Hell Bent

It was dark. She wasn’t wearing protective gear. Her bike was big and it was fast and it was brand spanking new.

Jack, you trust me way too much…

As she’d anticipated, he switched on his turning signal and eased on out onto the highway, picking up incredible speed as he neared the junction. She slowly twisted the throttle and was struck with the real difference between the V-Rod and Harley’s other motorcycles. If the wind hadn’t been hitting her so hard, she’d be breaking into a sweat. The bike was really, really fast. Not as fast as Jack’s, but quite a bit more speedy than was strictly sufficient.

They hit seventy miles per hour in a very few short seconds and kept the speed steady. Jack let off of his own throttle momentarily and kicked back to run even with Annabelle. He looked over at her and their eyes met. The gaze held for longer than it should have before Annabelle broke it and looked back at the road in front of her. Motorcycles tended to go where their drivers were looking. Look left, the bike goes left. Look right, it goes right. Look down, guess where it goes?

She just happened to have enough experience with motorcycles to know how to keep the bike from doing whatever the hell it wanted to just because she chose to enjoy the view. But it wasn’t wise to get too side tracked, so, Annabelle trained her gaze a good fifteen seconds ahead of them and kept it there for the time being. Jack rode steady beside her.

After a while, Annabelle relaxed into position and began to notice things. The road was newly paved and easy on the tires. That was nice. No distracting bumps; just the steady, comforting vibration of the engine between her legs.

There was no wind, which was strange, but a pleasant change. Wind jerked the bike around and caused tension to ride up the biker’s arms and shoulders. No wind was good.

The night was cold, but not as cold as it had been. Though this last winter had been relatively mild, Minnesota was never balmy in May. Tonight, however, was a truly mellow night. It wasn’t clear and there weren’t any shooting stars or anything magical like that, but the overhead cloud cover kept what warmth there was down on the ground.

And it wasn’t raining. The black top was dry and because it was a week night, it was more or less empty. It stretched on and on.

She chanced a glance down at her gauges. She had a full tank of gas. Jack had set her up. How far could she get if she wanted to? Could she leave the state? Head for the sea side? On a Night Rod, how long would it take her to get there?

In the last ten years, Minnesota had iced up her bones and rimed over her soul. Some days, she felt like she would never thaw out. She felt like she could walk through the desert, trudge from dune to sandy dune, and the frost around her heart still wouldn’t melt.

She had come here a decade ago to help her mother, Rachel, who underwent a lengthy surgery that left her handicapped for several years. In that time, Annabelle finished her BA at “The U”, the University of Minnesota, and then signed up for graduate classes. At the same time, she acquired a job at a health sciences university. She was a natural and a quick study. She learned a lot about graphic design and learned it well.

When her mother’s doctor suggested that his patient move somewhere warmer, her mother listened. Rachel and Annabelle talked it over for a long time. The truth was, Rachel was well on the mend and no longer truly needed Annabelle’s help. So, after much deliberation and wringing of the hands, she agreed to move to Florida even though her daughter couldn’t follow.

At the time, there was just too much for Annabelle in the Twin Cities. A good job, classes, the Minnesota Wild – she was a big fan – and the winters hadn’t yet gotten to her. Plus, there was Jack. They’d been friends for four years by that point, and though she’d had friends for longer, she’d never had any that were closer.

Annabelle’s mother had been forty when she’d given birth to her daughter. So, to Rachel, Jack had seemed just as young as Annabelle. Their age difference didn’t much phase the woman. In fact, nothing much phased the woman. And Rachel liked Jack. For some unknown and, to Annabelle, entirely ironic reason, her mother thought Jack was safe.

It was one of the reasons she’d agreed to leave for Orlando in the first place. Rachel figured Jack would protect Annabelle from the world.

Well, she’d been right on that count.

But who was going to protect her from him?

Annabelle chanced another glance away from the road, this time at her handsome assassin companion. Did he know that she dreamt about him at night? Did he have any clue how amazingly attractive she found him? Charismatic? Powerful? Did he know?

Why was she thinking about this right now? Was it the ride, maybe? Was she still high on pain killers? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t seem to help where her thoughts were sliding.

And they were sliding, inexorably, toward Jack.

Did he know that, for some reason she didn’t care to evaluate, she not only didn’t mind his occupation all that much, but she was… well… intrigued by it? Something about Jack holding lives in his hands made her weak in the knees. And that was wrong, wasn’t it? It was wrong! After all, he was a killer. He was paid to end lives!

Still, she believed that Jack was not the kind of person to take a life that didn’t deserve to be taken. She held on to that belief tooth and nail. There were so many nasty people out there. She’d been up close and personal with a few of them; if they ever came across Jack’s path during his career, she could not feel sorry for them.

In that light, Jack appeared to be more a vigilante, really. An outlaw, but one on the side of the good guys. He was strong and fast and very, very smart. He embodied an ultimate form of power, and that was a definite turn on.

And nothing short of an overdose of truth serum would get her to admit as much to him.

But did he know anyway? Did he know that she trusted him like she had never trusted anyone else in her life? It wasn’t even an earned trust. It was an immediate trust that made absolutely no sense. From day one, from the first glance, in that bar on her twenty-first birthday, she’d trusted him. Implicitly. And she had no idea why.

A part of her needed Jack Thane. He was like a piece of her. She often found herself worrying about him and his occupation. What if, one night, a particular job just suddenly – went bad? What if it back fired?

What if he were killed?

Annabelle’s brow furrowed and she jerked her attention back to the road ahead of her. It was a sobering thought. It wasn’t the first time she’d had it, either. As much as she wanted to think of herself as a strong and independent woman, the truth was, Jack Thane represented a piece of her life that simply couldn’t be cut out. Not without dire consequences, at any rate.

And why was that?

She twisted the throttle a little and picked up speed, moving slightly ahead of Jack, who had been riding steady on her left side. She just suddenly had an urge to move past him. To push the engine as hard as she could.

To run away.

In the next instant, Jack pulled up along side her once more and she couldn’t help but look over at him. Their eyes met. Still, his expression was unreadable. But there was something dangerous behind his blue eyes. Something she didn’t recognize.

She blinked. He looked away, refocusing his attention on the ribbon of black unfolding before them. She followed suit.

Annabelle wondered how long they were going to drive. Not that she minded the ride. They could just keep going and going, for all she cared. But Jack had a destination in mind, and she wondered what it was.

She looked over at him again, suddenly curious as to how Dylan was holding up. The teenager’s arms were wrapped tightly around Jack’s trim waist and his eyes were shut tight. He almost looked as if he was in pain.

Probably afraid of the motorcycle. A lot of people were nervous about motorcycles, the way that Annabelle was afraid to fly. She had empathy for him.

Beside her, carefully matching her speed on his Triumph, Jack Thane was lost in his own dark thoughts. If Annabelle had been able to read his grim reflections, she might have driven that new motorcycle of hers right off of the interstate.