His old lady swatted at him. “You know being in the rain gives me fevers now.”
I pointed at her. “Try taking a warm shower right as you come in. Helps to warm your body up before it compromises your immune system.”
“See?” the man said as he and his wife walked away from me. “Even the doctor told us that.”
The woman clicked her lips. “I swear, Elbert, you’ll take the advice of a stranger before you take the advice of your wife.”
“Perfect,” I murmured, a grin spreading across my face.
What they had was lovely, and I enjoyed the fact that I didn’t have to snuff it out. I would have, of course. Sometimes, that was simply par for the course. And with how long we had been working on tracking this psycho bitch down, I wasn’t about to let some old ass couple get in the way of that. They kept chittering along, walking toward a group of cars off to the left-hand side of the emergency room building. The man dug his keys out of his pocket before pointing them at a surprisingly nice BMW, and I had to allow myself a moment to smile.
Because sometimes, people were simply a surprise. “Way to go, Elbert.”
After I watched that man help his wife into the passenger’s seat of their vehicle, I turned back to my bike. Long gone were the days that I yearned for a life like that. Gone were the useless dreams that had taken up years of my life while I wished for a good woman at my side. Good women didn’t debase themselves for men like me. Men whose hands were coated in the blood of others. Men who smiled while they gutted their enemies like fish. Good, strong, valiant women like the ones I enjoyed riding my cock weren’t stupid enough to attach themselves to someone like me.
So, I filled my time with other things.
Like following that stupid bitch around for as long as I had.
I perched against my bike as thunder rolled in the distance. I opened the lock on the back compartment, then pulled out that tattered manilla folder. The front cover was coated in pencil and highlighter markings. Things had been jotted down and erased over time as we brainstormed where she’d head next, or where we’d be able to intercept her without the radar of the entire community going wild in the process. We had missed something, surely. Not me, of course; I read people like open books for fun. But there had to have been something we overlooked, something in that file that changed the way we looked at everything.
Because if not, we were back at square one.
I pulled out that black and white surveillance photo. It was the only picture we had of that woman serving as proof that she had done it. That she had slaughtered our President before Axton had been thrust into a position that everyone knew he wasn’t ready for at the time. Whoever that bitch in the picture was, she had taken out the head of our crew. The man who had helped found The Road Raiders. The man who had recruited me, who had taught me that my stealth work and people skills were of value to a brutish crew of motorcycle men who protected what was theirs while taking what was owed to them.
As I looked at that picture, studying the soft slope of her nose and the quick blossom of her hips, lightning streaked across the sky. She’d pay the price for what she had done to us. For what she had taken from us. But the longer I studied that picture of her standing over Luca’s dead body with his blood spilled everywhere beneath him, I focused on that bloodied knife in her hand. The knife that had ended my friend’s life.
“We’re coming for you,” I murmured as my fingers clenched so hard that they crumpled the edge of the picture, “and we won’t stop until we find you.”
I lost myself within the nooks and crannies of that file folder. I skimmed over everything. I devoured my own profile, making sure I could track down the lineage of information that drove me to that point. I fished out a green highlighter from the back compartment of my bike, highlighting any and all information that helped me come to certain conclusions and facts we had deemed true. I highlighted and numbered. I triple-checked my work in order to make absolutely certain there hadn’t been another train of thought to take.
Until something slapped against my chest.
“There,” Roger said.
I looked down at the plastic grocery bag of files. “Well, then.”
“That’s it. That’s everything, though I’m pretty sure I just lost my job doing it.”
I peeked inside. “You’ll find a better one.”
“Why? Because you’re going to place some calls? Trust me, I don’t need it.”
I looked up and plastered on my best smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “If I ever see you back around this hospital, I’m calling the police. You got it?”
Aw. How cute.“Good luck with that.”
“Good luck with what?”
I slid our dossier into the plastic bag before I shoved it into the compartment. “With convincing the police that the receipt I have for our transacted services is fake.”
“Goddamn it, Dante. Just leave me the fuck alone. What the hell did I ever do to you?”
I slung my leg over my bike and shoved the key into the ignition. “I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”
“No. I’m serious, Dante. If you come back around here, I’ll—”
