CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Riding down Highway 99, flanked by his Steel Jockey brothers, it was hard not to feel invincible, like kings, like gods, especially when they turned the corner and the panorama of the San Joaquin Valley spread out beneath them. It was everything a kid who had grown up with nothing could ever want. But that innocence, Joe had come to realize, was a mirage, an illusion. It was for young guys like Wings, the prospects, and the newly patched. Joe had watched his best friend bleed out. He knew it was just as easy to ride into death as it was to ride into glory. Now, though, the various facts of the matter swirled like a storm in his head: Aaron's story, Brenda's involvement, and what Tony had told him. The so-called Reaper who had shivved him riding off in Fox Keene's BMW. A break-in Walnut Creek, Tony had said. They just ransacked the place. He reached up and clutched the ruby hanging around his neck, his gloved hands curling around it like a vise. Ruby.

 

Methodically, as if he were on autopilot, he scanned the road for a place to pull over, and then put on the brakes and skidded to a stop on the narrow shoulder. He stood in shadow, his back up against a sheer rock cliff where the highway curved upward. Up ahead, just before the point where his view disappeared, he saw A.J and Rex slow down, too. A.J. signaled Rex, then U-turned back, but Joe ignored him. Hand trembling, he reached up to undo the clasp of the necklace. The gem looked dark and nebulous against his black leather glove. He held it up to his ear and shook it, greeted by a distinctive clicking noise. Quickly, he yanked off his gloves and used his fingernail to pry up the three claws of the gold backing. He tipped it upside down, and a tiny metal key slipped into his hand. As he stood there staring at it, a lot of things became clear.

 

He grabbed the handlebars and wheeled his bike around in the other direction before vaulting back on and kicking it into gear.

 

"Where the hell are you going?" he heard A.J. shouting at him.

 

"Back to Colt's."

 

"Are you fucking kidding me, Ryan? We've got a job to do here."

 

"So do it," he shouted back, though he had sped off so quickly he was certain A.J. couldn't hear him anymore. "And I'll do mine."

 

***

 

If there was one thing Ruby knew about herself, it was that to stay sane, she had to keep busy. She needed a task, the more repetitive and mind-numbing the better. Joe had instructed her to stay away from the bar, but back at Holly’s, she could vacuum the stairs, wash the breakfast dishes, strip all the sheets from all the beds, wash and dry them, and put them back on. Normally Holly would have laughed and told her to relax, but today, she said nothing, just nodded and pointed to whatever chore could use doing.

 

The house gleaming like new, Ruby was sitting in the front yard crouched down in front of Kyle's Dyna Glide, methodically waxing it, top to bottom, in deliberate, intricate patterns. She knew if she were to let it wander for even a second, tentacles like a sea monster would come up to strangle her, memories of a nightmare she'd had days before. Visions of Joe lying lifeless on the pavement, amber-gold eyes staring up at nothing, as Kyle once had, a trickle of red blood. She'd cast her lot in with him now. If he were to never come back...she gritted her teeth and swiped again with the wax. Somewhere down the street, she was vaguely aware of a car pulling up and its door slamming.

 

"Ruby?"

 

She glanced up. George McCombs III, the ex-Jockey she'd met in Mexico, stood there, wearing one of his expensive plum-colored Hugo Boss blazers like armor. He pulled off his sunglasses, revealing his memorable blue eyes that looked so striking with his thick dark hair. But there were noticeable dark circles underneath, and a pinprick cut on his neck had been bandaged. Overall, he looked more haggard than he had when she had last seen him, as if his sleep had been troubled.

 

Behind him was Tony, pointing a pistol, which offered her little comfort. She knew disarming Tony in his current state would be like taking a squirt gun away from a three-year-old, and George, though he looked disheveled now, was more experienced than his playboy persona suggested.

 

"It's Joe," he said, and everything suddenly seemed to move in slow motion to Ruby, her companions’ faces blurry streaks as her heart pumped blood. Joe...

 

"He's okay," explained George. "They had a dust-up with the Reapers, and he took a bullet."

 

Ruby's hands flew to her mouth, but George held up a hand to reassure her. "They've got him in a safe house and they're taking care of him. But he's asking for you."

 

Almost instantly, with one last surge of adrenaline, Ruby's heart calmed. Now was the time to be skeptical. "Why didn't any of the other Jockeys come? Are they...?" She thought fleetingly of Morgan and Holly, of the other women in the parking lot.

