Sierra clung desperately tight to her captor as the bike accelerated hard. She was terrified, unable to see and afraid she was going to fall to her death any moment. The blindfold, the wind in her hair, and the roar of the bike made her feel like she was traveling a million miles an hour.
As they rode, she became resigned to her fate. She thought about ripping the blindfold from her face but she was too afraid of falling off to release her hold on the man she clung to. She was certain she was going to die, either in a fall from the speeding motorcycle or at the hands of the men who had kidnapped her. She began to cry silently, afraid to make noise, her tears soaking into the cloth around her face. It was just another knock in the life of hard knocks she’d endured. She was tired, so tired that, perhaps, death would be welcome.
Sierra Mora, only child of Pedro and Camilla Mora, had been born in San Diego, California twenty-two years before. Her mother had been pregnant with Sierra when her father had finally scraped together enough money to pay a Coyote to smuggle them into the United States. He was a hardworking man, looking for something better for his family, eking out a living by working whatever jobs he could find. When Sierra was old enough, her mother began working at a rundown motel as the sole housekeeper, working long hours at substandard wages, little Sierra helping where she could, but mainly playing by running up and down the halls or jumping on the beds while her mother worked. Things had been reasonably normal in her life at first, going to school, making friends. Then, just after her fifteenth birthday, everything changed.
The Coyotes had returned and demanded more money, money they didn’t have. She still remembered arriving home from her babysitting job and being held at knifepoint as the Coyotes threatened her father, saying unless he paid them five-thousand dollars they were going to turn his family in to INS. All but Sierra. Being a citizen, she couldn’t be deported, but she was already beginning to bloom into the beauty she would become, and there were other ways she could pay her debt.
Her father had tried to meet their demand. He and her mother took on additional work, and Sierra had even contributed the money she’d saved to buy her own car, but no matter what he did, it was never enough, soon enough. After another visit from the Coyotes had left them penniless, he’d packed his family into the wheezy Ford wagon and began their journey east. They were headed for New York City to lose themselves in the bustling crowd. They drove as far as the gas in the car took them, then stopped to live out of their car for a week or two until they scraped together enough money for more gas and food.
They were driving north and east, trying to get away from the stifling summer heat, when their car had suffered another in a long series of breakdown as they drove along I-95 in Nevada. They were stopping in large towns, working for a week or two to scrape together gas money, then moving on. They were halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada when the car thumped loudly and steam began to pour from the hood.
They were in the middle of nowhere, the stark desert stretching around them in every direction. The only signs of life were stunted scrub bushes, the occasional cactus, and the three weary and sweaty people trudging along the road. The nearest town was Gallup, a grueling ten mile walk in the blistering summer heat, but they had no choice as staying with the car was inviting death through dehydration.
She snorted as she remembered that walk. The Nevada desert and its blistering heat were so unlike the consistently beautiful San Diego weather. Little did she know at the time that Gallup, Nevada, population 2,200, would become her permanent home.
With no money, and fewer prospects, her father had worked long enough to arrange to have the car towed into town and inspected by the local mechanic. The news was grim. Their Ford had suffered a catastrophic failure in the desert heat and would never run again. The Candills, a good Christian family, had taken them in, allowing them to live in one room of the motel they owned, her mother working once again as housekeeper while her father searched for work.
It hadn’t been much of a life, but it was something. She’d started school in the Esmeralda Unified School District that fall, and hadn’t left since.
She tightened up as the bike suddenly slowed, its bass rumble burbling to a stop then falling silent. She began to weep silently. She thought she was ready to die, but now that the time was at hand, she was deathly afraid. She could feel the man she clung to moving and she imagined he was pulling his gun. She whimpered quietly, her tears soaking the cloth around her head.
“Help her off,” Colt said just before a pair of strong hands pulled her from the bike.
“Please!” she begged, crying in earnest now. “Please don’t hurt me!”
Her blindfold was removed and as she blinked, squinting in the blinding sun, the five men stood before her. “We’re not going to hurt you, Sierra. I told you that,” the largest man said. He was clearly the leader, the one who had been giving orders at the store and the one the other men deferred to.
“You’re going to let me go?” she sniffed, trying to dry her tears, unable to believe they would keep their word.
“That’s right. I told you we would. There’s no reason to kill you.”
She sniffed again and wiped her eyes. “No. I won’t tell anyone anything! I swear!”
The big man smiled, his face twisted by his mask. “Tell them what? You don’t know anything.”
“No! I don’t! But I won’t talk to anyone! I promise!”
The man chuckled. “Suit yourself. Town is about twenty miles that way,” he said pointing.
“Twenty miles?” she gasped. “I could die out here!”
The man shrugged. “You could, but you’re young. You’ll probably make it. Maybe a car will come along and pick you up.”
She looked up and down the deserted road. There were no cars in sight. There were never any fucking cars around, plus she had no idea of where she was; the surrounding desert looking the same all around her. She wasn’t even sure town was in the direction he pointed. Maybe he is sending me in the wrong direction, making me walk until the desert did his work for him. “How do I know that’s the way back to town?” she asked, already sweating in the broiling heat.
The man chuckled. “Babe, if I wanted you dead, there’re a lot better ways to do it. Town’s back the way we came, about twenty miles.” Colt watched as the woman hesitated. “Look, going or staying, your choice, but make up your mind. In case you forgot, we’re in a hurry.”
