“The new ones on Fifth?” I asked.

He grunted out a ‘yes.’

“Those are nice,” I said. “Expensive.”

“Fuck yeah they are,” he agreed. “Though apparently I have a lot of fuckin’ money in the bank. Not sure how or why…but yeah. I can afford it.”

I laughed. “I guess it’s not a bad thing, to have money that you didn’t know you had. One of the better things in your situation, I would have to say.”

The man’s eyes met mine, and once again I was struck with a familiarity.

“You look familiar as fuck,” I finally said as I stopped us next to the two motorcycles we’d be using today.

“I’ve gotten that a lot.” He paused. “When I enlisted, I met a guy that was enlisting same as me from the same town. We swore in on the same day. Looked like my fuckin’ twin. Not sure how we managed to live in a city the size of Kilgore and never see each other but whatever.” He straddled the bike and looked back at me. “We swore in together. Went into BUD/S together. Deployed together. Weirdest fuckin’ thing. According to everyone else, anyway. Like I said…” he shrugged, saying without words that he couldn’t remember. “The other kid’s name was Luca Maldanado.”

And that was why he looked so familiar.

I hadn’t been best friends with Luca seeing as he’d gone to a different school than me, but we’d hung in the same circles, and our parents had been friends.

Luca had gone missing right around the same time that Malachi had disappeared.

“Y’all went missing together?” I asked.

He nodded. “From what I’ve been told.”

I blew out a breath.

That sucked.

What sucked even more was I had the fleeting thought that it wasn’t Malachi sitting next to me, but Luca.

“Luca was a friend,” I finally said, knowing that he needed to hear it. I wouldn’t lie to him. “You’re probably going to get a lot of attention. Luca was a town hero.”

Malachi smiled bitterly. “I know. His parents helped me get on my feet once I got back. I could tell that he was loved.” He paused. “From what I could also tell, I was loved by them, too. I might not be their flesh and blood, but I’d been brought into their home and into their arms…and I just wish I could fucking remember.”

I felt awful for him.

What kind of life would it be to just wake up at his age and not remember anything that had happened up until that point?

“You know how to ride a motorcycle, right?” I asked, changing the subject.

Malachi nodded once.

“I do,” he confirmed. “The doc said that I would remember how to do things…just not remember how I knew them.” He paused. “I had severe damage to the part of my brain that houses the hippocampus, which is associated with memory functions. It’s highly likely that I’ll never remember…my doc just said to be thankful that I can remember how to read and write. Which, I guess he’s right.”

The idea of having to start that far over was terrifying.

“Right.” I paused. “Fuck, that really sucks.”

Malachi smiled then.

“Glad I’m not the only one to think so,” he muttered darkly.

***

“Fuck,” I said as we pulled up to a stop right outside of the main part of the accident scene. “Goddammit.”

Malachi parked his bike next to mine and put his emergency lights on just as I did, surveying the scene with a critical eye.

I assessed the situation as well, knowing that the girl in the car was more than likely dead.

Just based on the way her car was smashed in so badly.

But we’d get off and look anyway.

Which we did together moments later.

“I can’t reach her from this side,” I said as I reached into the car. “Can you?”

Malachi was on the opposite side of the car, reaching in just as I was doing, and he could just barely get his fingers on the girl’s neck.

A neck that, from what I could see, was obviously broken.

“Dead,” Malachi confirmed seconds later. “Goddamn.”

Goddamn was right.

The entire front end of the car was just gone.

It was smashed up so far into the front seats that there was no way in hell she could’ve survived that.

“What happened?” I asked the man that was standing next to the car wringing his hands.

The man looked sick to his stomach and tried to look anywhere but at the girl.

“I was driving by,” he started, swallowing hard, trying desperately to control his stomach. “Some guy with fancy rims cut her off. She swerved to avoid him going the speed limit, or thereabout, and ran straight into the pole seconds later.”

The ‘pole’ in question being a concrete pylon that held the bridge up above it.

It wasn’t a pole as much as a fuckin’ concrete wall.

To hit that at the speed limit, which was fifty-five miles an hour, would’ve done the damage that we were seeing.

Tags: Lani Lynn Vale KPD Motorcycle Patrol Erotic
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