She came to the railroad tracks that ran through town. She followed them, tripping over the ties, the alcohol making her off-balance. Not far in the distance, Delaware Drive came into view, the streetlights illuminating the strip of town and the small shops that lined the street. Tourists walked up and down the block, their voices carrying in the night air. A large group of men and women holding cameras headed for the pedestrian bridge to take pictures of the moon on the river, the Delaware Water Gap as their backdrop.
But down the alley not far from where the antique store sold trinkets, the diner served tasty root beer floats and vanilla shakes, the sports store rented tubes and canoes and kayaks, was the darker part of town where there weren’t any streetlights, where the music played fast and hard, where the Scions congregated in Sweeney’s Bar.
Becca walked toward the dark alley, leaving the shops, the tourists, the street, the light behind. She didn’t think about what she was doing, not really, taking tentative steps toward the bar, her curiosity about the Scions, John, drawing her ever closer. Several motorcycles were parked out front, the chrome shiny in the moonlight. A lone figure stood on the bar porch. Becca jumped when whoever it was struck a match.
“Come a little closer,” the woman said and lit a cigarette. “So I can see you.”
“Me?” Becca asked and looked over her shoulder. She was the only one in the alley. The noise of the town was all but gone, faded into the humid air. The music that had been playing inside the bar had stopped. Men’s voices bellowed in between laughter.
“Yeah, you. Ain’t no one else out here but us.” The woman took a long drag of the cigarette, the end of the butt illuminating her face. She looked young but also old too. Weathered, Becca’s mother would’ve described her if she’d been there. Her mother would’ve said the woman was someone who had taken some hard knocks, lived a hard life.
Becca stepped onto the porch. Her legs a little unsteady from the beer she’d drunk. The woman was wearing a white tank top and a black miniskirt. The neon sign in the window flashed red and blue lights across the woman’s tattooed arm.
“You want a drink?” The woman took another long drag from the cigarette, then flicked it into the alley.
Becca knew she wasn’t thinking clearly and that she should turn around and walk away. The bikers’ bar was no place for the police chief’s daughter.
“Sure,” she said and followed the woman inside.
The door banged shut behind her. A large bearded man at a nearby table turned toward them. He reached out and grabbed the woman Becca had followed into the bar, wrapping his large hand around the woman’s wrist.
“Have a seat,” he said and pulled the woman onto his lap as though she were some kind of rag doll. She didn’t protest and wrapped her skinny, tattooed arms around the man’s neck, kissing his cheek and ear and lips.
Becca lingered by the back wall, abandoned. A couple of men were playing pool. A stack of money was piled high by one of the corner pockets. The tables and bar were crowded with bikers dressed in jeans and leather and tattoos. The women all looked the same with their teased, bleached hair and cheap clothing. The place wasn’t anything like Becca had expected, although she couldn’t say what she’d thought it would be like. But this place . . . this place was dingy and smoky and smelled like a boys’ locker room, wet and stale. It didn’t make her want to leave, though. Someone belched. Becca caught the scent, turned her head away.
Not far from where she stood with her back against the wall, she spotted a woman sitting alone. She wasn’t like the other women. She was wearing a plain T-shirt, and her reddish hair was tied in a ponytail. Several empty shot glasses littered the table in front of her, but she didn’t appear drunk. Becca thought the pretty woman would be the safest person for her to approach. Now that Becca was here, she figured she might as well get what she had come for.
She skirted around a couple of men, trying to be inconspicuous as she made her way to the pretty woman. She was five steps away when someone grabbed her forearm.
“Aren’t you a cute thing,” the guy said, smiling, his teeth stained brown with nicotine.
“Thanks,” she said and tried to pull her arm free.
“Where are you going?” He squeezed her tightly. His fingers were covered in skull rings. “Come on, sit. Have a drink.”
“No, thanks,” she said, feeling afraid for the first time since she’d stepped inside. “I’m meeting a friend.”
“Sit.” He kicked out a chair. “I don’t bite. Not unless you want me to.” He laughed, and then his face turned serious. “Come on, doll. Sit.”
Becca’s mouth went dry as she lowered herself into the chair. He released her arm, handed her a beer. She sipped from the mug. One of his friends grabbed a chair, turned it around so that it was facing backward, dropped down on it in front of her.
“Look who we have here,” he said. “The police chief’s daughter, all grown up.” He was wearing a leather jacket full of patches. One of them was the number sixty-nine. He caught Becca looking at it.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” He wriggled his tongue.
Becca’s legs started shaking.
“It’s Becky, right?” the guy with the patches asked.
“Becca,” she said, clearing her throat.
“Well, Becca, what do you say we go for a little ride? I bet you could give us something extraspecial,” he said, laughed, punched the guy with the rings in the shoulder.
