Chapter 52
RUE
That was so fucking weird. The normalcy of breakfast with a stranger was almost too much for my mind to handle. We were just a husband and wife on their way to Phoenix. And the breaking point isn’t the fact that we lied.
It’s the pain of the truth underneath. We’ll never be those people.
The ride is a tense, silent descent. The road twists through the Ponderosa pines, every hairpin turn a blind drop into the dark. Noah is pushing the bike to its limits, the engine roaring around us. His body feels stiff, and I’m not sure if it’s his focus on the road—or the pain in his arm.
And then finally, the geography shifts.
The trees begin to thin out, revealing the jagged, plunging limestone canyons that lead down toward Clifton and the massive Morenci Mine complex.
We take a sharp, descending curve, and suddenly, the shadows on the canyon walls ahead aren’t just gray anymore…
They are pulsing with a faint, rhythmic flash of red and blue reflecting off the rock face a mile below us.
Oh shit. f
Noah’s spine goes rigid against my chest, but he doesn’t hit the brakes. Instead, he immediately rolls off the throttle and downshifts, letting the engine brake the heavy bike.
“I think they’re waiting for us,” he rasps over his shoulder.
He wrestles the handlebars to the right, veering off the pavement just before we round the bend that would put us in their direct line of sight. The tires crunch over loose volcanic rock as he forces the bike up a narrow, hidden wash choked with scrub juniper.
He kills the engine, and the sudden silence of the mountain drops over us like a heavy blanket.
“Get off,” he orders, his voice low and tight. He kicks the stand down and leans the bike into the brush to hide the chrome from the road below.
“Where are they?” I ask, my shoes hitting the dirt with a crunch.
“I don’t know.” Noah looks up at the towering limestone ridge to our left, blocking our view of the valley below. “We have to see what’s ahead. Come on.”
“Up there?” I point to the ridge. “We’re climbing that?”
He blinks and then nods. “Uh, yeah. Let’s go. I’m not going to fuck this up and ride right into a trap.”
My shoulders slump, and I close my eyes for a second, then breathe out. “Okay, fine. Let’s go for a fucking hike then.”
“Good girl.” He grabs my hand and tugs me toward the ascent.
The hike up the bluff is a grueling, miserable battle, and I spend most of it cursing under my breath, while miraculously, a few eggs and bacon seem to have brought Noah back to life.
How fucking nice.
However, as we make the final scramble up the limestone, I notice his left arm is stiff, favoring the gunshot wound. His eyes are clear and hardened with that familiar, calculating focus, though.
And I want to ask him what he’s thinking, but I hold back.
When we reach the crest of the bluff, Noah drops to his stomach. I follow suit, crawling the last few feet to the edge of the rock overhang.
The wind whips my hair across my face, but I barely feel it. Below us, Highway 78 carves a deep, dizzying ‘S’ curve down the side of the mountain, dropping into the massive, excavated canyon of the Morenci Mine.
And at the bottom of the pass, the road is bleeding red and blue.
Oh my God.
“Did Kirk call the cops?” I ask, tilting my head to catch Noah’s gaze.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so, but the answer doesn’t really matter at this point. There’s a lot of fucking cops.”
“They’ve got us boxed,” I whisper, my stomach dropping as I take it in again.
Two miles down, where the road narrows to enter the mining complex, sits a wall of Arizona Highway Patrol cars. They’ve funneled the two lanes down to a single choke point with orange cones and portable floodlights that cut through the morning sun.
Noah rests his chin on his crossed arms, staring down at the blockade. His breathing is ragged, but I can tell his mind is already working. “They probably know we’re in the mountains somewhere for some reason. They’re just waiting for us to ride down into the net.”
“There’s no way through that, Noah. There are too many of them.”
“We just need to watch,” he says, his voice a low, steady rasp. “People get bored, Rue. They get tired, they get sloppy. Watch the cars.”
I focus on the cruisers below. The time passes. The cold bites through my clothes, but Noah remains perfectly still, a predator waiting for a slip.
