Rising Heat (16 page)

On the interstate now, the asphalt was nothing but a blur as we ate up the miles. The wind buffeted my body, and I pulled my kerchief up over my nose and mouth. Kathy would be shielded from the brunt of it, but still, going this fast on a bike was a lot different than in a car. Her grip around my waist was incredibly tight. Amazing really. I kept one eye on my mirrors as I darted among cars, heading for the highway that would take me up into Boulder, then to my destination.

Kathy squealed as we whipped by a semi, the tug of its draft pulling at us through the suck and blow created by the massive machine. Horns blared as we passed cars and trucks as if they were sitting still.

Damn, despite the danger behind us, this was fun.

Behind me, Kathy shivered, the jerk of it moving through me. She was cold, and there was nothing I could do right now to warm her. I couldn’t slow down, and the sun was getting lower in the sky.

“You all right?” I shouted at her. She didn’t answer right away. “Kathy!”

“I-I’m okay!” she finally hollered back.

Glancing in my mirror, a single motorcycle headlight was behind me, but I was gaining ground, the white dot of the light growing smaller. Then, much to my relief, red and blue lights joined the white one. Hot damn. A state trooper was on my nemesis’s tail.

Near Broomfield now, I took the first off-ramp we came to. At the bottom, I turned a sharp right, my knee nearly touching the ground. Vice like arms hugged my middle as Kathy hung on for dear life. But I was proud of her. She leaned with me automatically. She was a quick learner.

The Flatiron Crossing Mall was ahead and I turned into the first entrance. I knew that security cameras were prevalent in places like this, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I quickly decelerated and found some shadows near the rear corner of a clothing boutique. Up against a dumpster and shaded by trees. I maneuvered my way through the narrow space and tucked the bike as far behind the dumpster as I could. Turning off the engine, I sat frozen for several seconds, focusing on the off-ramp I could see in the distance.

Nothing. No single light. No rumble. I waited another few minutes to be sure before turning to Kathy. “Are you all right?” I asked quietly.

She didn’t say anything at first, just trembled against me, her teeth chattering. I felt horrible. “Kathy, are you all right?” I tried to speak calmly, knowing it probably wouldn’t take much to incite her to panic.

“What the
hell,
Ash? Who… who are those guys? Part of your gang?”

“My ex-gang.” I turned to watch the off-ramp again.

“Why were they following you? Why were they shooting at us?”

Her grip was still tight around my waist as I tried to soothe her fears. “I don’t know, and I’m not sure. You’re not hurt?”

She was quiet for several seconds. “No, I’m not hurt, but I think I’m going to be sick.”

Kicking down the stand, I swung off the bike and quickly removed her helmet, dropping it to the ground. Peeling her off the back of the bike, I swept her into my arms and carried her farther into the shadows.

She retched, and I dropped her to her feet, holding her hair back as bile shot from her mouth. Then she began to cry. Not sobbing, panicky cries, more like a weeping. “I’m sorry, I hate to throw up. For some reason, I always cry afterwards.”

“It’s the adrenaline,” I said, crouching down beside her. “Kathy, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to—”

She reached out to grab my arm, and I hissed in pain. She pulled her hand away and stared wide-eyed at the blood on her palm.

“Your arm, Ash, you’re bleeding. Were you shot?”

“It’s not bad,” I said, not wanting to frighten her any more than she already was. I shrugged out of my jacket, and sure enough, it was a flesh wound, a six-inch-long furrow that looked more like a deep burn.

“Oh my God, do you have a first aid kit on your bike?” she asked, and I nodded toward a saddle bag. She rummaged through it and began cleaning the wound, her hands steady now, her face serious as she took care of me.

“You’ll make a great vet one day,” I told her as she secured the last bit of tape.

She smiled, but the gesture was tight, turning her lips into a thin line. “Thanks. I’ve been putting Band-Aids on my dolls and pets, anything that would let me, since before I can remember.”

After she put the kit away, I took her by the arms and turned her toward me. “Kathy, I’m so sorry.”

She jerked her arm away. “Answer one question for me.” Her blue eyes blazed up at me, and I swallowed.

“What’s that?”

