Dirty Ties

by Pam Godwin

  Two things were certain. Someone had killed the street lights, and Lebeau was deliberately lagging behind. I gritted my teeth and spoke into the mic. “Night vision.”

  The helmet’s interface switched from a kaleidoscope of color to hues of green. The shadowed alley illuminated, stretching out for several blocks and revealing a depth and clarity that couldn’t be captured with thermal. Because the bright beams of headlights impeded the technology, night vision was limited but extremely precise in identifying details…like the spike strip blending into the dark, oily crevices of the street.

  The zigzag of metal thorns stretched building to building three blocks ahead. The handy work of Lebeau’s guys, no doubt. There had to be a way out.

  My heart pounded, and my hands tightened on the grips as Lebeau screamed up from behind. Which way would he go?

  A wall of trash cluttered a few feet before the strip. It stood as tall as the bike and twice as deep, piled against the building. Indecision tore through me, battling with the adrenaline heating my blood. Either the spikes didn’t reach the garbage or the pile hid a ramp. Two blocks to go.

  I angled toward the trash as Lebeau closed the three meters between us. Something flashed in the camera image. There. Metal reflected from Lebeau’s hand where he clutched the handlebar grip. A knife.

  He hammered down, accelerating between me and the building, evidently intending to lay me down before I reached the trash heap. I set my jaw and squeezed my thighs around the aluminum bodywork, tensing to dodge the impending strike.

  Inches from my side, he swung, and the blade arced rubberside, aiming for my ankles. I yanked my leg up and braced my boot on the windshield, jerking the handlebars to avoid a lopsided manhole cover.

  Too damned late. His hand connected with my leg, jolting a wealth of pain through my thigh. I wrenched my foot towards my body, bringing the other boot up to stand in a squat on the seat. The position protected my core against another strike, but it was a lethal test of balance at 150 mph.

  Thrashing down the alley, seconds until impact with the trash, I steadied my feet on the narrow seat and reached down to grip the source of the anguish burning my leg. My gloved fingers collided with the knife handle protruding from my thigh.

  Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck. My pulse sped up, and my teeth bared. I let the anger in, gloried in it as it flushed through my body. Anger had molded me at thirteen when I watched my mother’s blood spray the walls. It strengthened me through my most vulnerable years in the children’s home. And now, it kept me focused.

  Lebeau was a dead motherfucker.

  His front tire rammed hard and fast, the rubber burning against my frame slider, his gloved hand stretching for the knife in my leg. The son of a bitch wanted his blade back?

  A churning smog as dense and black as the night sky enveloped me. My muscles heated, and my stomach hardened into a furious knot of muscle. I wanted to pull the blade free and stab him through the visor repeatedly. I wanted to watch him horizontally park against the building and explode on impact. I wanted to smell his burning flesh polluting the air as I rolled to the finish line.

  In that feral moment, in the space of a seething breath, my mother’s lifeless eyes filled my vision. They told me to be patient. To be smart. To avenge with precision and cool detachment. To save the butchering for the families I was after.

  My front tire hit the trash pile, Lebeau hanging right at my side. With my hands on the grips, I kicked out my aching leg and slammed my boot into his helmet. Blinding pain burst stars across my vision. No way could I leverage enough force to flatten him, but the impact sent his bike screeching along the side of the building, slowing him enough to give me the lead.

  A sudden incline whipped my head back to the road. Shit, a ramp hid in the heap after all. A steep fucking ramp.

  I dug the toes of my boots into the seat. Tightened my fists around the grips. Slipped the clutch. Lifted the front tire skyward into a wheelie. My pulse spiked as the rear tire hit the end of the ramp then spun out.

  Behind me, Lebeau wobbled back on my trail as I pitched forward, tires first. The bike’s four-hundred pounds of wet weight shot through the air and over the spike strip. I clung to the grips, toes hooked on the seat, my body and the frame vertical with the ground.

  Adrenaline quickened my breath and soared through my bloodstream. Ah God, the thrill was electrifying. I landed shiny side up, but the collision of rubber against concrete jarred the steel in my thigh, spreading sparks of agony to every inch of my body.

