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  Zane finally wrenched her away and gave her a shove. She stumbled away then turned to face them, the two twenties falling from her hand. A tear was running down her cheek, but the pain and fear that had come into her face as she held him was gone. She was a zombie again.

  He turned and mounted up. He watched her as he thumbed his bike to life, half expecting her to try to mount up behind him again, but she just stood here, her face and eyes totally blank. He kicked the bike into gear but didn’t release the clutch.

  “Fuck!” he snarled. “Get on!”

  “What?” Chet yelped. “We can’t take her with us!”

  She made no move, so he put the bike back into neutral and held out his hand. “If you’re coming get on. Otherwise I’ll leave your ass here.”

  He was reaching for the clutch again when she stepped forward and mounted up behind him. He knew this was a stupid idea, but he knew in his gut if they were to leave her now, she would die. The only sign of life she’d shown since they stopped on side of the road was the fear and pain as she cried out softly when she thought they were going to leave her.

  “You know this is a bad idea, right?” Zane asked as he eased up beside them.

  “Yeah. Grab the money, will you?”

  He nodded. “So long as you know.”

  Chapter 3

  I’m in hell. My skin is burning from my body, but I force myself to put one foot in front of the other. This hell is preferable to the one I escaped. If I die, it’ll be a blessing. No more pain. No more suffering. In death, I can balance the scales. I can pay for the mistakes that have led me to this moment.

  I walk. One foot in front of the other, the pavement so hot I feel it burning the bottoms of my feet even though my shoes, but I don’t care. I’ve endured far more pain. My mouth is dry. I can’t remember the last time I had water, but I’m free.

  The man had gotten sloppy. He’d left his knife on his belt and I had gotten it. I had gotten it and then I’d stabbed him, once, twice, then a third time. I knew if the others found me they’d kill me, but I welcomed death.

  Somehow they didn’t know and I’d taken his bike, riding in the first direction I turned. I didn’t care where I went, so long as I was gone. I’d never actually operated a bike before, but I knew enough from riding on the back of one that I could manage. I didn’t have to think. I only did.

  I rode until it came to shuddering stop, and I’d left it. It was no longer of use and I wasn’t far enough away. I wasn’t sure I could ever get far enough away.

  Cars pass. Some horns blow, but none stop, and I walk. I’ll walk until I can walk no more, then I’ll crawl, then I’ll die, and then I’ll be at peace.

  I hear the motorcycles approach. I’ve heard others rumble by. None stop, but these do. At first I think it’s the men who took me. I know they’ll kill me. I only hope it’ll be quick. I keep moving, one foot in front of the other. They can kill me as easily walking as not.

  The men approach. I’ve not seen these men before. The first one speaks to me, but I ignore him. I’d tried talking. I’d tried to reason with my captors, then begged for their mercy, only to hear them laugh. Finally, I had begged for them to kill me, and again they’d only laughed. I had begged and pleaded until I ran out of words. And they had laughed.

  I stop walking when they make me. Fighting only makes the pain worse. Compliance, that’s what they wanted, so I complied. Most of the men who’ve come for me seem kind, all but one, but I know it’s only a trick. Even the kind ones had their way with me, my cries for mercy falling upon deaf ears.

  I allow the man to look at me. His touch is firm but gentle, and he promises not to hurt me, but it’s a lie. They all promised that at first. He wants me to go with him. He says he’ll help me. I want to trust him, but I can’t. I have to keep moving. I have to get as far away as I can.

  A man grabs me, his hands around my waist. They’re going to take me back, back to that prison of pain and fear. I would rather die than go back. I fight. I want them to kill me. I bite the big man’s hand, trying to tear his flesh from his bones with my teeth.

  I turn to face them, wishing for death, but the kind man orders them back, and they obey. He orders me away, tells me to keep walking, allowing me to leave, then turns his back to me, ignoring me as I place one foot in front of another.

  I hear the motorcycles start. I turn to watch, to see if they are going to leave me. The kind man is watching me and I can see he’s leaving. He wants nothing from me.

  I turn and walk toward them men, the sound of their motorcycles calling to me. I realize: while I would rather die than return to the hell that was my life, I don’t actually want to die. I start to walk back, my mind screaming, but my body is moving of its own accord. The kind man watches me, his face twisting behind his sunglasses, not in anger, lust, or cruelty, but in humor. His eyes track me as I move back to him and step onto his motorcycle, my body knowing what to do.

  He looks behind him and I can see his lips break into a smile before his attention shifts and we pull smartly onto the interstate.

  The air rushes over me, blessedly cool as we thunder down the interstate. He’s taking me away from my prison. He said he wouldn’t hurt me and he is keeping his word. I don’t know where we are going, and I don’t care.

  We pull off the interstate into a gas station. When he switches off the bike, I dismount, but he doesn’t follow me. He pushes something into my hand and promises again to help me. He is helping me. The words he says, about getting back to the bike, don’t make sense. When he starts his bike, I mount up, ready to go where he’s going, waiting for him to take me away.

