Sloe Ride (4 page)

The car’s tires fought to catch at the road, but the truck’s hit was enough to push Quinn to the side. A couple of cement trucks momentarily filled Quinn’s peripheral vision, and he fought down the panic clamping his jaw. Breathing in deeply, he shoved aside all of the noise and scary shit his mind was coming up with and focused on the car instead. Yanking the wheel would only spin him about, slamming the low Audi under the bulbous mixer, shearing off the car’s roof. Pushing into the spin, Quinn counted off a few seconds, then eased into the gas, forcing the Audi back into the lane by holding its weight firm with a punishing grasp of the steering wheel. His shoulder ached from maneuvering the car out of its turn, but the Audi snapped forward, taking the pressure off of his arm.

Rain splattered the Audi’s windshield, a sudden burst of drops barely thick enough to turn on the wipers, but Quinn kept his window cracked, counting on the street rattle to clue him in on the truck’s noisy progress. The street tightened, dropping a lane as another construction project swallowed up one from the right. A dip in the road lifted the Audi up off the asphalt for a moment. Then it landed softly. The truck didn’t fare as well.

Quinn didn’t have to watch to know the heavy vehicle hit hard. The crunch of the truck’s undercarriage hitting the street was loud enough to rattle his teeth. Then a booming noise shook the air, bouncing back and forth between the tightly packed buildings until Quinn’s ears buzzed with the sound.

He risked a quick look, trying to weave around a bus pulling over to a stop. Behind him, the truck continued to wobble forward, sparks flying up from its front wheel well as pieces of torn tire flopped about an exposed rim. The Audi’s rear seemed to be holding up well. A far sight better than the truck’s front end.

Quinn heard sirens cutting through the traffic noise, but any thought of stopping flew out the Audi’s open window when the truck lurched forward, hemming him in. He dove to the side, sliding the Audi out of the truck’s next jerking lunge. Off-balance and uneven, the truck’s popped tire hit a swell in the blacktop and tilted it toward Quinn’s lane.

Its tall sides drew up against the R8, casting a long shadow over the windshield and blocking off the scant light filtering down between Fremont’s packed buildings. He wasn’t going to make it to the next intersection without another hit, possibly one hard enough to cripple the Audi, and even if he was able to avoid the truck, the street took a hard right after Market, dangerously thickening the traffic.

The light turned red on Mission, and the world went dark. Quinn glanced up to see the truck’s weight give in to gravity, tipping over, its beaten white steel sides looming over him. Slamming on his brakes, he locked the Audi up, pulling it sideways and out from under the toppling truck’s way.

Smoke poured out from the Audi’s tires, choking Quinn. Its acrid sting brought water to his eyes, and he tried to blink it away, but nothing helped. He felt the truck hit the street, a shock wave of screaming metal slamming hard into the blacktop, and then a barrage of sirens overwhelmed him. Sitting sideways in the middle of the road, the Audi continued to idle, battered to hell but apparently ready for another round. Someone shouted nearby, and as the smoke cleared, Quinn saw the Muni bus he’d passed heading straight for him, its front rack bristling with bicycles. He caught a momentary flash of the bus driver’s horrified face, then heard screeching brakes as he tightened into a ball to brace for impact.

A second later, the only thing Quinn heard was his panicked breathing and the rapid trot of his heart racing hard enough to clear a tall fence if it had to. The world was lost under the whooshing sound of his blood pounding in his ears, and Quinn blinked, his lashes catching on his jacket’s soft leather.

“Hey, you okay?” The voice could have come from God for all he knew, but Quinn seriously doubted God sounded like a stoner from Haight. He peeled his arm out from around his face, then peered out of the Audi’s window, straight into the business end of the Muni bus, the nut on a bike tire only a few inches away from the car’s tinted glass. Slowly turning his head to the right, he found the source of the worried voice, a long-haired man dressed in a food-stained chef’s coat, his fingers clenched around a partially chopped handful of kale.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Quinn stuttered, snagging his teeth on his tongue. “Fecking hell and shite.”

