by Bourne, Lena
I straighten up, put my hands over my head and step out from behind the bush, saying nothing. This is better than staying hidden and startling some rookie cop when he comes around the bush. Chances are, I’d get a bullet in the chest for that stunt. As it is, my sudden appearance agitates more than a few of the cops, causing several to point their guns at me. I stop and wait for further instructions. Ten years ago, I’d fuck with cops in a situation like this. Now I know how to pick my battles. None of the other bikers are putting up any sort of a fight either, as the cops circle around to cuff them and load them in the cruisers. They cuff Horse and Piston too. For now, they’re content to just keep some guns trained on me, while I wait my turn to be arrested.
“Check inside,” the suit orders.
Cops run in to obey, and a few minutes later, yells of, “All clear!” sound from inside the bar.
Handcuffed Piston and Horse are being led to one of the black SUVs and Horse is glaring at me the whole way. Two cops, both with their guns pointed at me are approaching. I let them put my arms behind my back and cuff me while reciting my Miranda Rights, which I barely hear as I glare right back at Horse.
By the time they push me down into the back of a police cruiser, Horse and Piston are completely hidden behind the black windows of the SUV.
I lean back as well as I can with my hands cuffed behind my back and watch the rest of the scene. The Knights’ president is loudly demanding to know why we’re all being carted away like this, but if he’s getting an answer, I don’t hear it.
They won’t get anything on me, but I’m resigned to spending the rest of the day and maybe the night in jail.
Hawk, our MC’s hacker whizz, gave us all bulletproof fake identities, and I know mine will hold up when they check it. Wyatt Cole, the name on my driver’s license has no criminal record, save for a couple of parking and speeding tickets and two brawls. If all goes well, I should be out of jail in a couple of hours, and if not, Hawk will get me out by tomorrow.
* * *
Stormi
I busied myself helping Brenda in the bar and tried to act like nothing happened, but after fifteen minutes of being in there, I started feeling like the walls were closing in on me, so I wasn’t much use at anything. At one point, Griff came in, looking very pleased with himself, laughing and damn near shouting, as he made the rounds and greeted all the guys in there.
I kept looking at the doors leading into this place, all three of them in turn, waiting for one to open and Ace to walk in. I wouldn’t even say anything to him. I wouldn’t even look at him for too long, and I certainly wouldn’t have a conversation with him, since there’s nothing more to say between us. But I would like to look at him for a little while more, would like to be in the same room as him for a little while longer, before it becomes impossible.
I’m leaving tonight. I say it again in my mind, like I’ve done a bunch of times already.
The bar is still mostly empty, and the light spilling in through the grimy, brownish scum-covered windows is soft and yellow. It’s late afternoon, close to evening. The dirty tables, the loud bikers, the stained walls that have been my prison for so long seem more like a photograph of this place than an actual place I’m currently in. As though it’s already in my past, confined only to my memories and nightmares.
My sister’s exam is a day away and I’m gonna be there. I already checked the bus schedules and there’s an overnight to Vegas leaving tonight at midnight. I filched a little more money from the register, just in case. But this is the last time I steal anything, ever again, from anyone. Later, once the place gets rowdier and it’s dark outside, I’ll slip away. I’ll walk to town in the darkness, and disappear. I’ll take nothing with me. With any luck, they’ll think something happened to me. Not that I have that kind of luck. Or much of any kind of luck at all.
I’ll be there to see my sister cured. Then I’ll lay low and lead a quiet life away from bikers and parties and fun. Away from my sister too. I should be OK that way. We both should be.
The sound of several bikes arriving to the courtyard startles me from my daydream, and I’m glad for it. Me imagining and planning on finally going home was supposed to be a happy picture. Instead, it’s fraught with the bleak pain of loss. Ace. In so many ways, he was the first truly lucky thing that’s ever happened to me. And the most dangerous thing too. Potentially. No, certainly.
The back door bangs open and Horse enters in three long strides, Piston right behind him. My eyes are stuck to the open door, because Ace is coming in next, I know he is, he’s always with those two, but all I see is the dust their arrival kicked up sparkling as it settles in the late afternoon light.
“We got’em!” Horse announces loudly and happily and the room erupts in jovial shouts and the sound of glasses and bottles thumping against the wooden tabletops.
Horse is staring at me now, shiny anger in his dark eyes. Why?
And where’s Ace?
It doesn’t matter! After tonight he’ll be just a photograph in my mind. Just a memory. A very good memory, but just a memory nonetheless.
Piston and Horse leave again through the door that leads to Griff’s office, and I slip off my bar stool and go behind the counter to busy myself with something so Horse won’t bother me when he comes back in. And so I won’t just stare at the door anymore.
It’s time to focus only on getting out and nothing else.
Several times today, I’ve attempted to tell Brenda I’m leaving, but each time I meet her eyes, they’re angry yet dead, like looking into the darkness down a deep hole. I’ll leave her a note.
“That new boyfriend of yours wasn’t with Horse and Piston,” Brenda says to my back, while I’m stacking clean glasses up onto a shelf. “I wonder what that means.”
