by Mia Malone
A former colleague had moved to Vancouver, and his wife was a lawyer.
I had no clue how we’d cross the border, or if Canadian lawyers could even help, but I had nowhere else to go, and I’d find a way.
“How did they find us?” Desi asked.
“I think they tracked our phones somehow,” I said. “He really must have some friends in high places.”
Desi gasped and put a hand over her mouth.
“No need,” she mumbled. “It’s my phone. Snapchat.”
“What?”
“God, I’m such an idiot,” she wailed. “My password for Snapchat is Bessie123. If he figured it out, he could log in and see my location, and Mom... he’d see yours too.”
“Okay,” I said.
Well, shit. If Desi was right, we could have just turned off location services, and they wouldn’t have known where we were. Now we didn’t have any phones, but I wasn’t going to call anyone until we got closer to the border anyway. We’d just keep going and try to stay off the grid. Dump the car and don’t use your credit card the old man had said. I’d used the ATM at Target, so we’d manage for a while, but I had to get rid of the car.
An hour later we passed through a small town, and I slowed down. The Main Street was short but looked nice, and there were stores and a couple of restaurants so I wondered if I dared to stop and ask someone if there was a garage or some other place where I could trade my Honda for something else.
Then a police cruiser came straight toward us, and I calmly turned off the main street.
“Mom,” Desi breathed.
“Probably just driving around,” I said, and parked the car behind a big building.
It looked like the back of a bar, and since it was early in the morning, I didn’t think anyone would be around.
“Let’s get out and breathe for a while. Stretch our legs and get some air. Eat something,” I murmured and opened my door.
“What are we going to do?” Desi asked when I pulled her into my arms.
“We’ll head to Tony in Canada. I’ll have to find somewhere to trade the car to something else.”
“Canada?”
“Not sure how we’ll cross the border, but it’s the only thing I can think of, honey,” I murmured. “I want to get really far away from Sheriff White and the lies he’s telling everyone. We also have to get away for a while until I can figure out what to do.”
“‘Kay,” she mumbled. “You’ll trade the car?”
“Yeah,” I said and looked at the motorcycles standing behind the bar. “There are people here who own bikes, so there might be a garage. I’ll see if I can get one. They won’t look for that.”
“You can drive a bike?” Desi asked, and I grinned.
“Sure can, sweetie. Haven’t done it in ages but I drove one when I met your father.”
She grinned at me but winced from the pain.
“Oh, Desi,” I sighed. “I’m so sorry he hurt you. I’ll find a way to sort this out. Promise, baby.”
She stepped into my arms, and I breathed into her hair as I held her.
My girl.
The only thing that mattered so I’d find a way.
A dog ambled up to us suddenly, and I patted Desi’s shoulder.
“Get in the car.”
If there were a dog, there would be an owner.
“Hey,” a deep voice rumbled as I walked around to my side, and a tall man with blonde hair in a ponytail appeared from behind a fence. “Problems?”
“Nope,” I said and nodded to Desi to indicate that she should get into the car. “We just stopped to stretch our legs. We’ll leave.”
“I heard you, so I’m gonna ask again,” the man said calmly. “Problems?”
“No,” I said dismissively.
“One of my friends is the Chief of Police here,” the man said. “He’s a good man, I can give him a call?”
“No need,” I stated. “We’ll just leave.”
He watched me with narrowed eyes for a while, and I let him. If he insisted, I would fight him. He was big, but I would kick in him his fucking gonads, and we would get in the car and drive away. Then he suddenly nodded, raised a finger to indicate that I should wait, which I wasn’t going to do, but he spoke before I had taken more than a single step toward the car.
“Babe,” he rumbled into his phone. “No questions. Get the keys to your bike, yours and Mimi’s helmets and come downstairs.”
Then he hung up and watched me calmly.
“What?” I breathed.
“Get your stuff, start loading it up. We’ll put your car someplace where no one will see it. Come back and get it when you can.”
I blinked and didn’t know what to say.
“Honey,” he said quietly. “A while back a woman walked into my bar with the same look in her eyes that you have in yours. She needed help, and she got it. You’re getting help too because of that look, and because someone put those bruises on your girl’s face. I don’t like the look of them,” he said but turned when the door opened behind him, and his face softened. “There’s my girl,” he murmured.
“You’re helping me?” I asked and had to clear my throat.
“Would prefer to call my friend, but this works too,” he said and waved a hand back and forth between my car and the smaller of the bikes. “Get to it.”
“Hey,” the woman said softly. “I’m Sissy.”
I looked into her pale blue eyes and felt my own burn with tears.
I’d just gotten another break.
“I’m Cassandra,” I said quietly. “Cassandra Davis.”
***
Sissy
“We should have made her stay and called Mac,” Sissy murmured as she watched the bike disappear down the street. “I’m not sure this is the best way to help them.”
“No use trying to make her stay,” Joke said and put his arm around her shoulders. “Whatever she’s running from is right on her tail, and they’re too close for her to be safe here. I also recognized that look in her eyes, baby. She would have tried to fight her way out of here, and I didn’t want to make her lose that battle.”