Becca’s heart pounded. The guy with the skull rings stood. The other guy with the leather jacket full of patches slipped his hand under her arm, pulled her up. No, she wanted to yell. She was supposed to holler, No! Stop! The music started blaring. A guitar riff sliced the air. Who would help her? Who would hear her if she screamed? She felt as though she were being dragged, her feet barely touching the floor as the guy with the patches pulled her through the bar, the crowd, and headed for the door, the guy with the rings on their heels. No one stopped them. Not many had been paying attention, and the ones who were smiled, laughed, joked, a blur of stained teeth and talking heads. Surely the other women would see what was happening and save her. But as they got closer to the door, the woman from the porch, the one who had invited Becca inside, tossed a condom at her. It hit Becca in the face before falling to the floor.
“You can’t be too careful now, honey,” the woman said.
Becca yanked her arm free and reached for the condom, stalling, anything to stay inside the bar with the others. The warnings given during school assemblies, the pamphlets passed around classrooms, the health teacher talking about what to do when you were confronted with the exact situation Becca had now found herself in, raced through her mind. Don’t let them take you to another location. Fight. Run. Find help. But no one said what you were supposed to do when fear overwhelmed you, paralyzed you, when you were frozen in a state of panic. Later, she imagined they would say she was compliant, a participant in the horrible acts that she believed were about to be bestowed upon her tender body.
This time the guy with the skull rings grabbed her upper arm, pulled her toward the door. Becca tried to wriggle from his grasp. Then his buddy with the patches clutched her other arm. At the same time, John appeared as though she’d summoned him telepathically, as though he’d heard her private cry for help.
“Not tonight, fellas.” He removed the guys’ hands from around Becca’s biceps. He was taller than she’d remembered, much taller than he’d looked from a distance.
“What the hell?” the guy with the rings said. “We were just having a little fun. Weren’t we, doll?”
“Not with this one, you’re not,” John said.
“What? You scared of her daddy?”
Becca folded her arms, curling in on herself. She stared at the sticky floor, feeling small and like a little girl. She’d been foolish to come here, when all she wanted to know was what it was like inside the bar, and who these men were that the town feared, respected, looked the other way rath
er than get involved in whatever business the members were conducting. She wanted to know what John’s life was like, why he stopped coming around, watched her from a distance.
“Is there a problem?” the pretty woman asked, wrapping her arms around John’s waist.
“There’s no problem. Isn’t that right, fellas?” There was something about John’s expression, a look that said he shouldn’t be messed with.
The guy with the rings flipped over a chair. Several of the men at the bar and surrounding tables turned to see what the commotion was about. For a second, Becca thought she was about to be tossed into the middle of a bar fight.
“Fuck this,” the guy said and walked away.
“Later, Becca,” the guy with the patches whispered in her ear before he walked away too.
John looked around the bar at the crowd. Anyone who had turned to see what was going on had turned away and continued with their conversations, drinking, playing pool.
“I’ll wait here,” the pretty woman said. She kissed John on the cheek before disappearing in the crowd.
“Let’s go,” he said and escorted Becca outside.
“Where are we going?” Becca asked and followed him off the porch, wondering if maybe she should be afraid of him too. It was clear he was in a position of power over the other members. He was feared.
He straddled one of the motorcycles parked in the alley. “I’m taking you home,” he said.
She slid onto the back of the bike. The engine rumbled between her thighs.
“Hold on to me,” he said.
She grabbed his waist, his muscles hard beneath the leather jacket he wore on a hot night in July. She pressed her head against his back and closed her eyes, smelling the leather mixed with sweat.
The motor revved as he shifted gears and took off down the road. She felt like she was flying, soaring through the night, hanging on to a man she trusted more than her own father.
John pulled into Becca’s driveway and cut the engine. Becca slid off the back of his bike. She was about to thank him for saving her when her father flew out the front door of the house. He stopped short when he saw them.
“Get in the house, Becca,” he said.
She knew by his tone she was in deep trouble. It was well past her curfew. She reeked of alcohol and cigarettes. Not to mention the fact that she’d come home on the back of John’s motorcycle.
“Thanks for everything back there in the bar,” she said.
John nodded.
“Now, Becca,” her father said, his final warning.
She dragged her feet, making her way toward the house. The motorcycle’s engine revved as John drove away, racing up the road. She wasn’t two steps in the house when her father stormed in behind her.
“I better not ever catch you on the back of his motorcycle again,” he roared. “You stay away from him. Do you hear?” He pointed his finger in her face. “You don’t ever go near him again!”
“Why? What’s the big deal? It’s not like he’s a pervert or anything. It’s not like he’s you.”
Her father’s expression changed. He no longer looked angry but more hurt than anything else. In a calmer voice he said, “I want you to go upstairs to your room and pack your bags. You’re leaving for boarding school in the morning.”
“What? No!”
Her mother appeared on the steps. “Clint, you’re being unreasonable.”
“Stay out of this, Jane.”
“Mom, you can’t let him do this.”
“Clint.”
“Jane, I’m warning you. Stay out of it.” He turned to Becca. “It’s for your own good. I won’t hear another word about it. I should’ve sent you away to school years ago. But you’re going now, and that’s final.”
“I hate you!” Becca screamed, pushing past her mother, racing up the stairs to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
She heard her mother say, “Don’t you think you’re overreacting? So she came home on John’s motorcycle.”
