by Jessie Cooke
When he finished, Ryder looked down at her. She was smiling up at him and using her fingers to wipe the edges of her lips. “You’re fucking amazing,” he said.
She smiled. “So are you.”
“Fuck, I love you.”
She laughed. “Fuck, I love you too.”
26
Ryder forgot just how dry the desert heat was until the minute they stepped out of the airport in Reno. The Reno-Tahoe Airport was the closest public airport to where they were going to, Carson City. As they walked toward the rental car area, heat licked at his face and a thick haze of heat swirled around them as actual steam coiled up from the black pavement beneath their feet.
“It’s hot,” Storm said.
Ryder chuckled. “Yeah, baby, it’s hot. You should visit in July or August sometime—hot doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“Nah, if it’s this hot in the spring, I’ll have to pass, thanks. When it’s hot I always wish that I would have gotten my father’s dark skin. This white skin of mine makes me look like I’m burning up with a fever and need to be dunked in ice before I start to seize.”
Ryder smiled down at her. She was beautiful, even with her lightweight t-shirt clinging to her back and sweat rolling down the sides of her pretty, pale face. Her light brown hair was stuck to the sides of her face in places too, but it still shone brightly underneath the Nevada sun. Most telling of all that she was gorgeous was that even after their antics on the plane, he felt a stirring in his pants when he looked at her and he was already looking forward to getting her back to the motel they would be staying at. “I think your genes got distributed perfectly.”
“Me too,” Hunter said. Ryder reached across, over Storm’s head, and slapped Hunter on the back. “Hey, I was just appreciating the beauty of your old lady.”
“Fine, I’ll appreciate the beauty of yours as soon as we get back to the ranch.”
Hunter grinned and said, “She’s used to it, as I’m sure this pretty lady is too. Besides, she has all this,” He held his arms out at his sides, “No way would she risk losing it.”
Ryder rolled his eyes as the valet from the car rental agency approached them. They had reserved the car online, so it was quick and easy, and before long they were on the road toward Carson City. The drive was short, but it was gorgeous. Storm watched out the window as they made their way down I-580 and along the outskirts of the Humbolt-Toiyabe National Forest. Ryder had lived in Las Vegas for years when he first got out of the army, but he’d never been there. He realized, as he had that thought, that despite all the traveling he had done in the army, he didn’t feel like he’d gotten all that much out of it. Each place they sent him to, he would stay on base, in barracks, or in a tent on a makeshift base or camp in the middle of nowhere. On his nights off he was either in a bar, or in some woman’s bed. He wondered if it was part of growing up, or maybe finally meeting someone that he wanted to have adventures with, but he found himself with the desire to travel and experience new things.
He looked back into the mirror at Storm again. Her eyes were lit up as she looked out at the huge rocks that dotted the landscape, with multicolored desert brush decorating them. He could imagine himself doing so many things with her, things he’d never really considered doing with other women. He loved to hike and swim...boat and fish…and he realized that he didn’t know if she liked any of those things. He wondered how long it took to really get to know everything about a person, and found himself looking forward to the months or years to come, full of new discoveries and adventures.
Ryder was in the backseat and when he felt the car exiting the highway he pulled his eyes off Storm and looked in the direction Hunter was taking them. The road they were on was definitely not maintained well by the county. The car bounced through and across cracks and potholes in the pavement, and the beautiful scenery they’d just been gazing out at was suddenly dust, tumbleweeds, and the occasional Joshua tree once more.
They drove for about eight miles before Hunter pulled the car off the road and turned off the ignition. As soon as the air conditioner went off, Ryder had to open his door to feel like he was getting any air at all. It was hot air, but at least he could breathe. “You gonna kill us and bury us out here in the desert?” Ryder asked his friend.
“You, maybe,” Hunter said. “But first look east. You see the tower?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the tower that Carolyn’s number is bouncing off.”
“Okay...so what does that mean? Can you tell how close she is by that?”
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Hunter said.
“Can we turn the air back on before you ‘school’ us on it?” Ryder asked, sarcastically. He saw Storm smile slightly at him in the side-view mirror.
Hunter sighed and turned the ignition on. “Wasting gas,” he said as Ryder pulled his door closed.
“I’ll buy the next round. Now, we’re ready for our education.”
“Okay, so cell towers and tracking someone using them is not an exact science, especially for guys that have no law enforcement background. But here is what I do know. The towers have three sides; typically, they are referred to as Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, and that tower is a line-of-sight instrument, controlled by a computer whose job is to pass a call on to the next tower if it’s traveling. So, once we found out that it bounced off this tower, we had to look to see if it was passed on to the next one too. With me so far?”
“Yeah, so was it?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“You wanna get there a little faster? None of us are getting any younger here.”
“Don’t know how you ever made it in the army with that mouth of yours,” Hunter said. He smiled at Storm then and said, “Thank you for listening with interest.” She laughed, and Ryder assumed she was just being polite. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but sometimes Hunter just loved to hear himself talk. “So, this tower is the only one that cell phone has been hitting for the past twenty-four hours.”
