Melissa smiled, then started to cry, not the loud, movie kind, but soft and silent, like she’d done it a million times before. “He’s not dead,” she said. “The asshole was wearing Kevlar. He’s out from shock. He’ll be back after me.”
“Take the truck,” I told Dalton and nodded at the bikes in front of the hotel. “They could use one less bike.”
We mounted a Leatherback bike and hit the road. I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the road, the whine of the engine, the wet gurgle of my own lungs. I wondered how many more nights like this there would be, and whether I’d ever see another sunrise.
I hoped so. I wanted to see her face in daylight again.
10
Augustine
The engine coughed its last breath as I rolled the Leatherback's hog into the only gas station between the bad side of the Rio Grande and the asscrack of southern Colorado. Everything about the place screamed extinction event: cracked asphalt sprouting thistles, the ancient Coke machine up front buzzing like a dying insect, the gas pumps one good wind away from collapse. The only sign of life was the sickly green-and-pink neon over the door, advertising "Groceries & Smokes" with the kind of pride usually reserved for sex shops and bail bondsmen.
Melissa shivered behind me on the seat, her knees bony against my hips. She’d run out of tears by mile thirty, now just running on whatever cocktail of terror and adrenalinekept her clinging to me instead of flinging herself off the back. I almost pitied her. Almost.
The gas gauge needle was well below E. If there was ever a place to die slow and loud, it was here.
I killed the engine and slid off, boots landing on dirt that crunched like ground glass. A cluster of dead moths haloed the bare bulb over the entrance, and inside I caught the blurry shape of a clerk—skinny, twitchy, hair so greasy it could’ve lubed a chain—watching us through the plate glass like he was prepping for an armed robbery, not a sale.
“Wait here,” I said, jaw tight. She started to get off, but I put a hand on her thigh. “I mean it. Here.”
She nodded, mute, and buried her face in her sleeve. I topped off the tank as quick as the pump would allow, digits on the ancient LCD moving so slow I thought about just siphoning from the clerk’s car out back. By the time I’d replaced the nozzle, another set of headlights speared the dusk. A low, hungry rumble, heavier than mine. Chrome and thunder. A Leatherback bike, all clubbed out with decals and custom skull work, barreled in and skidded to a stop beside me.
Rex.
He was a brick shithouse on wheels, old scars and new tattoos blending into an ombré of pain. The last time I’d seen him, I was prying his hand off a Louisville Sluggerduring the Kansas City bloodbath. His nose had never healed right, making him look like he was always smelling something rotten.
He clocked me, then the bike, then the girl. Everything about his face said he was doing the math, and none of the answers were coming up peaceable.
I slotted myself between him and Melissa, fingers already dancing at my belt, where the handle of my Glock peeked out from beneath my jacket.
“Evening,” I said, casual as a man ordering fries. “Gas up and get the fuck out, or do we gotta make this social?”
He smirked. The kind of smirk you practice in the mirror after a bar fight. “You got balls, Deadman. I’ll give you that.”
“It’s Augustine.”
He sniffed, ignoring the correction. “Didn’t figure you for a Leatherback. Or a kidnapper.” His voice was always a little too loud, meant to intimidate or distract. It just annoyed the shit out of me.
“Didn’t figure you for a snitch,” I shot back. “And yet here you are.” Rex had a notorious reputation for leaking information.
The clerk was staring at us, lip quivering. I caught his reflection in the window, eyes bugged out like cartoon eggs. Melissa had gone perfectly still.
Rex took a slow step forward, boots scuffing dust. “You know you’re riding a patch that’s not yours, yeah?”
I shrugged. “Guy I took it from didn’t seem to mind. He was dead.”
He barked a laugh, then looked at the bike more closely. The Leatherback logo—a flayed armadillo with angel wings—was still splattered with the last owner’s blood. Rex’s eyes flicked to my hands, where the knuckles were still split and crusted from the fight.
“Who’s the girl?” he asked, cocking his head.
“None of your business.”
He grinned, every tooth a threat. “Looks like club business to me.”
I dropped my voice, low and poisonous. “If it was club business, you’d have backup.”
He didn’t like that. Not at all. He shifted his weight, shoulders rolling forward like a batter stepping up to the plate. “So that’s how it is,” he said. “You know I can’t just let you ride out.”
