“Babe, after that, I can do anything.”
He got to his feet but I stopped him before he straightened to his full height. “Maybe a crouch would get us out of here a little less conspicuously,” I suggested.
“You might be right.” We formed a tight line, hunched over, and wove our way to the door. Micah waited on us right outside.
“How the hell did he get back out?” Stacy asked.
“How the hell does he get anywhere?” I countered. “Might be a good idea to get a little further away from here.” More bodies flew out the door.
“I’d say so,” Spike agreed, and we moved down the block, headed to a group of outside tables sporting colorful umbrellas.
A waitress in a halter-top two sizes too small and years too young for her scraggly bun of white hair appeared about two seconds after we sat down.
“Gettcha?” she asked, making it completely obvious that she wasn’t wearing dentures. And that she needed to be.
“Just a soda,” Spike said.
“For everybody?”
“Yep, all around.”
“Jezzzz. Why’d y’all bother to come to Bike Week at all?” She shook her head sadly and moved off. Stacy’s eyes widened as she walked away. I raised my eyebrows in silent question. Stacy pointed down at Granny’s feet as she walked away.
She was wearing flip-flops and no wonder. Her toenails, painted hot pink and shaped and filed to perfection, poked out at least an inch over the tip of the open shoes. The crowning touch. A true poster child for Bike Week. We howled like hyenas.
“Oh, oh, oh—damn, that hurts!” Spike exclaimed, holding his head.
“What’d he hit you with?”
“Beer bottle. Out of the blue. Musta gone out like a light, never saw the rest of the fighting start. He knew that’d do it. Fights break out every five minutes somewhere or other, nobody’d give it a minute’s thought. And now that I’m focusing a little bit more here—what in the hell are you two doing here? We told you to stay at the hotel! Where you’d be safe!”
“We very seldom do as we’re told,” Stacy said. “Either of us. Especially me. Is that a problem?”
“I’ll work around it.”
Toenail Granny returned with our drinks. Our not terribly large drinks. “That’ll be fifteen bucks.” Welcome to Bike Week. Spike handed over a twenty.
“You need change?”
“No, ma’am, have a great day.”
“Don’t guess you need any connections, not with the lookers you sittin’ with, but they don’t treat you right, come back and see me. I’ll hook you up.”
Granny moved to new customers. And I moved back into darkness.
* * *
Highway 47. Mile Marker 16.
“You’re surrounded! Hands in the air!”
“Sonofabitch! What the fuck?! Break! Break!”
Cycles spun and swerved and gunned. Riders tore off into the darkness. Some made it, some didn’t. Metal screeched as bikes hit dirt. Sound of gunshots. Shrieking sirens. And faintly in the distance, the roaring engines of the bikes that made it out.
The Alabama Snowman hung back from the escaping pack, falling behind. When the last rider in his sightline rounded a curve, he pulled over to the side, punching viciously at the keypad of that dinosaur of a cell phone.
“What the fuck?! Are you guys completely insane? That wasn’t a take-down, at least half of ‘em are on the road! Best guess is the third safehouse. ”
He shoved the phone back into his jacket and tore off into the night.
Rush of wind. Light drizzle of rain. Another warehouse. Where, I didn’t know. Not the same one. Sanctuary. Safehouse. But not for the Snowman.
The biggest rider—the Prez? Ripped his helmet off and slammed it down on the concrete floor.
“Set up! Fucking set-up!” The Prez turned. “Snowman? Where the fuck you disappear to all the time?”
A hand flashed. The Snowman’s t-shirt ripped downward from the neck, bringing the zipper of the leather jacket with it.
“Wired! You’re fuckin’ wired, you bastard!”
Chapter Ten
“Ariel! Earth to Ariel! Where the hell’d you go, honey?”
Spike shook my arm and Stacy reached over to stop him.
“Been happenin’ all afternoon. Flashbacks. Not hers, Chad’s.”
“Not Chad’s either,” I protested. “The Alabama Snowman’s. Haven’t seen you in ‘em yet, but I know you were involved. How?”
