by Nico Rosso
Ellie was a good enough manager to understand the conditions. She walked from the house toward Arash and the others with four beers in her hand. “Wrap it up,” she called out. “We’ll get back at it tomorrow.”
Instead of walking to her, Hector angled at the van Arash was working on. “Let me see that job.”
“You’re not my supervisor.” Arash released the hood support and slammed the hood down before Hector could get close enough to see. Arash leaned on the front of the van to emphasize that Hector would not get what he wanted.
“I have seniority.” Hector puffed up and Thom backed him.
Thom toed open a cardboard box next to Arash’s van and peered at the contents before exclaiming, “He’s not even as far along as we are. This isn’t hard work, man, it’s all the same fittings.”
Arash didn’t budge for the two men. “Shut the hell up and twitch, Thom. And don’t you ever question my work, Hector. I’ve been wrenching since you were eating breakfast cereal.” Hector’s head tilted to the side and his mouth turned down in a scowl. He was ready to fight. Arash pressed because it was the worst idea and he was too damn trapped. “Oh, wait. That’s still happening now.”
Hector drew his fists back to charge Arash and Ellie slid between them, beers raised high. “Bloody hell. Drink beer. Calm down.” But she didn’t have the mass or leverage to stop Hector and he barreled into her. The beers went flying and she spun down to her knees.
Hector’s momentum carried him into Arash with a bone-shaking impact. Arash braced his legs and started to swivel to get Hector off him, but Thom jumped in, fists flying. One punch caught Arash on his chest, just next to his shoulder, and the muscle seized. Before Thom could get another blow in, Arash swung Hector into the path of the strike. Thom punched Hector in the temple and Hector yelled his pain into Arash’s ear.
Arash drove a knee into Hector’s side while he was off balance, making him wheeze and clutch at Arash’s shoulders to stay upright. Thom cradled his knuckles after striking Hector and wasn’t paying attention to how close he still was to the action. Arash reached past Hector, wrapped his hand around the back of Thom’s neck and yanked him forward. Thom’s face smashed into Hector’s skull and both men wobbled, dazed. Arash twisted out of Hector’s grip and let him fall to the dirt with Thom next to him.
Ellie scrambled away from them and stood. “Bloody wankers.” She dusted off her jeans.
“And now you know what it’s like to question me.” Arash blazed with fury. He could finish both men right now. With his knife, or a heavy tool from the jobsite. These people killed Marcos. But Olesk was the head. Making Hector and Thom pay would be the end of Arash’s stay with the STR. He had to wait to get them all.
Thom and Hector struggled to their feet and leaned on each other for support. Each man squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide, trying to focus. Ellie spoke through clenched teeth. “Enough. Not one more inch, you idiots. If you throw this gig off by one second, you are dead. We are all dead.” She speared her finger toward the house. “Go inside and drink your beers.”
Hector and Thom tried to glare at Arash, but the haze in their eyes undermined any attempt at intimidation. And then there was the fact that they propped each other up like a couple of drunks while Arash stood on his own two legs. He stared back at them and didn’t even need to move to make them turn and shuffle toward the house. Arash didn’t follow. When Ellie questioned him with a look, he tipped his head at a collection of different types of motorcycles next to one of the barns. “Are those for riding?”
“Anything but the street bikes.” She waved him toward the machines. “If it runs, take it.”
He turned his back to the others and walked to the bikes. There were at least two hundred yards of decent dirt behind the house before the hills got too steep and a wire fence demarcated the edge of civilization.
Arash found a dual-purpose motorcycle with air in the tires and swung his leg over it. After two kicks on the starter, he got the engine cranking to a high whine. Twisting the throttle blew carbon out of the tailpipe. He snapped it into gear and let the clutch go. The engine had enough power to jump him away from the other bikes and toward the open field.
Hector and the others stood where he’d left them, watching. Arash pushed the bike faster. The dim headlight only gave him a few feet of rushing ground before him, making him concentrate hard on the ride. Any distractions and he’d be eating dirt without a helmet. After a few seconds he nearly ran into the wire fence and swerved at the last moment. Dust billowed, tasting dry and mineral. He needed a beer to cool down, but he got more of a rush from twisting the throttle again and speeding along the edge of the fence.
The motorcycle was game, if a little loose in the suspension. He fishtailed in softer soil, his pulse racing as high as the engine. With a little extra speed, he could jump the fence and leave all these psychopaths behind. But running now would haunt him forever, the same way seeing Marcos’s blood mixed with the fluids from the car wreck persisted in his memory.
Another fence jutted down from the one he rode along. He’d reached the far edge of the property and skidded to a stop. Looking down, he saw that Ellie and the others had gone inside. Beyond the house was the main road. It knifed into the suburbs, then disappeared on its way to the glowing city in the distance. No cars lit it up now. Stephanie was out there somewhere. Hopefully alive. He couldn’t take another ghost begging him for revenge.
