by Jackson Kane
It was funny. Growing up, I was always taught to eat healthy. Sorry, Mom, but desperate times….
We ate in silence with me furtively glancing over at him from time to time. I wanted to rekindle that conversation we’d had right before he went in. I wanted to tell him how strong I was, how I could help him, and how I wasn’t scared of what was coming. Every time I’d mustered the courage to say something, the introspective look of determination on his face stopped me. Something seemed even more off-putting about him since he came out of the store.
Giving up on my appeal, I instead tried to feel him out, to discern what that look meant, but to no avail. What is going on in that conflicted mind of yours, Remy?
“Do you smell that?” The dim whiff of smoke caught my nose. I thought it was Remy smoking a cigarette at first, but he’d switched over to eating a bag of chips and reading. Besides, it was a different kind of smoke—more like burning tar-paper-covered wood, old paint, and plastic.
“I lit the store on fire.” Remy finished the bag of chips, tossing it on the ground, then drained a bottle of water.
“What?” I must’ve heard that wrong. Glancing over to the building, I saw one of the windows flash with an orange glow.
Holy shit! The building was on fire!
“What the fuck, Remy! Why is the store on fire?” I gaped, my blood pumping faster.
“Localized surveillance cameras hardwired to a safe bolted to the floor. The safe wasn’t fire-rated. This way, I know they’re destroyed.” Remy reached past me and started the bike without getting on.
In the distance, fire engine sirens pierced the calm, predawn darkness.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! What do we do now?”
“There is no we.” Remy squinted at me. “You’re staying here.”
“What? No—”
“Get. Off.” He cut me off.
“Remy, don’t do this! You’re only in this situation because of me. I want to help you.”
Remy grabbed my arms, but this time, it hurt! His hands were steel traps devoid of even a fraction of the tenderness from earlier. He hauled me off the bike and then climbed on. “I warned you of who I was in the hall at Muse’s.” His eyes were cold and radiated simmering hostility. “Do you think that just because I saved your life that I love you? I don’t love anything! You’re nothing to me.”
I was mortified. I couldn’t find the strength to move. As the sirens grew louder, I hoped this was just some twisted joke. “Gotcha!” he would say, completely out of character, and we would ride off and evade the police.
No, of course not. That wasn’t the case.
“I can be helpful… be worth my weight...” I grabbed his arm and stumbled horribly through the empowering speech I’d been rehearsing in my head.
“Star, get your hands off me. I don’t want to have to hurt you.” The approaching blue and red lights of the cop car accompanying the fire truck reflected off the store’s windows, casting Remy’s face in chilling, hellish shades, making him look truly monstrous.
If he didn’t care about me, why hadn’t he sped off yet? It wasn’t like I could physically stop him, but why wait until the police pulled in? Maybe I was wrong, though. Maybe he realized that he did make a mistake choosing me over his real family.
“Remy.” Even now, despite everything he said, I didn’t want to lose him even as his bike crawled forward. I couldn’t just let him go.
“Bitch! Get the fuck on, or I will fucking end you!” Remy yelled as the police cruiser and fire truck were arriving.
What? My expression twisted up. Did he just say get on?
Although Remy was definitely yelling at me, it felt like his yelling wasn’t actually for me. He glanced past me and yelled far too loudly for someone just a foot away. I’d seen Remy mad. His tone didn’t get louder, only... sharper. I didn’t know if I was just fooling myself, but all of this felt disingenuous.
Remy ripped open the plastic bag of money, scattering some across the pavement, then he shoved me. I never took my eyes off him as I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. He didn’t look at me after that.
“Freeze!” police officers screamed. Remy disregarded the officers’ cries and sped off. One of them squeezed off a few rounds, but Remy’s bike was far too quick. They’d never catch him, and they knew it.
I laid there, crying on the cold pavement, as I watched him disappear like a waking dream.
Chapter Seventeen
Star
“Stay where you are! Don’t move! What happened here?” The flashlights blinded me so I couldn’t figure out which officer was questioning me. I guessed it really didn’t matter.
I finally noticed the heat emanating from the front door. God, this building went up so fast! Errant water spray from the fire truck’s hoses sprinkled me. The officers kept interrogating me, but I wasn’t talking. Impermeable. My senses shut down. Too much was happening.
Everything was too surreal.
“Your name, miss. Tell us your name. I think she’s in shock.”
“Looks like there was a struggle, but cuff her just in case.”
When the officers flipped me onto my stomach and I felt the pinching chill of handcuffs, I gasped for air. I surfaced after what felt like a lifetime under water. The daze started lifting. “What’s going on?” Although I knew what was happening, the words came out automatically like it was something I was just supposed to ask in situations like these. Didn’t one of them ask my name? “My name is Star Keller.”
“Keller... that name—”
“Oh, shit! That’s the girl who was abducted in Oklahoma. Get those fucking cuffs off of her!”
An ambulance showed up some time later. After a thorough examination by the EMT, he cleared me and I was taken to the station. The ride, the questioning, the paperwork... I ate something at some point, I think.