“Wasn’t really involved. I just—helped end it.”
“You wanta explain that?”
“Nope. Not really.”
“Didn’t think so. So what happened after the—Prez? Is that what they call it? Fingered the Snowman?”
“Flashbacks that good, are they?”
“They’re makin’ progress, yeah. Just not quick enough. So fill me in.” But he didn’t have to. The damn flashbacks, once started, had a time-table of their own, accelerating with light speed.
* * *
The Prez whipped out his own dinosaur of a cell-phone.
“Snowman’s a plant. Put the word on the street.”
Wail of sirens. Blare of loudspeakers. Most telling of all, the click of automatic weapons at the ready that sounded from the shadows. From the inside shadows.
‘Best guess is the third safehouse.’ Good guess, Snowman.
“You’re surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”
The Prez looked at Snowman with reptilian eyes. “Judas.”
One of the armed agents laughed as he stepped forward out of the line. “Wow, I’m impressed, douche bag, you know your Bible.”
The Snowman’s right hook flashed out and the agent hit the floor.
“You stupid sonofabitch!”
“What the hell? Your cover was blown, they’d seen the wire—”
“And you couldn’t come out before he made that call? My family’s dead, you bastard! And you just helped kill them!”
Snowman raced to the lever opening the warehouse and cranked it. He ran back to his cycle and revved out into the crowd of waiting law enforcement.
“Stop! We’ll shoot!”
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire! One of ours, let him go!”
Racing wind. Whirling maelstrom of dread. Faster. Faster. Down country highway. Onto small town streets. Onto the street. The street lined with fire trucks.
The cycle hit pavement when the rider jumped off, no time wasted to set the kickstand.
“Mom! Dad!” He charged toward the flaming house.
“Stop him! It’s suicide!”
It took four firefighters to tackle him down.
“No way in! Not even when we got here! No way anyone was alive in there! No one! You hear me, son?”
And the flashback faded away, leaving me with the smell of smoke in my nostrils and the sound of Chad’s weeping in my ears.
* * *
I shook my head and wiped the tears from my own eyes. Stacy had vacated her chair and stood leaning over me, holding me tight in her arms.
“Oh, God, will you stop that? That was the longest one yet and the look on your face—”
I looked at Spike, who stared at me with dread. “Give,” I ordered.
“Honey—”
“Give. What’s your connection with Chad really? The one that let you help end it?”
“I was in the foster system. Chad’s parents took me when I was thirteen. Chad was sixteen. And from the first day, they didn’t make me feel like a foster anything anymore. I was their child. I was Chad’s brother.”
“Where were you? When it happened?”
“Nevada. My mother was from Nevada originally. Dad—Chad’s Dad. My Dad. The only man I ever called Dad—he’d found my grandparents for me. My high school graduation present, a trip to meet them. And when I did, I found out Nevada had a medical program that let you combine some undergrad with medical school, shorten the time a bit. So I stayed. And after Mom and Dad—I never came back. Not for good.”
Stacy looked from one of us to the other. “So nice to be in the loop. Let me guess. Chad got busted by the Dark Rulers—”
“The Alabama Snowman,” I corrected. “They’re not the same person. Just the same man.”
“Makes perfect sense.” Stacy nodded. “I even get it. And when they found out, the Dark Rulers killed his—your parents?”
“Only parents I ever had, yeah. Chad’s always blamed himself. And it’s true in one sense, he hadn’t ever gone undercover, they wouldn’t have been in danger. But if it’d been handled right, they still wouldn’t have been in danger. Stupid, stupid mistake, the whole bust from the git-go. Should have had ‘em all. Should have had protection on Mom and Dad soon as they knew they didn’t net the whole group.”
“But still—sooner or later wouldn’t the Dark Rulers have tracked them down?”
“Oh, honey! They loved it. And they were all set. In position to go into a—witness protection program, sort of. In Vegas. It was all a big adventure to Mom. Said not everybody got to re-make themselves and she was gonna be a Las Vegas blonde this go-around. Man, did she love that. And I’m so damn sorry I never got to take her to a Vegas show. She had a real thing for Wayne Newton.”
