Chapter Twenty
The Gilas ran for their bikes as Joey slammed through the neighborhood and headed for the highway. Hoodoo fired up his bike and felt a weight behind him. He turned.
Tracy looked at him, “Well? What are you waiting for?” she asked. “He’s getting away!”
Hoodoo grinned as she grabbed his waist and he winked once to Val who was being embraced by Rocky. She blushed, but the grin was about to split her face in two. Val gave the bike an extra rev and Rocky’s hand went to her hips. She wiggled a bit. It was a good thing Val was as small as she was, Rocky took most of the seat on his own, but there was just enough for a smallish woman, if she leaned into him hard enough. She did.
Hoodoo shook his head. He was starting to wonder just how good of an idea introducing the two of them had been.
The Gilas took to the streets, Hoodoo at the fore, Mad-dog and his trike coming behind. A wingman would normally ride in a staggered formation, so they were side by side with one slightly ahead of the other, but since Mad-dog had switched up to a trike, he took more room in the lane than normal. In most circumstances, a trike would have put him in the rear, but he was still Hoodoo’s wingman and so The Gilas were led by a giant and behind him, a simple abnormally large bruiser on a trike.
The day Mad-dog had traded in for the three-wheeler had been a confusing time for the group. He’d ridden a customized bike for years and then, without warning, he’d come running this thing. He’d been reluctant to explain the sudden change, but when he’d been pressed he haltingly admitted that he’d wrenched his back and was having trouble keeping the bike upright at stoplights.
“I didn’t know you hurt your back.” Hoodoo had been shocked at the news. “It’s permanent?”
“Well, it’s a reoccurring injury,” Mad-dog said and clammed up. It was a month before Hoodoo found out that Mad-dog had drawn once-a-week babysitting for his two nieces while his sister worked on Sundays. She couldn’t get a sitter and the daycare was closed for the day. It turned out that Mad-dog took his charges on piggy-back rides and occasional stroller trips to the zoo. Hoodoo said nothing to anyone else, simply extoling the virtues of trikes and the benefit of having someone to carry the keg.
When the girls got older, they’d both be able to ride in the rear seat, not something that could be done on a bike. The man looked like a pugilistic Viking, but he loved those kids and every Sunday night after he left his duty, he was always a lot more relaxed and his ready smile grew exponentially.
Now the problem was a different one. A trike has the weight in the rear, it’s a rear-wheel drive, meaning the rear wheels were where the power was. The front… well, if Mad-dog got too carried away, the front had a tendency to rise off the asphalt, making steering a problem and if he hit the accelerator too hard, the front and rear wheels would change places. In the air.
Mad-dog came close. The trike rose and started to lift, and he cut the accelerator. He was still down far enough to catch it before it got out of control, but the rest of them had to slow down or ride up the back of him. It cost them time. Joey was already almost out of sight; he hadn’t had to contend with traffic in the neighborhood, and with Mad-dog’s delay, he was taking the on ramp at the highest speed he could coax out of the thing, well out in front, although thankfully not impossible to catch. It was a powerful machine, he could pull a great deal of power from it.
If he knew how to ride it properly. Hoodoo was counting on the man’s inexperience now as they took off after him.
A Crocker driven by one lightweight man could outrun a custom chopper weighted down with two people. Provided the rider of the Crocker was good. Joey… wasn’t. He’d presumably spent a great deal of time on his bike, but Hoodoo had seen it when he came to Hoodoo’s booth to pick a fight. It was originally a sportster, a good decent bike, but not the largest, not as powerful as the custom-made Crocker. It was like having a good reliable sports car and suddenly driving off in a Lamborghini. It was the same problem Mad-dog had, only on steroids and two wheels instead of three.
In the case of the Crocker, if he accelerated too quickly, the bike wouldn’t – most likely – become airborne. The front and rear wheels would trade places while staying on the ground. But with two wheels, there was nothing to keep the bike upright.
Joey narrowly avoided laying the bike down as he broke onto the highway and even then came very close to digging into the soft loam of the shoulder before he got the powerful machine under control. That bought The Gilas time to catch up. They poured on the gas, Hoodoo’s front wheel lifted as he dropped the bike into the next gear. Mad-dog was standing on the pegs, leaned over the forks, using his body weight to keep the front wheel on the ground.
