2. Orion
Orion
Istare out the window, taking in the deep blackness of the street outside and the stars scattered across the night sky, and wonder if the moon’s out tonight.
I don’t think so; if it was, the street would be lit more brightly, the tiny white house across the street reflecting the moon’s light. But I wouldn’t know.
I haven’t been outside since early this morning, when I took the quick walk from the house to the garage and started working.
Sniffing, I turn my focus back to the garage itself and glance around.
It’s quiet in here now, the corners full of shadows and the lights above us only on at half power, the large, cavernous space quiet of its usual hustle and bustle, and I let myself take a breath for the first time all day.
This garage is generally so loud, so frantic, that a man can’t get a word in edgewise, much less hear himself think.
Which is probably why I love it so much.
After all, thinking means remembering, Processing. Understanding. And I spend most of my time trying not to do any of that. Letting my mind run loose means dealing with ghosts I don’t want to acknowledge.
Ghosts I left behind when I moved to Hawke’s Wood and started a whole new life.
“Hand me that wrench.”
It’s a command, not a request, and for a moment I want to say no, just to piss him off.
But he wouldn’t be Mars Hawke if he didn’t try to boss me around. And I’ve never gone out of my way to piss him off before.
I usually do it without any real intention. Just pure luck.
I nearly grin at the thought but stop myself when he pulls his head out from under the hood of the ‘48 Chevy pickup he’s working on and scowls at me.
“Orion. You listening or are you just here to look pretty?”
This brings a scowl to my face as well, and I glare at him. I grab the wrench he wants from the tool chest next to me and slap it into hit hand. “That’s low, even from you. I never stand around looking pretty.”
Mars smirks, then, and a second later lets it grow into a full grin. “Really? That’s not what the girls in town think. I was talking to Sammy the other day and she said Wendy from the cafe thinks–”
I launch myself at him before he can finish the sentence, swinging an arm in an attempt to punch him cleanly in the nose, but as usual, Mars is too fast for me.
He ducks out of the way and lets me slide past him, then whips out his own hand and catches my arm, spinning me until my back is against the truck.
“Too slow, Orion. As usual.”
Then, because he’s Mars and is therefore both demanding control freak and jolly green giant, he grins and lets me go.
“Don’t know why you’re getting so upset, anyhow. Wendy’s a cute girl. She’d take good care of you.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” I growl, shaking out my arm and stalking to the back of the truck. I shove the tool chest his way, my anger demanding some relief, and barely keep myself from pounding my fists into the cherry red of the truck’s surface.
It would be stupid, of course. The gang has spent weeks working on this truck, restoring it to its full life, and I’d be an idiot to destroy all the work we’ve done. Hell, I was the one who laid down that bright red finish.
I’d kill anyone else who touched it.
This truck also represents something important: a project from the town when they’ve been too few and far between lately.
The garage is run by the Black Oaks, the local motorcycle gang that belongs partially to Hawke’s Wood but mostly to Mars himself.
It’s Mars’ gang and I don’t think anyone would argue that. Which makes this Mars’ garage.
Fitting, since it’s attached to his house.
The garage has been here for all of time, as far as I know, and is a fixture in town like so many small businesses are in a place like this.
The local mechanic. The bakery. The coffee shop and bookstore and fire station.
The vet and the doctor and the dentist. Hawke’s Wood has them all, and I’ve always assumed they’re the sort of businesses that are passed from father to son or daughter, and then on down the family.
Hell, Mars’ own family are the ones who started this town, years and years ago.
Hawke’s Wood takes tradition seriously, and part of that tradition has always been that everyone in town brings their cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles to Mars when they need repair or renovation.
Lately, though...
Well, like I said, projects have been getting fewer, and the garage hasn’t been as busy as it once was.
This truck here is one of only three vehicles in the space, two of them still up on lifts so we can work on the engines from underneath, and though Mars has been pretending it doesn’t matter, I’ve seen the wear of it on his face.
The deeper lines. The down turned mouth.