Spike’s eyes looked suspiciously wet. Then they widened suddenly as he looked past me.
“What now, man?” he asked the seemingly empty air.
“The ghost agent from this morning’s back, isn’t he?” I asked Stacy.
“Yep. Don’t be rude, Spike, invite him to sit down. Oh, never mind, he just did.”
“Thanks for keepin’ me in the loop,” I said.
“No problem. Now hush.”
I sat back and hushed.
“Aw, man, so when is this supposed to go down?” From Spike’s expression, whatever it was couldn’t be good. “Okay, now I got a question for you. You seen my buddy around, the one with me this morning? Rides the Honda? Hey, come back here!” Spike banged the table with the flat of his hand. “Damn it! Ask ‘em something they don’t like, they just disappear on you!”
Stacy reached over and took Spike’s hand. “Yeah, the dead are a flighty bunch,” she commiserated. “Ari, it might be time to call that number you coerced outta Chad this morning. The one for whatever damn Agency this poor guy was working for.”
“Because?”
“Looks like the Dark Rulers have branched out from just drugs and weapons,” Spike said. “Seems they’re having a private auction tonight. Involving human merchandise.”
“White slave trade.”
“Bingo. Great time for Chad to go poking around looking for ‘em.”
“You know it. Well, here goes nothing.” I pulled out my phone and punched in the number I’d forced out of Chad. I got an answer after two rings. Not the one I was expecting.
“Luigi’s Pizza!”
Spike waved at me furiously. I covered the phone with my hand.
“Leave a message!” he mouthed. I raised my eyebrows. “Message!” he mouthed back. “Leave one!”
“This is Ariel Garrett,” I said. “Chad Garrett’s wife. Understand there’s a party goin’ on tonight, please have the caterer call me back. On this number, not on Chad’s. Thank you.”
I hung up and looked at Spike.
“Good job, honey. I should’ve thought of it before you called but that was damn quick thinking.”
“Luigi’s Pizza?”
“Honey. You think they’re going to answer the phone ‘Search and Rescue for Agents in Trouble’?”
“No, guess not.”
“No, of course not. Turn your ringer up so we won’t miss a call back.”
“If we get one and he didn’t just give me a wrong number.”
“There’s that, yeah.”
“Think he did?”
Spike shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
“How comforting. Well, nothing’s gettin’ done, us just sitting here. Time to do—something.”
I started to my feet but sat back down abruptly. Surely I knew all I needed to know by now. Would these damn flashbacks never quit? Well, not yet, anyway.
Chapter Eleven
A garage. Not a warehouse. A regular, ordinary house’s garage. Chad—no longer the Snowman—stood at a work counter, glass bottles lined up in front of him. Corks, already threaded with long pieces of cloth, stood in front of each bottle. The smell of gas permeated the air, laced with a hint of alcohol. Ah, of course. The strips of cloth, the wicks. He’d soaked them in alcohol. He worked methodically, pouring gas into the glass bottles, corking them firmly, and storing them in the leather saddlebags.
The kitchen door leading from the house into the garage slammed shut. He turned his head.
“Squirt. What’re you doing here?”
A younger Spike—no, he wasn’t Spike, not yet, he was Squirt, twenty-two or twenty-three, tops, walked toward him. No beard. His shoulders and chest hadn’t grown into their massive promise quite yet.
“Got in about nine tonight. Expect me to stay in Nevada when I knew tonight was it? Been chasing your ass ever since. They wouldn’t let me near the house, either.”
“I didn’t see you there.”
“Got there after you left. Said you’d been there. Well, didn’t say it was you. Pretty unmistakable from the description.”
Squirt moved to the counter and started filling bottles with gasoline.
“What the fuck you think you’re doing?”
“Going with you.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Try and stop me. My parents, too. Even if they didn’t have to be.”
“You’ll get yourself kicked out of school.”
“So? You’re ‘bout to get yourself kicked out of organized law enforcement.”
Chad snorted. “Yeah. Some organization, huh?”