The sirens were a waterfall of noise pouring down over his head. Then as quickly as they’d swelled up from the street noise, they fell silent. The chatter of voices around the Audi and the bus faded, quieted by authoritarian growls ordering everyone to back away from the street. The chef disappeared, replaced by a craggy-faced veteran in patrol blues.

“You okay, sir?” The scowl on the cop’s face was epic but tempered by concern in his warm brown eyes. “Can you move? Do you need medical assistance?”

“No, I’m… good. That truck….” He tried to see past the cop toward the truck lying side down in the middle of the street, but all Quinn could make out was one of the back tires. “He just wouldn’t stop… hell.”

His nerves finally snapped, crawling out from under the odd calm he’d felt when he realized the bus had nearly killed him. He shook as he grabbed what he needed out of the car’s console, and Quinn’s skin tingled with shock as he slung his messenger bag over his neck and popped open the far-side door. Crawling over the passenger seat was tricky, but Quinn didn’t trust himself to stay in the car much longer. The cop grabbed at him once he cleared the open door, stopping Quinn from falling flat on his face next to the Audi’s beaten side.

“Let me get your license and registration—shit, thanks,” the cop said as Quinn handed them over without a word. “Wait here. The medics really should look you over, kid.”

“Fuck. My poor baby,” Quinn sighed heavily. The Audi’s glossy black coat was crackled and peeled up in spots. One of the truck’s strikes drove a piece of the rear bumper into one of the back wells, but its tire remained untouched. Running his hand over the car’s back window, Quinn’s heart seized up at the extent of the damage done by the truck.

“Driver’s gone from the truck. Witnesses say he climbed out and booked down the alley as soon as the R8 went sideways.” Another cop, younger and muscled enough to strain the seams of his uniform, glanced at Quinn. “Sorry about your ride, man. It’s a sweet car.”

“Insurance. I’ve got… hell.” His knees gave out, and Quinn grabbed at the R8 for support. The older cop grabbed his arm, steadying him.

“You okay?” he rumbled, checking Quinn’s license. “Morgan? Huh. Any relation to Donal Morgan? You kind of look like one of his kids.”

“Yeah, he’s… my da,” Quinn muttered softly. “Shit, Mum’s going to lose her shit.”

The older cop quirked a grin. “Kid, you could have gotten killed here. I think she’ll be happy you walked out of that.”

“Yeah, for about five seconds.” Quinn blinked at the man, shaking his head. “Then she’ll be having my head for being late.”

One moon, a thousand stars

Come crack the sky open for me

And point me towards Mars

Leaving you a bit of my soul

Hold on to it tight

’Cause nothing’s forever, baby,

Not even tonight.

—
One Thousand Stars

M
ARSHALL
’
S
A
MP
was right where Rafe’d left it, sharing a wall with the Sound recording studio on the corner of bad memories and regret. He’d missed his first gig as Rising Black’s bassist because he’d gotten into a fight with Mario, one of the studio musicians, a slimy asshole with light fingers and a drug habit, Rafe’d been amazed he could find his own nose to shove coke into.

He’d also been sorry to hear about Frank’s death, even sorrier to find out Connor Morgan’d hooked up with the blond kid who’d drummed there.

“Not sorry,” Rafe corrected as he got out of his Chevelle. “Surprised. Fucking surprised. Didn’t know Connie even
liked
dick. Shit, I’d have tapped that back in high school if I’d thought it was open season.”

That
was a lie. Connor Morgan was so far above his reach in high school Rafe might as well have wanted to have a threesome with Pussy Galore and Godzilla. His running alongside the Morgan boys and their cousin, Sionn, was as close to cool as he was going to get in those days, and even then he’d been the one to steer the four of them right to the edge of gone-too-far.

It was usually Connor who’d dragged them right back.

