Treat: Steel Saints MC

by Evelyn Glass

  They finished eating and, in the meantime, glanced furtively around. Not even one person showed the slightest interest in them.

  Done, Jack dropped a pair of twenties on the table without waiting for the check and they slinked out, putting on their sunglasses as they walked to further disguise their faces.

  They rumbled back to the motel and while Tina packed, Jack settled up with the manager. Less than an hour after their faces appeared on the television they were ready to leave. As he stuffed his clothes into the saddlebags on his bike, Tina suggested they stop and have their hair cut. They found the nearest place and she pouted as she watched his gorgeous, sexy locks were cut into a conservative business cut. It looked good on him, but she wouldn’t be able to twist her hands up in his hair anymore and she was going to miss that.

  Because her picture showed her hair short, she left it long, but had it lightened considerably and cut so that she had bangs instead of wearing it pulled straight back.

  Satisfied they had done all they could on short notice, they stood by their bikes to decide their next move. After they discussed it they decided on Carlsbad because, like Roswell, there was a lot of tourist traffic and they would only spend one night in each town they stopped in before moving on to someplace new.

  They mounted up and hit the road and once again headed south on highway 285. By the time they reached the halfway point at Artesia, Jack’s Knucklehead was suffering. It was severely down on power and running rough. With no other option, they pressed on and after two tedious hours, they completed the seventy-five mile journey to Carlsbad. Jack’s hog was limping as he nursed the bike into the first large restaurant they found.

  “What are we going to do?” Tina asked as they dismount from their bikes.

  “Nothing to do. We’re going to have to find someone that can fix it. Or let me use their shop so I can fix it.” He looked at the bike in disgust. Of all the times for it to go tits up, why did it have to be now? he wondered to himself. “Let’s go inside and see what we can find out.”

  Inside they asked around, but nobody could offer any help. They were about to leave when a man and woman rumble up on a full dresser Harley. Jack waited until they dismounted before he approached. Fortunately the man and his wife were locals and, while sympathetic to their plight, their only advice was to take the bike to the nearest Harley dealer… in Roswell.

  “Shit!” Jack spat after the man and woman entered the restaurant. “We were just there! I doubt it will make it that far. I’m going to have to have it hauled.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “We need to borrow a phone and a phone book.”

  “I haven’t even seen a phone book in years… have you?”

  “No,” Jack admitted.

  “Come on. Let’s go inside and get something to drink,” Tina said as she led the way.

  It’s only eleven in the morning and the restaurant isn’t very busy. As they order their drinks, Tina scanned the restaurant until her eyes stopped on a man typing away at his phone. She watched for a moment as he finished his message and returned the phone to his suit coat pocket.

  “Be right back,” she said.

  Tina approached the man’s table, heading for the restroom, as a waitress arrived with her hands full of plates for a nearby table. Tina stepped back to give the woman room to pass and bumped into the man’s chair. “Oh! Excuse me!” Tina said as she put a hand on his shoulder to avoid falling on him.

  “No problem,” the man replied with a congenial smile as he steadied her.

  She waited until the waitress finished passing out plates, then made her way to the restroom to relieve herself.

  “Here you go,” Tina said as she handed the phone to Jack when she returned.

  “Where the hell did you get this?” Jack asked in surprise.

  “I… uh… borrowed it. Make it quick before the guy misses it. There’s no password on it… thank goodness.”

  It was an iPhone, and Jack was used to using an Android, so it took him a minute to figure it out, But soon enough he had the web browser pulled up and started making phone calls. He didn’t have time to be choosy and took the first person he reached that could transport his bike, then handed the phone back to Tina.

  “Shouldn’t we keep it?” Tina asked.

  “No. I don’t want to keep the guy’s phone. Besides, he’s going to miss it in here and know someone took it. If we are going to steal a phone, better to do it on the street so they won’t know when it went missing.”

  “You want me to put it back?” she asked dryly.

  “Can you?”

  She grimaced. “Not without making him suspicious. But I can do the next best thing.” She took the phone and as she stood, slipped it inside her pants and let it slide down inside her leg until she could hold it with her hand. As she made her way to the restroom again she dropped the phone and give it a little kick as it came out on her foot. The phone slid to a stop under his chair.

  “I’ll try not to fall on you this time,” she teased as she walked by the mark to cover the noise and focus his attention on her.

  She hung around in the bathroom long enough to make her trip plausible before she exited and returned to their table. She was just sitting down as the man stood to leave, checked his person and looked around until he found his phone on the floor. Tina heaved a sigh of relief. That was cutting it a little close.