“You don’t understand,” her father said.
“Then explain it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both. She’s leaving tomorrow. End of discussion.”
Becca didn’t speak to her father during the two-hour drive to Philadelphia. She still didn’t talk to him after her bags were unpacked from the car and sitting on the floor in her new room, a suite that she’d share with two other girls at the start of her senior year of high school. He didn’t make eye contact with her or her mother. He left them alone while he went to talk with one of the school officials, the one he’d made a deal with, called in a favor, in order to get his daughter enrolled on such short notice, a month before classes would officially begin.
“It doesn’t seem so bad,” her mother said, looking around the flat, the sparse furniture, the beige cement walls. “Think of it as a fresh start. A new beginning.” She almost sounded envious.
“I don’t ever want to see or speak to him again,” Becca said about her father.
“I know you feel that way right now, but I’m sure your father has a very good reason for doing what he did.”
“Yeah? And what is that?” She kicked a box, plopped onto the mattress, crossed her arms.
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t understand why he does the things he does sometimes.”
“I hate him,” she said.
Becca’s mother joined her on the bed, wrapped her arms around her. “Sometimes I feel that way about him too.”
After hanging up with Vicky, Becca emerged from the woods and walked up the yard, one shaky step after another. She leaned against the outside wall of the garage. Her legs were weak, her insides hollowed out. It happened on occasion, mornings she pushed her legs too hard, running on an empty stomach without any fuel. There were times when she would have to stop and throw up the water she’d drunk that was sloshing around her gut. But this wasn’t one of those times. Overexerting herself wasn’t causing her to be nauseous.
“Becca,” Jackie called and stuck her head out the garage door.
“Over here.” She pushed off the wall, wiping her lips with the back of her arm. Her mouth tasted vile and dry. Her tongue burned with the remnants of stomach bile that had never quite made it all the way out.
“I checked your room earlier, but you’d already gone.” Jackie was wearing a light-blue terry cloth warm-up suit without a bra. She looked Becca up and down.
“I went for a run,” Becca said, explaining her ragged appearance.
“Your dad has been asking for you.”
“Okay,” she said, with the understanding it was her turn to sit by his side. “I’ll go up in a minute.” She walked into the kitchen. Romy raced ahead. She poured fresh water into the dog’s water dish, set it on the floor along with a bowl of food. Romy dove in.
Becca drank greedily from her own glass of water. Jackie sat at the table picking at her cuticle, inspecting her long fingers and clipped nails.
Becca’s father coughed. Both Becca and Jackie looked toward the ceiling to his room upstairs.
“I’m going,” Becca said, leaving Jackie and Romy in the kitchen. Slowly, she made her way up the steps and down the hall. The bedroom door was wide open.
“Jackie,” he called.
“No, Dad, it’s me.” She sat in the chair beside him.
He nodded, closed his eyes. She thought he was going to sleep and she would only be expected to sit by his bedside, relieved not to have to talk. She needed time to think things through about John, about what she’d seen at the river. But he opened his eyes, poked his finger to his chest.
“What is it, Dad?”
His lashes were wet. His bottom lip trembled. He turned his head away as though he couldn’t bear for her to see him cry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Wait here,” Russell said.
He left with a rifle in his hand, walking in the direction of the woods,
taking the path near the stream, the one that ran north away from town and eventually connected to the Appalachian Trail. John waited a few minutes before setting out to follow him. He was sure-footed and comfortable in the woods, as silent as a predator stalking its prey. If his father knew he was tracking him, he never let on.
Russell drifted off the path and away from the trickling stream. John kept close, hiding in the brush, ducking behind trees. He was so quiet he startled a deer that had crossed in front of his path. Russell jumped and swung around, the rifle aimed and ready to fire. When his father saw the small doe, he lowered his weapon. Russell was a good hunter, and the doe would’ve been an easy kill, but John’s father respected two things—one was nature. You never shot and killed an animal for sport. You did it to survive, to eat the meat and take your place inside the food chain.
The only other rules his father lived by were those of the club, the Harley-Davidson manual his bible. If you listened to Russell explain it, he was a man of principles, and he wasn’t above killing another man if that man went against the very things that Russell believed in.
John continued following his father, trekking farther and farther away from the path, closing in on the edge of the woods that backed up to a yard. It didn’t take him long to figure out Russell’s plan was to confront Clint. But Russell didn’t walk up the lawn to where Clint was riding on his John Deere lawn mower, making neat little rows in the grass, mulching the autumn leaves, bagging them. Instead, he lingered by a large oak tree, leaning his shoulder against it, his rifle by his side.
John inched his way closer until he was about twenty yards from where his father stood. He hid in the shadows of the sweeping limbs of a hemlock, keeping out of sight. The air was filled with the scent of pine. He stepped closer to the tree, peering at his father through the opening of the branches. The needles poked the exposed area of his skin around his neck and wrists. Despite the crisp autumn air, moisture gathered underneath his arms. A bead of sweat dripped down his back. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through his veins. The lawn mower’s engine continued to hum.
River Bodies (Northampton County Book 1) Page 13