Chelsea pulled on her clothes and then picked up Chopper’s clothes and his phone and carried them out front. At first she didn’t see him, so she began walking up the cobblestone road toward the front gate. It took her almost a full five minutes before she was close enough to the wrought iron gates to see him standing there. He looked pitiful. He was naked and leaning into the open gate with his head pressed into it. She approached him gently, stopping about a foot away and saying, “Chopper?”

He looked up at her and there was a look in his eyes that was almost comparable to what she’d seen in the eyes of people she’d known who had lost loved ones. She wondered if he didn’t have insurance. Surely he did. All of their stuff was still on the bike. Not that either of them had brought much. Maybe he had something on the bike that she didn’t know about? “He took my bike,” he said, sounding almost as if he was in shock.

She held out his clothes and softly said, “I’m sorry. Maybe you should get dressed and we can call the police.” He took the clothes and like a zombie, he got dressed. He was still staring out past the gates the entire time, like he expected the guy to change his mind suddenly and turn around and come back. When he finished dressing, she handed him his phone. He looked at it for a second like he didn’t know what to do with it, and then at last he used his thumb to pull up a number and pressed it. He hadn’t had to look it up, so she knew he wasn’t calling the police even before he said:

“Dax, someone stole my chopper.” Chelsea let him talk, but quietly reached out for his hand. He took hers and she led him slowly back up to the house while he told Dax what had happened. They were almost to the house when he told Dax he’d keep in touch, ended the call, and then used his thumb to find something else in the phone. He stopped at the steps that led up to the door and made another call. “Rusty, it’s Chopper. Hey, man, someone stole my bike. It was right in front of your door.” He was quiet for a second and then he said, “Fuck, no. Damn it! I’m so stupid. I just assumed it reset itself when it closed behind us.” He listened again and then said, “Dax told me to let you know I was going to call the cops so they can check with you to make sure I have permission to be here. Thanks, Rusty. I’m sorry for the trouble.” He ended the call and looked at Chelsea. “The gates closed behind us, but I should have gotten off the bike and reset the alarm. I’m so stupid. Fucker probably just climbed over the gate.”

“No, you’re not stupid. Please don’t do that. This isn’t your fault. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Who would have thought that someone would steal anything out here, especially behind these iron gates? You want me to look up the number for the police?” He nodded, still looking numb, and handed her the phone. Chelsea looked up the number, entered it in the phone, and handed it back to him. Once he told them who he was, where he was, and what happened, he ended the call and they went inside to wait.

It was half an hour later before the police got there and Chopper was growing restless. Chelsea sat on the couch and watched him pace back and forth. She wished that there was something she could do for him. He just looked so miserable. When the police rang the doorbell, she was going to get the door, just so she didn’t feel so helpless, but Chopper rushed toward it, not giving her a chance.

“Mr. Crowley?”

“Yes,” Chopper said. “I’m Justice Crowley.”

“You called to report a stolen vehicle?”

“Yes, come in please.” The two uniformed officers entered the house and when they got to the living room, Chelsea got up and said:

“Can I offer you something to drink? I’m not sure what we have, but I can look.”

“No thank you,” the older of the two told her. “Please have a seat, miss.” Chelsea sat back down, and the cop said, “Can you describe the vehicle?” Chelsea listened to Chopper tell the cop about his bike. She could hear the tremor in his voice as he talked about all the custom work he’d had done to it over the years. When he finished the officer asked, “So approximately how much would you say this bike is worth?”

“Fifty or sixty grand,” Chopper said. The policemen looked at each other and the younger one said:

“You’re from Massachusetts?”

“Yes, Boston.”

“What do you do down there?”

Chelsea saw Chopper’s jaw clench before he said, “I work on bikes and cars.”

“For who?”

“Why are you interrogating me? You should be out there looking for my fucking chopper!” Chelsea reached over and put her hand on his arm. He covered it with his own, but she could feel how tense his muscles were.

“We’re just getting some background, sir. Is this your home?”

