And then that angry façade cracked a little, as she admitted:
“Until you came along, that is.”
I moved my hand from hers, up her forearm, until I was using it to rub her bare arm instead. Her skin was deliciously warm, and soft.
She leaned into me – and from that, it confirmed her annoyance at me was at least partially feigned.
“So, if you’re not going to tell me anything about yourself,” I purred, leaning in closer myself, “let me tell you.”
I look her up and down again, and traced a path with my finger down her arm, over her waist, until my fingertip met with the bare skin peeking out from beneath the hem of her tank-top.
Barely visible – half-covered by the top of her low-rise jeans, was a faded green and yellow pawprint tattoo.
“That’s a Wildcats tattoo,” I told her. “North Michigan University. It’s older than the rest, so I’m guessing you went to school there.”
She raised an eyebrow, obviously a little impressed.
“…but you’re not from Michigan,” I continued. “You’re a Cali girl – I can tell by the accent.” Narrowing my eyes, and pursing my lips, I guessed: “San Diego?”
“Escondido,” she admitted, with the beginning of a smile. “But still, that’s close enough.”
I let my fingertip linger on her bare skin for a minute, but then lifted my arm away, and took her hand in mine instead.
I examined her fingernails for a second – clean, but cut short, and unpainted. Then I turned her hand over, and rubbed my thumb over the pad of her palm, at the spot where her fingers started.
I felt callouses there – faded ones.
“So, you’re a college girl,” I pursed my lips. “But you used to work with your hands.” I raised my eyebrow. “I had a girlfriend who worked in a winery, and she had calluses just like that… But I’m thinking you’re too much of a wild child for a vineyard girl… Besides, Escondido’s a little far south…”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Christi purred back, clearly amused by my detective work. “There’s this little winery called Bernardo, not far from where my father…”
She paused, cutting herself off, as if even that had been sharing too much.
But I wasn’t done.
Reluctantly letting go of her hand, I traced my fingers up her other arm – the one covered with a beautiful sleeve of tattoos.
I traced my fingers around the shape of a familiar, seven-pointed-leaf – a vivid, green marijuana leaf that was incorporated into a much more complex design.
“I’ve been watching you – and I know you can take it or leave it when the bikers pass spliffs around,” I told her, thumb stroking her soft skin, “so I assume this tattoo has more significance than just how much you love weed…”
Looking up into her eyes, I guessed: “You work on a marijuana farm.” Then I paused. “Your dad’s marijuana farm, from what you let slip earlier.”
Suddenly, Christi wasn’t smiling any more.
She pulled away from my touch as if it scalded her.
“What the fuck,” the beautiful blond spat. “How the fuck could you possibly know that?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to. The clues were all there right from the beginning.
For a moment there, Christi and I had been getting closer – but now it was like a wall of ice separated us.
“Why do you have to be so nosy,” Christi growled. “That’s precisely what I didn’t want any of you motherfuckers to know about me.”
I reeled a little when she told me that. Sure, I’d been riding with the Knuckleheads for months… but I didn’t want her to think I was anything like them. It hurt to be included in the “…you motherfuckers…” comment.
But I shrugged it off, and simply asked: “Am I right?”
Christi schooched away from me on the bench.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she hissed. “And it’s everything I’m trying to run the fuck away from.”
Chapter Eleven
Christi
Thirty seconds earlier, I’d been feeling warm and tingly at Mason’s touch. This tall, handsome biker was so unlike all the other men I’d been forced to spend time with, ever since I started riding with the Knuckleheads…
…but in an instant, all that had changed.
Despite the heat of the late morning, I suddenly had goosebumps up and down my arms. My stomach was a knot, and I could barely breathe.
How did he know? How could he know?
“Is this some kind of trick?” I looked up at him, recoiling as if his nearness was toxic. “Did you look me up? Run my prints or something?”
I staggered up from the picnic bench, and lurched away. Wrapping my arms around my chest, I started glancing around – wondering where I could go, where I could run, to get away from this man.
But there was nowhere. It was ten miles in any direction before we hit the nearest gas station, house or farm.
I felt the bile rising in my throat. I was going to throw up…
“Hey!” It was Mason, clambering up from the picnic bench. “Christi, I’m so sorry…” He reached out his arms, and I lurched further out of his reach. “I didn’t mean to… to…”
I looked at him, and as I did, I realized he didn’t even know what he’d done…
“I was just trying to figure you out, I didn’t mean to…”
“Well, stop,” I cut him off, mid-sentence. “Stop trying to figure me out.” Squeezing my arms more tightly around myself, I hissed: “I didn’t sign up with you assholes – put myself through everything that I did – just for you to ruin it.”
“Ruin it?” Mason took a cautious step forward – and this time I didn’t back off. “Ruin what?”
He looked across at me with those big, blue eyes of his and murmured: “What the fuck happened to you, Christi? What are you running from?”
It wasn’t bile rising in my throat any more. It was a sob. As I stood there, squeezing my arms around myself, I suddenly couldn’t control an anguished cry, and tears burst from my eyes like a raincloud opening.