I was so mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted that it all became a blur. I just didn’t care anymore. Remy’s last words ran laps in my head. I tried to make sense of it all, but there was nothing to make sense of. There was no normal to compare it to. What was left of me?
They asked me what happened. I told them I was kidnapped by bikers. They asked if I knew which club they took me. I told them no. They asked me if I could identify the man on the bike that took off. Again, I said no.
Why was I protecting him?
Some part of me knew I wasn’t protecting the Steel Veins from the police but that I was protecting myself from the Steel Veins. Seeing how easily the officers at Muse’s Place were sent away made me keep quiet. I wanted to trust them, I really did. I wanted to tell them everything down to the shape of Top’s bent dick, but I kept learning the hard way what happened when you trusted freely.
I mean, these were the same guys who showed up and put me in cuffs before even finding out who I was.
Professor Baker back home, Muse, and now Remy... Maybe my parents were right after all about always making the wrong kinds of friends. Somehow, I always found the worst people in life and orbited around them like a moon. Scorched in the light and frozen in the darkness.
The officers were all nice, but I could tell that it was because of a nagging worry over the potential of a PR shitstorm. “Abducted girl rescued from brutal biker gang only to be abused by local police!”
That would probably make an embarrassing headline for the Lost Vegas PD.
They told me I could call my parents, but I politely turned them down. It was too late for that—not for them but for me. I just wasn’t prepared for what would be a very long, very emotional call.
I’d always been a night owl, but dawn was usually a bit much for me. I walked across the quiet station and peered out the window at the brightening sky. Across the street was a traffic rotary with a park in its center. The beautiful scorching hues of sunrise gave the few green trees surrounded by the rest of this dusty desert town an otherworldly glow.
Despite the surprisingly pretty view, my eyelids felt as if they were full of we
t cement when I realized just how little I’d slept these past few days. Fortunately, one of the officers set me up on a couch in the coffee area just outside the grid of overworked, nearly empty desks. They would have given me an actual prison cell, but none were empty, and they sure as hell weren’t having me share.
Heh, my first night in jail, I thought as I was given a blanket and pillow. I bet Remy wouldn’t ever be treated this nicely if he were ever picked up.
The moment my head touched the pillow, I was done. I was exhausted to the point of near immobility, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Remy. My heart was so full with hurt that there was barely enough room for it to beat. Why would he save me just to abandon me? Well, I’d finally woken from an awful, violent nightmare and was now able to go home. I would get to step back into the warm, familiar shoes of my old life like nothing ever happened.
The tears came in force.
Why did it hurt so much? I was so angry at Remy, yet burned for him at the same time. He was unbridled adrenaline. I felt like I was so much more just by being near him. It was intoxicating. I was drunk off Remy like I was off Professor Jonathan, but this time it was real, not just a dirty student crush.
I should be elated to even be alive, but being in this police station, knowing New Hampshire was my next stop, I felt like the part of me that was truly happy was starting to die off. I was free to go back to being the boring, timid version of myself that everyone overlooked or took for granted. I was free to be a burden on my parents who would, again, have to pick up my pieces.
In my freedom, I was poisoned.
Finally, mercifully, the calm of sleep finally took me.
I awoke to a biblical level of commotion in the midmorning. The station was filled with people running around and yelling on the phone. For such a small town, I couldn’t believe that this amount of activity was normal.
Something big must’ve happened.
I stood up as fast as I could, but my ass, legs, and arms were still sore from where Remy pushed me off the bike.
The officers were strapping on thick, bulletproof vests and divvying out larger weapons like shotguns and assault rifles. It was like something out of a movie.
War came to sleepy Las Vegas, New Mexico.
I was so swept up in all the excitement that I kept catching myself looking around for Remy, even though it wouldn’t make sense for him to be here. At least not on this side of the bars. I guess I’d come to associate Remy with action, and despite myself, it made my heart race a little.
I couldn’t deny the thrill of being so close to it all.
I rubbed the last of the stubborn weariness out of my eyes. “What’s going on?” I asked the older blonde lady at the desk across from where I’d just been sleeping.
“Police business, ma’am. Nothing to worry about,” she curtly replied after hanging up the phone. The officer had cropped, short hair and carried herself with the same hard demeanor as the other men and women gearing up.
When I saw the handles of the wheelchair behind her, I understood why she wasn’t getting ready as well. “It’s Ms. Keller, right?”
“Star is fine.” I attempted a polite smile. “Is everything okay?”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” she said with a confident toughness that only came from hard experience. She asked me to hold on as she answered the phone.
I watched her without feeling any pity for her. If anything, I felt a sense of commonality. We both survived something potentially life ending and we were still here. By the way she’d talked to others, both on the phone and to those who came up to her, she had a demeanor that demanded respect. She was the kind of person who lived on her own terms.
I wanted the strength that she had.
“You’re not being charged with anything. You can call your parents if you’d like.” The officer’s stern face cracked me a small, disarming smile.
