by Adair Rymer
They asked me what happened. I told them I was kidnapped by bikers. They asked if I knew which club took me. I told them no. They asked me if could identify the man on the bike that took off. Again, I said no.
I don't know why I was protecting the MC or even Remy at that point. Some part of me knew I wasn't protecting the Steel Veins from the police, but that I was protecting me from the Steel Veins. I think it was seeing how easily the officers at Muse's place were dispatched that 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. Professor Jackson back home, Muse, and now Remy... Maybe my parents were right after all. 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 very nice. I'm sure some of it was a nagging worry over the potential of a PR shit-storm. “Abducted girl rescued from brutal biker gang only to be treated harshly by local police!” That would probably make for an embarrassing headline.
They told me I could call my parents but I declined. It was too late for that. Not that I thought they wouldn't answer, just that I wasn't prepared for what was going to be a very long, emotional call.
The sky had lightened. Beautiful hues of the seldom seen sunrise glowed over the horizon and through the police station windows. My head and eyelids felt full of wet cement. I was on the verge of falling asleep in one of their office chairs.
They set me up on a couch in the coffee area just outside the grid of over-worked, near-empty desks. They would have given me a cell but none were empty and they sure as hell weren't going to have me share. I was given a blanket and pillow. My first night in jail. It wasn't so bad, really. Granted, I'm sure that was only because I wasn't there as a prisoner.
When I laid down my body gave out. I was exhausted to the point of near immobility. My mind kicked back on with a vengeance.
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? I'd finally woken from an awful, violent nightmare and was now able to go home. I would get to step back into the worn, 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 Thomas, but this time it was real, not just a dirty student crush.
I should be elated to even be alive but being in this cell, knowing New Hampshire was my next stop, I felt like the part of me that was truly happy was starting to die off. Mercifully, the calm of sleep finally took me.
In my freedom I was poisoned.
* * * * *
I awoke to a biblical-level of commotion in the mid morning. 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 got up as fast as I could but my ass 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: shotguns, assault rifles. It looked like war came to sleepy Las Vegas, New Mexico. It was kind of thrilling being so close to this side of it.
“What's going on?” I rubbed the stubborn weariness out of my eyes.
“Police business, ma'am. Nothing to worry about.” The older blond lady at the desk across from me had just hung up the phone. She had cropped, short hair and carried herself with the same hard demeanor as the other men and woman 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. Is everything OK?”
“Nothing we can't handle.” She was probably still tough as nails, if not out-right tougher than she was before whatever had crippled her. I tried not to feel pity for her, but I couldn't help it. “You're not being charged with anything, so you should go call your parents.”
My parents? I had already forgotten about them. 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've just come to associate Remy with action and despite myself, it made my heart race a little.
“Yeah.” I deflated. “I should call them.”
“You can use that desk on the corner.”
“Thanks.” I gave the officers a wide berth. The room was wider than it was long. Drop ceilings, carpets, it looked like countless other office buildings I'd seen before. I walked slowly to absorb as much as I could. It was so loud and layered that once I got to the desk, I closed my eyes to focus better on the details.
“Shots fired at the Super 8. Emergency Resp—” “—Martine is down!” “—ave SWAT en route. Eta in—” “—like it's Los Lobos—” “essir, it might be connected to the fire at the Pick and Pay. Both have connections to Lob—”
What was I doing? My eyes opened. 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. I was surprised I actually remembered her number. I had grown so accustomed to just calling peoples faces or names that it was easy to forget the actual digits.
“—rival motorcycle gang. Best guess? The Steel Veins out of Oklahoma. Put me thro—” the officer in the wheelchair was one of the very few that remained.
“Hello?” My mother's voice. I reached over and mashed my fingers on the switch hook, killing the call. Shit. Stop being fucking crazy, Star! Yes, if the Steel Veins were there then so was Remy, probably. So what? He abandoned me, it was obvious that he didn't want me.
Was it? He pulled me out of danger so often, I couldn’t believe it was for nothing. If it was just for the sex why bring me to New Mexico? He could have easily just given me to Tee and the other biker. Then there was the convenience store. He was so different when he came out, like he made up his mind and that was that. He left me there knowing I'd get picked up by the police.
That sonofabitch saved 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 asshole of the Midwest for some bullshit degree. 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 Daniels.
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 hesitated. Some of my righteousness dissipated. This wasn’t a victimless crime.
Still, I wasn't hurting anyone. Not really. 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 needed this right now. I had made up my mind.
The blond officer was on the phone with someone important and was apologizing like crazy. I used the distraction to walk down to the entrance unnoticed. Right by the front door was a rack with the town's brochures. I grabbed the Super 8 pamphlet and slipped outside.