* * *
STEPHANIE LOVED TO DRIVE, but she was more than happy to be in the passenger seat while Olesk took them back to the compound. Grant hadn’t talked to her at all after handing over his card. In the parking lot, he and Olesk had exchanged some words alone before Grant got behind the wheel of his car and pulled away. She’d taken her time alone to secretly turn the volume all the way down on her stolen phone. All Olesk relayed when he waved her to his car was that Grant was complimentary of her work.
After that, Olesk was his usual driving machine. She decompressed to the base level of tension and danger that had been established when she joined up with the STR. Asking casual questions about the progress with the vans resulted in nonanswers from Olesk. He said he’d been taking care of business in town and hadn’t been back to the compound all day. Worry ramped up in her as she thought of Arash being outnumbered. Olesk’s tone while driving was always so flat there could be good news or disaster waiting for them.
The glow of the city swept past. The suburbs were quiet. Beyond them, the dark hills tumbled closer. Olesk spoke, and she couldn’t tell if it was for her, or to himself. “The Slick Track Racers started as a bunch of idiot teenagers getting faster than the suburbs on a slick track that’s now a home store next to a chain sports bar next to a pet supply store. We got really good. We started to get hired on the real streets. But only the best survived. That was me.” His expression remained stony. “I built this gang to handle anything anyone threw at us. You’ve got wheels, and I like it.”
That was it. He clammed up and drove, constantly in motion but not paying her any attention. Tiny lights in the distance revealed where the houses nestled in the wild. She looked ahead, trying to identify which one was the compound. As if she’d be able to tell what she was racing toward.
There were no smouldering craters or burning structures. Olesk turned up the drive and she saw the house was intact. The front door opened when he parked and Ellie came down the steps to greet him. As soon as he stepped from the car, his demeanor transformed to a comfortable man, in control. He met Ellie with a quick kiss to her lips, then proceeded to the house.
Ellie continued to Stephanie with an envelope in her outstretched hand. “Job well-done, from what I heard.”
Stephanie took the envelope and looked over another eight-thousand-dollar payday. “Did you expect anything other than perfection?”
“Absolutely not.” Ellie smiled at her. A motorcycle engine grated high from behi
nd the house. Ellie tipped her head that way. “I think he missed you.” Ellie skipped off after Olesk.
The mechanical sound grew louder. A dark rider burst into the glow from the house, a cloud of dust behind him. Arash rocketed closer and put his foot down to skid in a hard turn toward Stephanie. He gunned the engine and sped to her side. His intense eyes devoured her. His voice was just loud enough over the sound of the engine. “You good?”
“I’m good.” This close to him she felt her breath rushing. Her relief at seeing him was overcome by a deeper need to be pressed against his body. “You good?”
“Now I am.” He nodded, mouth severe. The man looked wild, near a breaking point. He revved the engine. “Want to go for a ride?”
Either she growled, or it was the motor resonating in her chest. “Get us out of here.” She swung her leg over the back of the bike and snugged herself up against Arash’s back. The complications of who he was and what he was doing with this gang tried to hook into her and drag her away, but the heated contact was too powerful. It felt so real, his strong body and sure posture. She damned the consequences and convinced herself she would deal with them later. For now, she reveled in the feel of his hips against the insides of her thighs.
“Go,” she urged him.
The bike lurched, forcing her to wrap herself tighter around Arash. He firmed where she touched him. They took off and sped past the house. The dual-purpose motorcycle wasn’t sprung for two people, making for a rough ride. But that just made her and Arash find a common balance, both of them in the moment. He took them over the dirt lot behind the house. Darkness rushed past, and for a moment it seemed like they could fly into the black hills ahead. She breathed as if her lungs were as large as those mysteries, as if all the burdens of the day and this mission didn’t bear down on her. As if she was kissing Arash in freedom.
He skidded to a stop and she saw the wire fence that hemmed them in. There was no freedom. The engine idled low. She followed Arash’s gaze back down to the house and barns. The two white vans were parked next to a barn, boxes and tools spread out around them. The dim headlight of the motorcycle just illuminated the darkness in Arash’s eyes.
He asked, “Do you know what the gig is?”
“I don’t.” She did, but not through Olesk, so she couldn’t blow her cover.
“Does it matter to you?” Doubt stained his voice.
“Cash will only pay for so much.” At first she thought he might be testing her loyalty to the STR, but he’d already revealed too much of his own concern.
His wary glance took in the house, then turned to her, dead serious. “We’re building rolling cages. For people.”
She didn’t think her heart could beat any faster, but this flash of conscience from Arash made it thunder. He didn’t belong here. She might have an ally. The connection she’d felt with him became more real.
She brought her mouth close to his ear. “Give me twenty minutes, then we’re going to get off this compound for some privacy.”
He nodded, caution returning to his eyes. She gathered herself against him again and he took off back toward the house. The man in her arms hadn’t changed; she’d just learned more of him. But instead of explaining him, this new information only deepened his mystery.
Back at the house, she dismounted near the rear door. He rocked the bike side to side to hear the gasoline slosh in the tank. “There’s a little fuel left.” He checked his watch, held her eyes for a moment, then tore back into the darkness.