“No. It belongs to Rusty Daniels. He said you can call him if you need confirmation of our right to be here. I’m a Southside Skull. I’m sure that’s what all your questions are about, right?” Before the cop could answer that, Chopper said, “I’ve been working since I was thirteen years old, putting almost every penny I made into that bike. It’s been my passion. I’m good at it, and I love my bike. Meanwhile, yes, I am a Skull. But I’m twenty-six years old and you’re welcome to check this with Boston PD. I haven’t been arrested since I was a juvenile and then it was for petty shit like racing and underage drinking. The same shit other teenagers do. I’m not the fucking criminal here. I’m the victim and I’d appreciate it if you treated me as such.”

Chelsea was trying to keep a straight face. She was proud of him for standing up for himself, and the cop looked like he was re-evaluating what he was going to say next. When he finally spoke he said, “Did you see the person who took your bike?”

“I saw his back. He had on a leather jacket, brown. His hair was dark. He was probably close to my size…maybe a little shorter.”

“Do you know how he got on the property?”

“He must have climbed the gates. I didn’t reset the alarm after we came in. Can you fingerprint the gates?” He seemed excited about that, but the cops didn’t look enthusiastic. In their defense, unless they knew exactly where he climbed over, that would take a hell of a lot of time. Rusty’s property wasn’t small and the gate and fence went all the way around it. The cop was smart enough not to touch that one yet. Instead he said:

“So, he climbed in, but wouldn’t he still need a code to get out?”

“I watched him leave,” Chopper said. “The gate must be on a sensor on this side because when he was about five feet away, it slid open. He barely made it through without damaging the bike. Fuck…If he wrecks it, I’ll…” Chopper caught himself before he spoke the rest of that sentence. He took his hand from Chelsea and ran it through his hair. The police stayed for another twenty minutes or so, asking the same questions only phrasing them differently, it seemed to Chelsea. When they were finally gone, she put her arms around him and they just sat there on the couch like that for a long time. When Chopper finally spoke he said, “I know you probably think I’m ridiculous, but that chopper means the world to me. It’s like…if you had a pet for a really long time and you put all this care and love into it and someone just came along and took it…but it was your fault because you left the gate open…”

“Stop beating yourself up, please,” she said. “Ithaca is not that big geographically, right? Maybe they’ll find him before the night is over.”

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it himself. “Or maybe he’ll just disappear into New York City and I’ll never see it again. The fucker better hope I never see him.”

Chelsea shivered. She’d been able to kind of block out the fact that she was traveling cross-country with a member of a motorcycle gang the whole time. But, the look on Chopper’s face at that moment reminded her. She knew he had a right to be angry, but there was murder in his eyes at that moment. Almost the same look he had when the guy tried to mow her down outside of the Waffle House… “Oh shit!”

“What?”

“You said brown leather jacket…”

Chopper jumped up to his feet. “Motherfucker. It’s the same guy! The one that’s been following you.” Suddenly Chelsea wished they could go back just a few minutes to when losing his chopper was his own fault, and not hers. She felt like shit.

“I’m sorry.”

He was pacing, but at the sound of her apology, he stopped and looked down at her. Pulling his brows together he said, “Sorry?” He reached for her hand and pulled her up to her feet. With his arms around her waist he said, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, but that son of a bitch just put one more nail in his coffin for making you think that you do. He’s stalking you. He tried to hurt you. Fuck! He’s probably been following us and watching us since we left Boston. None of that is your fault, Chelsea. But I promise you that I’m going to find out who this fucker is. He picked the wrong people to mess with.”

She wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t her fault, but she melded into him and his arms felt so good around her that she let it go. It wasn’t long before they made their way up the winding staircase to the huge master bedroom and called it a night. They didn’t have sex. Chopper just held her, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she actually slept peacefully through the night and woke up feeling refreshed. She was lying in that big bed next to him, staring up through the skylight in the ceiling with a smile on her face, when she heard the sounds of motorcycles…a lot of them. She looked over at Chopper, who had pulled open his eyes. He heard them too. The cavalry had arrived.