Red Hot Bikers, Rock Stars and Bad Boys

by Cassia Leo

  “Sure you don’t want to go home and clean up?” He picked a pine needle from her hair.

  “I don’t have a home, remember?” Stella shook her head, sending dirt and leaves flying.

  “We can go to the duplex.”

  “No. Not Holly. I can’t go there. Branson isn’t far.”

  Dane straddled the bike. “Branson it is.”

  “And I’ll call Janine.”

  “Sounds like we have a plan.”

  He fired up the motor again, and Stella climbed on behind him. They took the long way around the creek on the road. By the time they hit the highway, Stella felt better. The wind tore the trash from her hair, and she held on to Dane. As long as she was putting miles between herself and Holly, she’d be all right.

  Dane pulled up to a truck stop a few miles south of Branson. “We can clean up here,” he said after cutting the motor.

  Stella watched a burly bush-bearded man in a gimme cap limp out of the diner and climb up into his eighteen-wheeler. “We definitely won’t scare the regulars.”

  Dane laughed. “Nope. And they have showers plus a little shop in the back. We can pick up something to wear, as long as you like your overalls loose.” He wrapped an arm around her. “We could get a matching set.”

  She punched his shoulder as they crossed the parking lot. The place was immense. The glass doors opened to a diner on the right and a big open shop on the left. Dane led her to the back corner, where pay-phone booths lined one wall. “You can call Janine here.” He tried to fix the torn sleeve to her shirt. “I’ll grab you a T-shirt or something.”

  Stella opened the door to a booth and flipped on the light. The air was stale and muggy, smelling faintly of beer. She dug a quarter out of her purse. She was asking a lot from Janine, who was no doubt still upset about the bar. “Please be my friend still,” she whispered and dialed her home number.

  Janine’s mother answered. Not a good thing. She already borderline hated Stella.

  “Is Janine around?”

  “Stella? Where are you? And that boy?”

  “I really need to talk to Janine.”

  “I don’t want her mixed up in all this.”

  “It was just a fight.”

  “Then you haven’t heard.”

  Stella stomach lurched. “Heard what?”

  “That boyfriend of yours really hurt Bobby Ray bad. They had to fly him to County in a helicopter.”

  Stella almost fainted with relief. She’d just known Bobby Ray was dead. “How is he?”

  “Bad. Getting surgery. More than one, from what I hear.”

  “Mrs. Thomas—Bobby Ray started that fight.”

  Silence.

  Stella twisted the cord around her fingers. “And most people don’t seem to realize Bobby Ray cut Dane up with a knife a few days ago.”

  “You were always into trouble, Stella. I need you to stay away from my daughter.”

  The line went dead.

  Stella held the receiver in her hands. What would she do now? Janine had her car and everything in it.

  Dane pressed his face against the window, smashing his nose. Stella wanted to laugh at him, her beautiful Dane. He had no idea how bad things were. Stella couldn’t get her car. They couldn’t go home. What would they do?

  He noticed her distress and popped open the door.

  “Stell? You okay?”

  She could see on his face the same worry, that something worse had happened.

  “Oh, Janine’s mother wouldn’t let me talk to her.”

  He exhaled slowly, and Stella knew he’d been worried she’d tell him Bobby Ray was dead.

  “You got any other way to get in touch with her? Her boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, I can call Nick.” She smiled up at him. “You’re the brains of this getaway.”

  He held up a bright green “Show-Me State” T-shirt. “Still feel the same?”

  She snatched the shirt from his hands. “I never said you had good taste.”

  “It said ‘show me,’ and I thought of you.” He scooted her over on the booth and closed the door. “I knew the words would give me an excuse to look exactly where I wanted to all the time.”

  She dropped the shirt and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  He pulled her close. “It’s a rough day. We’ll get through this.”

  “You make me want to slow things down.”

  “Well, today, we will do that.”