She marked the time and headed inside. The kitchen was empty as she passed through. Video game sounds and small conversation echoed out of one of the living rooms, but no one paid her any attention when she climbed the stairs. After a visit to the bathroom, she closed herself in her room and wedged the door with the buckle of her bag’s strap.
Sitting on the floor with her back propped on the wall, she allowed her body to relax in increments. Once she was sure she hadn’t been followed upstairs, she took out the stolen phone and brought up the lock screen. Football Jersey was probably at the hospital getting his wrist x-rayed and wrapped in a cast, so he didn’t have time to search the parking lot for his phone or have the account canceled. Gauging the mentality of the man she took it from, the first code she tried was 6969. It didn’t work. She guessed his age was somewhere in the twenties, meaning his birth year would be in the nineties. Before she started with that run, she keyed in the largest number associated with the parking lot harasser, the jersey number. 7575. The phone unlocked.
Urgency straightened her posture. She muted all the sounds from the phone, opened the web browser and navigated to the fan fiction message board Frontier Justice used to communicate. Narrowing down to the relevant thread, she quickly typed about a fictional story line for a TV show that takes the characters to Reno. She listed all the addresses she remembered, but offset all the numbers by four, so any paranoid web searches by the Seventh Syndicate wouldn’t bring people to this site. Cars were described, as well as people, but she couldn’t use names in this format.
When she’d texted Ty and Vincent with the burner phone, she’d given them Arash’s first name and her belief that he was a mechanic at some point. A comment on this thread referred to The Mechanic and explained that he had no criminal record. That fit with the Arash she knew. But it didn’t explain what the hell he was doing with Olesk.
She closed the web browser and cleared out the cache and history. The phone was a different model from hers and she didn’t have a charger for it. The battery was down to 25 percent. Football Jersey might cancel it before that, so she had to assume that this resource was closed off to her now.
But she might not be completely isolated in her mission. She pocketed the phone and gathered herself before stepping out of her room and back downstairs. Arash stood at the edge of the living room with his back to the wall. The dust of the land colored his chest and shoulders. His windswept hair accentuated his wary eyes. Like he’d ventured down to civilization from the dark hills. Just for Stephanie, from the way he heated when he gazed at her.
Olesk sat alone with his phone at his table while Ellie and Hector played video games and Thom paced while watching. Stephanie stated to no one in particular, “Rubber chicken isn’t going to do it for me tonight.”
Thom kept pacing, his gaze on the video game. A dark bruise ringed one of his eyes. Olesk pointed vaguely south. “There’s a supermarket three miles down the road. I don’t want anyone dining out and giving too much face.”
Ellie paused the game and Hector exclaimed, “I was winning!”
“We need more beer and frozen egg rolls.” She reached into her pocket and peeled off a few hundred-dollar bills.
“Keys to the gunmetal gray minivan out front?” Stephanie stepped forward and took the money.
“On the rack of hooks in the garage.” Olesk still stared at his phone. “Go easy. It’s working in the next gig and still needs to be dialed in.”
She waved, though no one saw it, and moved to Arash. The game resumed, its noise walling off the others and making her voice more intimate than she’d anticipated. “Steak and onions?”
“I’ll cook it.” He remained cagey, though the draw between them was palpable.
“Come with me, pick out your ingredients.”
When he stepped away from the wall it was like they were the only two people on earth. His nearness seared her and she had to know how deep the burn would go. Then he somehow restrained himself, and that’s when she saw just how strong-willed he was. Because the intensity he showed could level this whole house. She wanted to wreck it all with him.
But there were still too many questions. She took a half step backward and the electricity between them reduced to the usual constant crackling hum. The two of them found the inside door to the garage, where there were three more cars, one of them not much more than a frame with wheels. Boxes of power tools,
some unopened, were stacked in a corner next to shelves filled with home electronics of all varieties.
Arash looked over a rack of hooks by the door and selected the only ones that could be for the minivan. “You want the wheel?” he asked.
“Take it. I was driving all day.”
Cold night knifed down once they walked out the front of the house. They hurried to the minivan and jumped in. Arash turned the starter and the motor juddered. She felt the powerful torque of the modified engine but knew it wasn’t running as optimally as it could. From the way Arash hovered his hands over the steering wheel, head cocked listening, she sensed he felt it, too. “Timing,” he declared.
“It’s wheezing. Air/fuel mix is off.”
“Main computer needs to be updated for the mods they made.” He put it into Drive and paused again as the car strained against the brakes. “We’ve got work to do.” The minivan kicked dirt behind it before grabbing hold and jumping forward.
She hoped he was right, that they could truly work together. That he was the man she thought he was. It was a chance she had to take. She headed into the night with the dark mystery that was Arash. The only light was the flame of a fuse she just set. If she and Arash were both fighting on the same side, the blast could crack the foundation of Olesk and the Seventh. If she was wrong about him, she could be dead by the end of the night.
Chapter Twelve
The minivan was a mechanical mess. Exactly how Arash felt inside. Nothing meshed, the potential was hindered and it felt like any minute all the bolts would come loose and he would wreck into the dark asphalt. Stephanie rode calmly next to him, but he knew she held a secret. Something was coming.