“You have any water?”
He shook his head in exasperation. “Does it look like I’ve got any fucking water? Get down on your knees and I’ll piss in your mouth if you want water.”
She wiped at the sweat trickling down her face. She didn’t want to go with them, but being abandoned in the middle of fucking nowhere Nevada didn’t hold a lot of appeal either.
He looked her over again. Tall for a woman, with large brown eyes, long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a body that would give a preacher a hard-on, Sierra was hot, and not just from the Nevada sun. “Tell you what. Come back to the clubhouse with us. Do what I tell you, when I tell you, for twenty-four hours, and I will take you back to town and drop you off. Not Gallup, obviously, but somewhere you can use a phone.”
“What do you want me to do?” She noticed the other four men grinning and looking away to hide their smiles. “Oh,” she said as realization dawned.
“Your choice,” he said. “I’m not going to make you come with us, but if you do, you realize it’s because you choose to, and that means you choose to do what I say. Got it? You don’t live up to your end of the bargain I will chuck your ass out in the middle of desert and you can take your chances with the vultures.”
“How far?”
“How far, what? How far will I ask you to go? All the way.”
“How far from here to the clubhouse?”
“About an hour. Trust me, you are as close to civilization as you are going to get right now.”
“Take me to Reno, or Vegas, when the twenty-four hours are up?”
All five of the men laughed. “You seem to think you are in a position to bargain.” Colt looked her over again, thinking of the pleasure she could give a man. “Fine. Reno.”
“And you won’t hurt me?”
He smiled, a dangerous smile that sent a chill straight to her womanhood. “Only as much as you want me to.”
Sierra looked around her again. She couldn’t tell about their faces, twisted and distorted by the masks, but all five were good looking guys, built and cut to perfection. But the leader was more, a mashup of bad boy swagger and Greek god. To get out of Gallup she could lie on her back for him for twenty-four hours, even if his face was like a pig. Hell, I’ve done it for less. “I’ll go with you.”
“Okay,” Colt said, his voice low and dangerous. “But let’s get one thing straight: you don’t live up to your end of the bargain, I’m kicking your ass out in the middle of the desert. You talk, to anyone, about anything you hear or see, and I will track you down and kill you. Got it?”
She nodded, suddenly afraid again.
He studied her a moment then pulled off the mask that was suffocating him. The other four followed his lead. “I’m Colt. That’s Fletcher, Harrison, Gunner, and Nic,” Colt said, introducing each man in turn.
Sierra swallowed hard. She was willing to lie on her back for Colt, even if he had the face of goat, but his piercing blue eyes, strong chin and cheekbones, and full lips completed his look. He is fucking gorgeous, she gasped to herself. Yes, she could certainly lie on her back for him. “Sierra. Sierra Mora,” she said while looking down shyly, but glanced back up to Colt while keeping her head down. She even liked the name. Colt…strong and masculine. The name fits him.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here. The heat is killing me.” He took the strip of fabric and began to tie it around her head again. “Sorry about this, but only members know where the clubhouse is,” he said as he covered her eyes.
She said nothing and allowed him to do it without protest. Her die was cast, and she would take what fate dealt her. Letting Colt fuck me for a day is a small price to pay to get out of Gallup and to have a new start. She stood still until someone helped her onto the bike as it rumbled into life. She wrapped her arms around Colt and pulled herself tight just before the bike surged away with a deep rumble.
She was leaving behind the only life she knew as an adult, such as it was. She was living in the same room she’d been living in since their arrival in Gallup with little money and fewer possessions. Some life.
Her father had finally gone to work at Death Valley Rock Crawlers, an adventure firm in Gallup that conducted rock crawling adventures in their specially-prepared Jeeps. Things were going as well as could be expected as they scrimped and saved to buy a car, until the last couple of months of her senior year in high school. That’s when INS had shown up and swept up her parents, along with several other locals, in a raid. She didn’t know who had tipped them, but it didn’t matter. Her parents were processed and sent back to Mexico and she’d been on her own since.
The Candills had allowed her to stay in their motel, and had given her a job, but she was just scraping by. She worked in Candill Grocery from noon until it closed at seven. She then went to the Blue Plate Diner, also owned by the Candills, to work from seven until it closed at nine. Then it was back to the Dew Drop Inn, where she cleaned rooms if required. All for minimum wage. She was netting about $50 a month after expenses, but she had nothing to show for it. A few clothes, a bicycle she used to get around town, a small automatic .22 caliber pistol, and nothing else.
Gallup had sprung up just north of Death Valley in the early 1900s when Silver was discovered nearby, but by the 1950s, the mines had run dry and the town had started the long, slow slide into oblivion. Now there was a gas station and convenience store, also owned by the Candills, the grocery store, the diner and the motel that served those that came out for the rock crawling. There were a few other businesses, but no opportunities.
As the wind whipped her hair, Sierra knew she was taking a terrible gamble, but anything, anything, was better than the unrelenting, soul-crushing, existence she’d been living for the last four years. If she could just survive the next day, and get to Reno, she could start fresh. Maybe go to school and get an education. Just twenty-four hours, she kept repeating to herself as the bike belted along. I can take anything for twenty-four hours.