Chapter Six
Dylan
Anxiety had still been swirling since I woke up, this constant fluttering, dizzy, off-center sensation that refused to let up.
“Want to go for another walk?” I asked Sugar, who was curled up on her bed, already tired from three long walks already.
It was dark out.
We were supposed to be settling in for the night.
But she seemed to sense my plummeting mood and decided to rally, getting up, then walking over to let me attach her leash.
I forewent her harness and all its patches declaring her a service dog.
I mostly just planned to walk around the apartment complex a few times until I was too tired to stay awake with my thoughts driving me half crazy.
So we took off and started walking.
Ten minutes became twenty, then forty.
Sugar and I were both dragging our feet by the time we were closing in on an hour.
“Wanna go home?” I asked as we rounded the side of our building.
Only to have the anxiety come surging back.
This time, though, with good reason.
Because there were three bikes lined up in one of the guest parking spots.
Maybe it was nothing.
Actual guests who just fancied motorcycles.
But my gut was saying it was too much of a coincidence, that I had been seen, that they’d tracked me down.
As always, I trusted my gut.
It had kept me alive this long.
I turned and ran, pulling a confused Sugar with me until she broke into an easy run too.
I didn’t go far. I couldn’t. I had no car. And I damn sure wasn’t leaving Sugar behind. So I ran through the complex and down to the storage shed that was never locked because the groundskeeper was a raging alcoholic who was always too smashed to remember his keys.
“I know, baby,” I said once I got the doors open and started to pull her inside. “But we have to do it.”
I tugged the leash a little harder, and she stepped inside far enough for me to close the doors.
There was a mini window on the roadside, but the night had come in dark, the moon hidden behind clouds. I couldn’t see anything once we were closed in.
Inside, it smelled strongly of weed killer and gas from the tractor.
I worried about the chemicals inside, about Sugar and her curious nose. “Sorry about this, baby,” I said, reaching to close my hand around her snout so she didn’t try to eat anything dangerous. “We’re going to be okay.”
I wasn’t sure if I was talking more to her or to myself.
They weren’t going to come look for me. Not in the shed. They’d look too conspicuous. Someone would call the cops.
I just had to wait them out.
I would hear them leave.
I could watch out the window to make sure all of them left.
Then I could climb out.
And, what?
I couldn’t stay here. Not anymore. Not now that they’d found me. They would come back eventually. They’d kill me. They’d do worse until I was begging for death.
I had to go.
Start over.
It was over an hour before I heard the bikes purr to life.
“Come here, baby,” I said, pulling her with me to the window, keeping one hand on her snout and leaning up to watch out the window, seeing all three of them pulling off.
“They’re gone,” I told Sugar, as if she had any idea what was going on.
“We’re just going to wait a little bit longer before we go back. ”
That ‘little bit’ ended up being almost an hour. Until I had a wicked headache from the fumes and had walked into at least a dozen clinging spider webs.
My heart was in my throat as we crept back to my apartment. But there was no one lying in wait. Just a slightly ajar door and a completely wrecked apartment.
“Fucking assholes,” I growled, spotting my kit in the kitchen.
They took my freaking syringes. Every last one of them. And, yep, my damn insulin as well.
Great.
That was just fantastic.
Just what I needed.
My pulse was throbbing in my temples as I zipped up my test kit and took it with me into the bedroom.
“Of course,” I grumbled when I realized they’d raided one of my stashes of money. The biggest one.
“Girl, this is so bad,” I said when Sugar came up next to me with one of her toys in her mouth. “We have to go. Now.”
I guess there was one perk to having completely started my life over just about a year ago. I didn’t have much. I wasn’t attached to anything that I did have. All the furniture was from secondhand shops or on clearance at a box store. Nothing was quality. Very little had to come with me.
Wherever we were even going.
I didn’t have time to think about that, though.
I rushed through my room, grabbing clothes, toiletries, medication, chargers, and electronics.
Then, when I was sure I had everything I would need to survive for a few days—minus my insulin, which I’d have to figure out as soon as possible—I started gathering Sugar’s favorite toys, her treats, food, and bowls.
“This is a lot,” I declared, looking at my pile of bags.
It was too much to carry.
And I had no car.
