Inked & Dangerous

by Evelyn Glass

  So, here I am in the back of my dad’s “Miss Alana” ice cream truck. My makeshift accommodation, a fold out mattress on a pull-down Murphy bed, sat upright in the corner next to a bag of clothes I had grabbed from my dorm room. I have a chair in here along with my laptop and textbooks, but that is about it. While I came up with many of the flavors, I had really never run the show before. This place, without my dad’s laughter and silly songs, was incredibly lonely. I hate to admit that I’m not quite up to being “Miss Alana.”

  I turn and look at the pile of books stacked next to me and back up at the clock. I’ve got three or four good hours of ice cream truck time before I can actually do my studying for my midterm exams next week, but it wouldn’t kill me to use the lull in customers to read a few chapters of the text. I open up to a folded back page and begin to read to myself. I’m about a page in when I realize that this isn’t working at all. I can’t focus. I can barely remember the last word I read. I’m too focused on that poor boy and his asshole dad and my own father with the tubes and wires attached to his beat up body.

  I close the book and pull over my laptop instead, resting it on my lap. Flipping the lid up, it powers on almost immediately to the homepage of my website, Graduate Level Ice Cream, or as Jana calls it -- GLIC. Jana’s been working on it from behind the scenes all day as a favor to me. I’ve been writing in it for about two years now, and I’m just starting to get readers. It needed a bit of sprucing up, and Jana is the one to go to with anything design-orientated. She has always had an eye for that sort of stuff.

  And looking at the end result -- I’m completely amazed. It looks exactly like a website version of my ice cream truck down to the pink lettering and the mint green drips of ice cream coming from the header. Then there is the cartoon version of me leaning up against the letters, holding an ice cream cone to her ruby red painted lips (my signature color!). My blonde hair is pulled back into a vintage ponytail with the curl at the end, and I’m wearing a pair of tight jean leggings, black sneakers, and a black and white top. It was like she managed to transform me. I don’t know how I will ever be able to thank her for this, but I make a note to think of a new flavor of ice cream and name it after her. Maybe chocolate rum or something funky like that…

  I push aside thoughts of ice cream and begin to type into the blog post box. At first, I write about my dad. I get out about four paragraphs of writing just about him and my fears for him. I write about him not being able to hold my hand and the feeling of walking into the ice cream truck alone for the first time. I write about being worried that I will never be able to pay these medical bills despite working almost every waking minute of my life (outside of class) in the back of this truck. I write about how I wish someone were here to support me or at least tell me that everything was going to be alright.

  And then I delete all of it. I do this a lot. I write and write and write until my fingers want to bleed, but then I erase everything. This blog, while about my life, is anonymous. Sure, people know me as the “ice cream girl” but that’s about it. I’ve only given away bits and pieces of how I look, how I am a graduate student and how I work in the ice cream truck my father owns. Names, places, and other identifiers have been changed to protect myself from the backlash.

  So instead of pouring my heart out, I stick to what I know best -- quick wit observations:

  Holy hell, you guys. Let me tell you about scumbag dads. You know the type -- guy comes in with his son/daughter, and isn’t even paying attention to them. They do the bare minimum. And then… BAM! They notice the pair of boobs in front of them. But do you think a scumbag dad cares that he couldn’t give his special snowflake two minutes of attention? No. He cares more about his chances of nailing the tits owner.

  True story. This all just happened to me as I tried to serve this poor kid a scoop of ice cream. And no, that dad will not be getting my number. Nor will he be stopping over here once he’s done dropping his kid off to his real parent. I’ll be long gone before then. Creepers do not apply here. Adios. Good luck, kid. You’re going to need it with those genes.

  I smile as I press send. All that anger I felt earlier about that dad has washed away with the woosh of the submit button. Writing was that kind of relief for me. And even though I had to censor myself, it was still a version of me online. I could be saucy like Jana and funny like my dad. I could be Alana 2.0. I could be GLIC girl.

  I close the laptop as I hear a group of kids bombarding the truck. Swim lessons over at the Rec Center must be getting out because there are at least ten kids in swim trunks and half covered bathing suits dragging annoyed parents behind them as they point excitedly at me. One by one, I scoop and serve with the brightest, most loving smile I can muster until they’re gone as fast as they had come -- just enough of a rush to get me through my day.

  With music blasting in my headphones, I lock the truck up starting with the windows and back entrances, leaving the front unlocked. I pack up my supplies, quickly washing everything and putting the scoopers and stirrers away. The cups go back in the drawers while the leftover ice cream treats are pushed into the labeled bins in the freezers. The chill of the open doors gives me enough relief to get the end of day work done.

  When I’m done, I walk around to the front of the truck and slip off the apron, tossing it mindlessly into the front seat as I pull up my phone’s GPS in search of my next destination. I’ve got to park this thing near the fairgrounds tonight with the carnival opening tomorrow before the regular school year begins. With directions in hand, I open the driver’s door and leap into the high seat.

