And the way my belly fluttered made me realize I was actually nervous.
Nervous.
To ride my bike.
Something I’d been doing almost daily since I was eighteen.
Until those bastards ruined that for me.
On top of everything else.
Well, I told myself as I strapped on my helmet and sat down on my seat, they were going to start paying for that.
Starting that night.
CHAPTER THREE
Colter
“This is how you travel all the way down to Florida and back?” I asked, shining the reading flashlight onto the map spread open on my lap.
“Can’t use phone apps if you don’t want to get caught,” Raff said from the driver’s seat. “But after a while, you only need the maps if you get yourself turned around. I could do the straight run from us to the Golden Glades chapter in my sleep. It’s the little stops to all the gun shows and shops that can get me lost.”
“Still not sick of it?” I asked.
It was different, but I’d really enjoyed all the traveling involved when I was deployed. But even all that got old fast.
Raff had been driving the route from Florida to California and back every few weeks for years. He used to do the trek with his twin, but since Riff settled down, he cut way back on his traveling, only going a few times a year. Even then, begrudgingly.
Since then, the rest of us took turns doing the trips with him.
I liked a road trip as much as the next guy, but after the third trip, I was sick of it.
With Raff, though, he didn’t seem to tire of it. Sometimes, he even seemed eager to get back on the road if he’d been parked in Shady Valley for an extended period of time.
When I’d asked about it once, he’d brushed me off, saying some shit about how he loved visiting Florida and partying with the Golden Glades crew. They were connected to an insanely rich international arms dealer who would bring them out on his yacht or fly them places on his private jet. And, more recently, Raff also got a chance to stop in at the new sister chapter in Texas and “pretend to be a cowboy” for a few days.
I couldn’t help but imagine there was some deeper reason behind it all. But it wasn’t really my place to demand he dig and uncover what it was.
“It should be the next right,” I said, squinting at the tiny print on the map.
“We’re out in the suburbs, man,” Sway said from the backseat. “Are you sure you got the address right from Slash?”
“I looked up the coordinates that were on the paper he gave me. It looks like it’s getting a little more rural now,” I said as Raff turned down the next street.
Sure enough, slowly but surely, the houses spread further apart until, eventually, they gave way to dense, scraggly trees and more hilly terrain.
We passed a small white sign with bland black font declaring we were passing Lytle Creek, which I figured was the blue blob I hadn’t been able to read in the dark.
“Left, then quick right, and we should be there.”
Raff took the next left.
And for a reason I couldn’t explain, my stomach swooped.
I glanced over at Raff, then back at Sway, trying to see if they had the same sudden sense of trepidation as I did.
Either they were good at hiding it, or they didn’t feel anything off. Which made me second-guess my own.
