Ryder

by Hope Stone

  “Well, none of this may have anything to do with where Lily is, but I definitely would like to have a conversation with El Diablo.” I turned to Hawk and said, “Whaddya say you and I take a little ride out to the water towers and see if we can find him?”

  “Sounds good, brother.” Hawk then turned to Swole and said, “Swole, can you keep an eye on the kid, here?”

  “Why, because I’m a woman?” she asked, grinning.

  “You’re a woman?” he said. “I never noticed.”

  “Fuck you,” she said, laughing.

  “You wish,” Hawk replied.

  They were busy bantering, and I was busy figuring out how I was going to get El Diablo to tell me where my sister was. I just knew he had something to do with her disappearance.

  We’d gone to the first water tower, but no one was there. I was glad it wasn’t July because it gets up close to 130 out here. They don’t call it Death Valley for nothing.

  “Let’s head out to the other water tower and see if he’s there.” Without waiting for an answer, Hawk left me in the dust.

  About half a mile up a narrow dirt road set among cacti and bushes was the second tall water tower in the Baker area. From a distance I could see two bikes, and felt confident that it was El Diablo and that guy Chanclas.

  The closer we got, the more my confidence melted like ice cream on a 130 degree day. The first bike was El Diablo’s all right. I’d recognize it anywhere. But the second bike was also one I’d recognize anywhere—from my own workplace. It belonged to Padre.

  My first instinct was to think that maybe Padre had been taken hostage by El Diablo. But as I approached, I saw that they were standing side by side talking. Padre was here on his own free will.

  As soon as El Diablo heard us, he jumped on his bike and raced off. Hawk waved at me, and followed El Diablo, leaving me alone in the middle of the desert with Padre.

  My bike slowed to an idle. “What are you doing here, Padre?”

  He looked sad and old as he shook his head. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “You didn’t mean to come out here? How did you get here, Padre?” I was getting concerned. He wasn’t making sense.

  “I rode here.” He shook his head again. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. He was only supposed to scare you.”

  “Scare me? Who was supposed to scare me?” I really wished I knew what the hell he was talking about.

  “El Diablo. I didn’t mean for him to…”

  The reality of what was going on started to seep into my brain, but it couldn’t accept it. “Tell me what is going on, Padre.”

  “You were stealing from me, and…”

  “I wasn’t stealing from you,” I corrected, “but go on.”

  “And I wanted you and the others to know that disloyalty is punished. El Diablo owed me a favor from that time with the cops and I called it in. I told him to grab Lily and just hold her for an hour or two. When you discovered her missing, then you’d learn a lesson in loyalty.”

  The rage that rose inside of me was sudden and fierce. The man I considered a father figure after my parents had died betrayed me by hiring some thug—a sex trafficker—to kidnap my little sister as a lesson. I was going to kill him.

  I lunged off my bike and reached out to grab his neck. I had weapons, but I wanted to feel him choke under my hands.

  “Ryder! I didn’t mean it. He was supposed to bring her back. I swear!” His eyes were wild with fear but I didn’t care. Punches started landing on his old face.

  “You motherfucker. You gave my baby sister to a fucking sex trafficker and believed him when he said he’d bring her back? You’re as stupid as you are old.”

  Padre wasn’t fighting back, but was in a defensive posture with his arms up. “That’s why I came out here. To get him to release her. I went to the warehouse last night to try and stop him.”

  I stopped punching him. “Wait. You were at the warehouse? When?” We were at the concert last night. I saw him at the convention center.

  “When you guys were all inside. I said I had to take a leak…”

  Oh my god. “So you started the explosion?”

  “Yes, it was supposed to be a couple of little explosives. Just to distract him so he wouldn’t kidnap Lily. I changed my mind and didn’t know what to do.”

  I wanted to start kicking him, but it’s no relief to beat a defenseless old man so I stopped. “Where is she, Padre? Where is my goddamn sister?”

  “I don’t know! He just said he had her and another girl hidden away until sunset and then the plane from Columbia would come to take them.”

  That meant we had about five hours to find Lily and Bailey before they were transported to South America to god knows what fate.

  I grabbed Padre by the collar of his jacket. “If I don’t get my sister back, I am going to kill you, personally. I will fucking kill you.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry, Ryder. So sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t mean shit. Get my sister back.”

  Thirty-Six

  Paige

  My eyes were involuntarily closing as I sat on the couch with my parents. My cellphone was clutched in my left hand and I kept checking it every two minutes, hoping to hear from Ryder.

  “Honey, why don’t you go up to your room and get some rest?” my mom said.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “You most certainly are not okay,” my dad said. “You’re passing out. How long have you been awake?”

  “Twenty-eight hours.”

  “That’s it. You’re getting some rest.” My mom stood up and extended her hand. “Give me the phone. I’ll watch it to see if we get any calls.”

  “No, really. It’s…”

  “Paige Melissa. Listen to your mother.”

  “Okay. But I’ll keep the phone.” I had a password set and really didn’t want my parents snooping around my phone. Ryder and I had activated each other on Find My Friends on our cellphones and I wanted to be able to track where he was while he was looking for our sisters.