Luckily the car had an electric key. I walked around the parking lot, clicking the button until a tan, mid two-thousands Nissan Altima winked its headlights back at me. The car door opened and I was in. Easily the craziest thing I'd ever done! I mean, I did shoot a guy but I that was barely a choice and I wasn't the one to kill him.
This, though. This was all me. My hands were shaking as I opened the brochure. On the back was a small map that showed the area surrounding the motel. I scanned through the car windows and found a street sign, then I found it on the map and plotted a course. The motel was actually
really close, I would be there in no time.
The car started right up and that thrill surged within me. I'm stealing a fucking cop car!
I pulled out of the parking lot and was on my way. This was my decision. If I got arrested or killed, it's because of the choice that I made. Right or wrong, I was no longer just along for the fucking ride in my own life.
Chapter 2
Remy
“I'll take that shirt too.” I peeled off another fifty from the wad of cash and dropped it on the counter.
“Somewhere between where you are and where you're going, there's a SUPER 8!” quietly hummed the digital display above the dark-skinned man's shiny head as he regarded me nervously.
Hades, I mused, this is exactly the motel that would be on the way there. Cerberus probably shits out back.
“You want my shirt?” The dark-skinned man across from me smiled nervously as he tentatively handed me the room key.
My eyes burned from the road and the night. On the best of days, my patience was extremely limited. I grabbed him by the throat and the shirt and jerked him onto the long check-In desk that was between us. The paperwork I wasn't going to sign scattered across the floor. This wasn't the best of days.
“I hate to repeat myself.” He could feel my acrid breath on his face as I looked down at him with last chance eyes.
“OK! OK! Take it!” he squealed.
I did.
I took the long way around. The building looked like an L, with the main office at the end of the bent shorter arm. An awning stretched out another twenty feet to allow for bus pickups and drop offs. My bike was parked between the employee dumpster and the cement wall, opposite the back of whatever passed for the motel's kitchen. You could see my Kawasaki but you'd have to be looking for it. I took out and folded my vest so that none of the patches were easily visible, then I headed up to my room. I didn't want to fly the colors here. This was Los Lobos territory.
Whores and dealers littered the stairs and hallway with their battered flesh and cheap words. Carrion glances flitted to the gun-butt that popped out of the waist of my blood stained jeans then darted away. They parted as I neared.
“Two-ten,” I growled, turning back at them once I reached my door. Curiosity etched across their dull forms. “Come. Fuck with me.” Their idle chatter petered into uncomfortable silence as their eyes abruptly found other things to look at. The door slammed behind me, shattering that stifled absence of deals and coos like a gunshot. No one would bother me tonight.
The room was clean enough. Queen bed. Tube TV in an outdated wooden hutch. The sink and mirror were on the back wall to the right of the small bathroom that only had a toilet and shower. I tossed the vest on a chair near the door, took a piss, a shower and sat naked at the end of the bed.
I'd been pushing it all away. Burying my feelings of what happened to Bren under layers of distraction, violence and sex. He was my brother after all. Half-brother really, but we never gave a fuck. Same thing with Top. Bren was a likable kid, not brilliant but he was sharp as a motherfucker.
Occasionally, I'd bounce a problem off him just to see how he'd deal with it once he was a full member. He was clever, sometimes he'd even surprise me with an idea so good that I actually used it. He just saw through the bullshit to the simplest answer. He used to say “Cut off their feet and see how well they stand.”
He would've done really well in the ranks eventually. He might've even made Vice faster than me, and I made Vice under Top faster than anyone in Veins' history. I didn't ascend that fast because Top was my half brother but because I was that fucking good. I had a knack for retaliation. Not just the beatings. I knew the science behind sending a message.
Rival gangs running guns in our town? We'd broken into their houses at night and made their families watch as we cut of the offenders' trigger finger. Some dumb fuck turned tail on a Veins loan expecting to never pay it back? We'd pick him up, give the guy a gun and force him to rob a convenience store to pay off his debt. Always in another county. We'd film the robbery as insurance for his silence and take our cut off his take. Plus an additional fee, of course.
It used to be fun. I loved it. Even met a girl that...
I shook my head. I didn't want to dig up that old hurt.
Maria's death drove a wedge between me and the MC world. I started getting jaded. Nihilistic. Had I been more vigilant and done my fucking job, I would've seen that war hero fuck before Bren even turned the corner. I might as well have given my brother the steaming chest wound myself.
When my hands fell away from my face, I was greeted with the black reflection staring back at me through the glass on the dark TV. The one shitty lamp I had on cast me in a truly evil light. The truth of the image was so starkly apparent. I didn't recognize it as me right away. My face tightened. My mouth filled with saliva and my eyes began to gloss over with water. The reflection looked through me. It captured me, I couldn't look away.