  On my tail, Lebeau made the same jump. Goddammit. I tasted blood and unclenched my jaw, releasing the gouged skin inside my cheek. Christ, my leg was fucking wasted. I coughed through a parched throat and dropped my boots to the foot pegs. “Thermal.”

  Full color returned to the visor display, the finish line blinking on the map. Two more blocks.

  I ripped it up, bolting out of the alley, skirted around an oncoming truck, and stretched out on the final block. No surprise, Lebeau was still vertical and ten meters behind me, gobbling up pavement.

  And fuck, the pain gripped me by the balls. The fire heaving from the wound felt like it was seconds from scorching my leg right off my hip.

  The wail of police sirens rang out in the distance. Up ahead, traffic lights blinked in an intersection, bracketed by two walls of bikes. Dozens of engines revved and sputtered, growing in number but ready to scatter the moment the heat showed up.

  I focused on the blinking red lights. The finish line.

  In the lead by twenty meters, I could rush forward, claim the win, and collect my money. But as the hole in my leg stabbed like a vindictive bitch, soaking my favorite leathers in crimson, I couldn’t smother the fury simmering in my gut. My mother taught me how to ride, how to win, and when she died in a river of her blood, she taught me how to hate.

  A block from the finish line, I squeezed the binders, spun the bike to face Lebeau head on, and skidded to a stop. He rose from his tucked lean, seemingly surprised, but didn’t slow.

  On the two-lane street, a smart man would’ve passed in a wide arc and hauled ass to the finish line. Lebeau was a dumb fuck.

  He approached on my left, close enough to clip me, probably his intention. At the last second, I leaned right with the bike, yanked the knife from my leg, and returned it in kind. I only needed to point the sharp end in a firm grasp, holding my arm loose as to not dislocate my shoulder. His momentum took care of the rest, the blade piercing his chest.

  It happened so fast, he didn’t see it coming. Arrogance caught him. Shock teetered him. And the bite of the steel jerked his shoulders, the flinch careening his bike to the side.

  He countersteered, but both wheels lost grip, refusing to regain traction. Might’ve had something to do with his hands releasing the handlebars to grab at his chest. The frame slipped out from beneath him, and the velocity of his forward motion sent his body pavement surfing until his helmet crashed into the curb.

  Road rash was the least of his problems. His limbs tumbled to a stop, twisted at awkward angles around his unmoving torso. Dead or alive, it made no difference. The mobsters who bet on him would see that he never ate another croissant or frog or whatever he shoved in his prissy mouth.

  Sirens grew in proximity and volume, and my GPS alerts blared in my ears. The cops were four blocks away. I thrashed the throttle, pivoted the bike toward the finish line, and shot forward. The rear-view camera showed several guys dragging Lebeau off the street and into a waiting getaway car. Probably the same asshats who threw the spike strip and who would probably help him flee the country and the target that was now on his back.

  Unlike Lebeau, I didn’t need a team of people to hold my damned dick. I wore the most hi-tech helmet in existence. Binocular-wide field-of-view, voice-activated, powered by Bluetooth controls on the bike, and wired to the Interwebs, the head-up display kept my eyes on the road, and the 9mm plating protected my skull. The U.S. military would cream themselves if they discovered my warehouse, my int
el, and the engineer who worked for me.

  As I rolled beneath the traffic light, a notification popped up on the visor display, alerting me that my winnings had been deposited in one of my offshore accounts. I gripped the wound on my leg and drew a deep breath through my nose. I might’ve smiled if my jaw wasn’t locked in a teeth-grinding grimace of pain.

  Speculations on what I did with my winnings were as satisfying as they were inaccurate, some theorizing the lavish lifestyle of a playboy, others romanticizing the philanthropy of a heroic outlaw. I fed the rumors, planting seeds of embellishment that disguised the truth.

  Destroying Trenchant Media, the most influential entity in the nation, had been my mother’s crusade. Killing the two prominent families behind the conglomerate was mine.

  Motorcyclists and pedestrians invaded the street, fleeing in all directions to circumvent the nearing sirens. I savored the chaos. It kept me aware, focused, searching for my exit.