“I can’t go home, can I?”

Kathy

T
he question came out softly but inside, I wanted to explode. This was fuckin’ unbelievable. I didn’t curse often, but this was crazy. I shook my head in the darkness of the shadows, not even caring that I had thrown up in front of Ash. Or cried. At the moment, I couldn’t care less what he thought.

An emotion I’m not familiar with slammed into me. Fury. Blinding white hot fury took over my nervous system; I could feel it spread like a disease through each cell. “What the hell, Ash!” I yelled and punched him in the chest. “What the hell!” I pounded again, one fist then the other. “What have you done?”

He didn’t stop me. He just stood there, letting me hit him, letting me get it out of my system until I didn’t even have the energy to do that.

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to that firm chest, holding me close while I shook uncontrollably. “I have a place we can go for a couple of days, Kathy. You’ll be safe there. I promise.”

“Safe from what, Ash?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice down. Nevertheless, it was filled with harsh anger, accusation, and disbelief.

“The Outlaws seem—”

“
Seem?”
I asked in disbelief. “They
shot
at you. At us!” I tried to pull away, to look up at him, but he held me closer. “If I go back home, they’ll find me because they think I’ll know where to find you, won’t they?”

“Just for a few days,” he said, his hands stroking up and down my back. “I’ll take care of this. I promise. I just want to make sure that you’re safe—”

I swiped at his uninjured arm. “And how am I supposed to go to work?” The panic began to build again. “It’s obvious that they know where I work, Ash. Take a couple of days off? I just got promoted to assistant manager! I can’t afford to take days off. I have bills to pay!”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Right now, I just need you to trust me. You can’t go home. You can’t go back to work. It’s not safe.”

I banged my forehead against his chest. “I’m so angry with you right now, Ash. So frickin’ angry!” I don’t know whether it was anger or fear, perhaps even both, but my eyes filled with hot tears that spilled over and made their way down my cheeks. “I don’t need this, Ash.” I shook my head, like I was trying to shake all this craziness away. “I don’t need this. I can’t deal with this.” I looked up at him, the anger melting into uncertainty. “If I don’t go to work, I won’t get paid enough to pay my rent. For crying out loud, Ash, I was just promoted to assistant manager, that extra dollar an hour means a lot to me. If I don’t show up for work, my jackass manager will fire me!”

“I said I’d take care of it,” he said, glancing between me and the off-ramp. I glanced that way too but didn’t see anything but cars. “I think we lost him,” he said softly, wiping a tear away with his thumb.

“Lost
who?”
I nearly shouted and jerked away from his touch. He let me go this time.

He looked down at me. Genuine regret wore heavy on his features but, regret wouldn’t help me one bit.

“You got a cell phone on you?”

I glowered up at him. “Of course I have my cell phone!”

“Let me use it for a minute, will you?”

I frowned. “Where’s yours?”

Without replying, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, placed it on the ground, and stomped on it. Then, much to my surprise, he picked it up, removed the backing and pulled out the Sim card before ripping out the battery. Tossed the Sim card into the dumpster, the battery into a drain, and stooped to pick up the pieces, tossing them into a trash bin nearby.

“I don’t have one.”

Thanks to my crime show addiction, I had no need to question why he’d destroyed his phone. So they couldn’t track him. Couldn’t ping his location. But could they have done that anyway? You needed the cops to do that, or at least I thought so. Or else superb hacking skills and software. I didn’t think a motorcycle gang would have such skills or connections. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was possible. I reached for my flip phone, took off the back, pocketing the battery. He watched me. “We better move away from here before you use my phone.”

Anyone who knew that we were together would also eventually identify me, and depending on how far their reach, the motorcycle gang might even be able to track me the same way. It wouldn’t take much to put two and two together if my phone pinged in the same place that Ash’s had suddenly shut off.

He nodded. “Smart thinking.” He gestured with his chin. “Come on, climb back on. I’ll take you to a safe place.”

I refused to move. “Ash, I can’t go with you. I don’t want to get involved in all this. I have nothing to do with any of it. I have a job. I have
two
jobs. I have school. I can’t just walk away from it all like you did.” I stared at the stores surrounding us. “I’m going to call a cab to take me home.”