  “I’ll lie down, but only for an hour or so.” I headed toward the stairs. “You guys should take your own advice. It’s been a long night for all of us.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was laying in my full-sized bed in the bedroom I grew up in. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I stared at the NSYNC posters and dreamed of being a veterinarian. Instead, I was a waitress who couldn’t get another job.

  “Shit!” I’d forgotten that I was supposed to work this afternoon. I grabbed the phone and called work.

  “Tiny’s,” barked the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Martha, it’s Paige.”

  “Yeah?” Martha Jiminez was a woman of few words.

  “Look. I’m having a bit of a family emergency and I can’t come in for my shift.”

  “And by ‘family emergency’ you mean you were at that concert last night?”

  “No. It’s…it’s my sister. She’s missing.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s different. I can get Rocky to work a double. Keep us posted, okay?” Her voice sounded strange when she was being empathetic. It was like she didn’t know how to do it.

  “Thanks, Martha. I will.”

  I barely had time to hang up the phone before sleep overtook me.

  When I woke up, my mind forgot what was happening and my body remembered being in my childhood bed. My eyes were closed and I could smell the familiar scent of pancakes and bacon coming from the kitchen. I could hear kids playing outside on their bikes and the sounds of a ballgame on TV.

  I was just a carefree teenager, sleeping in on a Sunday afternoon. Bailey was probably in her room…

  Bailey! The reality came flooding back to me. Bailey was missing and I was lying here in my bed dreaming of pancakes. What was wrong with me?

  I grabbed my phone and my heart sank. No messages from Ryder.

  “That’s it.” I sat up and smoothed my hair. “I’m going out there. I’m not going to sit around he
re like some teenager. I may not be able to do much, but it’s better than sitting around here.”

  “Won’t you at least eat before you go?” My mom was stress cooking. She’d made pancakes and bacon, blueberry muffins, lemon scones, and was now in the middle of making a chocolate cake. “I just need to keep busy,” she’d said when I raised my eyebrows at the buffet in the kitchen.

  “I don’t think I can eat, Mom.”

  “Take a few muffins. The girls are likely to be hungry when you pick them up.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was a real possibility that I wouldn’t be bringing them home. She didn’t know the kind of people we were dealing with.

  One look at my dad’s face and I could tell that he understood. He stood up and walked over to the desk in the living room and grabbed a set of keys. “Take the Audi, Paige. You’ll get there faster.”

  Dad was right. The R8 was such an amazing machine that I barely felt the 110 miles an hour I was going. The stretch of highway on the way to Baker was deserted this time of day, and if I did happen to get pulled over, I’d explain that my sister was missing and ask for a police escort. But, pretty much everyone sped along this part of the desert.

  Feeling the engine rev as I switched gears, I thought of Ryder. It was no wonder he fell in love with motorcycles. Being the one in control of a powerful engine definitely helped when you felt out of control in life. He’d gotten into it when his parents were killed, and I was feeling it now, worried about Bailey and Lily.

  It was shocking, really, how quickly Ryder had become part of my everyday life. I found myself thinking about him all the time. I’d smile when I remembered something funny or witty he said, and my heart lifted every time he walked into Tiny’s. I’d only lived in La Playa a few weeks, but in that short time, that hunk of a man had wormed his way into my life.

  As I wrapped my hand around the gear shift, I found myself looking forward to getting my hands on Ryder. It had been a long time since I’d been with a man, and I was long overdue for some loving.

  Was it really love, though? We didn’t exactly run in the same circles. I couldn’t really imagine bringing him to the club or having dinner with my parents. I had to grin imagining him at the Schweigers’s summer barbecue. “So, Ryder? What do you do for a living? You’re a mechanic? And a biker? How interesting. I think I see someone I need to speak to.”

  I didn’t see any way that Ryder and I could have a long-term future. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who wanted 2.5 kids and a big house, complete with driving carpool and Girl or Boy Scouts.

  Would I be willing to give all of that up to be with him?

  My phone dinged with a text message. I changed lanes and then pulled off to the side of the road to read it. There was no way I was risking an accident in my father’s $150,000 car.

  Lots to tell you when I see you but no word yet on the girls. I know who has them and why, but not where. I’ll text when I know more.

  I sat there for a moment and wondered if I should tell him I was on my way. No, he’d probably tell me not to come. Turn around and wait at home. But he wouldn’t say that if I were already there.

  Putting the car in gear, I turned the radio on. In about an hour, I’d be one step closer to finding my sister.

  Thirty-Seven

  Ryder

  I was so pissed off I was shaking. Of all the things I could have imagined, Padre being responsible for Lily’s disappearance was not even on my radar. The only reason I didn’t kill him right then and there was because I figured I’d have a better shot of getting her back alive if I didn’t. But, so help me god, if one hair on my sister’s head—or Bailey’s, for that matter— was harmed, I would kill that motherfucker with my bare hands.

  The guy was obviously losing it mentally, because the man I knew would never have done something like this. His judgment was clearly way off. But that was a different issue for another day. Right now, I had five hours to find my sister, otherwise I’d be spending the rest of my life in South America trying to find her there.