  As I turn to grab the apron that has slid down the back of the seat, I feel something completely new and unfamiliar. Well, it’s not completely unfamiliar. I recognize the grip of someone holding my wrist. But it’s the face attached to the hand that scares me the most. Two piercing green eyes glow in the darkness of the back of the truck, and the stranger firmly commands me, “Don’t say anything.”

  I feel the cold steel of a gun placed directly at my head as the faceless man points towards the highway. I put my shaking hands on the steering wheel, swallow the lump forming in my throat, and head out onto the road.

  Chapter 2

  What the hell am I doing here? Am I insane? I’m breaking every single fucking rule Steel Saints have set up, but mainly: Don’t loop in civilians. And here I am, commandeering a freaking ice cream truck driven by some pretty book-loving girl who looks as though she’s about to keel over and die from the shock. Damnit, this idea is even worse than I had even imagined twenty minutes ago when I spotted it as my only escape option.

  I didn’t pick this truck because it was inconspicuous. The girl had been parked in the spot right outside the park for hours. Based on her customers, I could tell that she was legit. It wasn’t like the hot dog vendors selling drugs to hapless teens, or the street musicians faking some injury to get a sympathy dime. No, she took her business seriously. And that meant she wouldn’t be looked over twice by security, or police.

  But I also know food trucks. I know them inside out -- from the rules and regulations regarding their cleaning methods and food storage, to how they kept their ice cream fresh and frozen. I know about the undercarriage trunks and the huge tanks she most likely has attached to part of the truck. I even know about the specific vent units the health inspectors require her to put on the top of the roof.

  This made it so easy for me to sneak in while she was packing up those picnic tables. As she loaded them up in the back and then went back to cleaning up, I kept quiet and unseen behind the corner of a murphy bed she cleverly installed. She never even turned my way as she danced to her music, her hips and head bobbing to the beat of the rock song, her hands wiping the sweat from her brow, the tight white t-shirt clinging to her tan skin as she splashed the water in the sink around… The ice cream truck may have been a stupid idea, but at least I was getting my money’s worth out of this big risk.

  When she finally finished, I knew I only had
seconds from the time she went around to the driver’s side to make this work. I first took out my gun. That’s rule number one. If you’re going to go out in public with your dirty work, you need a weapon on you in case things go wrong. Then, I took out the jewels -- a black, velveteen bag full of fresh-cut diamonds that glittered in the light of the truck. I did the math for the hundredth time. A bag like this, weighing at least a pound, had about 3,000 diamonds in them. At two thousand a pop on the black market, this little steal was going to nab me, and Steel Saints, at least six million! My mouth practically watered looking down at the shimmer in my palms.

  That little bag is my ticket out of the Vegas club scene. As much as I love being part of Steel Saints, I feel that my time is numbered due to the stares of my men and the slow show of mistrust of my orders. Yesterday, Fernando, a guy I recruited myself to run the enforcers, decided to take it upon himself to change the schedule of the security shifts I had set up weeks before without even checking with me. When one of my loyalists called him out, he shivved my man with a butcher’s knife from my restaurant’s kitchen. My whole club life seems like it was going to live and die by the edge of that knife.

  It isn’t that the club is running badly. Hell, we just made forty thousand in a month running security for ten of Las Vegas’s hottest nightclubs. I had men dealing premium snow out the back doors as well, bringing in even more funds for Steel Saints to continue to get off the ground. And after a few run-ins with The Padres motorcycle club and the Black Flag Mafia, where we came out with more men and territory, I was feeling even more confident with how we were establishing ourselves in the Vegas hoods.

  But it is money that makes men greedy assholes. There’s never enough. Everyone wants a bigger cut of the cake. There are mouths to feed, rent to pay, gear to buy, and behind the scenes, they are what was playing at the back of everyone’s mind - the forty thousand prize meant only a few thousand per guy come pay day.

  That’s why I had thought this jewel heist was going to save my face. Sixty million would buy a few safe houses and pay off the debts for the suppliers we owed for the ammo and arms. It also would net every patch-wearing member twenty thousand -- enough to tie them and their families over until our next big pay day.

  And because I was the one who spotted the mark, who risked his life slipping into the home of the Black Flag leader, Tony Valderas, (past the dogs and the high-tech security system), and busting the safe with my new lock picking skills, I didn’t feel too horrible about taking a larger cut. This money was going to be my way out in case Steel Saints kept going the way it was going. This money would ensure that I could set up my shop somewhere far away from Vegas -- someplace where I could be a faceless guy free to be who he wants to be.

  I take out the second bag -- my bag. It doesn’t have diamonds. It’s a mix of uncut, unclean rubies and emeralds. It may not be as precious or as valuable as the diamonds, but my black market appraiser had told me that those jewels were at least five million in value. This small hunter green velvet bag held my freedom.

  I could spend all night weighing the contents of the diamonds or staring into the red and greens of the jewels, but I had to part with them… and quick. The girl was just getting into the driver’s seat and buckling up. I had no idea where she was heading, but I needed to make sure that I was in control here. I couldn’t let her just drive off with my stash to some unknown location. Who knows what this girl is capable of or what her backstory is. Beautiful girls like her, with bodies that could turn any man stone hard, were always way more dangerous than they appear. Even though she looked as if she couldn’t pick up a bag of flour on her own, the sweet rush of adrenaline was known to do some crazy ass shit to weaker people.