Between the two of them, every glass bottle stood full. Squirt walked over to a cycle I hadn’t noticed parked on the side of the garage and wheeled it over, opening the saddlebag and loading up. Obviously his, stored at big brother’s house.
In unison, the brothers by choice, that bond so much stronger than blood, fastened their jackets and mounted their cycles. Helmets? We doan need no stinkin’ helmets.
“You ready, Squirt?”
“Let’s do this thing.”
Chad reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a gun. A Glock. He handed it to Squirt.
“Don’t take it if you can’t use it. Don’t come if you can’t use it.”
“I can use it.”
Revving engines. Billows of exhaust. The garage door opened. Riders armed, ready to make their own storm. Self-appointed Enforcers of the Code of the One Percenters. Do unto others exactly what they did unto you.
Rushing wind. Twisting turns. Hint of red foretelling fiery dawn. Narrow streets. The wrong side of town. The lairs of the Dark Rulers. Off the streets and onto sidewalks, down walkways to run-down houses, off into the yards. One rider toward the front windows. One rider toward the back windows. Hands flashed down to saddlebags, grabbing bottles. Lighters flared, cloth wicks soaked in alcohol grew blossoms of red. Crashing glass in front windows. Crashing glass in back windows. Screams and shrieks. Dante’s Inferno, One Percenter style. And off to the next target, and the next.
At a four-way stop, Chad leaned closer to Squirt.
“Word’s out on the street now. They know we’re coming.”
“Yeah.”
“We got one good hit left. But they’ll be waiting for us. Spike’ll be at this one. Keep your eyes open and your head down.”
“Spike?”
“Handle’s from his weapon of choice. Railroad spikes. Polished and filed, uses ‘em like throwing knives. Razor sharp. Eyes open. Head down. Ride low.”
“Got it.”
“Be damn sure you do.”
Into the next yard. Their heads weren’t down low enough. A fine link chain jerked itself taunt out of the grass across their path. Cycles crashed. A Wild Man of Borneo—Spike—faci
al features hidden under the bush of hair, jumped from the shrubbery. His arm drew back, sending a heavy metal projectile whizzing through the air. Squirt rolled and the railroad spike, sharpened to a stiletto point, buried itself half-way in the dirt.
The attacker threw himself on top of Chad, his weight knocking him back to the ground.
“Bastard! You were our brother!”
His arm flashed upward, silvery gleams coming off the polished spike in his hand in the dawn light. Striking position.
Squirt grabbed the handle of the dirt-bound spike protruding from the ground. He yanked it free and hurled himself forward as the biker’s arm began its downward arc. Loud, wet smack as the stiletto point of the dirt-coated spike tore its way through the flesh and bone and tendons of the hand wielding the spike intended for Chad’s heart. A dark geyser of blood exploded into the reddish rays of the rising sun. Screams of agony drowned out the faint wail of approaching sirens. Chad’s body surged upward, flipping the screaming biker’s body off and pinning it under his.
“Think you just lost claim to your handle, ass-wipe!” His fist connected hard with the biker’s jaw. The head lolled as he lapsed into unconsciousness.
“Chad, the sirens are getting closer. We stay or we go?”
Chad stood.
“We go. Don’t trust those ass-wipes either. Bikes rideable?”
“Think so.” The man who’d started the night as Squirt lifted his cycle and mounted it. Chad raised his own bike.
“Then we ride. Guess you didn’t need that gun after all. Spike.”
* * *
The real world came back into focus. And surely, please God, surely I was done with these heart-wrenching rides down a memory lane not my own.
I looked at Spike and Stacy, watching me with worried eyes.
“Where you been, baby?” Spike asked gently.
I smiled. “Watching Squirt’s long night’s journey into Spike. No wonder you and Chad don’t advertise you’re brothers. You probably shouldn’t have even stayed in contact. At all.”
“Well, that was mentioned to us, yeah. We didn’t pay that much attention. Though even we knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to broadcast the relationship. It just got to be habit not to.”
War-N-Wit, Inc. - The Coven (War-N-Wit, Inc. - Book 3) Page 7