  Stella looked down at the shirt. She didn’t want to tell him about Bobby Ray. Maybe she just wouldn’t. He’d probably be fine. Just some recovery before going back to his ugly self. It was an unfortunate thing, but not something that ruined their lives. Today, they’d play. They’d have each other.

  She whipped off her pink halter. “That perked you up, now, didn’t it?”

  Dane glanced at the window to the booth. He hung the shirt from a little hook made for coats, then stretched it over the window, opening the door and closing it to catch the sleeve so it stayed in place. “I’m feeling quite perky now.”

  And despite the tight quarters and a bevy of bruises, she found they could escape no matter where they were or what might wait for them in the next hour. Even so, Stella worried. Something this good had to have a downside. Just how far it might slide, she didn’t know.

  ***

  25: Night at Angie’s

  DANE throttled the bike down as they entered Holly from a back street around midnight. He didn’t know all the alleyways and cut-throughs as well as Stella, but she’d shown him the way. Once they arrived at the end of her grandmother’s street, he killed the Harley and they walked it along the sidewalk.

  “House looks dark,” Dane said.

  “Yeah. I think we’ll be all right,” Stella said. “Let’s go in from the back. Bring the bike around.”

  They cut across the yard and pushed through a broken-down gate. Stella dug through her purse and pulled out her keys. Dane leaned the bike against the house. The moon slid behind a cloud, pitching them into near-blackness. Stella dropped the keys and cursed. He felt his way along the house, tripping over a coil of garden hose.

  The landscape brightened again, and Stella fumbled with the door. “I don’t get it,” she said.

  He came up behind her on the stoop. “Get what?”

  “The key. It isn’t working.”

  “Here.” He fished his own keys from his pocket and squeezed a tiny light hanging on the chain. He took the key from her. It wouldn’t go in the lock.

  “Sure it’s the right one?”

  “I’ve been going in this door all my life.”

  He shone the light on the lock. “It’s new.”

  “What?”

  Stella crowded in. “Holy shit. She changed the locks. My mother changed the locks.”

  Dane squeezed her arm. “She’s upset, Stell, that’s all.”

  Stella turned and leaned her back on the door. “She locked me out of the only place I ever called home.”

  Dane could feel the trembling in her legs. “I’ll get you in. Not like a little lock can stop someone like me.”

  He shone the light on the lock again. He could break it, but he’d rather try another way first. Something quicker and easier. “What are the windows on the back side?”

  They stepped off the porch just as the moon faded out again. They waited, and Dane pulled Stella against him, nice and tight, so she wouldn’t get any worse off. They’d had a pretty good day, riding through the Ozarks and eating fried fish in paper trays near Table Rock. Stella looked different after showering at the truck stop, all fresh and shiny, no hair spray or makeup. He liked her just fine that way. Better, even, though she kept fussing over it.

  She’d wanted to toss the pink halter, but he’d torn a strip from it, a swath of hot pink he’d tied in a knot on the metal chain he kept on his hip. Something about the shirt was important to him, like it marked a big moment. He couldn’t explain it, just went with it.

  “When is Nick bringing the c
ar?” he whispered. Stella had arranged for Janine’s boyfriend to leave the Mustang with her stuff in it in front of Angie’s house.

  “Anytime now. I had planned to hide it in the garage.”

  The moon appeared, and Dane surveyed the back. A high bathroom window was no good, but all the other rooms had nice low sashes. He quickly pushed up on them all. Locked.

  “You okay with me breaking one?” he asked her. “I can do it quiet-like.”

  “Yes. I’d do the living-room one. It has a sofa beneath it.”

  They walked along the house. Dane bent and snatched one of the big stones that bordered the flower garden, now overgrown and beset with weeds. He thought of Joe and the roses. He wouldn’t get a chance to say good-bye to him. The old man might not even want to see him again, after all that happened. Stella had finally told him about Bobby Ray after dinner. He hoped for all their sakes that the boy would pull it out.