 

"They're banged up, but okay. Joe got the worst of it. They're still waiting for the heat to die down. They thought I'd attract less attention," he said, pointing to his black BMW with tinted windows, parked a little ways down the street.

 

"Why the hell should we believe anything you're saying?" Tony demanded.

 

"I'm one of you," insisted George.

 

"Used to be," said Tony.

 

"Do you trust him, Ruby?" Ruby swiveled her head to the front door, relieved to glimpse Holly, all five-feet-nothing of her, standing there holding a gleaming kitchen knife, its point suspended on the tip of the index finger of her other hand. Ruby knew instantly it wasn't the one in the wooden block that she used for chopping onions. This one she kept honed for another purpose.

 

"You hurt this girl, and you'll answer to us," Holly growled.

 

"But I--"

 

"We don't care who you are, or who you used to be. The Jockeys will ruin you. We will put a torch to your business, your house, to everything you own. To your goddamn dog. And when that's over, I will personally cut your nuts off with a rusty razor, and then feed them to you with ketchup."

 

George nodded. A trickle of sweat ran down his face. "Got it."

 

Ruby looked from Holly to Tony to George. But the only face she was seeing was Joe's. "I'm going."

 

Just like that, Holly nodded and put the knife down. "That's all right, then." She came and kissed Ruby on both cheeks. "When you love an outlaw, you do what you have to do." She understood that caution, that reason, meant nothing when there was any chance that Joe needed her by his side.

 

She turned to George. "But I'm going my way."

 

"What do you mean?"

 

She was already straddled atop Kyle's bike. "Hop on."

 

***

 

Joe pulled into the alley a few blocks away, determined to approach quietly and on foot, in case someone had beaten him to the Curtis house. He crept up behind Colt's pole shed, the miscellaneous parts like deformed animals helping to keep him out of sight. A chickadee sounded from the orange tree. He kept one hand on the key in his pocket.

 

Joe had never been able to figure out why Kyle had gone to the Stop 'n' Shop warehouse alone the night he was killed. It had been years since he'd worked there, and he had to have known it was dangerous. ATF was already breathing down their necks, trying to figure out where the sudden influx of Russian weapons was coming from, and their fellow Jockeys had started to ask questions. It was only a matter of time before Fox decided he was too much of liability and eliminated him, or at least hired one of his thugs to do it. But now Joe knew that Kyle, as oblivious as he’d seemed, hadn’t been totally ignorant of what was going down, and he’d had a backup plan. This key was it, the key to getting at whatever he had stashed at the Stop 'n' Shop in a place where only Ruby would think to look.

 

This was why Fox had wooed her, plied her with clothes, money, and an entire college education. It wasn't only that winning her opened up doors to every racket in Northern California. It was that it literally opened a door. Not only power, but greed. Fox, all that time, had looked at Ruby's flushed cheeks and gray-green eyes and seen not a woman with astonishing courage and an achingly beautiful soul, but an object. A prize. It made Joe's stomach hurt to think that he might have put his hands on her. Some disgusted part inside of him told him that he had, or at least tried.

 

It gave Joe at least a little satisfaction to know he'd thrown a serious wrench in Fox’s plans by taking Ruby away from him. But Fox hadn't given up. He was pretty sure the ex-Jockey had enlisted Aaron and Brenda to keep her trapped in Mexico, but hadn't counted on Tony being there to help her escape. Fox probably didn't want Brenda at all, Joe realized with a surge of adrenaline. He wanted Ruby. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if the whole kidnapping had been staged; he didn't know if Aaron was in on it or Brenda was, but somebody wasn't telling the truth.

 

But what it boiled down to was that Ruby was back at Colt's with no one but a debilitated Tony to protect her while the rest of the Jockeys were headed to the Harborview Inn on a wild goose chase. And Joe himself had been insanely, wretchedly stupid, he scolded himself as he edged behind the orange tree and along the fence bordering the neighbors’ property. There was no movement in the house, he remarked with a nervous swallow. Kyle’s bike was not where he had last seen it parked. What if--

 

He felt somebody grab his jacket from behind and jerk him backward, and the familiar click of a pistol cocked. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a greasy-haired man with acne scars, holding a gun to his throat.