  ***

  “Awesome bike,” the driver of the truck said as Jack pushed the bike up. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Don’t know. Something serious, though.”

  “Man, that’s a shame. What is that, a forty-something?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Beautiful bike. They told you what the charge would be?” the man asked as he started pulling out straps.

  “Yeah. They said to pay you,” Jack said, peeling off the cash.

  The man took the money and wrote him a receipt. “Thank you. Don’t worry… I wouldn’t dare scratch such a beautiful bike,” he said with a grin.

  Jack helped him muscle the bike onto the truck and then watched as the man strapped it securely. “One of you want to ride in the truck with me?” the driver offered once the bike was loaded and secured.

  “You want to ride in the truck?” Jack asked.

  “It’s only an hour back to Roswell. I’ll just ride behind you.”

  Jack smiled. The back of the Softail wasn’t the most comfortable perch for Tina, but having her tucked in tight makes it a nice ride for him. “We’re good. You know where the Harley dealer is?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. We’ll follow you, then.”

  Ninety minutes later they rolled into the Harley dealership and, as the bike was unloaded, Jack spoke to the service manager. “They’re booked for the next couple of days but they said they would try to work us in,” he informed Tina.

  “You want me to go back the motel and get our room back?”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you do that, then come back here? Maybe by then I will know something.” He handed her a decent stack of cash, and as she rode away he tipped the driver, then pushed the bike into the service bay.

  The bike caused all work in the service area to stop as the service techs gathered around to gawk at the Knucklehead. After some difficulty Jack was finally able to start the bike, but it ran very poorly. Opinions to the problem flew, but most of them Jack was able to knock down immediately as the likely culprit.

  “Hang on, let me try something,” one of the techs said as he walked away and returned in a moment with a paper napkin. “Try to start it again,” he said as he crouched at the exhaust pipe. Once Jack finally got the bike running again, the tech held the paper at the end of the exhaust. “Kill it,” he commanded after a moment. “I think you have a burned valve.”

  “That’s not good,” Jack said somberly.

  “No, it’s not. We’re going to have to tear it down to know for sure, though. Let me talk to the boss. I kn
ow the guy whose bike I’m working on. I’ll give him a call and tell him your situation. He’ll be okay with slotting you in ahead of him. We’ll see if we can’t break this thing down and see what’s going on today. Parts are going to be the problem.”

  “Thanks for helping me out,” Jack said sincerely.

  The tech gave him a big smile. “Just want to help get that beauty back on the road. I’m Brad, by the way.”

  “Tom Harris,” Jack said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you Tom. Go make yourself comfortable while I try to get squared away. I’ll call you before we start taking it apart. This ol’ girl is a little before my time and I could use your advice while opening her up so I don’t break anything.”

  ***

  Jack was wandering around in the showroom when Tina arrived. With nothing else to do, they fitted her for a leather jacket and a helmet. The jacket and helmet took a bite out of their available funds, but if they were going to be on the road for days or weeks on end, she needed a helmet that fit and leathers to protect her in the event of a crash.

  “Tom!” Brad called.

  It took a moment before it registered on Jack that he was talking to him. “Sorry!” he said when he realized the tech was talking to him. “Daydreaming.”

  “Come on back. The service manager said we could look and see if we can diagnose the problem.”

  “You want to hang out here or go back to the room?” Jack asked Tina.

  “How long will you be?”

  “Not long, I hope. Not more than a couple of hours. Probably less.”

  “I’ll hang out for a while. If I decide to go back to the room, I will find you and let you know.”

  “Okay, babe,” he said. He kissed her quickly on the lips before he followed Brad into the service area.

  After Jack left, Tina began to pace. She knew the chances of someone recognizing her were slim, but she still felt exposed and vulnerable all the same. She looked over the bikes arrayed in ranks like soldiers, then thumbed through the racks of Harley-Davidson apparel again. Then she began to pace again.

  As she wandered, she took an opportunity to lift a customer’s wallet as he carefully inspected one of the new bikes. As he moved off to look at another bike, she discreetly pulled a pair of twenties from the cash inside and dropped the wallet by the bike he was inspecting earlier. She didn’t empty the wallet of cash in hopes he wouldn’t discover the missing funds right away, but she felt the need to pad her meager cash supply in case she had to bolt on her own.

  Finally, after almost ninety minutes, Jack appeared, and he didn’t look happy. “It’s bad?” she asked as she joined him.

  “Yeah. The guy was right—a burned exhaust valve on the front cylinder. The back one didn’t look so good either, so we are going to replace both. I used their computer to get the parts on order from a place I use.”

  “How are you going to pay for them?”

  “The dealership is going to add them to my bill.”

