86. Chapter 86
In the back of the garage, where Saul said it would be, stood a Harley Davidson Road King Classic.
“Beautiful,” Lindsey gaped.
Beautiful? The word, tossed around from women to sunsets and everything in between, hardly scratched the spit-shined red and chrome surface. No detail was spared from the leather saddlebags to the white-walled tires and wire rims. Jase’s fingers skimmed the contours of the seat.
“He got Dad a bike?” Graham asked. “He can’t really mean for us to take it?”
“That’s what he said.” Lindsey grabbed one of the helmets from the shelf behind the bike and turned it over in her hands.
“He was on a lot of drugs,” Helen pointed out.
“Speaking of drugs,” Graham said. “I want to check out the herb garden.”
Helen grabbed his arm to stop him from walking away.
“What are you thinking?” Lindsey asked Jase.
What am I thinking? Christ. He couldn’t think. Not staring at the bike meant for his dad with Saul’s offer in his ears.
Lindsey touched his arm. He stepped away from her and the bike, needing space from both, and rubbed the stubble on his chin.
“We can’t take it,” he said. “I mean, there’s no way we can take it.”
“The key is in the ignition, just like he said,” Lindsey told him.
Jase’s fingers found their way back to the seat, then closed around the handlebar. A sigh broke loose in his chest.
“Hold on a minute,” Graham said. “How are we supposed to finish the trip if we aren’t even riding together?”
“It’s the only way we all finish.”
All eyes turned to Helen, who stared at the bike with more longing than Jase.
“I’ve hit my limit, Graham,” she said. “It’s this or I go home and we figure it out when you’re done.”
“You’re serious?” Graham asked.
“Dead,” Helen said.
He shifted in his sandals, his eyes darting between his fiancée and Jase. “How would we handle Whitlock?”
“He’ll get his pictures,” Helen said. “This isn’t breaking the rules.”
“Technically, it is,” Graham said.
“I think your dad would’ve made an exception here.”
“He would have,” Lindsey said. “You can call Whitlock just in case, can’t you? What’s the worst that will happen?”
We lose six million bucks was the collective look passing between everyone but Lindsey.
“Saul wanted you to have this,” Lindsey said.
“No, he wanted Dad to have this,” Jase argued. “It should’ve been his.”
“Your dad would want you to have it too.”
Lindsey set the helmet down and pulled the cord for the back garage door. It lifted with metal creaks and screeches suggesting no one had opened it for years, and she moved aside for Jase to push the bike out.
Which he didn’t.
He couldn’t keep it, no matter how much he wanted to.
As if reading his mind, Graham said, “This is messed up.”
“Not as much as your face,” Lindsey said to Graham. “How’s the mouth?”
“About as good as your eye,” Helen shot back.
“Okay,” Graham interjected before fists started flying again. “Let’s go find that herb garden. I think we could all use a little something to calm down.”
Graham led his fiancée from the room and Lindsey draped an arm over the handlebars, looking sexy as hell doing it. The girl, the bike—Jase didn’t deserve either.
“Do you remember what you told me in Kentucky?” she asked Jase. “On the walk to the Pederson farm? You said things like that—things like this—happened to your dad all the time.”
“To him. Not to me,” Jase hissed, unsure where to look. Her legs in those shorts and the curves of the Road King were equally distracting. “This bike should’ve been his.”
Lindsey walked those legs out of the garage and into the cooling air of the desert evening.
Jase’s hackles were up. He sympathized with Graham in Kentucky then, unwilling to indulge in more fantasy.
After being shot at and finding his dad’s picture on the goddamn wall of a shop a couple thousand miles from Ohio, he needed hard truths and solid ground beneath his feet. Something, finally, to stand on.
“Oh my gosh,” he heard Lindsey mutter. He left the garage and came up behind her.
“What?”
“Let me see the letter.”
Lindsey reached into his back pocket for today’s instructions. “I thought it was a mistake when I read it the first time. Saul’s Easy Out Autobody.“ She held the letter in front of his face. “He knew we were coming.”
Jase took it from her and focused on his dad’s slanted handwriting. Take it Easy, Jason had written, with a capital E.
“You’ve got to see this!” Graham hollered, emerging through the shop’s maze of dusty shelves with Helen. “No wonder he didn’t want the cops here. I’m not sure this much pot is legal, even in California.”
Jase lowered the letter. He felt his dad’s eyes on him from beyond the grave, the message damn near as clear as Lovers Who Wander showing up at the bus station.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, we’re done in the wagon.”
“What? You’re serious?” Graham asked.
Jase nodded. “Lindsey and I will take the bike.”