My parents? With the thought of them came the crushing weakness of the person I’d once been. I began to dread that life. “Yeah.” A pang of dread stabbed me in the ribs. “I should call them.”
“You can use that desk in the corner.” She pointed across the bustling room then immediately went back to work.
I gave the officers a wide berth on my way to the empty desk. The room was wider than it was long. Drop ceilings and carpets made it look like countless other office buildings I’d seen before. I strolled slowly to absorb as much as I could, as I desperately wanted to know what all the commotion was about. With everyone talking over each other and phones and walkie-talkies going off, everything was so loud and layered. Once I reached the desk, I closed my eyes and focused on the fragments of conversation to piece together what was going on.
“Shots fired at the Super 8! Emergency responders—”
“—Martinez is down!”
“—have SWAT team en route. ETA in—”
“—looks like it’s Los Lobos—”
“Yessir! It might be connected to the fire at the Pick and Pay. Both have connections to Lobos and—”
What was I doing?
My eyes opened. I wasn’t in that world anymore. I was safe now. I needed to let it go.
As the officers filed out the front door, I picked up the phone and dialed my mom’s cell, surprised I actually remembered her number. I had grown so accustomed to just calling people’s faces or names that it was easy to forget the actual digits.
More fragments caught my ear through the dial tone. “—rival motorcycle gang. Best guess? The Steel Veins out of Oklahoma. Put me thro—”
“Hello?” The curiosity in my mother’s voice at the unknown number was both hopeful and cautious.
I opened my mouth to speak, knowing that I could be on a plane home in a few hours. This was where my story ended.
“Confirmed. At least one member of the Steel Veins MC. Proceed with extreme caution,” the officer in the wheelchair warned over her walkie-talkie. She was one of the few who remained here at the station. She barked commands with a phone in each hand, occasionally snapping her fingers for other officers to come over and execute her orders. She seemed to be organizing everything. Despite whatever happened to her, she chose to be here, and because of that, she’d become indispensable.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” my mother asked again.
I reached over and mashed my fingers on the switch hook, killing the call.
I had a choice too.
If the Steel Veins were at that hotel, then that probably meant Remy was too.
So what? He abandoned you. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want you.
Was it, though? For the first time, I looked past the torrent of emotions and broke down what actually had happened.
He’d gone to extreme lengths to pull me out of danger. If it was just for sex, why bring me to New Mexico? He could have easily given me to Tee and the other biker. Then there was the convenience store. He was so different when he came out. He wasn’t distant. He was deliberating! He’d made up his mind. He left me there knowing I’d get picked up by the police. Then the show when they arrived and how he demanded I get on the bike after telling me to get off. He was giving me probable deniability. The cops would think I escaped from him rather than being abandoned.
Remy was trying to save me again….
Well, fuck him! I didn’t want to be saved this time!
No. People had been making decisions for me my whole fucking life. I didn’t want to get sent to the armpit of the Midwest for some bullshit degree that I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be taken by bikers and almost gang-raped to death.
And I didn’t ask to be saved from Remy.
I rooted around the desk until I found a set of car keys. I knocked over a small picture frame of the man’s family in the process. The frame held a Christmas scene—a pregnant wife, a little boy, and even the dog all wearing ugly sweaters. It was sweet. I promised myself that I’d take good care of the car and abandon it the first chance I had. Then I’d leave an anonymous
tip where it could be found. I’m sorry, Vasquez family, but I really need this right now.
I had made up my mind.
I hesitated. Some of my righteousness dissipated. Stealing a car was an actual crime. This was a serious line I was about to cross.
I had a dream once when I was very little that always stayed with me. Well, two dreams actually. In one of them, I was on an island being chased around by people-sized forks and knives, which was probably some residual anxiety over always being told to finish my dinner.
But the second dream was intense for a sheltered, eight-year-old girl who came from a quiet town….
Years later when I started college, my roommate was all about studying the meaning of dreams. The Gateway to the Subconscious was a club she was in that held its meetings in my dorm room. Which also meant there was no escape when I was too hungover to move.
Their meetings, which were too esoteric for my tastes, weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be, but that was probably because they always brought weed with them. I did try not to be close-minded, but to me, there was nothing mystical about dreams. They were basically just a messy filing system that organized all the crap you saw the past few days, and, yeah, every once in a while, it occasionally hiccupped into a nightmare or some really crazy shit. But at least for me, that was always super rare.
Still though, all my skepticism aside, one of those crazy hiccups stayed with me for some reason. I even shared it with the dream group after I was good and high. The look of speechless horror on their faces afterward was something I’d never forget.
They looked at me like I’d just killed someone.
In the dream, I floated through this endless hallway of doors, or maybe I fell? I wasn’t sure. Open doorways on either side of me that led to different paths my life could take gently closed on the right and left as I reached them. I was able to catch the briefest glimpse into each one just before the portal was shut forever. The rooms were lush. Full of color, life, and warmth, but somehow they seemed alien to me, as if they were paintings of a memory.