Vivi
I thought spending the day in bed with Jag’s body as my playground would have made me relaxed and calm. I was wrong. After a few hours of deep, dreamless sleep I woke up around six in the morning with sore limbs and one little thought niggling over and over in my brain.
My contact. Bob. Bob had contacted me again about six months ago to decrypt the external hard drive but hadn’t been in touch since. None of my calls were returned, not even the threatening ones. But this morning, for some fucking reason, I got it in my head to find out what the fuck was going on. So I called Bob again. Three times.
Bob didn’t answer. Instead of leaving more irate messages, I grabbed my keys and my I.D. because I needed some fresh air. Some distance from Jag and all the thoughts racing through my mind. I needed my bike, dammit.
It took nearly an hour to get to the storage facility by bus where I hid my bike because apparently Las Vegas traffic was as bad as New York. The moment my two wheels hit the pavement though, everything else disappeared. No one was chasing me with plans to do who the fuck knew what with me. There were no distractions from my work and my adventures, and especially no tall, dark and deadly hot hacker with a military background. None of it mattered as I wove through traffic in an attempt to get on the freeway in this sea of streets that all led back to the cluster of casinos. The city’s bread and butter was not what I wanted or needed right now.
Nope, I needed a long stretch of road where I could rev the engine and focus on nothing but the blur of the passing road. Riding was my favorite thing to do when I wasn’t locked in my house working. And I rode for hours with the sun steadily rising at my back, I rode until all the thoughts and worries…all the fucking noise disappeared and left nothing but the facts.
Suddenly my mind went back about seven years ago when I’d taken a few college classes for shits and giggles. And to prove I could, of course.
I took a journalism class and the professor, whose name I couldn’t remember, said something that came back to me when my mind was decluttered. Figuring out every story means figuring out the six major questions: Who, what, where, when, how and why. I already knew who—or I thought I did—and I knew what. Basically. But I needed to know why it was such a problem that I’d seen what I saw. If I could figure that out, I could beat this fucker at his own game.
Assuming said fucker was Governor Blaise and not the gangster who looked like he’d smack his own mother if there was some benefit to it. Otherwise, I was totally fucked.
My back started to ache from riding too long, so I stopped at a greasy spoon diner for a bowl of chili and got back on the road, energized to figure this shit out. Optimism was totally out of character for me and that should have been a clue that something was about to spoil my almost good mood.
I’d spotted a shiny red pickup truck on my ass ever since I’d left the diner and he was following too damn close. Not that anyone with a ride that flashy could ever be accused of being subtle, but he was doing a piss poor job of remaining unseen, which meant I needed to put some distance between us. I gunned the
engine and split between a big rig and a minivan, speeding ten cars ahead. But this time of day, the traffic was light, and the big red asshole was gaining on me.
I slowed down, staying between the right and middle lanes and switching it up whenever he got too close. And when he was right on my ass, I sped up and flew around a curve hoping that I would lose him but once again the universe conspired against me and he was right there. My speedometer needle jerked past ninety miles and it continued to climb but there was a curve up ahead and I needed to slow down.
But I couldn’t. He was gaining on me but speeding up was certain death where this asshole was…uncertain. “Shit!” The impact was brief and jarring, and just enough to make my bike tire stop and then spin until the whole bike was out of control and careening down a ravine. It was no more than twenty or thirty feet but even with my leathers on it hurt like a motherfucker. Especially when my helmet was kindly stopped by a giant rock.
The only thing I could think of as I lay there trying to catch my breath was that I fucking hurt and I wasn’t going to die out here.
I held my breath for ninety seconds when a car came to a stop above. I assumed it was the red truck douchebag making sure he scared or killed me. I stayed as still as I could, waiting for the sound of footsteps on the dry grass and graveled path I just skidded down. But they never came. At the seventieth second the door slammed shut and the engine gunned but still, I waited until the ninety second mark. “Fuck.”
My chest heaved, and I focused on my legs first, to see if I felt any broken bones. My toes wiggled, and I exhaled. Thank the Man above. Both of my arms were intact, so I slowly slid off my helmet and got up on my knees and looked around. “Fuck!”
I searched for my phone that had flown from my pocket and saw it about ten feet away. I rolled over to my phone, afraid to get up. My body could go into shock any minute and I had to get a hold of Jag before that happened.
My hands shook so bad it took nearly a minute just to get the fingerprint unlock on my phone to work. When it opened I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut until I saw stars. I needed to concentrate. To focus. There were no details to recall other than the flashy red pickup with the extended cab. I spoke the details into the notepad app when a thought occurred to me and I slid back over to my bike. There was no way in hell those guys had found me by accident.
I searched behind the tail light, the fender and even the goddamn safety bar before I found what I was looking for. A tracker. It was no bigger than a SIM card and wasn’t even pro or military grade. Cheap fuckers. I shoved it in my pocket and called Jag.
“Since your camper is still here I assume you didn’t run?”
He was such a ballbuster. “You know what happens when you assume, Jeremiah.” A groan came out when I tried to stand and I was starting to think maybe I was more banged up than I realized. “Do you know the name of a tow company?”
He was quiet for a second, probably trying to figure me out. Good luck. I’d been trying to figure that shit out all my life. “Gunnar has a towing company in town. He can take care of you.”
“No. I don’t want a company associated with your club.” I realized how that sounded after I said it. “I didn’t mean it like that, just give me the name of another? Please?”
“Fine. Where are you?”
“I don’t even know. I’ll text you from my GPS app.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.”
He hung up and I texted my GPS location to him. I fell back on the ground and rolled my eyes, laughing on the inside at the absurdity of my life now. Chasing down a man I’d never met but crushed on and dodging a possible government conspiracy out to kill me for a few photos. It sounded batshit crazy to me and I was living it. Or I was in the matrix, which could be kind of cool since it would mean none of this was real, but that would mean last night with Jeremiah wasn’t real either.
Damn. My head hurt. Was I dreaming?
The sound of a motorcycle engine grew closer and stopped and I knew it was Jag. Then he spoke and confirmed my suspicions. “What in the hell happened? I’ll call the ambulance.”