“So, she’s what...a few miles away?” Ryder asked.
“Depends on the cell phone company, actually. See, their business is to make sure their customers get the best reach and calls don’t get dropped. Sometimes in order to do that, they have to alter the ‘pitch’ of their towers.”
“Pitch?” Storm asked.
“Yeah, in layman’s terms it means basically that they’re changing the tower's direction. They do that based on a daily report they get called a SCAMP report. According to today’s report, this tower has a reach of 30-40 miles before the next tower would pick up.”
“Fuck,” Ryder said. Hunter frowned at him and said:
“But there is another way to pinpoint a more exact location. David, who is the only one with access to that kind of technology and information, however—”
“I’m sorry, who is David again?” Storm asked.
“David is Angel’s brother and Hurricane Katrina’s old man. He’s a cop,” Hunter told her. She raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t say anything. Ryder sometimes wondered what she thought of them as she tried to put this all together.
“So, David is doing what?” Ryder asked.
“David is ‘pinging’ her phone. He sends signals out to it and the information he gets back can pinpoint the phone’s exact location.”
“Cool. How long does that take?”
“Well, David says that will depend on how much she uses her phone. It could take up to a dozen ‘pings’ to be able to get an exact location.”
“So in the meantime we’re assuming she’s in Carson City but truthfully she could be anywhere within a forty-mile radius?”
“Exactly,” Hunter said.
“You could have just said that,” Ryder mumbled.
“Somebody is in a pissy mood.”
“I’d just like to get this shit wrapped up once and for all,” Ryder said. Dax had come around to the idea that Storm and her mother had nothing to do with the robbery, but until it was
proven beyond a doubt, Storm still wouldn’t be welcome on the ranch. Ryder wasn’t going to be okay with that, so the sooner they found Carolyn and her old man, the better. “What do we do while we wait for David?”
“Check into the hotel and I’ll go out and show some pictures around and see if we can scare anything up in the meantime, but after we eat. I’m starving. And we need to get in touch with that friend of yours and get...” He looked at Storm and hesitated, finally saying, “Replacements for the equipment we had to leave behind.”
Storm was not stupid and Ryder knew without even looking at her face that she knew Hunter was talking about guns. Ryder hoped it wouldn’t come to their needing armament, but Tyler...or whoever hit the bar that night…had a gun. It would be foolish for them to walk around unarmed. Luckily they had contacts all over the U.S. Some of them were Skulls contacts, but the one in Nevada was a personal friend of Ryder’s, one of the Battles he’d served with.
While Hunter drove them to the motel, Ryder took out his phone and called his friend. Knuckles answered on the first ring. Ryder said, “Hey, old man, what’s up?”
Knuckles chuckled in that deep voice of his. “Well, I’ll be damned if it ain’t old Ride Her Hard.” That was what they used to call him until one of the guys shortened it to “Ryder.” “What’s shakin’?”
“Same as always, meaner than a snake and a fucking animal in the sack.”
Ryder laughed. “Good to know. I need to make a couple of purchases from you.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Where?”
“I’m in Carson City at the Red Roof Inn.”
“I can be there in an hour. You want handguns or semi-automatics?”
“Handguns.”
“Got a coupla nines.”
“That’ll work, and plenty of ammo. How much cash do I need?”
“Nah, this one’s on me, man.”
“What? No way. I’ve got the cash.”
“I’m sure you do, and I’m still breathing thanks to you, so you don’t pay...this time.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Sure. I figure a few hundred dollars is about all I’m worth, though, so after this we’re even.”
Ryder laughed. “Sounds about right. See you soon.”
Ryder looked up as he ended the call and saw Storm looking at him in the mirror. She looked worried, and like she had something to say. The ring of Hunter’s phone stopped her.
“It’s David,” Hunter said. He hit the speaker on his phone as he pulled up in front of the diner attached to their motel and said, “Hey, David, what you got for me?”
“The phone is pinging from the Carson Country RV Park. It’s about five miles from the Nugget.”
“The casino?”
“Yeah. It’s a small park and kind of in a secluded area. It only has twenty-five spaces so if they’re parked there you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding them. But it’s in a pretty rough area, so they’re likely to be armed pretty heavily—so be careful.”
“Always careful,” Hunter said.
“By careful I mean call the cops if you need them.”
Storm looked at Ryder just as Hunter was about to respond. Hunter seemed to remember she was there as he said, “Yeah, sure, man, of course.” Ryder could tell by the look on Storm’s face that she didn’t believe that any more than David had, but she still didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure if she was just resigned to accepting how they did things, or if he’d hear what she thought later, when Hunter wasn’t around. “When will your friend be making the delivery?” Hunter asked him.
“About an hour,” Ryder said.
“Good, gives us enough time to go into this little diner here and eat, I’m still starving.”