  He shuts the bike off again. I don’t understand what he wants, so I get off again. I don’t want to anger him. He again promises to help me, but when I try to get back on his motorcycle, he stops me. I try again, and again he prevents me. He’s leaving me! He is leaving me here as he rides away. I try to tell him I want to go, to beg him to take me with him, but I am out of words. I hold his hand, praying he won’t leave me.

  Another man takes me by the arm and tries to take me away. He’s going to take me back and I hold to the kind man, desperately afraid. If he leaves me here, I know the others will find me and take me back. I struggle, not wanting to be left behind. He tries to remove my hands, but I hold onto whatever I can reach.

  The man holding my arms throws me away. I’m going to be alone again and I can feel the flicker of hope extinguish. He turns his back to me and I watch as he mounts his bike and brings it to life. I prepare to walk again, but I can’t move. I’m frozen to this spot, held by the kind man’s eyes.

  He orders me to get on, but I’m afraid it’s a trick. The moment I take a step he’ll leave as he laughs at me. He holds his hand out to me and orders me again, but it’s not an order. He allows me to make my own choice. I can go or stay as I choose.

  I choose to go. I step up onto the motorcycle. As soon as I’m settled, we pull out of the gas station. Once again we are traveling, every turn of the motorcycle’s tires taking me farther and farther away.

  We ride for a time, my hair blowing in the wind, and I remember when, before the time of pain, I rode like this. I remember the feeling of freedom and of being happy. The man I was riding behind was kind to me, like this man. I don’t even try to stop the tears as they slowly well out of my eyes, the hot desert air drying them instantly.

  Chapter 4

  The Blades hammered the last hour of the trip. The time they had spent fooling around with the motorcycle and the woman had cut into their time. They couldn’t risk getting caught for possession with intent because of a speeding ticket, but they pushed the envelope and ran a bit faster than the prevailing traffic.

  They arrived in Yuma fifteen minutes late, despite the push, and didn’t have time to fill their bikes before meeting the Advocates, so they proceeded directly to the south end of the airport. They could fill up on the way out of town.

  They were early, but the Advocates were already w
aiting on them in the wide dusty area behind the airport. Local kids came here to watch airport traffic take off and land and make out where their parents wouldn’t walk in. It was often busy on weekends, but was normally deserted on weekdays. The best part of the location was nobody blinked an eye at seeing people parked and standing around, so they could conduct their business easily but without arousing suspicion. Plus, there was something oddly satisfying about doing a drug deal less than ten miles from the regional DEA office.

  The Blacktop Blades pulled to a stop fifty feet from the Devil’s Advocates bikes. As expected, the moment the Indian went silent, the woman stepped off. “Wait here,” Arsen said softly. “I’ll be right over there.”

  Arsen waited as the Blades retrieved the molly from their bikes, five 5,000 pill bags, then led the brothers as they started toward the Advocates. The moment they started walking away, the woman began to follow.

  “Wait a minute,” Arsen said then turned to the woman, taking her arm and steering taking her back to his bike. “I need you to wait here, okay? I’m not going anywhere, and you’re right by the bike. Can you wait here?”

  She didn’t respond, and he held up both his hands in front of her, as if giving a dog a stay command. When he started walking away again, she followed.

  “Chet!” When Chet arrived, Arsen turned back to her. “Chet is going to stay with you, okay? He’s not going to hurt you. I need you to stay with him. Do you understand?” Again, she didn’t make a sound or give any gesture of confirmation. When he stepped away this time, she started to follow, but Chet held her arm.

  “Nuh-uh. You heard him. Wait here.” When she didn’t try to escape, he relaxed his grip a bit. “What’s wrong with you that you can’t talk?” After a moment of silence, he sighed and settled against Arsen’s bike to wait.

  “Who’s that?” Jason Herld, President of the Devil’s Advocates Motorcycle Club, asked Arsen as he nodded at the woman.

  “A lost puppy we picked up along the way.”

  Jason squinted his eyes. “You know I don’t like surprises.”

  Arsen gave a shrug. “What can I say? She wasn’t part of our plan either.”

  “You got the stuff?”

  Arsen grinned. “Don’t we always? 25K, your standard order.” He waved and Zane brought the bags up. Jason waived his man over with the cash. The two were exchanged before the proxies returned to their over watch positions. He knew the pills would be quickly checked, just as Zane was giving the cash a cursory count. Trust, but verify was the name of the game.

  “What’s so important that you needed to see me?” Arsen asked.

  “I wanted to find out if you were dealing behind our backs.”

  “What?” Arsen pushed out a laugh to keep the worry from his voice. He ran his club straight, but that wasn’t the same as everything being on the up and up. “Why would we do that? This relationship has been good for both of us. Why would I screw that up?”

  “Because someone is selling Hearts and Daggers besides us.”