The neighborhood had changed since he’d seen it last. Trendy-looking townhouses lined the street opposite of the Sound’s parking lot, petunias and pansies fighting for space in narrow window boxes hooked over wrought-iron balcony railings. There were a few nods to San Francisco’s pre-earthquake architecture, bits of concrete embellishments meant to age the structure, but its youth peeked out in its fake-tree cell tower poking up out of a stand of pines. The restaurant’s back door on the other end of the parking lot was as grubby and oily as Rafe remembered, and a line of old dumpsters still leaned up against the coffeehouse’s back wall, their lids splattered with seagull shit and food specks. A new coat of paint and a power wash did wonders for the brick building, and at some point, a sturdy gridded metal and wood staircase replaced the rickety wood steps leading up to the crappy studio apartment over the Sound.

What was missing from the picture was Frank’s old RV, with its concrete blocks and plywood porch and the umbrella, table, and seats he’d liberated from a burrito shop’s trash pile.

The parking lot seemed odd, echoingly still in Rafe’s mind. He couldn’t remember a time when the Sound’s parking lot hadn’t smelled like patchouli and sweet Thai smoke, and the sleek, polished deep black was at odds with the faded gray memory of patchy asphalt and crooked lines Frank’d painted for parking spaces around his Winnebago palace.

It was funny what an empty space on a parking lot could do to a person’s insides.

The inside of Marshall’s Amp was like stepping into a blue police box and coming out in another era. Or a movie set in the ’60s. White tile gleamed, throwing moonlight reflections up of the squishy spaceship chairs and sweeps of tables. If there was music playing, Rafe couldn’t hear it, but he caught snatches of guitar threading through the murmuring crowd noise. The splashes of color around the coffee shop were nearly as loud as the cop chatter filling it, and the smell of brewing roasts and sweet pastries made Rafe’s mouth water.

“Shit, there’s a lot of cops.” And only a few of them were Morgans.

He’d been about to search for Connor or Sionn in the sea of Irish and badges when a frill of eye-bleeding red hair appeared at someone’s shoulder, and Rafe stopped dead in his tracks. The exit was cut off from him. He’d gone too far into the shop and was too tangled in its crowd to beat a hasty retreat. Another flash of crimson, and Rafe’s belly turned to ice, melting slightly when he spotted the face beneath the hair.

“Fuck, thank God. That’s Kiki.” He exhaled hard, turning back around to grab some coffee, and smacked right into the stuff of nightmares—Brigid Finnegan Morgan.

Brigid
fucking
Finnegan Morgan. Bane of his existence and his de facto second mother.

To the casual observer, Brigid Morgan would appear to be a gloriously adult version of a Disney princess, sans bow and an enormous horse named Angus. Tall heels the height of a cat brought Brigid up to Rafe’s collarbone, and her gamine face was brightened by a brilliant, broad smile. A classic porcelain-skinned Irish beauty, Brigid Morgan looked as if she’d pour sweetness, light, and sugar into the life of someone she loved.

Fortunately, Rafe knew better, and he certainly wasn’t fooled by the cupcake-offering hellion standing right under his nose.

“Well, then, it appears the rumors of yer demise were greatly exaggerated there, Rafey boy,” Brigid purred, holding out a tall cup of coffee and a devil’s food cupcake. She was playing up her Irish, probably intent on luring him into a false complacency. “Obviously yer weak from not eating or summat, because if ye’d been well, ye’d have been at the Sunday table like the rest of the miscreants I have there.”

“Hello, Bridge.” He took the coffee and cupcake, then bent over. Kissing her cheek was safe, or so he thought right before she grabbed a hold of his right ear. Pinching and pulling at his lobe, Brigid drew Rafe down until they were nose to nose. “Ouch…
ouch
. Okay, let go.
Leggo!
What? Shit, it’s just dinner. I’m not even one of your kids—”

“I’ve been worried about ye, ye fecking fool.”

If anything, it felt like Brigid grew lobster claws on her hands and was about to give Rafe another piercing to go with the daith he already had in that ear.

“Did ye cook that brain of yers so much ye forgot the house number?”

“Leave the boy alone, love.”

Donal eased Brigid’s fingers from Rafe’s ear. Rafe refused to rub at it, even though it tingled as the feeling rushed back into the side of his head, but his pride could only carry him so far, and he stumbled forward when Donal slapped him across the back.