  “Is it going to be bad?”

  “It’s not going to be good. And we are looking at least two days, even overnighting the parts.”

  Tina frowned. Two days, stuck and unable to run if someone fingered them. “We might just have to spend all our time in the room,” she finally said with a small smile.

  Jack snorted. “I might not be able to ride after that,” he said as he escorted her out.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Leaving the Harley dealer, they stopped at Verizon and purchased a prepaid cell phone. It was a struggle because the Verizon rep couldn’t believe that they didn’t have, nor want, the minutes billed to a credit card each month. But with patience, and two hours of their time, they finally walked out with a cell phone with no connection to Jack Carter or Tina Harris.

  Jack used the new-found freedom to locate a pizza joint that delivered and ordered a large Carnivore’s Delight. Why they waited for the pizza he made a quick run to the local market and returned with a six icy bottles of Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

  “Now I know why you drink this, you damn Yankee,” Tina teased as she took the bottles and placed them in the ice filled sink.

  “You seemed to like it well enough.”

  “Yeah… beats the hell out of that piss in a can I normally drink.”

  Jack woofed out a laugh. “Know how most American beers and sex in a boat are the same?” When she shook her head and grinned, he continued. “Because they are both fucking close to water.”

  Tina snickered. “I like a good beer, but it was hard to afford anything but the cheap stuff on what I made. Even then it was a special treat, so it actually tasted pretty good.”

  He made a face. “If we ever get out of this mess we will have to hit some of the microbreweries around. Boston Lager is pretty good stuff, but it can’t touch most craft beers.”

  Before she could answer she heard a knock on the door.

  “Pizza or police? Which you think?” Jack asked.

  “Bet you a beer it’s the pizza.”

  “You’re on,” he said as he opened the door. It was the pizza. He paid the man, threw in a nice tip, and closed the door.

  “Thanks for the beer,” she said as she took a sip. I’m going to have to get a better job so I don’t have to go back to drinking piss in a can, she thought as the full-flavored beer caressed her tongue.

  He sat the heavenly-smelling pizza on the table and flipped up the lid. As it flopped open he practically thought he heard an angel sing as his eye feasted on the meat covered-pizza… only to realize that it was Tina trilling out a note beside him when she saw the baked goodness before them. He grinned to himself and wondered if she could actually sing.

  The pizza had cooled enough on the ride to the motel, allowing them to dive right in. They had missed lunch… again. They spoke little as they devoured their first slice, and Jack snickered when the loudest sound for the first several minutes was Tina moaning in hedonistic delight.

  “So, Jack,” she began as she pulled her second slice from the box. “Getting that cell phone was a real cluster-fuck.”

  “You’re telling me! I didn’t think they were going to give it to us without my driver’s license.”

  “I was thinking: How about while we wait for your bike to be fixed, we borrow someone’s ID? Someone that looks enough like one of us for us to pass for them. Then we can use that ID when we have to.”

  “I guess we would only need one, wouldn’t we?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. We can stroll up and down the road where we saw all the alien stuff. That’s probably our best chance to lift someone’s wallet.”

  “I don’t know, Tina. I like the idea, and with the new cell phone and a fake ID, we should be pretty well hidden, but we have been taking a lot of risks lately. You lifted that guy’s cell and got it back to him just in time.”

  She didn’t mention the wallet at the Harley dealership. “But this would be a lot safer than that. Bump and grab. Done. Unless you expect me to put it back. That could get a little dicey.”

  He rubbed at his chin as the thought. “No… no putting it back,” he said slowly. “Okay. Let’s see if we can find someone that looks enough like us. We don’t have much of a choice. We can’t even check into a regular chain motel because they are going to want a driver’s license. And probably a credit card.”

  “I never knew being on the lam was such hard work. It looks easy on television.”

  “Doesn’t everything?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah. So how did you have time to think of all this stuff? I was nearly pissing myself when we left ABQ, but you were as cool as an ice cube. I would have brought my phone, used my credit cards, the works. It never even occurred to me, until you mentioned it, that all that stuff would lead the cops right to us.”

  “I’ve had a bug-out plan for a while. I didn’t have think of it… I had already thought of it.”

  Tina stared at him a moment. Jack always seemed to have a plan for every contingenc
y. “So what’s next?”

  “First I’m going to finish stuffing myself on this pizza and drink half of the beer. Then I’m going to call Marshall and find out what the fuck is going on. Then I think I might watch a little television and try to relax.”

  “And then?” she prompted.

  “After the television? I know this sexy dishwater blond. If she’ll let me, I’m going to make love to her all night… or until I can’t get it up anymore… whichever comes first.”