Hard Rider

My lover had been taken.

Even after realizing that horrible fact, the note that was left in the kitchen confirmed it all.

Kept pinned to the cabinet door with a fucking knife through both, I tugged the sheet of paper free and read it once, twice, a third time again:

Dear Devil’s Dragon Asshole,

Thanks for kidnapping my woman, dragging her across Louisiana, and filling her head with a load of bullshit. Did me a real solid with all that.

If you ever wanna see this prime piece of ass again, meet us at the abandoned railway station here in Metairie. Tomorrow night, 10 o’clock.

Come alone.

– Mudflap and the Bayou Boys

The burning rage built up inside, threatening to eclipse every last scrap of reason that I had left.

They took Kate.

I repeated that in my head, feeling the anger burn hotter, brighter every time that I felt those syllables with my thoughts.

They took Kate.

Those piece-of-shit backwater bikers had somehow found us, kidnapped her, and dragged her off to be used as bait in some stupid fucking trap, and for what?

Just so her spineless ex-boyfriend can have his stupid little power trip and try to get his dick wet?

They came into my territory.

They wrecked our goddamn home.

And they fucking took Kate.

If it had been another hour, I could have hit the road with my woman at my back, leaving for El Paso. I could at least have gotten us halfway before needing a few hours’ rest. It would have been a hard ride for her, but Kate’s a tough woman. She would have been able to handle it.

But now…

Now, my life lay around me.

Shattered. Broken. Corrupted.

I had been reunited with a ghost from my past and I let myself feel just a little bit of fucking happiness.

And these redneck motherfuckers had come and taken that from me.

Quickly taking stock of my resources, I grabbed the bowl from the other room and poured it onto the kitchen countertop. After that, I emptied my pockets on the heap.

Hmm. Not a whole lot here…

My worn fingers trailed over the burner phone that slipped into the pile. For a moment, they calmly lingered.

I could call for backup.

The Devil’s Dragons were a sixteen hour ride away. If I called now, my brothers would answer the call, mount the offense, and ride into town for a rest before they got ready to fucking clean house. Hunter would lead the men straight down here and lay waste until the Bayou Boys were smeared straight off of the goddamn map.

The uncaged beast inside roared in fury, demanding vengeance and bloodlust. The chaos of shattered debris only pushed me onward…

Almost as if making their mind up for me, my fingers quickly snapped back from the burner phone. Trying to soothe the beast and calm myself down, I took a few slow, deep breaths.

No, I thought to myself.

Come alone…

If they get wind the Dragons are coming, they’ll kill her just to make a fucking point. Sure, we’d wipe them off the goddamned planet, but they’d deal me a killing blow first. I’d lose Kate forever…

That’s not how my story is going to fucking end.

I was going to save Kate myself… even if it meant laying my life down on line to bring her to goddamn safety.

And if it really came to that, I was going to make sure that I dragged every last one of those rednecks down to Hell with me.

I carefully, angrily lifted the phone and began to dial in a number I hadn’t needed to call in many, many years. It was a few rings before the tired voice answered.

“H-hello?”

“John,” I replied. “It’s me.”

“Holy shit, Grizz?” He laughed down the line. “How’s civilian life treating you? Better than me, I hope…”

“Right this moment John, not too well.” My voice flattened out into a hot simmer as I gazed across the scattered debris. “I need a favor. Are you still a law-abiding supporter of the Second Amendment?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because I need guns… Big fucking guns.”

Kate

You know, I’ve had to live in my fair share of shitty rooms, but the disgusting workshop they locked me in definitely takes the cake.

The air smelled like a lovely mix of ancient oil, dusty soot, and filthy ash. I could feel it filling my lungs, one patch of stagnant, stale dust in the air at a time.

At least the floor was comfortable.

I mean, why pack the room with something cold and unforgiving like lush, feathery carpeting when you could just leave the soothing and relaxing surface of freezing, oily concrete?

Unfortunately, all the tools and sharp edges had been plucked from the room that served as my jail cell. There was nothing with which to defend myself if anyone came.

What I was trapped in was essentially a metal box when it came to the ceiling and walls. A single dingy bulb cast the bare minimum amount of light, exposing the toilet in the corner and the pile of musty cloths that was to be my bed.

The Hilton, it was not.

A sharp knocking on the door jarred me from my thoughts. Lifting myself up from the ragged blankets, I stumbled over to the single exit, where a flap against the bottom opened.

“Eat,” Mark blurted out, pushing a small plate of greasy food through the door.

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded to know. “Why am I being kept in this stupid goddamn room?”

“Quiet,” he insisted. “Just ride this out with us, babe, and we’ll bring you back home all safe and sound.”

“Ride what out??

? I demanded.

I heard a chuckle through the door. “Oh, it’ll all be over soon… don’t you worry about that. And then we can put you where you rightfully belong.”

“And where is that?”

Mark’s voice sneered.

“With me, of course. Back on my bike… and back on my cock, too. I really missed you...”

I bit my tongue.

As much as I wanted to rip through that door and absolutely tear him a new one for putting me through this… I figured that it probably wasn’t smart.

Plus, minor detail:

I hadn’t figured out how to burst out through locked metal doors yet.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he chuckled. The lust was blatant on every goddamn syllable. “Think about that, Buttercup… think about that all night long. I know I will.”

With that, the moron shut the flap, basically ending our little chat. I heard his footsteps wander off, and I groaned with frustration.

Half an hour later while eating the slop he brought me, I could barely make out the sounds of a muffled argument coming from a small vent grate at the top of the wall. Things sounded like they were starting to get heated, and I felt driven to find out what was going on.

There wasn’t anything nearby to stand on, so I stepped onto my tiptoes and pressed my ear as close as I could get.

Mark’s voice trailed through the vent, barely loud enough for me to hear. “…What do you mean I can’t fuck her?”

An older man responded gruffly. “Exactly what I said, boy… the woman’s a liability. We keep her under lock and key until this is over.”

“But we had a deal!”

There was a second of scuffle. It sounded like someone punched or smacked the other upside the head.

“We still have a deal. All we have to do is wait until tomorrow night, and see where things fall…”

“She’s locked up like an animal!”

“And she’ll stay that way,” the older voice commanded. “When you’ve lived up to your half and the piece of shit spills blood on the fucking pavement, then you can have your piece of ass.”