The eyes constantly turning toward the front of the garage like he’s just waiting for things to get back to normal.
So yeah, I’d be pretty fucking stupid to ruin this truck when we’re nearly finished with it.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to keep my mouth shut when it comes to Mars making fun of me, though. I may not be a native here–only been in town for ten years now–but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let him talk shit.
I walk around to where he’s standing and glance down into the motor.
The truck came in old and rusted out and we’ve been slowly replacing everything in the engine, as well as half the body.
It hasn’t been fast–we had to source a lot of the parts from junk yards far from our mountain–but it’s nearly finished now, and it’s looking very solid.
“Looking good, old man,” I mutter. “Think you might have it done by the time Jerry comes back for it after all.”
“No thanks to you,” he grunts, reaching down to tighten the gasket holding in one of the spark plugs. “You spent more time admiring your own reflection in the truck’s paint job than painting it.”
This time my swing connects with his cheekbone and his stumbles to the side, then comes charging back, and within moments we’re half wrestling, half laughing in the echoing quiet of the garage, though our punches are half-hearted and neither one of us is taking it seriously.
I would never hurt Mars on purpose, and I don’t think he’d ever actually hurt me, either. The man is, after all, responsible for pulling me off the streets of New York when I was just nineteen and homeless. Caught up with a level of people I should never have messed with.
Probably on my way to an early death, if I’m being honest.
He was in the city for parts and to visit family–his sister is married to some guy in the city, though Mars has never told me who–and happened to go to a junkyard a knew.
A junk yard where I was living, all of my stuff piled into one of the rusted-out cars in the corner of the lot.
I was nineteen and had been on my own for seven years by that time, barely surviving on the streets of the Big Apple and doing everything I could to stay out of the hands of the organization that was supposed to protect orphans.
I’d seen where they put kids who didn’t have parents to look out for them–even spent a day in one of those shelters when they caught me–and had decided immediately that I didn’t want to go back.
Too many kids packed into each room. Beds as hard as rocks and sheets too dirty to ever be clean again.
Not enough food, not enough privacy, and adults who abused the kids more than they helped them.
I ran away the first chance I got, and never looked back. And then I spent the next five years regretting that I hadn’t taken any of the other kids with me.
Though I wasn’t sure taking them to the streets would have been much better.
I was the son of two public defenders and thought I’d heard everything there was to know about the streets and what went on there.
I thought I knew about the criminal element and how to defend myself again.
Figured, with the cockiness that only happens to boys between the age of twelve and eighteen, that whatever happened, I could deal with it.
I was wrong.
It had taken two weeks before I joined one of the street gangs and started running cons for the older boys, and two months before I was dealing in stuff no twelve-year-old should know anything about. Two years and I’d progressed to things I would never wish on anyone.
By the time Mars found me, I was trying to leave the syndicate I’d been working for, and failing at it. I’d been in the junkyard for two weeks and hadn’t been discovered yet, but I’d known it was only a matter of time.
Which was why I tried to steal his truck.
I had a bike, of course–a black Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 that I’d built myself out of any scrap I could find–but I didn’t think it could go more than a couple miles at a time–the throttle still wasn’t working quite right–and from where I’d been sitting, his F250 had looked like it had a better engine and a bed I could fit my bike into.
Long story short, he caught me trying to steal his bike, took one look at my ratty jeans and even rattier haircut, and told me he had a certain cure for my ills.
A cure called Hawke’s Wood. Hauled me up here, installed me in the MC, and told me I was his new assistant in the garage.
That was ten years ago, now, and I think he’s regretted it every day since then. Not that he’d ever tell me that.
Mars Hawke has trouble telling people things he thinks they don’t want to hear.
“You gonna stand there looking pretty or actually help me, here?” the man in question snaps.
I jerk myself out of the shadows and rot of a New York junk yard and remember where I am: in the Black Oak garage, helping Mars himself fix a truck that’s needed rehabilitation almost as much as I did.