“Oh, God,” I cried, sinking to my knees on the sharp gravel. “Oh, God… I can’t believe this…”
I slumped onto the dirt, and Mason was over in a flash. This time I didn’t recoil, or fight him off, as he wrapped his big, strong arms around me and squeezed me tight.
I crushed my head into his chest, and sobbed desperately.
And the weirdest thing? The weirdest fucking thing?
As I curled my arms around this virtual stranger – a man I hadn’t spoken to until the previous night – I suddenly felt more alive than I had in months.
Even the hot, angry tears gushing down my cheeks, and the throat-tearing sobs emerging from my lungs, felt good.
Ever since I’d joined the Knuckleheads I’d switched off my emotions. I’d swallowed everything down. I’d sucked, and fucked, and endured every indignity with barely a raise of my eyebrow. I’d trained myself to be utterly immune to everything around me…
…and now, like the floodgates had been opened, it all came deluging out.
“Oh, God, Mason,” I wailed, face buried in his chest. “Oh, God… It’s true. Everything you said was true… and if you figured it out…” I gulped, my throat raw. “What if somebody else does, too?”
Mason squeezed my head to his chest, and stroked my hair.
“It’s okay,” he murmured softly in my ear. “It’s okay, honey. Everything’s going to be okay…”
And then, after letting me drench his shirt in my tears for a few minutes, Mason peeled my face away from his chest, and wiped the tear-soaked hair that was plastered across my eyes.
He looked down at me – so strong, and warm, and caring.
“What happened to you, Christi,” he asked again, squeezing me in his powerful arms. “What are you running from? And what did I tell you that scared you so much?”
I gulped down another sob, and snorted up my snotty tears.
And then, wrapped in the warmth and security of Mason’s big, strong arms, I told him.
***
“It’s exactly as you said,” I began to explain, a short while later.
We were back on the picnic table now – me perched on the corner of it, while Mason sat on the edge and studied me silently.
“You said I worked on a marijuana farm – my dad’s marijuana farm. And that’s exactly right. Bandy Canyon Cannabis, just southeast of Escondido, in the San Pasqual Valley.”
Mason listened intently.
Taking a deep breath, I explained: “We were one of California’s biggest legal cannabis growers. We produced fifty pounds a month – medical grade cannabis, some of the best in the state.”
Seeing the look in Mason’s eyes, I added a little frost to my tone when I explained: “It was all legal, okay. We were licensed by the state, inspected, approved, everything.”
“Were,” Mason finally spoke. “You keep saying were.”
I felt my heart sink as I heard that.
“Yeah,” I spat bitterly. “Were.” With a rattling sigh, I explained: “You know how it works, right? Marijuana is legal at the state level in California, but not at the federal level in America, right?”
Mason nodded. “Just one of the many ass-backwards things about this goddamn country.”
“Well, that always put us on unsteady footing,” I explained, “and then one day, things go to shit. The local cops said they got an anonymous tip that it’s not just weed we were growing. So, they come rolling up to the farm in a goddamn tank, with SWAT teams and everything, looking for a meth lab, or something…”
My voice cracked. I didn’t think I could keep on talking… but I had to. I had to get this out…
“…and my dad…” I stifled a sob. “M-my dad doesn’t know what’s going on, so he comes barreling out of the farmhouse with his shotgun, thinking somebody’s trying to rob the place…”
I squeezed shut my eyes, feeling the hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
Reaching over, I grabbed Mason’s big, strong forearms and squeezed them – trying to find the strength to keep talking.
“They… they shot him, Mason.”
My eyes sprang open. I looked into Mason’s crisp, blue eyes, and clung inwardly to the strength they resonated.
“T-the cops shot him, Mason,” I repeated. “Right there on the porch, before they even showed him their badges. They gunned him down like he was nothing. They said he was a ‘visible and active threat’ but my dad did nothing wrong. If they’d just announced themselves… Shown their badges…”
I slumped forward, into Mason’s arms.
“B-but they killed him.”
Mason wrapped me in his strong embrace, and squeezed me tight.
“I’m so sorry, Christi,” he stroked my hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”
For a second I just buried my face in his chest, and let the tears flow. It felt good to finally cry. I’d kept all this bottled up for so long, ever since I’d joined this gang of bikers…
Now it was flowing, and it felt like the very act of just telling my story was sucking out all the poison I’d been keeping in for so very long.
After a few moments, I regained my composure, and I pulled my head away.
Looking back into Mason’s eyes, I warned him: “It gets worse.”
He rubbed my shoulders: “I’m listening.”
“They drag me out of my bed. Throw me in the back of a squad car. And then I hear them talking – these two local cops, as if I wasn’t even fucking there.”
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I explained:
“They boasted to each other about how they called in the ‘anonymous tip.’ That they organized the raid.”
I shook my head.
“One of them – Officer Dempsey, I’ll remember that bastard’s name as long as I live – was even the guy who shot my dad. He fucking boasted about it, Mason.”
