Chapter Eleven
Russ
We drove all night. My bike, it’s still parked in front of my apartment building. At least there’s a chance they don’t know Julie’s car. Now, it’s still dark outside, and we’re in a run-down motel two states away.
Julie hasn’t said anything since we got here.
It’s past midnight now. That means it’s Christmas Eve. This isn’t going to help either of us love the holidays.
It’s about four o’clock in the morning when Julie says, “It didn’t feel real. It never felt real. You kept telling me, but it didn’t seem possible.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Bringing you with me was the only way I could think to protect you.”
“Maybe we can talk to them,” she says. “Whatever the problem is, there’s got to be a way to get them to stop. What do they want? Money?”
“No, they want me,” I tell her. “There was a raid just before I met you, and our top guy, he got arrested. I was put in charge, but the man behind all of this, Auric, he wants to assure his position, and nothing’s gonna make him think he’s done that unless I’m dead and Rev’s dead, too.”
I almost want to tell her I tried to warn her, but that’s not going to help anything. It wouldn’t even make me feel any better. She kept coming back, even after I told her and told her how serious things were.
How could she have been prepared for this, though? This sort of thing doesn’t happen in her world.
“They can’t find us here, though, can they?” she asks.
“I don’t think we were followed, but they have their ways of tracking us down,” I tell her. “We don’t want to stay in one spot too long.”
“What do we do then?” she asks. “Do we just keep running until they find us? What kind of life is that?”
“It’s not what I wanted, but when Riley showed up, I didn’t know what else to do,” I tell her. “If I’d left you behind, they’d use you to get to me.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means they’d hurt you. They’d threaten to kill you unless I came back, and in the end, they’d kill both of us anyway.”
Her fingers pressed against her temples, rubbing, she says, “Oh my god.”
This is exactly what I didn’t want. I don’t know how I could let this happen. Yeah, she kept coming back no matter how often or fiercely I warned her, but she didn’t sign on for this.
“I need to go for a walk,” she says.
“You can’t,” I tell her. “It’s not safe outside.”
“So what are we going to do?” she yells. I motion for her to quiet down, and she does soften her voice. “We’re just going to sit here in this hotel room until they come for us? What happened to ‘We have to keep moving’ and all that talk?”
“We do have to keep moving,” I tell her, “but that’s a grab everything and run to the car kind of thing. We can’t just go out in the open and—”
She holds up her hand, saying, “I get it. I get it.” Now, she’s pacing the floor.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” I tell her.
“I thought bullets were cheap, and if I’m standing next to you, they’re not going to hesitate to get rid of a witness,” she says.
“I was trying to get you to leave,” I tell her. “I would have said anything to protect you.”
“Could you stop using that word?” she asks.
“If they come for us, I’ll find a way to keep you safe,” I tell her.
“But just throw your own life away, because who cares, right?” she asks, and then buzzes her lips. “Don’t you have guys on your side? You have friends in the club, it’s not all of them who are after you, is it?”
“Riley’s trying to round them all up,” I tell her.
“How are you going to know when she does that?” she asks. “How are you going to know if she’s done that?”
“She’s got the number to my burner cell, and nobody else knows I’ve got it.”
“We have a chance then?”
“Yeah,” I answer.
She sits down, saying, “All right then.”
Yardbird and those guys, I just hope they meant what they said about having my back. That, and I hope they’ve been recruiting some more help. I don’t know who my friends are, but I know there aren’t as many of them as there used to be.
I suggest we sleep in shifts, because Julie’s too stubborn to listen to me if I tell her she should get some sleep. She doesn’t mind so much sleeping first, though.
Time doesn’t mean much of anything, and I don’t know how fast it passes. I’m not looking at the clock.
I let Julie sleep until well after the sun is coming around the closed blinds. When I finally do look at the clock, it’s almost eleven. This would be a perfect time to leave without paying, but getting stopped by the cops isn’t going to help anything.
Walking over to the bed, I gently rub her shoulder. I tell her, “I need you to lock the door after me, and to use all of the locks. I’ve got to take care of the bill. Don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll knock four times fast, then three times slow, then four times fast again.”
She groans.
“You can sleep in the car,” I tell her. “We’ve got to get going.”
She gets up and shuffles to the door behind me.
“What’s the knock?” I ask.
“Four fast, three slow, four fast,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “Should I ask for a password or something, too?”
“No, just lock the door behind me, chain, bolt, and handle,” I tell her.
“Got it,” she says. Before I open the door, she touches my arm, saying, “Don’t take too long, okay?”
“If I’m not back in ten minutes, call the cops. Tell them everything you have to tell them,” he says.
As I’m closing the door behind me, she says, “I’m still not sure why we don’t do that anyway.”
The door latches behind me, and I stay close long enough to hear all of the locks fall into place. If I’m already dead, she can call the cops; but if she calls the cops before that, I won’t have any friends. We take care of business in-house.
It crosses my mind to put a call into Carlos, and see if I can get the family behind me, but they’re not going to interfere. They want to keep doing business, and it doesn’t matter if it’s me or Rev in charge, so long as the money keeps coming.
I get to the office and check out. I hand the clerk a $100 and don’t bother waiting for change.
On the way back to the room, I’m scanning the parking lot for anything out of place. Nothing I can see, but that doesn’t mean I’m not missing something.
We need to go back. Out here, she’s in just as much danger as I am, but if I can get her to a safe place near home, and hand myself over to Auric, she can get out of this alive.
I’m at the door now, and I knock four times fast, three times slow, and by then, the door is opening. I take one last look back toward the parking lot just in time to see a late ‘90s white Honda Civic with blacked out windows pulling in, and I duck into the room.
“We have to go,” I tell her. “We have to go right now.”
“What are we doing in here, then?” she asks.
I reach under the mattress and pull out the Glock 27 I hid underneath.
“Oh,” she says, her voice hushed.
“I don’t think they saw me, but if they know we’re here, they’re going to find us soon enough,” I tell her.
It’s already too late.
There’s a loud crack as the door’s kicked in, and I’m close enough the door hits me, knocking the gun out of my hand. I put myself between danger and Julie.
The next thing I know is I’m swinging as hard as I can, and then everything goes black.