The other Gilas were close in, they probably would run around Mad-dog, but his place as second had been so ingrained in them that it was like breaking a taboo to shoot past him. In a moment, he’d had enough momentum to keep the trike in a line and still open the throttle wide.
Hoodoo heard sirens behind them, but he wasn’t stopping for anything. His speedometer climbed past 90 and kept going, but Joey was tantalizingly close. They had probably been called for the fight and followed them on the road. This was going to require more than just a slap on the wrist, this was going to be a very long problem and Hoodoo felt bad that Rocky and Tracy were dragged into this with them. On the other hand, Hoodoo smiled big at the thought. Tracy had handled herself quite well in that fight and he couldn’t be prouder of her. This was no dainty princess waiting to be rescued, and it was high time he learned that.
The feel of her behind him, her head between his shoulder blades was a warmth he didn’t realized he’d missed this much. She’d told him that riding behind him didn’t do much in the way of scenery, but he made an excellent wind break. Like sitting behind a brick wall.
“Thank you!” she yelled in his ear. They had determined long ago that Hoodoo’s normal speaking voice was the same pitch and bass tone as the engine in his bike, so he didn’t try to return the conversation. He’d bought some Bluetooth headsets that let them talk to each other, but he’d not had those out in a long time. Not since Tracy was in Phoenix. The headsets were still in Phoenix. Somewhere.
“I know I said I can take care of myself,” Tracy said in his ear. “And I can.” Hoodoo thought maybe she was finished, but she added after a pause. “But I don’t necessarily want to. You know what I mean? I really…” her hands moved to his thighs. “I really missed you, Hoodoo. I… I love you!”
Hoodoo swallowed hard. If ever there was a time to answer, this was it. But there was no way she’d ever hear his words, and he wasn’t sure he could get them out. Here they were in a high-speed chase, risking life and limb together against a common enemy. If that wasn’t love, nothing was. But he still needed a way to express himself to her, and all he could think to do was to take his left hand off the handlebar and reached back to squeeze her thigh, trying not to smile so wide that he started eating bugs. Regaining his grip, he hit the accelerator again, hoping to catch up to Joey at the curve.
There was a turn ahead, where the road climbed one of the many hills and had to double back on itself to do so. The speed limit dropped to 45. Hoodoo had once taken at 60 and barely gotten through the curve. Even at that he’d survived it by dropping his speed before the curve ended.
He dropped it now, The Gilas fell back with him.
Joey sped up. The road turned more sharply than he could. Even when he fell, the bike righted itself, bouncing on some berm and the rear tire dug in for one last burst of speed.
Joey wound up breaking two ribs and his right leg. He was lucky. The drop off on the curve had a small ledge where he landed, easily obtainable by the side of the road. The ambulance was able to get to him without special equipment. The Crocker never fell – even when its rider bailed.
The bike rose, leaping and flying through the air, arching across the chasm and crashing into a boulder on the other side of the drop-off. The little piece of history shattered, becoming so much shrapnel.
The frame twisted, shearing off bits of steel; the tires warped and blew; the motor, so painfully reconstructed with original parts meticulously tracked down and milled, impacted on the rock and dug a hole in solid granite. The oil pan sheared away, painting the side of the rock with the lifeblood of the machine; the heads cracked and the bike fell, backward into the rift, a fiery angel falling with all the screaming fury of twisted metal and spraying gasoline.
It rolled, shedding more pieces, until it came to rest beside a scrubby pine tree and lay with the bent wheels in the air and the leather seats punctured by the tree’s lower limbs. The Crocker was more than totaled. It was completely destroyed.
“Thank God,” Tracy whispered.
“Because Joey’s alive?” Hoodoo asked as they drew to a stop at the side of the road. He could see Joey trying to sit up, looking around with a dazed expression on his face, not even feeling the pain just yet, although given the angle of his leg, he would.
“Yeah.” Tracy said, her gaze on the far boulder. “Let’s say that.”