Chapter 1 #2
Miami grinned and held up both palms like a sinner promising to behave. He still looked like a man planning to sin.
We got the pallets loaded onto the trucks fast. Turnpike and Priest carried the weight. Badger wrapped straps like a pro. Jackal kept count and kept quiet. Mirage signed what he needed to sign and kept the ink from staining his soul.
The bike came last. We eased the crate apart. The black shape leaned into the light. It was slicker up close. Tank shaved bare. Frame tubing thicker where it shouldn’t be thicker. The welds were too pretty. The pretty kind of wrong that means someone was hiding a scar.
“Roadkill,” I said.
He was already circling. He tapped the frame with a wrench and listened. Tapped again. His head cocked. He tapped a third time. “Too dull,” he said. “Too full.”
“Full of what?” Spade asked, bored and eager.
“Not air,” Roadkill said with a glance.
Snake Eyes looked at Blackjack, then at me, then at Salvatore. “We taking this on faith?”
“You’re taking it on invoice,” Salvatore replied. “If you want to pull parts in the middle of my pier, call your lawyer first.”
Blackjack stared at the bike. He was a man who trusted his gut the way sailors trust the moon.
But as shady as this seemed, we had no reason not to trust it.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t moved worse things or more dangerous things before.
At least this time we got to see what was inside the crate. “Load it,” he said.
Miami exhaled like he’d been holding his breath the whole time.
We rolled the bike toward our cage. Wheels whispered over wet wood. A flock of gulls wheeled and screamed. The bay slapped pilings. On the far end of the pier a man lit a cigarette. I watched the ash and the way his shoulders held tension like a story he didn’t want to tell.
“Jersey,” Blackjack said without taking his eyes off the load. “Take the Baltic run. Then stick to the back roads.”
“Me and who?”
“8-Ball. Miami. Spade. Snake Eyes tailing. Priest. Turnpike in the cage.”
“Copy.”
Miami bumped my shoulder with his. “You hear that? Date night.”
“Don’t flirt with me in front of the family,” I said.
“I’m faithful,” he said, grin widening.
“To Quinn,” I replied.
“To speed,” he said.
We strapped the bike. Roadkill double-checked. Triple-checked. He didn’t like things that didn’t talk back to him honestly. “She’ll ride,” he said at last, distrust lingering like a stain.
Salvatore handed 8-Ball a key on a brass ring. Cheap motel metal. “Unit 317,” he said. “You’ll meet a man named Carlo.”
“Carlo who?” 8-Ball asked.
“Carlo who says thank you,” he replied.
“That a last name?” I asked.
“It is for men who don’t need any trouble,” he said.
Spade rolled his neck. “He’s getting some anyway.”
8-Ball tossed the key to Spade who placed it in his pocket like it was a coin. He smiled then turned back to Salvatore the way diplomats smile at border guards. “We’ll be ghosts.”
“Be on time. The weather can be quick to change.” Salvatore replied.
“Storm coming,” I said.
He didn’t blink.
We fired the bikes up again. The choir came back to life. The pier jumped. Night opened its mouth to us as we pulled out in two lines, cages ahead, chrome behind, a little city on wheels.
One line would go with the cage carrying the bike to the drop off site. The rest would go with the other cages to the pier.
I took my slot and felt the road climb into my bones.
Snake Eyes drifted to the rear like smoke.
Spade’s engine thumped like a heart with anger issues.
Miami fell in next to me, face lit by the dash glow, eyes hot and hungry.
He kept glancing at the bed of the cage like a lover checking on a door he forgot to lock.
“You really think it’s humming?” I asked.
“Not think,” he said. “I know.”
“Maybe that’s your skull.”
“I got music in there,” he said. “You got bats.”
“Bats don’t hum.”
“These ones do,” he said.
I laughed. The city rolled at us in bands of neon and bad decisions.
We came off the dock road and onto blacktop slick from the last rain.
A quarter mile ahead a cruiser sat in the median with its lights off.
Snake Eyes called it in calm as a man ordering coffee.
We knifed past at exactly the speed limit for twenty long seconds, then the world opened again.