I knew that if I cried, the man in the TV mirror would not. Could not. He had no eyes. The light behind me highlighted only my most protruding features. Brow, nose, chin, cheekbones and the edges of my hair. Everything else was a diminished shade of gray or outright black. Was that what I've finally become? A hollow darkness, thinly veiled in a human suit.
“Fuck you!” I couldn't contain it any longer. Alternating knuckles struck the curved black screen like an old stream engine laying track spikes at full kilt. The TV exploded. Jagged cuts ran up both arms but I couldn't stop the blows from landing until I had blown out the back of the console.
Tears streamed down my face. I wiped them away with my bloody arm and stumbled back a step. My bare foot crushed some of the many glass shards on the floor. My reflection retreated into the mirror over the sink on the far wall. His face was covered in blood, he looked like a rabid animal in need of putting down.
“Fuck off and die!” The reflection mirrored my scream. The image of me was as honest as I was angry. I needed to kill it. To kill myself. I reached into the wooden cabinet and tore the TV off the wall. The flimsy screws that attached it there, along with discolored chunks of drywall, snapped and battered against me as I hurled the TV across the room. There was a beauty in the way the sad light caught the raining glass fragments from the mirror as they tumbled down into the sink and onto the seventy’s-brown carpeting.
There was no stopping it now, my mind was redder than the blood smeared across my face, arms and chest. I tore that room apart.
The wooden desk was in ruin. The couch and bed overturned. The TV stand toppled. Finally, all the lights gone. My limbs and core pulsed with spent rage as I collapsed along the back wall. I could hear my blood pumping through my ears. The adrenaline high made me strong, it numbed the pain. And then like a flash in the pan, it was gone. Alone, exhausted and covered in my own blood, I laid there on the floor. Just another pain junkie. Except, my drug of choice wasn't for sale.
The red behind my eyes faded to black. I knew what this was. I was so weak that instead of facing my problems head on, I cowered behind a wall of brutality. I hated this life. I hated Bren for dying. I hated Top for accepting him into the club so early but most of all, I hated myself.
I hated leaving Star.
She was beautiful and innocent and courageous and... she had a strength about her that was unmistakable. Most women would've folded up and disconnected when faced with that much horror. Not Star, she looked at it right in the fucking eye.
I took Star because I needed to save at least something that night after Bren died, and she did look a little like Maria. Same build, same cute ass. Shoulder-length, light brown hair, large almond eyes, button nose. Star was a little prettier. The glasses and slightly chubby cheeks really did it for me.
I couldn't stand by and watch Top or Tee or anyone put slugs into her. And I sure as fuck, wasn't about to let Top or even worse— that piece-of-shit Rio, put anything else into her. I rarely play things by ear. I was methodical in keeping her from danger. The distracti
on in the bar, the power-play on Muse, everything had at least some measure of planning.
Everything except vouching for her in the bar and killing Rio. I never expected to let myself be pushed that far. I don't know what I wanted initially but I knew that if I didn't act in anyway necessary to keep her alive, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. I think I would've left her at Muse's when we all rode out, but standing over Rio, I knew that option was removed from the table.
I hadn't just chose her because of who she was. A pretty girl, in way over her head that needed a hero. I chose her because, in her, I saw that one last piece of my soul that hadn't been reduced to ash. That final spark of goodness that would have died along with her.
I screamed again. This time just noise. Exterior light filtered in through the dirty windows. I missed her. I didn't know what could've been between us but I was so scared to lose her— to lose that part of myself, that I went and threw her away.
Right before I walked into that convenience store earlier tonight, my imagination filled to the brim with dread. I saw Star, caught in some crossfire, laying on the road, that shining spark fading from those beautiful auburn eyes. I've never scared easy but that image terrified me.
I knew she'd be safe and I guessed that's all that mattered. I could die knowing I’d done at least one worthwhile thing, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. I would do horrible things to keep her with me, just to see if there was hope for us. That's why I needed to give her up. Hope was far more dangerous than men with guns. Men only took your life.
Hope could ground out your fucking soul.
* * * * *
The slow, high-pitch creak of the door opening didn't wake me. It was the foot steps crinkling the glass on the carpet that did it. I found my pistol before I could even open my eyes. I heard a woman's self-muffled scream when I pointed it toward the noise.
The morning daylight bitterly flooded the room, blinding me. Once I saw that there was only one figure in front of me, I lowered my gun and I motioned for the girl to shut the door. That sobering light needed to die. The shitty curtains cut the edge but the room was still lit enough that even with the door shut, the aftermath of my tantrum was laid as bare as I was. I hadn't moved from the spot I landed in last night and didn't give a thought to put on clothes yet.
