Hard Rider

What can I say to make this better?

“Were they waiting for us to leave?” Kate asked, turning to me suddenly. “Were they watching us last night?”

I placed the dish back down, running my fingers along the scattered pages. They seemed to have been ripped out in handfuls and tossed in the air, spread all over.

There was something about the pattern of destruction that painted a very clear picture to me.

“No, I don’t think so,” I noted.

“Then what?” She threw her hands up in frustration. “We weren’t even gone for more than a couple of hours!”

My fingers fell upon a broken frame. I lifted it carefully, not wanting to slice my fingers against the shattered glass.

I didn’t recognize the people.

Probably her family.

“Grizz?” She repeated.

“Your ex-boyfriend is emotional,” I concluded, rising up from my knees. “Possibly drunk.”

“Yeah? No shit, Sherlock.”

I ignored the need to glare at her.

“What I mean is that he wasn’t trying to send a message. This is a child throwing a tantrum.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“I don’t know what the hell he thought he was accomplishing by screwing up my apartment.”

“Think about it, Kate,” I pushed her. “Your car was sitting outside. He probably thought that you were home.”

Concerned, she bit her bottom lip.

“What do you think I should do?”

I sighed, glancing around the wreckage. “You’re not safe here. He’s going to come back…”

Kate groaned, her hand to her forehead. “I’m already struggling to pay the bills as it is… I can’t afford another apartment here! Christ, I’ve only had this place a few months…”

I let her vent for a minute, stepping around the countertop and into the kitchen. The floor crunched with broken glass and ceramic beneath my boots. Half the cabinets were emptied, and some of the doors dangled on their broken hinges.

He’d done a number on this place.

Did nobody else hear this? Why didn’t anyone call the cops?

“There is a solution,” I told her as I surveyed the damage. “You’re not going to like it, but it’s the only one that I have.”

“I know,” Kate answered bitterly.

As I turned back to face her, she looked up from the destruction that surrounded us. An entire conversation happened in that three seconds of eye contact, and I watched the defeat paint itself across her face.

“How long?” I asked her.

Her answer came with a sigh.

“Ten minutes. Maybe less.”

I nodded, excusing myself outside to play lookout while she scrambled across the apartment for anything that she needed.

Not much later, Kate stepped outside with a backpack slung over her shoulder. Locking the door behind herself, she stepped over to my motorcycle, gracefully mounting it behind me.

“The sooner we leave…”

“I know,” she stopped me. “Just take me to my landlord. She’s probably not home, but I can leave her a note and the keys. I owe her an explanation for ditching town with a trashed apartment. She knows what kind of guy Mark is. She’ll understand…”

Kate gave me the directions on the way. I kept my eyes peeled for any signs that we were being followed, but nobody seemed to take more than a fleeting interest in us.

As she’d predicted, the driveway was deserted. Kate pulled a notebook and pen from her backpack and hastily jotted down a note that explained the situation, ended with an apology, and taped the key to the paper. After folding and dropping it in the mail slot, she was back on my bike in less than three minutes.

Neither of us tried to exchange a single word as I took the bike back down to the interstate. We didn’t have to. All that mattered were the miles as we hit I-10 going eastward, and keeping Lafayette in the rearview mirrors.

I felt her settle in the seat behind me, her arms tightening aground my chest.

My heart was heavy for her.

Simply coming back into her life, even by pure accident, had already caused her so much grief.

But this time…

This time, things would be different. No matter what, I refused to make the same mistakes again. I would keep her safe. I would protect Kate with my life.

It’s so easy to make those promises.

But all the conviction in the world can’t do a damned thing when you’re up against enemies you can’t see coming.

And danger still surrounded us…

Kate

Grizz took me to Metairie, a small but sprawled suburb. Short on trees and built on the usual flat Louisianan ground, it was met on three sides by the endless wetlands, the massive Lake Ponchartrain, and the magical New Orleans itself.

He decided to pause and top off his tank at a gas station. I hovered near the bike, thinking about the sharp turns my life had taken in the last twenty-four hours.

I wasn’t sure what to do, where to go, or why I had silently agreed to accompany him. My place in his world, and his in mine? That was still in a dark, murky spot in my mind.

What the hell happens next?

The biker wandered back outside from the convenience store. I watched his confident swagger, the chains dangling from his rugged jeans. I couldn’t deny how sexy he looked with that restrained, powerful stare as he approached.

I can’t let him have this effect on me.

Easier said than done.

“Where are we staying?” I asked, watching his powerful movements. It was a struggle to not lick my lips.

“Here,” Grizz answered, spinning a finger in the air while he walked.

“In Metairie?”

Grizz stopped in front. Smirking, his head crooked slightly, he chuckled out his words. “You got a problem with Metairie?”

My answer was defiant. “No.”

“Good,” Grizz nodded, looking around outside the gas station to the sprawling nothingness around. “Because this just might be home for a little while.”

I put my hands on my hips. “What made you pick here? Why not just New Orleans? Didn’t that club send you with some money?”

“They did, but funds are running tight as it is. No reason to start draining the account if we’re here longer than a couple of weeks,” Grizz replied. “Somewhere cheap and close is better. Besides, I like having a little more room than we’d get in the city.”

“Do you even know where we’re staying yet? Picked a place?”

“Thought I’d wing it. Trust me, the righ

t door will open.”

That was the Grizz I remembered – handsome, confident… and cocky. I had wondered how long it was going to take him to let out some of that old arrogance… He seemed so dead certain that the universe would provide.

“So, no plan then?”

“I’ll find us a place,” Grizz nodded, fiddling with the pump. He plugged it into the gas tank on his bike. “We’ll get a motel for the night. Might try and rent a place after that, just for a little while. Something tells me this little trip has some surprises in store for us.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Simple shit has turned sideways hard for the Dragons the last year or so. Maybe we’re cursed now. I’d like to be wrong, but… there’s something strange in the air. I don’t like it.”

Grizz absentmindedly tugged at the cross around his neck before mounting his bike. I climbed on behind him, wrapping my arms around his leather jacket.

We pulled into a nearby motel. While I watched the bike, he sauntered inside to secure a room.

Five minutes became ten, then twenty, then half an hour. I was already beyond nervous when he finally came back outside.

“What the hell was that?”

Grizz shook his head. “Found us somewhere better.”

“What? How?”

“Bulletin board, up for job postings and shit. There was an ad for a house for rent. It’s cheap… bad neighborhood, probably. I called the owner. Arranged a meet.”

“When?”

“Now,” he answered, mounting the bike.

We drove further into Metairie and stopped by an ATM. After he withdrew some money from the club account, we continued down the main highway running through town, Veteran’s Boulevard.

My eyes scanned the storefronts as we pushed past the commercial areas – fast food joints and cell phone stores quickly becoming apartment complexes and houses.

Grizz took us down a short side street, stopping in front of a small house where an old rust-bucket of a car was parked.

He killed the ignition, and I climbed down. Grizz followed suit, turning to face the stranger who stepped out of the car. She was in her upper forties, wearing worker’s clothes with a thick mane of wispy, prematurely graying hair.