  I motored through the exodus, held up by the mass of scuttling people, and maintained my trademark silence as the shouting echoed off the buildings. Evader! What’s your real name? Where did you learn to race? Show us your face. Take me for a ride, baby. Did Lebeau cut you?

  Could they not see the wound seeping all over my leg? Leather-clad women pressed their tattooed tits against my arms, begging for a ride, their glimmering eyes promising a wild ten minutes against an alley wall or a dirty hour between motel sheets.

  I shoved at their wandering hands and gunned the bike through the crush. If I wanted to ambush someone, trick him, and learn his identity, I’d do it while his pants were around his ankles. So yeah, I didn’t fuck the women connected to the race. My paranoia prohibited it. And at the moment, so did the hole in my leg.

  Didn’t stop me from scanning the frenzy for a silver Ducati Testastretta. She wasn’t always here, but when she was, she lingered on the outskirts, always alone, eerily still and watchful. I probed the mob of bodies, searching for her seductive curves sheathed in metallic silver leathers.

  Seriously, who went to the trouble to custom match their wardrobe to the paint on their fairings? Someone with too much money. Someone who didn’t belong in this scene.

  The fat-wallet investors in this business didn’t ride, and they certainly didn’t attend the races in person. Who the fuck was she?

  Helmets and hair of every color and style spread out above the thinning horde. Maybe I missed her? I held my breath and headed for my escape route, seeking her signature braid, the thick rope of blonde hair that snaked from her silver helmet, curling around her chest and teasing her waist. I wanted to use it to bind her wrists while I fucked her.

  Which was the most irrational fucking thought I’d had all night. Must’ve been the lingering adrenaline. I needed to shed my racing persona, find a willing body, and fuck the energy out of my system. First, I needed to kick dust and find a doctor.

  Red and blue lights reflected off the glass building a block away, the piercing sirens rising above the rumble of scattering motorcycles. Out of time.

  I revved the throttle and spun out the rear wheel with the front brake locked, a fast way to scatter the masses. Then I bolted through an opening and gagged it the hell out of there.

  The thermal sensor flashed red as I rounded a blind corner. I shifted left to avoid the oncoming bike and blinked. The silver Ducati.

  My heart thumped, and my muscles twitched to flip a U-turn and pursue her.

  Her bike wobbled, and her helmet jerked in my direction, whipping her blonde braid across her slender back. I slowed but didn’t turn my head. I didn’t have to. The rear camera showed her decelerating, her head rotating to watch my retreating backside.

  I didn’t know what was more enthralling, knowing she was here for me or not knowing the reason why. She rolled in on too much money to be a reporter or undercover cop. The aftermarket upgrades on her bike alone cost fifty times more than the average bike here. She didn’t engage in the rowdy shit talking, wasn’t scantily dressed, and never flashed her tits like the women who frequented the races. Hell, in the nine months since I first noticed her, I’d never seen her remove her helmet.

  She stood out like a sparkling jewel amidst the cesspool of thugs, gangsters, and bikers who arrived in groups. She came alone, watching the finish line from the seat of her flashy pasta rocket. No license plate. No apparent weapon. She might as well have waved a sign that said Rob me, rape me. She was either stupid or I was missing something crucial. Both notions fucked with my head.

  A squad car swerved in behind me, blocking my view of her, and a man’s voice bellowed over the loudspeaker. “Pull over and step away from the bike.”

  One of these nights, when I wasn’t bleeding all over the fucking place or hightailing it from the boys in blue, I’d follow her, corner her, then…what? My cock jerked in answer.

  Caning it down State Street, I carved the next corner with a horizontal lean. Six blocks later, the flashing lights dimmed to tiny blurs in the backdrop. I veered onto the entrance ramp, merged onto 290, and opened the throttle.

  Last thing I needed was a fling with some well-to-do, danger-seeking fangirl. She was probably just a bored housewife, looking for the kind of hard fuck she wasn’t getting from her uptight husband. And there I was, lollygagging after every goddamned race, flirting with the five-O on my ass in hopes of seeing her. A dangerous distraction.