“They’re heading north?”
“Yeah,” Joke sighed. “She has some dumbass plan to cross the border into Canada without papers or anything. It won’t work.”
Sissy grinned and squeezed his waist.
“I’ll make some calls.”
“Figured you would,” Joke said with a grin of his own. “Tell Roddy I said hey. I’ll call Mac, see what kind of trouble she’s in, and then we’ll move her car out to Day’s place.”
Chapter Two
Get your eyes off my woman
Cassandra
I kept driving, mile after mile. We stopped at gas stations, and I got us a couple of hamburgers from a fast food place, but none of the stops were more than a few minutes, and then we kept going. My arms hurt, and so did my butt, but I stayed focused on moving us north.
We spent the night at a Motel 66 on the outskirts of Jackson and got a room at the far back. I didn’t sleep much, and neither did Desi, so we got up early and left soon after dawn. The bruises were still showing on Desi’s face, but the swelling was going down. She was scared, and I felt her hold me tighter every time we passed through a small town, only to relax when it was just the two of us on the long stretches of road.
I didn’t want to tell her that we would be more visible on the empty roads, or that there was safety in being among people, and just kept driving.
Only a couple of days had passed since I left our home in Colorado Springs and went to get my daughter, but it felt like a lifetime.
One more day, I assured myself.
We’d reach the Canadian border after one more day. Maybe two.
I still had no clue how to pass, but we’d walk if we had to. I was fit, and so was Desi. I didn’t ski, but we both loved hiking and went horseback riding whenever we could. We were used to moving around in the mountains, Desi had grown up with them as a backdro
p, and I’d loved the sight of the front range since I first saw it when I was in my early twenties. I’d wanted to find a new home, a fresh start, and had picked Colorado simply from the way the mountains seemed to rise toward the sky like a wall of protection from the world.
Those mountains would protect us now because they had to.
We’d find a way to get to my friends, and hopefully, they would be able to help or at least provide a safe place for us to rest a few days.
I was so tired and had started doubting the wisdom of my desperate flight. Perhaps I should have let Sissy and Joke call their friend? Perhaps I should have gone home and gotten a lawyer. Then I remembered the look on Sheriff White’s face when he shifted the holster to his gun away, and pushed the bike forward.
“Mom,” Desi yelled, and I looked ahead at what she pointed at.
A police cruiser came our way with the lights flashing. I felt my daughter’s arms squeeze me as I calmly kept going, praying that they had an emergency which was not related to us. Surely they wouldn’t be looking for us on a bike this far from home?
The officer in the cruiser didn’t even glance at us when they passed, and I turned off on an outlook.
One more day, I told myself again. I just need one more goddamned day for Christ’s sake.
“They weren’t looking for us,” Desi said and moved as if to take her helmet off.
A low rumble was suddenly coming closer, and it sounded like thunder, but I knew what it was. It was bikes, and they were plural.
“Keep it on honey,” I murmured.
The sound increased, and then six men on big black cruisers turned off on the outlook. They surrounded us, and I shuffled Desi behind me when they got off the bikes.
A couple of them were young men, but the rest seemed to be my age more or less. They wore jeans or leather pants, and leather jackets, and did not wear helmets although a few of them had bandanas instead.
And they all wore vests filled with patches of various kinds. I saw the back of one of them as he swung his leg over a pretty awesome Harley, and it was covered with something which looked like the outline of a hammer. Above it, the words Thor MC were written in clear, black letters against a red background.
“Helmets off,” one of the men grunted, and my eyes flew to him.
He was a big man with a wide barrel of a chest, and he was quite a bit older than the rest, I realized. His gray hair was kept in a short braid at the nape of his neck, and his eyes were hard and shrewd. He looked like the kind of man who would kill anyone just for breathing in a way he didn’t like.
“Take your helmet off, honey,” I murmured and raised my hands to remove my own. Then I shook my hair out and straightened my back. “Gentlemen,” I said, aiming for calm indifference and pulling it off rather credibly. “Is there a problem?”
On the left side of the man’s vest were two patches. One shared that his name most likely was Roddy, and the other had the word president. It was hard to keep my face blank while I pretended that I wasn’t freaking out about the fact that I was standing with my bruised daughter in the middle of nowhere, facing the president of a motorcycle club apparently called Thor.
“Huh,” the man said, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on Desi, and they were hard and angry. “You’ve pushed through a lot of miles in the past few days.”
I blinked, and murmured inanely, “Yes?”
“They said you’d come this way. Weren’t expecting you this fast.”
“Who?” I whispered, and the man’s focus returned to me.
“Let’s –”
“Roddy,” one of the other men said, and pointed toward a car that was approaching.
I heard Desi suck in air when she saw the lights and wondered how the hell many police officers they had in this remote area.
“Helmet back on, sweetie,” I murmured.
“You too,” Roddy said, and my eyes flew to him. “Put these on.”
My mind scrambled to keep up, so he shoved two vests at me with an impatient grunt.