  So I tossed the bag of diamonds into a stock of weird black chocolate candies in the shape of bugs. The bottom of the bin had a little fake compartment on the bottom just the size of the bag. And the product above it was light enough that it wouldn’t smash it. It was the most perfect hiding spot in probably the entire truck. No one, not even a trained cop with an eye for shit like this, could see the bag when they held up the canister.

  The hunter green bag went into the small safe she stupidly left unlocked on the floor of the truck. As I use some electrical tape to fasten it to the shadowed wall, I glance down at the cash. There wasn’t much here, and almost all of it was in an envelope with the words, “Dad -- Hospital” scribbled on the side. Something was telling me that she might need me more than I need her.

  I close the safe and prepare for show time. Creeping through towards the front of the truck where the driver’s seat was, I crouch beside her, just out of site. I pull my black cap on and lift the collar of my leather jacket towards my neck. The gun rests heavy in my hand as I cock it up towards her head. With the roughest, most otherworldly voice I can muster, I order her, “Don’t say a word.”

  I point towards the highway -- the best solution to getting out of here quickly without giving away my destination. “Where -- where --- where am I going?” she stutters. Her voice is much lower pitched than I thought a skinny thing like hers would be. It’s smoky and dark, even with the nerves.

  “Just drive to the next exit,” I say, trying to think through the layout of the town. I want to get myself close enough to a destination where I can lay low for a bit. The only solution I can think of, within a five-minute drive, is the boxing gym where I spend the majority of my time. I’ve got a locker there full of fresh clothes, and I can get an alibi real quick if I can get on video sparring a bit. Plus, I need the workout time. It’s been a few days since I’ve been in the ring, and I’ve got a few agents chasing after me.

  The girl glances back at me a few times, but I’m too far in the shadows for a good look. Her hands shake as she asks, “Can you please lower that thing. I’m going to do what you ask me to do.” I grunt in agreement and stick the gun in my back pocket. It was just for show anyways. Some guys in Steel Saints would have been serious about using it. I, on the other hand, am less about the bloodshed when it isn’t by my own hands.

  Plus, I remember that envelope with the words, “Dad -- Hospital” written on it. She needs cash, and cash I am willing to part with. I reach into my pocket and pull out a wad of rolled up bills. They’re all hundreds. I stick a Franklin on the dash for her to see as I say, “I ain’t kidnapping you. I’m paying you. Drop me off at the Beat Gym and drive around the block for an hour. Pick me up in the back, and I’ll have three more of these waiting for you.”

  “Are you serious?” she asks as she turns around again. This time, I know she sees more of me. Maybe it’s the catch of my jawline or the scruff on my chin. Either way, she looks more satisfied as her eyes linger on me. She licks her scarlet lips deliciously. This chick has no idea how fucking hot she is.

  I clear my throat as I try not to glimpse down at those two round tits, the narrow hips, and the round apple ass connected to some thick thighs… “Yeah. I’m serious. You do this, and you go home tonight. You refuse, and I bring out the gun. You run and call the cops, you’ll have my entire club of men hunting your ass down within minutes.” I wasn’t lying about the last part. Driving away with about sixty-five million worth of jewels would mean the big hounds would have to be released. I’d have no mercy on her -- sweet pussy or not.

  Her eyes close in the moment of decision. I don’t blame her for thinking it through. She didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. But if we were going to make this work, she had to trust that I wasn’t going to get her killed and that the money I put in front of her was going to keep flowing. I have to make this more real for her. Pulling out that wad of cash again, I hold it up towards the light of the cars passing us by on the ramp to the highway. “It’s yours,” I point out.

  She sighs heavily before answering, “Okay. Okay. Just show me where to go. This truck doesn’t have GPS.”

  Laughing quietly, I hitch my leg over the middle counsel and force myself into the passenger seat next to her. I can tell she’s making an effor
t not to look my way. Her hands grip a circle on the wheel back and forth while her lips purse into a decidedly firm frown. I give her another glance from my new position. That long blonde hair trickling down her back makes her look like a living vintage Barbie doll -- minus those dark framed glasses she reaches over to put on. Still, hot librarian -- I can work with that.

  “Do I turn here… or?” She gestures to the exit sign, clearly remembering that I mentioned her getting off at the first exit.

  “Yeah. Haven’t you ever been to the Beat Gym?” A girl like her, I already knew the answer. The girls that went to the Beat Gym on a Monday or Friday night weren’t anything like her. They wore glitter bodysuit dresses and came looking for something other than the thrill of a fight. I should know. I took one or two home with me after most fights, especially since I was starting to get my brand out there.

  “No. That’s not my thing,” she answers coldly.

  “Then what is your thing?”

  “Driving strange biker guys around in my ice cream truck getaway van.” She turns towards me, her blue eyes scanning me up and down curiously. She’s much more feisty than I would have guessed. I love that about a girl.