps.

  This was stupid anyway. Even if she found her phone, Lawrence obviously wasn’t here. So how did her phone get here?

  Her ringtone sliced through the silence, and a blue light brightened the darkness near the loading dock. Julie walked toward her phone with her heart beating three times as fast as it should be.

  She bent to pick up her phone, surprised when she found the screen fully intact. Not a scratch or dent on the device at all. She wiped it on her coat as the call ended and returned to the car.

  “There it is,” her mom said.

  “But where’s Lawrence?”

  Only sniffling met her ears, and Julie pulled her last resort back off the shelf. “Maybe we should call the cops, Mom.” They hadn’t done that last time, because Lawrence had stopped by Julie’s to tell her he was leaving town.

  “Do you think so?”

  Julie didn’t want to be the one with the level head and the rational ideas. She wanted her mom to take that lead, but it was obvious she wasn’t going to.

  “Yes,” Julie said, already dialing 911. “I’m calling them right now.”

  Chapter Four

  “Tell me everything again,” Maverick said, and Lucas did his best not to sigh or roll his eyes.

  He re-told the story, and Vice filled in a couple of details Lucas had left out this time.

  “And we don’t know who they were,” Mav said, cocking his head at Electron and Vice.

  “They have never been on any of the tapes,” Electron said. “We’ve got them now, but that doesn’t really help us.”

  “No armbands either, Boss,” Vice said. “They might be regular members. No positions.”

  “But they came and picked up this guy,” Maverick said. “And he went with them. Did he seem like he knew them?”

  Lucas shook his head, remembering the plain fear on Lawrence’s face. “No, but I mean, I knew who they were and don’t know them. I think it was the same for him.”

  “And did they go anywhere else?” Maverick asked.

  “Yeah.” Electron fiddled with the mouse, backing up the images on the computer. Lucas
wanted to get out of this room, because it was tiny, and he felt like the air itself was suffocating him. The machines on the table whirred, and he sometimes sat in here with Vice and Electron while they monitored the Breathers and what they did in Forbidden Lake on Wednesday nights.

  Maverick only got reports, so having him here made the already tight quarters downright cramped.

  Not only that, but it smelled like old Chinese food, and Lucas had a pounding headache.

  “They went downtown,” he said. “First time they’ve done that. Andy’s building cam caught them. See?” He pointed to the two motorcycles as they went right past Andy’s huge skyscraper in the middle of downtown Forbidden Lake.

  Lawrence rode on the back of one bike, and from this distance, he didn’t look afraid. But Lucas could hear him pleading. Please don’t hurt me. Or my sister.

  “They turn toward the library,” Electron said. “And that’s it. They don’t come back this way, and the cameras are all pointed out, so there is a narrow alley on each corner that we can’t see.”

  They seriously seemed to have disappeared into thin air. “Why would they go to the library?” Lucas asked. “It closes at five.”

  “But it’s barely after five now,” Vice said. “It would’ve been open when they went, what? Half an hour ago?”

  “Yeah,” Electron said. “It’s still odd. Why would two Breathers who don’t live here go to the library?”

  “It feels so late,” Lucas said, yawning. He hated winter, with its sunset at four-thirty in the afternoon. Plus, he’d been working the swing shift for a couple of weeks now, and everything inside the hospital stayed bright and white no matter what the clock said.

  “And Lawrence has apparently been missing for six months.”

  “Missing?” Maverick barked. “Explain.”

  “I don’t know if missing is the right word or not,” Lucas said, glancing at Mav. The man had saved him from a life on the streets, and Lucas loved him. But he could be downright scary sometimes, like he was now with his folded arms, drawn down eyebrows, and glinting eyes that said Lucas better not be keeping secrets.

  “Julie said Lawrence brought his dog to her several months ago, and said he had to leave town suddenly. She hadn’t heard from him at all until he showed up on her doorstep this afternoon.”

  Maverick glared at Lucas, then Vice, and then Electron. “What does all this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Vice said. Lucas shrugged, and Electron kept studying the screen.

  “It means,” he finally said. “That the Breathers have business with Lawrence Paige, and perhaps that’s why he hasn’t contacted anyone in his family for six months.”

  Lucas looked at Electron. The man’s real name was Davis Feriman, and he taught high school chemistry. He was smart as a whip, a good friend, and a trusted club member. He thought through things before he said them, and that usually meant he was right.

  “And now you’re dating his sister,” Vice said. “This is bad news, House.”

  “I know.” Lucas ran his hands through his hair. “And I’m not really dating her.”

  Maverick coughed while Vice started laughing.

  “What?” Lucas asked. “I’m not. I barely see her. We have never been out. Like, actually out.”

  “You’re still seeing her,” Vice said. “And it doesn’t matter if you are or not, because to those two Breathers, you were at that house where Lawrence was.”

  “Maybe I should call Fire.”

  “No,” Electron and Vice said together. Lucas didn’t know what to do. About the Breathers. About Julie. About Lawrence. About any of it.

  His phone rang, and he looked down at the device in his hand. Julie’s name sat on the screen, and when he looked up, he knew he wasn’t the only one who’d seen it.

  “Answer it,” Mav said. “Maybe Lawrence got dropped off at home, and everything is fine.”

  Lucas didn’t want to talk to her in front of a crowd, but he didn’t have a choice. He swiped on the call and said, “Hey, Jules.”