We hit Baltic and the night tensed. You can feel it when a place holds its breath.
Windows went by one by one like eyes deciding to close.
A kid out way too late for his own good on a bicycle froze mid-pedal and then ghosted into an alley.
Somewhere behind the drumbeat of our pipes I heard the cough of a motorcycle that wasn’t ours and that didn’t belong.
“Eyes up,” I said. “We got company.”
Spade’s chuckle hit the comm like gravel. “Good.”
“Hold formation,” I said. “We’re not bleeding on their schedule.”
“Who says we’re going to bleed?” he asked.
The storage units sat in a low rectangle like a row of teeth. One streetlight was blown. One was flickering. Another was as steady as a heartbeat. The gate stood waiting, lock clean, no rub marks on the chain. Someone cared. Someone wanted the world to think nobody else did.
We swung in and killed our engines. The universe shrank to the ping of cooling heads and the tin twitch of the ocean wind.
The cage eased to a stop. Turnpike peeled off to the corners.
Snake Eyes rolled past and parked cross-wise, in the parking lot, thinking about exits and making calculations nobody else could see.
8-Ball stepped out and held the key up to the flickering light like he could see the future in its shine. “Make it quick,” he said.
“Make it clean,” Blackjack said over the radio from the pier, voice tinny and iron at once.
Miami hopped onto the bed. He wanted to be the first to touch that black thing again. Spade climbed up beside him, impatient. I took the door on 317 and listened. No breath behind it. No scrape. No prayer.
8-Ball slid the key in and opened the unit. It smelled like concrete, dust, and a brand new lie. It was empty. A rectangle of darkness. Enough room for a secret to grow legs.
“That Carlo better be real,” Spade said.
“He’s late,” I pointed out.
“Storm must have got him,” Miami said, grin crooked.
I turned to tell him to cut it out. That was when a second motorcycle came up the lane cold, lights off, rider black from boots to helmet, engine idling just above a whisper. Not ours. Not a friend.
“Show’s started,” Snake Eyes said.
The rider didn’t speak. He lifted a hand. The hand held nothing. That nothing felt like a gun.
“Hands,” I ordered. “Now.”
He didn’t show them. He looked at the cage. He looked at Miami. He looked at the bike. And then he reached behind his back slowly and smoothly and the night made a hinge sound in my head like a door beginning to open in a house that wasn’t supposed to be haunted.
Spade’s weight shifted. Priest rolled his shoulders. Turnpike forgot he was a prospect and started moving like a brother.
“On me!” I shouted.
The rider’s visor caught the flickering light and for a second my face looked back at me, thin and pale and already dead in the curve of glass. He tapped two fingers against the side of his helmet like a habit. Like a signal. Far off down the lane another engine woke up and then another answered.
Miami laughed under his breath. “Told you. Humming.”
We didn’t draw first. Not with the family key in our pocket and the Giorlando’s counting favors like casino chips. But my hand slid down and rested near the weight on my hip and my heart found a beat I trusted. Our drop site was a trap.
Blackjack’s voice snapped in low over the radio. “Status? Over.”
“Working,” 8-Ball said. “Guests arriving. Over.”
“Keep the floor clean. Over.” Blackjack said.
“Copy that.”
I stepped into the rider’s headlight and let him see all the ink I’d paid for and the quiet promise in my eyes. “You got business?” I asked, “you can call the office.”
He tilted his head. The helmet nodded no.
“Then you got a problem?”
He didn’t disagree this time.
Behind me, Miami’s hand went back to the black bike, fingers tracing the seam on the tank for the second time tonight, thirst and instinct and bad luck all pulling in the same direction. Priest watched with suspicion and worry. Snake Eyes breathed out once, steadily. Spade smiled without teeth.
The rider looked past me again. Straight at Miami.
Straight at the thing on the bed of our cage that did not belong to any of us and belonged to all of us because that was how the world worked down here.
He put two fingers up again and pressed them together.
The other engines down the lane cut out.
The night went still. The gulls stopped screaming.
Even the ocean seemed to hold its tongue.
I felt it then. Not a hum. A weight.