“Okay, baby. We’re going to stash all this in our unit until the morning.”
It was too late to find a car of any sort.
We were going to need to lie low until an appropriate hour.
With that, we took several trips down to the unit, then started on a careful walk toward town. And the twenty-four-hour coffee shop there.
I got a table in the back, and I ordered half-caf coffee after half-caf coffee—black, since I had no way to regulate my sugar aside from my daily slow-acting medication.
Sugar slept at my feet.
I stared out the window, watching the night shift toward day, and thought.
The car solution came to me easily enough.
I needed a place for Sugar and our things. But also my bike, since there was no way I could leave that behind.
I was going to rent a moving truck.
To go where was the question.
I had a decent amount of money. But I wasn’t sure where to go. Or if I was going to get someone else to agree to renting to me when I didn’t have a current job.
There were long-stay motels.
Not ideal.
Almost always dirty.
Sometimes full of creeps.
But I could make do.
Get a job to sock away some more money.
It was going to set back my revenge plans.
Then again, those weren’t going to move forward very easily now that they were onto me. And that they’d screwed around with another club.
I straightened at that.
The other club.
They had to be pissed off at Roach and his guys.
Someone had tried to murder one of them.
They had to retaliate, right?
And, well, the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
I wasn’t typically someone who would reach out for help. But for the first time—maybe in my whole life—I was fragile, vulnerable.
And what did it matter if I had help, so long as I got what I wanted out of this whole thing in the end?
I reached for my phone and typed in the town that had been on the bikers’ rockers.
Shady Valley.
It was a town over in Inyo County, right in the shadow of the Death Valley mountains. Almost four hours from where the drop had been. Nearly five from where I’d been living.
A long drive.
But doable.
Once I was there, I could find my way to a clinic or hospital and get a new prescription for insulin. Then figure out the whole sleeping situation.
“Okay. Mama needs to get something to eat. Then I can feed you. And we can go to the rental place.”
Without insulin, I had to be extra careful about what I was eating. My long-acting medication would (hopefully) prevent any crazy spikes in the meantime, but I wanted to be extra careful.
So we left the coffee place and went to a restaurant, where I got myself an egg and cheese meal and a side of breakfast ham as a special treat for Sugar.
After that, we walked to the moving truck place.
An hour later, all our belongings were in the back with my motorcycle, and Sugar and I were in the front, on the way to some tiny little nowhere town.
“You’re doing good,” I told Sugar as I reached over to pet her.
I was sure cars had been some part of her training, but she hadn’t been in one since I’d gotten her, and I’d been worried she might get anxious.
I should have known better.
That was what made service dogs so valuable—and so expensive.
They were personality tested to be calm and non-reactive as well as to obey commands and do their jobs.
Nothing bothered her. The closest she got to being hyped up was when a squirrel was teasing her by playing too close to where she was relaxing.
I reached for the radio, turning it up, hoping to drown out the thoughts that were getting louder with each passing mile.
But short of hurting Sugar’s ears with the volume, there was no quieting all the concerns and insecurities about reaching out to some unknown club for assistance.
All alone.
No backup.
Sure, I still had a few guns. Some mace. A knife or two. But none of that would help me if these guys turned on me.
“Stop,” I grumbled at myself when my GPS told me that Shady Valley was my next turn.
Nothing was going to happen.
I’d saved one of their lives.
They wouldn’t attack me.
They might be suspicious and curious. They might have a lot of questions for me. But they wouldn’t hurt me after what I’d done.
At least that was what I was forcing myself to believe as I drove down the center street of a quaint little small town lined with mom-and-pop shops. I clocked a gym, diner, pub, pool hall, martial arts studio, and a stationary store.
Though there were more empty buildings than occupied ones.
It was cute. But also maybe a little bit sad and rundown.
Nothing screamed ‘biker clubhouse’ to me as I passed by.
As I got to the stop sign at the end of the main street, though, my gaze was immediately pulled up. Toward the mountains.
There it was.
A giant concrete building with a ton of lights. And all of it surrounded by razor wire-topped fences.
A prison.
No wonder the area was kind of abandoned.
This was a prison town.
I mean, sure, actual prison escapes were few and far between these days. But people were paranoid. Especially women and young families.