I gave Desi one and put the other one on immediately and then my helmet. The one Desi wore covered most of her face, and I’d gotten her a pair of sunglasses, but mine was a small black thing which barely covered my ears. I had wondered more than once if it even was a real helmet or just something Sissy used to look cool.
The biker-men moved closer, and they weren’t exactly circling us but clearly tried to make us disappear among their tall frames. The car slowed down, swung around to stop next to us, and a chubby officer rolled down his window.
“Roddy,” the man said.
“Bodean,” Roddy grunted. “What can we do for you?”
“You got some new people with you.”
I wasn’t a question, and I raised my chin a little. The keys to my bike were in my pocket, and I slowly pulled them out to be prepared if we’d have to try to outrun the police.
“Nuh-uh,” a deep voice rumbled, and a steady hand cupped mine.
Just as slowly the keys were pushed back into the pocket, and I raised my head to look at the tall man standing next to me.
He wasn’t good-looking, not really.
There was something about his lean frame and narrow face that cut right through me, though. This man was a badass in a way most men I met wasn’t even remotely close to. His nose had been broken more than once, and he kept his partially gray hair short on the sides but quite a bit longer at the top, and his beard was neatly trimmed.
He looked hard.
I should be frightened but the way he watched me made me feel safe.
“What’s it to you?” Roddy asked calmly, and I turned my attention back toward the cruiser in front of us.
“We’re looking for some people. You wouldn’t know anything about it?” the police officer asked.
He leaned forward to look straight at me, and I glared back at him. He narrowed his eyes, but I raised my chin and one brow in a silent dare. You just try to come get me, I thought. Try to get close to my daughter, and I will fucking kill you.
“Hey,” the man next to me snarled suddenly, and took a small step forward, partially shielding me with his shoulder. “Get your eyes off my woman, Bodean.”
“Your woman?”
They stared at each other, and since I was more than a little surprised about how the conversation had shifted, I kept my face blank, but my eyes moved back and forth between them. The man next to me took my hand in a grip that was oddly gentle, but growled in a voice which suddenly sounded downright frightening, “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” the police officer said immediately. “It was a surprise, that’s all.”
“Do I care?”
“No, Black,” the man said and started up his car. “Of course not.”
The way the man next to me sounded, I couldn’t blame Officer Bodean for being nervous. Or preparing to get the hell out of there. If a spaceship full of aliens had appeared and offered to give me a lift to wherever, I would have ignored any and all rumors about anal probes and happily accepted.
“You should leave,” Roddy said calmly. “We don’t want trouble, and neither do you.”
“Right. My mistake. I meant no offense, Roddy,” the officer said,
I exhaled slowly when the car disappeared down the road. The men calmly started moving toward their bikes, and I tried to pull my hand out of a grip which suddenly had hardened.
Then I was abruptly and swiftly turned around, Black leaned down and murmured, “He’s looking in the rearview mirror, babe.”
I opened my mouth to say something, which I would absolutely do when I’d managed to figure something out, and gasped when he let go of my hand to take a firm grip of my hips. I gasped again when his hands moved around and down to cup my behind. Firmly.
“Wh –”
His mouth closed over mine, and his tongue suddenly slid inside my mouth.
It was hands down the best kiss in my whole life, and I arched my neck to get closer to a man I met on
ly minutes before and kissed him back with what could only be described as considerable gusto.
“Black,” someone snorted. “Get a fucking grip. He’s long gone.”
We both stepped back, and our eyes met.
Mine were probably wide and astonished.
His eyes didn’t show anything at all, and I understood why they called him Black.
They were so dark they looked like bottomless pits.
“Let’s go,” he said, and I blinked, which he didn’t see because he’d turned his back to me and walked over to his bike.
“What?” I breathed out.
“Come on girl,” Roddy muttered. “You’ll be in the middle.”
I’d be in the middle?
Nope.
This I would not be.
I would be on my bike, driving all on my own toward the border, at the highest speed I could possibly make my vehicle move.
Roddy turned, and he’d been kind of growly and a little bit frightening before, but it was nothing compared to how he looked in that moment. His face was a hard, expressionless mask, and I wondered if he was related to the man called Black.
They had the same eyes.
“Okay,” I squeaked, zipped up my jacket and pulled out the keys to the bike.
To my surprise, Desi’s lips twitched slightly, and I raised my brows.
“Are you laughing?” I whispered.
“You backed down, Mom,” she breathed out. “Heck yes, I’m laughing.”
I glared at her, ignored the chuckles from the men who had been close enough to hear, one of them being Roddy, and got up on the bike.
Then I drove in the middle of a group of bikers until we reached a small town called Rogan. We rode along a short Main Street and continued until we reached a group of houses, passed what looked like a lodge, or hotel, or something, turned off and went through a couple of big gates which closed behind us immediately.
There were cabins scattered around a wide, open area and everyone except Roddy veered off to the sides. I decided that following the older man would be best since he seemed to be the most frightening of a group of men who were downright scary, so I trailed him until he stopped in front of a small cabin.
“You’ll be good here,” he said over his shoulder. “Settle in. We’ll talk later.”