  I headed back to the Bun Boy parking lot to see if Hawk had any luck chasing down El Diablo. When I got there, the whole damn place had turned into some kind of tailgating party. The clubs had supposedly come to “help,” but instead were drinking and smoking weed, blasting music, and basically partying.

  Fortunately, the Outlaw Souls were taking it seriously, and when I pulled up to the corner where everyone was gathered, I found Scorpion, Swole, Trainer, and Chalupa looking at a map of the nearby desert.

  “Hey Ryder. I’m guessing you had no luck?” Chalupa asked.

  “Where’s Hawk?” Scorpion wondered.

  I wasn’t really sure how to answer that. Did I tell them that I found Padre and that he was responsible for this whole mess?

  I didn’t want to, but I pretty much had to.

  I paused for a moment, thinking about how to say it. “I didn’t find Lily or Bailey, but I did make a very upsetting discovery.”

  “Oh my god, no…” Trainer said. “Not…”

  “No, no. Not that. When we got to the water tower, we saw two bikes there. One was El Diablo and as soon as he heard us, he took off. Hawk followed him.”

  “Who was the other bike?” Swole asked.

  “It was Padre.”

  “Padre! What was he doing there? Why didn’t he ride with us?”

  “Wait. Was he kidnapped too?”

  I shook my head. “No. He was behind the whole thing. He thought I was stealing parts from the garage and decided to call in a favor with El Diablo and have him grab Lily for a couple of hours to scare me and teach me a lesson about loyalty, but it blew up.”

  “That’s fucked up, man,” Trainer said.

  Swole shook her head. “I can’t believe that. He told you that himself?”

  “Yeah. He came out here to find Lily and make it right, but El Diablo has a plane coming after dark to take them to South America.”

  “What the actual fuck?” Chalupa was in total shock.

  “I know. So that means we have less than five hours to find them.”

  Scorpion grabbed the big paper gas station map and handed it to me. “Here’s a map of the area, and we circled anything that could be a place where they could hide two girls.”

  “Obviously, they could be in the back of a van parked out in the middle of the desert, but it will give us some organization as we look,” Trainer said.

  “What about those guys?” I asked, nodding to the other MCs who were laughing and drinking. “Do we get them in on it?”

  Chalupa shook his head. “I wouldn’t. The more people we have out there, the more likely they are to move the girls. Maybe the party in the parking lot will be a good diversion for Las Balas to think we aren’t looking.”

  I nodded, “Makes sense.”

  Just then, Hawk roared into the parking lot. He swung off his bike and took off his helmet. “He took off. I tried to follow him, but he went behind a huge hill and by the time I got there, he’d disappeared.”

  “Shit. Okay, let’s spread out and canvass the area. You guys update Hawk about what happened with Padre, and let’s leave one at a time, spaced out every five minutes so we don’t draw attention from us all leaving at the same time.” I grabbed my helmet. “I’ll go first, and text you in about an hour. I’ll take this area here,” I said, pointing to the desert across the street from us.

  “Padre? What happened to Padre?” Hawk asked.

  If I had to tell the story again I’d probably puke, so I just left.

  I was getting frustrated. Here I was on what would be a beautiful Sunday afternoon riding my bike in the California desert. But instead of listening to some tunes and feeling the wind in my face as I straddled a powerful machine, riding with my brothers on the way to Vegas, I was wandering around the desert like some fucking nomad looking for my little sister.

  I knew I should update Paige, but what was I going to say? Oh, hey, yeah, sorry. My boss is delu
sional and thought I was stealing fifty-dollar parts from him, and so he arranged for our sisters to be kidnapped by sex traffickers. It was better that she knew nothing than to know that.

  I’d been riding around for forty five minutes and hadn’t seen a damn thing. No vans parked anywhere. No structures where the girls could be held. Maybe they were being held in a nearby city or something? They wouldn’t go as far as Vegas because the Metro Police there were on top of things. There’d be no way for an unauthorized plane to get anywhere near Vegas air space, either.

  If I were going to hide someone, where would I go? I sat with my bike idling and realized I was going to need fuel soon. Maybe I’d head back into town and get some gas before…

  “Wait. Holy shit. It was right in front of my face the whole time.” I turned around and headed to the abandoned Bun Boy Motel.

  Thirty-Eight

  Paige

  As I approached the city of Baker I saw “the world’s largest thermometer,” which was a huge tourist attraction back in the day. I’m pretty sure there is an old photograph of Bailey and me standing in front of it during one of our trips to Las Vegas.

  Those were some amazing memories. Every few years, we’d stay at Circus Circus and while my mom took her chances in the casino, my dad gave Bailey and me each a roll of quarters and let us go crazy in the arcade. Once our stash had run out, we’d go see the circus acts.

  Tears began to sting my eyes as I remembered those days. We had to find Bailey. We just did.

  I stole a quick glance at my phone to see if Ryder had written with an update yet. He hadn’t. The last thing he said to me was “stay at home where you’re safe.” Of course, I hadn’t. But, I wasn’t ready to just show up. “Hi everyone. Here I am in my dad’s expensive sports car and I want to help.”