  Dane pulled his shirt over his head and wrapped the stone in it. He checked the panes and tapped the corner of the rock against it. The window didn’t yield at first, so he finally reared back and smashed it through. The noise wasn’t as tremendous as they thought it might be, but still, they waited.

  A few dogs barked. A neighbor somewhere along the line shouted at one to be quiet. After a few minutes, all settled down again.

  Dane picked carefully at the glass, pulling out shards rather than letting them fall through. He used the shirt not just to protect his hands, but to avoid obvious fingerprints. He was quite sure Vivian and the sheriff would be glad to implicate him on as many crimes as possible.

  “Let me go in,” Stella said. “I can find my way around more easily.”

  He reached in and unlatched the window, shoving it wide. He grasped Stella’s waist and lifted, flashing back to the same moment in the bar. He couldn’t change things, no sense thinking about it. She clutched the window and wiggled through.

  She popped her head back out. “I’ll let you in the back door.”

  Crazy mission they were on. Glass tinkled from his shirt as he shook it. He crossed the yard, pulling it over his head. He looked forward to when they could leave. He still had all his stuff over at Ryker’s. They’d go for that once he had the car. At this point, he was sure he wanted to leave Holly, and he knew that going with Stella was the right thing.

  Stella opened the back door and stepped aside. They came into the kitchen, where he’d seen her with all the women and their food. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  “Let’s just sit a minute.” Stella collapsed on the sofa. “I have to think about what I want to get.”

  “Everything looks in place still,” Dane said.

  “Yeah, I half expected the house to be empty.”

  “Not even your mother could accomplish that in a day.”

  “Don’t be sure. She got the locks changed.” Stella jumped back up and headed to the entryway.

  Dane followed, arriving just as she bent before the front door to examine the lock. “Yep. Every last one. Why would she want to keep me out?”

  “You left her.”

  “Did she think I’d steal everything? It’s more mine than hers anyway.” Stella leaned wearily against the wall. “I guess we don’t have time to sleep.”

  He pulled her to him. “We have time to do anything we want.”

  Stella turned to the kitchen. “She’ll be here tomorrow. She’s already moving things around. Look.” The kitchen floor was covered in collapsed boxes.

  “We should probably leave before dawn, then,” Dane said. “Might as well take one of those and get the things you were wanting.”

  Stella retrieved an already-assembled box from the counter. “Can you find all the Johnny Mathis records? They are on the bookshelf in the living room.”

  “Will do.” He took the box and returned to the darkened room, shining his key light around until he found a small lamp. He brought it to the floor and covered the top with a book to keep the light low.

  The records were easy to locate and pack. He sat back on the floor, wondering where Stella was, and if she wanted to be alone or if he should find her. A clock ticked in the silence. Finally, he got up to see where she might be.

  He almost didn’t notice her, sitting on the floor on the far side of a great flowery bed in what had to be Angie’s room. She’d tied the drapes closed and turned on the bedside lamp. Her head was down, so he could only see her blond hair cascading to her shoulders over the green shirt.

  “Stella?”

  She looked up at him. “I found something.”

  He lay across the bed, immediately feeling better, the relief of resting. “What?”

  She laid a bracelet in front of him, beads strung on two wires.

  “It’s pretty.”

  “I’ve never seen it, and I saw everything of Grandma’s.”

  “What do you think it’s for?”

  She pointed to several colored bits. “These are love beads.”

  “Okay.”

  “But these aren’t the colors she used for Grandpa.”

  “So some other love.”

  “Exactly. But why these bright ones? Yellow and orange? They weren’t colors she ever wore.”

  The roses. He remembered the flowers in front of Joe’s house. “They were for Joe.”

  “What?”

  “He planted roses for her. Yellow and orange. He told me, the day I came to see you before the funeral.”

  Stella ran her finger along the beads. “I see it now. A strand of yellow and orange. For him. And the love beads. For her.” She looked up at him. “Oh, Dane. They never got to be together.”