We weren’t going to bleed on anyone’s schedule. But we were going to bleed.
“This isn’t right,” I said. “We need to get it out of here.” I looked at 8-Ball who held his radio up. “Tell Blackjack to tell them the drop is hot. Get us another spot.”
8-Ball nodded but there was only static.
“Whatever this is, is hot,” I said to 8-Ball, keeping my eyes on the unknown riders. “We need to hold ground. Let Miami get it out of here. It’ll be faster off the cage… if it works.”
8-Ball looked to Miami, then to me, then to the riders again. He nodded and glanced at Miami. “You heard Jersey. Get it out of here. You know our spots. Keep it low until the heats gone.”
Miami nodded.
The rider finally moved his empty hand away from his back and set it gently on the bar of his own bike.
Spade wanted to jump. I kept him leashed with a look. 8-Ball’s calm held us in the lane like gravity as Miami began to get the bike off the bed.
We rolled the bike onto the pavement, and I watched as Miami mounted it.
“I hope she works,” I said as the key was passed to him.
“She will. I can tell,” he said as he stroked her.
“Drive like you’ve never driven before brother,” 8-Ball said.
Miami wasted no time. He shoved the key in and kicked the bike to life.
It purred. I could see the look of ecstasy on Miami’s face as he took it in with one long inhale.
He looked at the unknown riders, gave them a dirty look, glanced back at me with a smile, added a wink for flare, and then took off like a bat out of hell.
The unknown rider kicked his bike to life, and the ones who had joined the darkness reappeared again too.
Suddenly, before they could even follow Miami, Turnpike must have already climbed into the cage.
The engine roared to life, and it jumped forward, turning sharply before stopping on the utility road Miami just fled down.
The cage took up the width and blocked their path. Nothing but swamp on the other side.
The rider then reached for something on his leg, and I saw a glint of silver.
“Cover!” I yelled as gunfire erupted.
We dove behind our bikes and used the building as cover too. We returned fire, unsure if we struck anyone, but managed to scare off those who had stalked the delivery site.
“Is anyone hurt?” 8-Ball asked as he looked around to check on everyone.
Fortunately, everyone was good, but it was a close one.
“Fucking shit show that was,” Spade said as everyone rose back to their feet and Turnpike jumped out of the cage.
8-Ball turned to him. “Drop was dirty. Product’s hot. Blackjack isn’t going to like this.”
“The Giorlando’s aren’t going to like this a whole lot more,” Priest replied.
“Fuck them. They gave it to us without knowing what it even is. What’s so fucking special about a bike anyway?” Spade replied, rubbing asphalt from an abrasion on his arm he must have gotten from diving to the ground for cover.
“Not like we haven’t taken surprises before. That’s the only reason we’re still kicking it now. Experience. Instinct. Blackjack will deliver, but the price tag just went up.”
“Way up,” Snake Eyes replied.
“We need to have Roadkill look more at that bike,” I suggested. “No way this was just over a machine. It’s suspicious as hell.”
8-ball glanced at me and nodded. “Once it’s secure, he will.”
Snake Eyes lit up a cigarette but didn’t smoke it. He let it burn down to the filter, watching the bike’s headlights disappear off in the distance, opposite direction of where Miami had gone. “We need to tell Prez it’s raining,” he said.
I looked up at the stars I couldn’t see, then over to the neon glow bouncing off the clouds that hovered over the city. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s about to rain. Storms coming in.”
We saddled up and left the unit sleeping behind us.
No idea where our contact was. He didn’t show.
On the way out, we saw no signs of the other bikers either.
As we headed to the pier to link up with everyone else to ensure the rest of the delivery went better than our half, the kid on the bicycle reappeared at the corner of a street we passed, watching with that hungry look boys get when they stumble on something they want but can’t have.
He raised a hand. I raised two fingers back and saluted him.
We hit the road and the road hit back. The city opened her arms and sharpened her nails.
We rode into her lights. The choir sang. And for a single moment, everything was simple. When the city blinked, that was when the world tilted toward blood. And I couldn’t help but think that was exactly what this storm brewing was going to be doing.