Taking a rattling deep breath, I finally reached the end of my sorry tale.
“A-and when I confronted them about it, in the back of the squad car,” I cried, “they just fucking laughed at me.”
Anger was starting to replace grief, and I clung to that rage. After all, it was all I had to sustain me.
“I told them I’d tell the prosecutors everything,” I hissed. “About the bullshit ‘tip.’ About shooting my father in cold blood. I told them I’d hang ‘em all up to dry – that they’d finish up in jail…”
…and then a wave of grief came rolling over me again.
“…and they just laughed again. They said nobody would believe me. That the world was better off without one more drug-pushing old man and his deadbeat daughter…”
I took another rattling breath…
“...and then they said if I caused them any grief, they’d end me. That it was a long ride back to the station, and who knew what could happen along the way.”
“It didn’t matter what I said, where I ran… They told me they were the police. They’d find me – and that I’d end up just like my father if they wanted me to.”
Mason looked dumbfounded – and I couldn’t blame him. It was one hell of a story.
“So,” he demanded, “what did you do?”
“I’ve got small wrists,” I held them up to demonstrate. “While they were driving me back to the station, I slipped out of the handcuffs – and when we were stopped at a red light, I started pretending to have a seizure…”
I remembered just as it happened – and even felt the same frantic knot of anxiety in my stomach – the one I’d had in the back of that squad car, as I searched desperately for some way out of my situation.
“One of the cops got out at the traffic lights, to check on me,” I explained. “And the moment he opened that back door? I headbutted him.”
I remembered doing it. The ‘clonk’ as my forehead met his. The ‘squish’ as my brow crushed his nose.
“…and then I just ran. I just got out of that car, and I went for it. I don’t even remember where I went, or how I lost them. I just remember running until I thought my lungs were going to bleed – and when I finally stopped, I must have been three miles away.”
Looking up at Mason, I explained: “And that’s when I knew I had to get lost. The police knew my name. They had my picture. They knew who I knew… There was nobody I could hide with. Nobody I could run to. So, I figured I just had to disappear. Find the baddest, most dangerous people I could, who wouldn’t care what my name was, or what my story was. People so goddamned scary even the cops wouldn’t mess with them.”
“And that’s when you found the Knuckleheads,” Mason breathed, finally understanding how I’d ended up riding with his band of miscreants.
“Always on the road. No real names. No background stories. It was perfect,” I explained. “Riding with the Knuckleheads was the one place in all of California the cops would never find me…”
I took a deep breath.
“…but there was a price attached.”
And that price was my slim, youthful body. Nobody got to ride with the Knuckleheads unless they provided value – hell, the gang’s unofficial motto was even “no free rides.”
And for a 24-year-old girl-on-the-run, the only assets I brought to the table were my tight ass, pert tits, and my willingness to do anything to anyone, as long as there was a place on the back of somebody’s bike at the end of it.
And they’d certainly taken me up on that, since I’d joined the gang. My cheeks burned as I remembered all the wicked, wanton acts I’d willingly succumbed to.
But that was something I didn’t want Mason to think too hard about.
“So, that’s my story,” I told him, looking up. “And that’s why I’m here. I’m on the run – and I’ll stay that way until I figure out a way to nail those bastards who killed my father.”
But how?
This was America. There’d been countless stories of cops literally gunning down unarmed kids, and still keeping their
jobs.
With that legacy in place, what justice could there be for me? A 24-year-old weed-grower and her shotgun-toting father? Framed and gunned down by corrupt cops.
It was hopeless.
And that much was confirmed when Mason reached over and squeezed my hand.
I’d expected him to tell me something like “it’ll be okay” or “we’ll find a way.” Some kind of platitude, to try and convince me that everything will be alright in the end.
But he didn’t. Even he knew the inevitability of the situation. All he said was “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
And it didn’t help. It didn’t make things better. It didn’t provide the answers I was looking for…
But at least it was the truth. At least he wasn’t trying to bullshit me, like so many other people might.
So, for what it was worth, it at least made me feel better.
For a couple of moments, we just sat there in silence, digesting the story I’d just told.
Then, finally, Mason lifted one of his muscular arms, and checked his watch – a Seiko diver’s watch, I noticed.
“We’d better get going,” he reluctantly told me, reaching over to squeeze my arm. “We’re going to be late if we don’t hit the road again.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You should have taken me up on the blowjob offer,” I forced myself to laugh. “It would probably have taken less time than listening to my sob story.”
The corner of Mason’s mouth curled.
“I don’t mind, hun,” he said, squeezing my arm again. “I just wish there was something I could do to help.”
But there wasn’t – and as we clambered up from the picnic table, and started crunching across the gravel towards his Harley, I wondered if that was perhaps the toughest thing of all to deal with.
Chapter Twelve
Mason
For the next couple of hours, Christi and I rode in companionable silence through the California scrublands – and I’m not going to lie; it was the happiest I’d been for weeks.
No Way Out Page 7