Storm never did say anything about the guns or the police. She was mostly quiet while they ate, and she picked at her food. Ryder wondered if bringing her along was even more of a mistake than he had originally been afraid it would be. What if she couldn’t handle seeing the man that he really was...the man that wouldn’t hesitate to use a gun if he had to? What if she didn’t like the man that was completely loyal to his brothers and his club? Could she reconcile all of that with the man she said she was in love with? He hoped so...because he wasn’t willing to give up his club...or her.
27
“You brought me all the way out here to leave me behind in a motel?”
“Storm, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to argue with you about this. I shouldn’t have brought you out here. We have no idea what we’re walking into today and I’m not going to be responsible for you getting hurt.”
“Who says it’s up to you? I’m a grown-ass woman. You’re not my keeper.”
“You’re not going.” Ryder was looking toward the parking lot as they stood in the doorway of the motel room. After they finished eating, they’d checked in and were waiting for Ryder’s friend to show up. Out of the blue, or as far as Storm was concerned it came out of the blue, Ryder up and decided that she wasn’t going with him. She still had plenty to say, but he walked away from her, toward a Harley that was just pulling into the lot.
She watched as the grizzly rider pulled up next to Ryder and stopped the bike. The man stepped off his bike and he and Ryder embraced. He was a lot shorter than Ryder, maybe only five seven or eight. His belly was round and stretching the fabric of the t-shirt he was wearing. His vest didn’t look like it would close if he tried. His graying beard lay down on his barrel chest and covered most of his face. What was left was framed by long, gray hair that hung in greasy strands across his shoulders and down his back.
They were close enough for Storm to see what they were doing, but not really hear what they were saying. She watched as the bearded man reached a gloved hand into his saddlebags and pulled out two small leather cases. Ryder took them and unzipped one and looked inside. He seemed satisfied with what was in there...the “nines,” she assumed. He zipped the case back up and the two men continued to talk. When they looked her way, she folded her arms and frowned at Ryder. Ryder smiled anyway and when she realized he was bringing the grizzly biker over to meet her, she almost went inside and closed the door. She might have if he didn’t have his own key card. She was really angry with him and she didn’t want to make nice with his friend.
“Storm, this is an old friend of mine, Tripp ‘Knuckles’ Morris. Knuckles, this is Stormy Waters.”
The biker laughed, a rough, deep laugh that sounded like he’d been smoking at least a pack a day for the last twenty years. “Well, hello there, Stormy Waters. I thought my name was unusual.”
She smiled at him. “Nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and when she shook it, his hand felt strange, hard, like plastic.
“My pleasure,” he said. Ryder was looking at his hand and as he pulled it away Ryder said:
“I was glad to see you riding again.”
The biker chuckled again and said, “You wanna see her? I mean if it wasn’t for you, those bastards would have kept taking pieces of me until there was nothing left.”
“Yeah, yeah, well, I had to go along with that ‘never leave a man behind’...even when the man was you,” Ryder said with a grin.
Knuckles laughed and said, “You weren’t gonna leave all this pretty behind if it killed you.”
Ryder chuckled again and said, “Okay, old man, show us.” Storm was looking from one man to the other, not sure what they were talking about. Knuckles used his left hand to pull off the glove on the right one and Storm had to control the gasp that stuck in the back of her throat. The hand underneath the glove had felt like plastic because that’s exactly what it was...or at least some of it. It started where his knuckles should be and four of the fingers were prosthetic. His thumb was the only one that was still intact. “How does it work?” Ryder asked.
Knuckles moved his thumb and the other fingers moved. He bent his thumb and they bent, he wiggled it and they wiggled. “Thumb controls the whole damned thing,” he said. “Ain�
�t she pretty?”
“Can you...?” Ryder stopped, like he just remembered Storm was there, but his friend laughed, and Storm knew what they were talking about when Knuckles said:
“Hell, yeah...not that I need to, plenty of women knocking on Knuckles’ door.”
Ryder laughed and rolled his eyes. Storm felt her face go hot at the visual they forced her to have of the man masturbating with his prosthetic hand. “Hey, we ready?” Hunter came out of the room next to theirs. He’d gone to call his old lady...and probably to avoid the argument that was brewing between Ryder and Storm. Ryder introduced Hunter and Knuckles and after several minutes of the men bullshitting, Knuckles said goodbye to Storm and left. As soon as he was gone Hunter looked at Storm and then Ryder and said, “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
Storm waited until he was out of earshot and then said, “Are you going to hurt her...Carolyn, I mean? I’m as pissed at her as you are...but she sounded genuinely remorseful on the phone.”
“I’m not going to hurt anyone if I don’t have to, baby, that’s not why I came here. I just want this to be over and if we can prove Carolyn and Tyler did this robbery once and for all, it will be, okay? Then, you and I can get on with our lives...together. If she’s genuinely sorry like you think she is, she’ll tell us her story and apologize to Dax.”