Finally, a fresh cruiser, white and gold, pulls up from the direction of the mine. It stops a car-length away from the lead patrol vehicle, blocking the lane. The officer in the stationary car opens his door. He stands up, stretching his arms over his head, a clipboard in his hand.
The officer in the new car rolls down his window and then steps out to meet him. They converge between the two idling vehicles.
“Shift change,” Noah murmurs, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “The day shift is maybe relieving the night patrol. They’ll be busy with the hand-off. Talking shop, signing the logs, maybe…”
“For how long?”
“No clue.” He looks at me, his exhaustion masked by pure adrenaline. “We can't ride through. They’ll hear the pipes for miles before we even reach the cones.”
“Then what?”
“We could… coast,” he says. “It’s a steep downgrade from here to the mine entrance. If I kill the lights and we hit the asphalt in neutral, we’re a ghost.”
“That sounds absolutely stupid,” I say, giving him a look. “This isn’t a fucking movie, Noah. We can’t just kick it into gear once we’re through. That’s just… asinine.”
Noah clambers back from the bluff and jumps to his feet. “It’s either that or stay up here forever, trying to wait them out.”
I glance back out and then chase Noah down.
I guess we’re really going to do this.
The descent back to the hidden bike is a frantic blur. We reach the Knucklehead, and Noah swings his leg over the seat. He looks exhausted, his skin seems pale in the dim light, but his grip on the handlebars is iron-tight.
I slide onto the seat behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“This is so stupid. You’re counting on us riding in the shadow of the road.”
“I know,” he says, his voice strained. “But this is the best idea I’ve got.”
He kicks the bike into neutral. He doesn’t touch the ignition. He just leans forward, his heavy boots pushing against the dirt to roll the seven-hundred-pound beast out of the brush and onto the shoulder of the highway.
The moment the tires hit the steep blacktop, gravity takes over.
The silence is terrifying. There is no roar of the exhaust, no vibration of the engine to ground me. There is only the hiss of rubber slicing over cold pavement and the strange tick-tick-tick of the drive chain.
We are a heavy, dark shape sliding down the mountain.
We round the first hairpin turn, picking up speed. The checkpoint is a mile below us, then a half-mile. The portable floodlights are blinding, casting long, distorted shadows of the police cruisers against the canyon walls.
Noah is a statue in front of me. His body is rigid, steering with tiny, precise shifts of his weight. I press my face against his back and hold my breath until my lungs burn.
We’re getting closer. The two officers are still standing between their cars. One is pointing at the clipboard, tapping it with a pen; the other is holding a steaming foam cup of coffee. They are entirely focused on each other, their backs to the dark slope descending behind them.
None of them looks. My chest constricts.
This is insane. We’re so fucking insane.
We glide toward the narrow gap between the cruiser’s rear bumper and the steep rock wall of the canyon. The bike hits a patch of loose gravel on the shoulder. It makes a loud crunch that sounds like a gunshot in the silent canyon.
The officer with the coffee stops talking. He starts to turn his head toward the road.
I brace for what’s to come, heart slamming against my ribs.
But then another officer taps the clipboard again, speaking up, drawing his partner's attention right back to the paperwork.
We are so close I can smell the stale coffee and the heavy exhaust of the idling police cars. We drift through the shadows. Ten yards. Twenty. Fifty.
The road levels out as we enter the towering steel skeletons and massive dirt berms of the Morenci Mine complex. Our momentum begins to die. The bike slows to a crawl.
Noah doesn’t wait for us to stop. He doesn’t look back either. His heavy boot finds the kickstart and comes down hard.
And the engine explodes into life, the violent roar echoing off the corrugated metal siding of the mine buildings like a bomb going off.
“Hold on!” Noah yells over the sound.
He drops it into gear and rips the throttle. The back tire fishtails, screaming as it finds traction on the asphalt, and then we are gone—shooting like a bullet into the labyrinth of the mine.
Far behind us, the floodlights pivot, and the sirens begin to wail.