  Arsen glanced at Zane, the info man. Zane shook his head. “Our other customers know that southern California is off limits, but I have no real control over the molly once it’s in their hands.”

  “You selling it to them cheaper?”

  “We charge everyone the same wholesale price. I don’t play favorites. Because you’re my biggest buyer, I give you a head’s up about price increases, but I don’t do special deals. It’s bad for my business. I give you a discount, then everyone wants one. Then I give some other guy a discount, somebody finds out, then everyone wants that one too. You want our stuff, it’s $5 a pop, 5,000 minimum, for everyone. Come clean with me. What the fuck is going on?”

  Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny baggy with two tablets in it. “This is what I’m talking about.”

  Arsen took the baggy. Pressing the plastic smooth against the tablets, he studied both sides. “These aren’t ours.”

  “They have the Heart and Dagger symbol on them.”

  Arsen flipped the pills over. “Yeah, but they don’t have our Heart and Dagger. Look at the handle on the blade. It doesn’t have the guard. And look.” He pointed at the tablet. “Our heart is ninety degrees to the blade. These are aligned.”

  Jason glanced at his own second, then took a tablet from the fresh drop the Blades had brought and compared the two. “Does that matter?”

  “Yeah. The pills are stamped in the production press. To change the orientation of the stamps, we would have to change the stamp in the machine. They only fit one way. Also, look at the color. It’s not quite right, and mottled. See how uniform our blue is?”

  “What are you telling me? Someone is counterfeiting your molly?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Arsen agreed. Rage was burning through him, and he let Jason see it, let him see that this was going to be taken care of. He looked at the fake pill again. “Their stamping isn’t as crisp as ours either.” He considered for a moment. “I’d like to take these with me and run some tests on them, but I’m betting these are typical street drugs, made in a kitchen somewhere.”

  “Motherfuck,” Jason sneered. “Assholes are counterfeiting illegal drugs now. Is that what the world is coming too? What are you going to do about it?”

  “Do you know who’s doing it?” He watched Jason carefully, looking for any sign of deception.

  “No.” The man’s gaze stayed level and calm.

  “Then nothing,” Arsen said. Jason looked confused, and once Arsen started talking again, plain scared. “You’re going to find out who is supplying these, and then we’ll do something about it.”

  Jason shifted on his feet. “They’re undercutting us on price.”

  “So? Put the word out that there are imitation Hearts and Daggers. Say they’re cut with rat poison. The easiest way to know our stuff from the fake is the orientation of the heart to the blade.”

  “I never noticed that before.”

  Arsen bit back the urge to punch the fool in the head. “We do everything for a reason and we don’t change shit up. You know our stuff is pharmaceutical grade. You don’t know what kind of shit might be in this or what the dosage is.”

  “They said it’s 150.”

  “What they say and what it is are not the same thing. But even if they’re right, 150 is pretty hot. That could kill a small, first time, woman, if she’s susceptible.”

  Jason nodded. “We’ll put the word out. If we find out who’s manufacturing, we’ll pass that along too.”

  “I’ll test these and let you know what I find.”

  “Will you even tell me if they’re as good as yours?” With his eyes narrowed like that, Jason looked more like a rat than normal.

  Arsen laughed. “I can tell by looking at them they’re not. I’ll make you a deal. If they’re as good as mine, I’ll give you the next 25k. Let the fuckers try to undercut free. But if they’re not, you don’t try to bite me in the ass over the price of the good stuff.”

  “Deal. But if they cut into us too much, it’s going to affect you too.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not going to start making shit just to compete on price. What’s the price on this?”

  “$15 on the street.”

  “What are you selling at?”

  “$16 for ten or more, $20 for a single.”

  “That’s it? People know our product. They know it’s safe and a consistent 90mg. When they risk their life on some unknown shit,” he raised the hand with the two pills in it, “they might wish they’d spent the nickel.”

  “Give me something to work with and I’ll scare the shit out of people.”

  “I’ll send the lab results with the next shipment. You’ll see it for yourself.”

  Jason smirked. “You’re chemist, not me. Just tell if it makes your dick fall off or something.”

  “Or something.”

  “What’s the story on chickadee?” he asked, nodding back towards Chet and the woman.

  Arsen loo
ked back over his shoulder. “Don’t know. Found her on the side of the road. Somebody has obviously beaten the shit out of her. She can’t, or won’t, talk.”

  “A woman who can’t talk? If she gives blow jobs and fetches beer, she’d be perfect. What are you going to do with her?”

  “I was going to turn over to the cops, but when I tried to leave her at a gas station where the cops could pick her up, she went nuts.”

  “Want us to take her off your hands?”

  Arsen gritted his teeth. He didn’t know why, but Jason’s sneering attitude about the woman got under his skin. If he let her go with him, she was probably in for another rough ride. “No. We’ll find her a good home.”

  “Find a good home for your cock you mean.”