  Vice’s smile shot across his face, and Lucas pressed his eyes closed. He really needed to slow down and think before he said things. Especially things like nicknames for the beautiful blonde that had been at the forefront of his mind for several weeks now.

  “Let me start with an apology,” she said.

  “For what?”

  Loud pounding sounded on the back door, and everyone in the small room looked that way.

  “Probably the pizza,” Mav said, squeezing past Lucas to leave the room. Lucas followed him out, the air much easier to breathe out in the bigger mechanic area of the clubhouse. Ruby’s was a motorcycle shop, with plenty of space in the back to work on bikes, build custom orders, and hold their weekly church meetings for the Sentinels. Out front, Mav kept a storefront with everything anyone wanting to ride a motorcycle could possibly need, from helmets, to gloves, to Chapstick.

  “…I didn’t know what else to do,” Julie was saying.

  “Sorry, what?” Lucas asked. “Something happened, and I didn’t hear all of that.”

  “This isn’t good,” Vice said at the same time Julie started to speak again, and once more, Lucas was distracted and didn’t hear her.

  He turned toward Vice, who stood with his eyes glued on the back door. Lucas followed his gaze, and no, what he saw was not good.

  Two police officers, right there at the back door of Ruby’s. Mav knew most of the men on the Forbidden Lake Police force, but Lucas didn’t.

  “It’s Brit again,” Vice said, sighing. “Maybe I better go—” He cut off when all three men at the door turned toward them. Maverick gestured for them to come closer, but Lucas knew it was him Maverick and the police wanted.

  “You called the cops?” Lucas asked as he took a step toward the back door.

  “Yes,” Julie said, clearly exasperated. “I just said that. Twice.”

  “They’re here,” he said, plenty of frustration moving through him too. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.” He ended the call and shoved his phone in his back pocket. He should’ve known getting involved with Julie Paige would only bring trouble into his life. He’d known, and he’d done it anyway.

  “This is Lucas Miner,” Maverick said, and Lucas stalled at his side and shook the officer’s hands. “Lucas, this is Brit Hill and his partner, Barry Butler.”

  He stalled at Barry’s name, his face easily making sense to Lucas. “Your dad is Rudy.”

  “Yeah,” the officer said, smiling. “How do you know him?”

  “He’s my team lead at the hospital.”

  “You work security at the hospital?”

  Lucas gestured to the clothes he was still wearing. “Sure do.”

  “It’s a good gig,” Barry said, still smiling. At least only Brit looked less than thrilled to be there.

  “Julie’s called the police and reported her brother missing,” Maverick said, getting right back to business. Lucas didn’t blame him. They still had hours to go tonight, and the last thing they needed was the heat here when the other club members started showing up.

  “She did?”

  “Yes,” Brit tapped on his tablet and looked at Barry.

  “She said she gave him her phone so he could call their mother.” Barry’s smile faded as he spoke. “She said you were there for that.”

  “Yes,” Lucas said. “I was, and that’s right. She gave him her phone, told him to call their mom, and closed the door.”

  “And then what?”

  “We talked for a few minutes,” Lucas said. “She was tired, and I’d gotten the night off of work and wanted to hang out here.” So far, he was telling the truth.

  He’d always tell the truth. He’d learned the hard way that lying might alleviate some pain now, but it always came back to bite him later.

  “Lawrence was sitting on the front steps when I left,” he said. “We talked really briefly.” His feet shifted, and he resisted the urge to clear his throat. “I got on my bike an
d started to leave, and that’s when these two other bikers showed up.”

  Brit’s fingers flew over his screen, making little thumping noises as he typed. “And then?”

  Lucas was so tired of telling this story, but he did it one more time, ending with his arrival here at Ruby’s.

  “And we’ve been trying to figure out what our rival club is doing here in town ever since,” Maverick said.

  “What’s the name of the rival club?” Brit asked.

  “The Devil’s Breath,” Maverick said. “Out of Williamsburg. Same ones who robbed the grocery store a few months ago.”

  Brit frowned, made the note, and looked at Barry again. But this time, Barry didn’t ask another question. Lucas wondered if the police would have more resources when it came to the video footage the Sentinels had of the rival bikers.

  Electron called, “Guys, I got something,” and Maverick and Lucas turned toward him.

  “What has he got?” Brit asked, taking a step toward the tiny room where their monitors were.

  “Nothing,” Mav said, inching in front of the cop. “Something for our meeting tonight. I was having him research some stuff.”

  Lucas cast another look over his shoulder, and Vice had moved into the surveillance room and closed the door.

  “You boys wouldn’t be hiding things from us, would you?” Brit asked.

  “Of course not,” Lucas said.

  “Nothing to hide,” Maverick added. “And you don’t want to get caught up in our rivalry, trust me.”

  “We have a man who’s been reported missing,” Brit practically barked. “It’s a police matter now. So if you—”

  “We have nothing,” Maverick said, holding up his hands. “Nothing to do with the missing guy. Lucas just happened to be at his girlfriend’s house, who happens to be this guy’s sister. That’s it.”

  “We’ll be the ones to determine that,” Brit said. “Do you mind if we take a look around?” He tried to step past Maverick again.

  “Yes,” Maverick said. “I do mind. This is my business and my home, and you don’t have a warrant, nor any probable cause to search here.”