She sounds like she knows, that she doesn’t have to wonder. She also sounds like giving me this piece of bad news gives her joy. Another reason I won’t tell her I’m leaving. Another thing that’s changed between us. She was never a vindictive bitch to me. Others yes, but not me. Or was she?
“I really don’t,” I snap and pick up the trashcan to go empty it, even though it’s barely half full. The last thing I want to do is talk about Ace. I might cry if I talk about him, that’s how much that whole thing hurts. But I’ll cry worse, if he gets killed in front of me, and worse still if my sister dies, because I brought him into her life. He’s a danger. Any which way I look at it. If I let things between us go any further, I won’t survive losing him. Better to get away while I still can. I storm away from her and out of the bar before she can say anything more.
Ace helped me with the trash the first time we met.
No, I can’t think of that!
It was the first kind thing any guy at this club’s done for me.
No!
My hands are stiff yet shaking all the same, as I dump the trash into the dumpster. I let the lid of the dumpster fall with a satisfyingly loud thump. For a second, the bang of heavy metal crashing against metal breaks me out of the funk of my thoughts, my musings, my wishing for things that could have been. The sound echoes off into the afternoon silence and by the time it fades completely, I’m calm.
I’m doing the right thing. I know I am.
18
Ace
All day, I kept repeating that I was just a guy having a drink in that bar, and out taking a piss in the bushes when the cops showed up. I told that to any cop who would listen, while also stressing that I have no idea who all those other bikers are. Nothing on my bike or on my person tied me to the Sinners or Knights, or the Devils, for that matter. Eventually they ran me through the system, found I was a misdemeanor-only type of guy from Oregon who moves around a lot, because he can’t hold down a job. I even have a permit for the guns I had on me. Thanks to Hawk.
Once the cops finally got around to checking all that, they let me go.
By that time, I knew what time it was.
Piston and Horse weren’t in booking with me and they w
eren’t in lock-up with the rest of us. Granted, they kept us all separated as much as possible, but I caught glimpses of all the rest of them during the day.
The Sinners set the Knights up to get busted at the meeting. And I guess the fact that a bunch of Sinners got arrested too means not all of them are in on the snitching. Right?
It’s almost eight PM before they finally get around to releasing me and returning my bike to me. I ride past the station, past the line of cabs and cabbies leaning on them, smoking and drinking coffee, trying to see if anyone else was released at the same time as me. No one was there when I was waiting to get my phone and keys and such back, nor while I waited for my bike to be released. No one comes out of the station now, nor do I see any bikers on the road as I approach the shopping complex that’s catching the rest of the day’s sunlight about a mile away.
I go into the first diner I pass and straight to the toilet once I’m in there.
Cross answers the phone on the first ring, and I launch into my story right away, telling it as succinctly as I can. I finish with, “It’s the Sinners, they’ve definitely got something going on with the feds. Griff, Horse and Piston are all in on it. And maybe some of the others too. But not all of them. A bunch of Sinners were arrested today too, along with the entire top of the Knights. Ink’s uncle and brother are sitting in jail. I’m guessing Griff’s gonna make some sort of move against them.”
“Alright, get outta there now, we’ll handle it from here,” Cross says.
“No,” I say, maybe a little too sharply. “I’m going back to get some clear answers.” Stormi and me need to have another conversation too. One in which I tell her exactly who I am. No way I’m just disappearing from her life.
“There’s no need, Ace. You’ve done what you could,” Cross says.
“There’s a woman there. I want to get her out before shit hits the fan,” I say, telling him all this before I even fully decided to.
A silence follows. I have no idea what to make of it.
“Fine, do what you gotta do, but don’t stick your neck out. Ice is near with a few of the guys, watching your back,” Cross finally tells me. “And Tank left with more guys earlier, when we heard about what happened from the Knights. He should be there in a couple of hours, and I’m following later tonight.”
“We’re hitting them soon?” I ask, knowing it’s probably useless to do so. He’ll tell me when he’s ready to tell me, and when I need to know it.
Predictably, he ignores my question. “If you insist on going back, I want you to check in every two hours from now on. A missed call to this number will do.”
“Why? I got this,” I interrupt.
“A precaution,” he says simply. “I don’t like what happened today. It stinks of bigger shit to come.”
“Alright, Prez.”
“And if you get a call from me, then don’t even pick up, just get your ass out of there. If you can’t then be ready to fight,” he concludes ominously, then hangs up right after I agree to it, and before I can ask any more questions that he probably wouldn’t answer anyway.
I hoped I’d get the chance to tell Stormi the truth about me tonight, but that was stupid, rash thinking. Too much is still riding on this and it’s a job like any other. No one can know a damn thing. At least I’ll be near her when it goes down. And once it’s done, I’ll have the rest of my life to explain it all to her.
* * *
Stormi
I had made my peace with never seeing Ace again when the street-side door to the bar suddenly opens, letting in fresh nighttime air riding on the last of the day’s heat. Ace is standing in the doorway. Not all, but most of the loud conversations going on in the bar stopped abruptly at the sight of him. Some old folk rock song is blaring on the jukebox, the refrain something about taking chances, and the premonition, the message for me in the lyrics I could suddenly hear clearly, froze me mid-reach for an empty beer bottle to toss in the trash.