  My mother’s death had instilled a sense of purpose in my life. As much as racing channeled my anger and breathed life into my memories of her, the money I won funded her purpose. My purpose.

  When my mother died, she had no money, no family, and no gurgled final words to offer her only child. What she left me with was knowledge. Dangerous knowledge of buried scandals, corrupt corporations and politicians, and their hushed victims. Victims like her.

  I weaved through interstate traffic, the anguish in my leg clawing through my body as the engine exerted max power. But I was free and alive to see another sunrise. To finish what my mother had started.

  Kathleen Baskel glowered at me from across the boardroom table. Ugh, that look. It twisted with the same disgust she used to give my scuffed sneakers after I’d spent an afternoon chasing Collin along the banks of the Outer Drive Bridge.

  I straightened my back in the stiff leather chair and offered my sweetest smile. She didn’t always look at me like she wanted to ship me back to boarding school. Sometimes, her dark blue gaze touched my face with warmth and approval. Didn’t it?

  Who was I kidding? My mother was a cold-hearted bitch.

  She smoothed a hand over her dyed auburn hair and gave the bob an extra pat at her jawline. Her fingers lowered to tap the armrest of her chair, and she blew out an irritated huff. Then she huffed again as if annoyed by the fact that I had caused her to expel a noisy breath. “Stop being so difficult, Kaci.”

  A flush crept up my neck, brought on from her nasty tone and intensified by the unwavering scowl of the man in my periphery. The man I had yet to make eye contact with.

  I folded my hands on the table. “I’m not being difficult, Mother. I’m merely stating facts you refuse to hear.”

  Her lips formed a stern white line. “Collin—”

  “Is not trying to vilify the Chicago PD.”

  She flared her nostrils, the only bits on her Botoxed face that moved. “Interviewing Officer Dipshit on our television broadcast is—”

  “Daniel Wyatt has twenty years on the force.”

  “—a childish way to raise ratings.” She sat back and set her jaw. “Not to mention the upheaval it will cause among our supporters.”

  There it was, the driving force behind this meeting. Whatever alliances our parents had built over the years controlled every goddamned thing at Trenchant.

  I stared at the woman across the table, her slender frame showcased in a black pantsuit from the latest Chanel collection. The ostentatious diamond on her ring finger cost more than the average annual income in Illinois. She had more money than she
could spend in a lifetime. What the hell did she gain from her supporters? Special favors? Popularity in her haughty clubs? Influence and attention?

  She stunk of greed and decay. Problem was, I couldn’t prove if bribery, subterfuge, or anything unlawful occurred within these alliances. When they ordered me to shred documents beneath their watchful eyes, they had reasonable justification. Their subtle manipulations, like slanting Collin’s show and erasing numbers on financial statements, seemed to be within the realm of the law.

  Legal, yet erratic and ambiguous, like pieces of a big, ugly secret I wasn’t privy to. It didn’t feel right, and I sure as fuck didn’t trust them.

  Exhaustion pulled on my shoulders. God, I didn’t want to deal with her at eight o’clock in the morning. My morning dose of vitamins and caffeine hadn’t kicked in, given the constant urge to yawn and the overwhelming need to face-plant right on this table and steal a nap. Wouldn’t my mother love that?

  When I’d crawled back in bed last night after the race, sleep had never come. My brain was in a permanent state of unrest, my body quivering on a tight-wire, longing for things so far out of my reach I was turning myself into a miserable tragedy. And I had five more meetings and a budget summary to evaluate before I could attempt another night’s sleep.

  I rested my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Collin hosts personalities on all sides of the debates. It’s what keeps the show honest.”

  Another huff. She stood and gathered her tablet and phone. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Of course, she didn’t. Mrs. I’ve-got-asses-to-kiss-and-lives-to-ruin didn’t have time for anyone with a net worth below nine digits. She glanced at the silent presence at the head of the table. “Trent.”

  Collin’s father lifted his chin but didn’t move his eyes from me, his gaze a phantom stroke over my face. “I’ll take it from here, Kathleen.”

  My insides filled with ice. Fuck that. I jumped to my feet to follow my mother’s escape.