I open my mouth to reply–something smart about having to be the only pretty one in this entire gang–when a buzz in my pocket stops me.
Then a chime that I recognize.
Shit.
I pull the burner phone out of my pocket, my blood freezing in my veins, and look down at it.
It’s the phone connected to the syndicate’s network, and honestly I don’t even know why I still have it.
It doesn’t represent anything good, just the life I once led, but for some reason I can’t name, I’ve never done the sensible thing and thrown it out.
Never had the heart to truly cut the cord, I guess.
No one knows I have it. Hell, no one even knows about the syndicate I once worked for. I can’t bring myself to tell anyone, and I don’t know why I would. I don’t want to think about the skeletons in my closet, and I don’t know why anyone else would.
And now the damn thing is signaling that there’s a text. A message going out to the network, something the higher-ups want done.
The thought makes my stomach turn.
Usually I ignore those texts. Turn the phone off and put it out of my mind as something I don’t actually need to know about. But right now, for some reason, I open the phone and hit the icon for text messages.
Something inside me, something I barely recognize, tells me I need to know what’s in that message.
Girl, I read quickly. Needs a keeper. Worth a lot of money. Delete this after you read it, don’t tell anyone.
I frown at the first word, but then tip my head at the lack of detail. These texts are sort of like help wanted ads, crimes that need committing, and this one leaves out some important details. Like who this girl is and what exactly they want done with her.
Her current location.
Then another text comes in, and my blood freezes.
Hawke’s Wood, New York.
And an address that I recognize.
Holy. Fuck.
Suddenly the pieces come slamming together, and the picture is clear.
The syndicate deals with a lot of things–drugs, boosting cars, chop shops, arms–but their biggest side hustle is kidnappings.
Stealing girls and boys from their homes and then holding them for ransom–or worse, selling them outright into the smuggling cartels.
They make a shitload of money doing it, and it’s the reason I got out, all those years ago.
So it doesn’t take as much translation as I’d like to figure out what’s going on here.
They’ve got a girl. She’s worth a lot of money and they need someone to watch after her. And she is, for whatever reason, in Wood.
At an address I’ve been suspicious of for a very long time.
I try to put the phone away. Try to clear out of the message and forget that it exists.
After all, I’m not part of the syndicate anymore.
I haven’t been for a long time, and that means I can very easily ignore this message and go about my life.
Help Mars fix up this old truck and maybe get him to look at the brakes on my bike, which haven’t been acting right lately.
I can forget this girl even exists.
Except I know I can’t.
I know damn well that I can’t do anything of the sort.
Because I know what happens to girls caught in the syndicate’s grasp, and where she’s going to end up. And what’s worse; I know that if I don’t do anything about this, it’ll bother for me for the rest of my fucking life.
I’ll spend the rest of my days hating myself for not having saved her when I had such a clear chance.
“God dammit,” I mutter, shoving the tool chest one more time and then whirling toward my bike.
The old girl is sitting against the side of the garage, midnight black except for set of scratched-up bronze pipes–the only ones I could find when I was only fourteen and trying to build a bike out of a beat-up frame and barely running engine.
She’s glowing softly in the dim lighting, though, crouched like she’s waiting for some fucking action.
Like she already knows what’s up, and is anxious to get the fuck on the road.
Fucking dying to go out and act the hero. Even my bike is against me.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Mars shouts from behind me. “Orion! We’re not done here!”
I don’t answer him, though. I walk to my bike, throw a leg over, and get her started. This girl, whatever’s going on at that address, doesn’t have anything to do with Mars or his garage or his gang.
Hell, she doesn’t have anything to do with me, either.
Except the biting, highly inconvenient thought that I know she’s here, and that if I don’t answer this call and make sure she’s safe, someone else will show up.
And bad things will happen to her.
I’m not a fucking hero, I tell myself as I skid out of the garage and into the night.
So why the fuck am I tearing through Wood, probably waking half the town with the sound of my bike, trying to get to the girl before anyone else answers that call?