But his gaze merely glances off my face like he hardly recognized me and the spell is broken. I toss the bottle in the trashcan, satisfied to hear glass shattering. I made the right choice. For the first time since I made it, the bitter sadness that followed that realization every time I thought of it today, isn’t as scalding.
Ace threads his way to the table Horse and Piston are sharing with three of the older guys. All of them are watching him approach warily. Piston looks like he’s seeing a ghost coming for him.
Ace greets them jovially, like they’re the best of friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time.
It takes awhile for the others in the bar to stop exchanging perplexed glances and slip back into the conversations they were having before he arrived.
He takes a seat and tries to get Lisa’s attention. She’s supposed to be serving drinks, but instead she’s letting some guy finger her while she pretends to wipe down the table he’s sitting at. And I’m right here behind the bar. Less than four feet from the table he’s at. All the serenity of knowing I’m doing the right thing evaporates like mist in sunlight. What the fuck is this all about? Didn’t he just say he was falling in love with me this morning? Is he gonna just stop trying this fast?
I grab a tray and head over to his table before I even decide to do it. I won’t be ignored, I could never deal with that very well, and I’m certainly not going to be ignored by the first and only guy I ever met that I thought I could spend the rest of my life with.
“What can I bring you?” I ask, fixing my gaze on him.
He glances at me, but doesn’t look into my eyes directly. What the fuck? My hands are totally ready to just slam the tray against the table to get his attention then asking him that question out loud.
“A beer will be fine,” he says and turns back to Horse.
I think he just asked him something before I got there, something Horse didn’t want to answer, because the silence between them is thick and tense as they stare at each other. I can’t fucking believe this.
Did he lie this morning? The way all guys lie?
I feel ashamed and stupid for all the hours I spent regretting breaking it off with him. All the hours I spent thinking he’s the one and only for me. My true love. Yeah, right. He’s just the same as everyone else. Careless. Only looking out for himself.
“We’re good,” Piston tells me, since I’m just standing there, being ignored by everyone. I turn on my toes and stalk off, already decided that I’ll “forget” to bring his beer.
I busy myself with every task imaginable once I reach my place behind the counter, doing things that need doing and many that don’t. I’m re-stacking the shot glasses, making them into little piles of four instead of six, as they were before, when I become aware of a solid, warm presence right behind me. I turn to find Ace standing less than a hand span behind my back, but I already knew it was him even before I saw him. I’d know his energy anywhere, and that thought startles me so much, I slam the stack of shot glasses I was holding back down on their rickety shelf too hard, almost causing everything on it to crash to the ground.
“You forgot to bring me my beer,” he tells me with wry amusement, and a smile that makes his whole face look as inviting as sunrise on a perfect dawn.
“Yes, I did,” I hiss at him. What’s this? He thinks he’s just gonna smile, and I’m gonna forget he ignored me completely.
He laughs. It’s a very warm, pleasant sound, one that takes the edge off my anger all on it’s own.
“It’s actually for the best,” he says. “Let’s go get some dinner and a drink somewhere else. We’ll talk.”
“And what makes you think I have anything more to say to you?” I ask sharply.
Why is he making this so hard? Why’s he ignoring me one minute and acting like he’s my man the next? Like he’s been my man for a long time and we just had a little spat that we need to smooth over now. That’s how I feel and I shouldn’t, so now I’m afraid I’m going insane on top of all the other shit I’m facing.
&nb
sp; “I have more things to say to you,” he says, still smiling at me. “Things you need to hear and I need to say. But I’m starving, I was locked up all day.”
“Locked up?”
“Yeah, nothing to worry about,” he says. “Let’s go.”
He puts his hand on my lower back and starts leading me across the bar toward the street-side door. Heads turn as we pass and several conversations fade, but no one tries to stop us from leaving in any way.
I’m not sure I should go with him. There’s nothing in the world he could say that would convince me he’s not too dangerous to take home to my sister. And nothing he can say that could convince me to stay here.
But I want to have this dinner with him. I want one last conversation with him. Maybe even one last kiss. Or two. And with him this close, with his hand gently guiding me, I don’t have the strength to fight that desire. It’s a mistake. Nothing good can come of it. But I can’t help going where he’s leading.
* * *
He takes me to a decrepit diner at an even more decrepit truck stop. Paint’s peeling off the walls outside and in, and the cheap, fake leather is peeling off the seats inside. There’s also a general smell of food left out too long, dirty men and bathroom permeating the place. The door is open, as are several of the windows, but the air coming in isn’t putting much of a dent in the smells. There’s only one other customer here—a depressed looking trucker slumped over a table in the back. The bored-looking, middle-aged waitress with frizzy, dyed red hair leaning on the edge of the counter looks annoyed that we came in. Is that how I look behind the counter of the bar? Probably. It’s certainly how I’ll look like in a couple of years if I don’t leave and reclaim my life. The thought is jarring enough to bring me back to the reality of the situation. I kinda lost my resolve to leave Ace behind for good, while I hugged his waist on the back of his bike on the way here.