  She came up and onto the bed then, shivering. They lay together, the bracelet between them. He clasped it around her wrist, beside the other one, with three strings. “You make bracelets too?”

  “It’s yours,” she said. “I made this one for you.” She fingered the triple strand.

  “You did?”

  “It was—” She touched the beads. “It was the last one Grandma and I did together. The day after the night on the tower.”

  Dane lifted her arm and kissed the bracelets. “You knew already.”

  “I was delusional.” She tried to laugh.

  “You were right. What do our colors mean?”

  She pointed to the wood beads. “Calmness. Gentleness.” Then to the brighter ones. “Danger. Recklessness.”

  He chuckled. “What about the middle?”

  “Those are for me.”

  He fitted her even closer against him.

  “I’m so tired,” Stella said. “Tired of everything.”

  “We can sleep for a bit.” Dane also felt himself shifting down. It had been a long time since they had rested, really rested. “We have to wait on your car anyway.”

  “We can’t sleep all night. I still have to gather some things.”

  “We won’t. I’ll listen for the car.”

  “Vivian will be here in the morning.”

  “We’ll be gone.”

  She settled back down against him. “Just for a little while, then.”

  “Shhhh.”

  He knew he shouldn’t fall asleep, that Vivian discovering them would make Stella even more upset.

  He awoke to a loud insistent banging on the front door, and the shouts of “Police! Open up!”

  ***

  26: Arrest

  STELLA startled awake. “What was that?” She jumped out of bed and yanked at the curtains. Still dark outside, but the first signs of dawn were beginning to show in the grayness over the rooftops.

  The banging came again. “You have thirty seconds to open this door, or we’ll break it in!”

  Stella peered harder at the backyard. One of the deputies stood beside Dane’s motorcycle. The stone they’d used to break the window was at his feet.

  She closed the drapes. “Shit. Vivian’s called her ex. She’ll probably try to get you arrested for breaking and entering.”

  Dane jumped off the bed. “
I’ll go talk to them.”

  “No,” Stella said. “I’ll handle it. This is my house too. Vivian’s not going to get anywhere. Please stay back here.”

  Stella rushed to the entryway. “Stop it!” she shouted. “I’m here. I’m opening the door.”

  But when it swung open, the man on the porch wasn’t the sheriff she knew, the one Vivian liked to cart around. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Sheriff Dunning. I’m looking for Dane Scoffield.”

  She knew it. “You realize I’m the one who broke into my own house.”

  “Ma’am, this is a felony charge.”

  “What? Since when is breaking your own window a felony?”

  “Is Dane Scoffield here?”

  Dane turned the corner and came into the entryway. “I am.”

  “Dane! I asked you not to come up!”

  “I think there’s more to it than us being here, Stell.”

  The sheriff stepped inside, followed by another officer holding handcuffs.

  Stella felt faint and explosive simultaneously. “What are you arresting him for?”

  “The charges will be announced by the judge at his arraignment within 48 hours of his arrest,” the sheriff said. “Please turn around.”

  Dane turned his back to them to be cuffed.

  Stella walked around to his front. “I’ll be there, baby. I’ll make Vivian call it off.”

  He kept his eyes on the floor, shaking his head.

  She bent down to look him in the face. “You think this is about Bobby Ray?”

  “The boy is dead.” The voice came from the kitchen. Stella moved to the doorway and saw her mother examining the lock. “Figures I couldn’t keep that delinquent out.” Vivian shut the door. “Bobby Ray died last night at County from swelling in his brain.” She grasped Stella’s arm. “You’re coming with me. I’ve had cops swarming my house since 5 a.m., looking for you two.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t mind that, with your taste for the badge.”

  Vivian slapped her flat across the cheek. The sound echoed in Stella’s ears, reverberating. “Mother, I already left you. You can stop acting like a parent.”