“You can’t go home now, Kathy.”

“Ash, what did you
do?”
The minute I said it, I regretted how harshly judgmental I sounded. But come on. This was
his
life. Not mine. Maybe he could afford to just walk away, but I sure as hell couldn’t. I stared up at him again, my eyes feeling huge in my face.

He shook his head. “I didn’t do anything, Kathy. I haven’t been involved in any illegal activities. That I can guarantee. Why they’re after me? I believe they think I know something about what they’re doing or what they’re planning that can cause some big time trouble.”

“What is it?”

He glanced at the off-ramp again. “I honestly don’t know.”

“What did they say to you this afternoon? Up on the mountain. I want all of it. The entire truth.” He glanced down at me and the look in his eyes frightened me. He looked concerned. “What? Tell me. At this point, I deserve to know.”

“I’ll tell you, but let’s get out of here first, okay?” He turned to move, then winced as he reached for his bike handle.

“Maybe you should go to a hospital or at least an urgent care center—”

“It’s not that bad,” he said. “Come on, get back on the bike. I’ll get you someplace safe.”

Again I dug in my heels. “My jobs, Ash. You don’t get it, do you? Either that or you’ve been bumming around so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to live without a roof over your head.”

Sadness appeared then disappeared from his face. “I understand how you feel. And I said I would take care of it.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, my anger rising again. “You have no idea how I feel! And how exactly do you propose to take care of it?”

He sighed. “I can give you money.”

I snorted. “Oh, you can, can you? And can you guarantee that I’ll have a job to go back to once all your charity is used up?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything right now. All I know is that I want to keep you safe. I’m sorry I got you into this.” He sighed. “I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but I’ll call a friend of mine when we get to a safe location, and we’ll figure this all out, okay?”

My thoughts were zinging along my brain pathways so fast I could hardly keep up. My emotions were a bundle of confusion. I think I felt every emotion possible in just a few seconds. My mental stimulation, as well as the adrenaline, had left me totally exhausted. Worn out.

The fight left me. And to be totally honest, I didn’t really want to go back home. Not if people were after Ash, and through innocent association, me. But still, my jobs… school. Wearily, I climbed back onto the motorcycle behind Ash. How had my life managed to turn upside down in the matter of a few hours? Stuff like this happened to other people. Not me. Not boring, stable, stay-at-home Kathy Mason. Not me, who got through my days just trying to mind my own business. Working my lousy part-time jobs. Going to school to try to make something better for my future. And now one cup of coffee and a mountain ride later… chaos.

“This isn’t fair,” I grumbled just before I slid the helmet over my head and fastened the strap.

“No, it isn’t.”

The Harley rumbled to life, and we headed back to the street, much slower this time. We drove on side streets for a while before getting onto the highway. I’m not sure how long we rode, but my butt was starting to hurt, and I was cold now that twilight was here. I pressed harder into his back, absorbing some of his warmth.

I tried to pay attention to where we were going but didn’t recognize most of it. After the highway, we wound our way along a number of county roads, heading southwest into the mountains. It seemed as if we were just winding our way back and forth, taking indiscriminate roads that headed southwest through the foothills.

Some time later, we ended up on westbound Interstate 40, and I noticed the sign for Berthould Falls. I’d never heard of the place. It was quite high up in the hills west of Idaho Springs, but that’s as far as I was familiar with the towns that were scattered in the mountains. The road slanted ever higher, taking us to lofty altitudes. The higher we climbed, the colder it got. Even though it was late summer, it was surprisingly cool. The scent of pine was heavy in the air. I wished it was daylight so I could see more of the beauty around me.

We turned off onto a county road just after we passed through a sleepy little town and followed a sign toward Woods Creek. Then he turned off the two-lane highway onto a narrow county road that veered south. We meandered this way and that on that county road for miles. Would we ever get wherever we were going?

Still, though I was hopelessly lost, I was also relieved. It didn’t seem possible that anyone would be able to find him — me — way out here. Then again, I still had my phone with me. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past anybody. Maybe I should ditch my phone too, but I didn’t like the idea of feeling totally disconnected from the outside world.