Jack gripped the handlebars of the bike and squeezed. Tension was riding him almost as hard as he wanted to ride the motorcycle beneath him. Nothing about this situation was controlled. He liked control. He depended on it. When things were in control, they ran according to plan and were easy to anticipate and manipulate.
Right now, his mind was working on all gears as he tried to get a handle on the situation. Beside him, Annabelle rode high on Vicodin, no food in her stomach, no helmet on her head, barely any protective gear on her body at all. And on a bike he probably shouldn’t have given her just yet. If he hadn’t had complete faith in her riding abilities, he would have made a point to shoot himself later for being such a bloody fool.
But Annabelle was no rookie and he was certain enough that she would remain upright. Besides, it wasn’t as if he’d had much of a choice. They were literally on the run. And that was what he was trying to get his head wrapped around. The past twenty-four hours were throwing him for a loop.
Nothing played out right. Nothing made sense.
Whoever had killed Max Anderson had been good enough that they’d managed to cover up the more obvious traces of foul play, but novice enough that they’d missed a few minor, yet damning details. Someone, perhaps, a year on the job.
Whoever had fixed the pharmaceutical records, however, had been very, very good. Thorough. Clever. He was certain it had been the same person to fix the autopsy. An informant had told Jack that the postmortem had come out clean – confirming evidential suicide.
And then there was the pizza boy. An amateur of the worst kind. He’d come blundering into a scene un- prepared and unaware. From what he had been carrying on his person, Jack had been able to surmise that he’d had no idea how many people he was going to find in that apartment. And the needles full of sodium thiopental made no sense at all. Anyone he wanted to stick a needle into would struggle, and if he thought he’d have had an easier time of it with a woman, he was wrong. Women were more often phobic of needles than men, and Annabelle was a good example. She was terrified of them. Needles and planes.
So, the kid must have been planning on forcing someone to inject themselves. And the only way to do that was to threaten to shoot someone else. That could get loud and messy and too many wild factors made for an unsure outcome. It was sloppy. Amateur work, indeed.
Three different hired guns.
One employer?
Jack wasn’t so sure. He glanced over at Annabelle. She was obviously lost in her own thoughts. Her brow was furrowed and her speed kept inching upward. Jack recognized her stance. She looked scared. Tired. Frustrated. She looked as if she could twist the throttle as far back as it would go and not slow down until she took the bike right over the edge of the Earth.
Time to pull her out of whatever abyss her mind had leapt into. Their turn-off was coming up. He waited for her to glance over and then held up his right hand. They’d learned hand signals for riding a long time ago and he used them now. She nodded and responded in kind and he kicked ahead of her with a slight flick of the right wrist and enormous ease.
The Triumph roared past and nearly out of view before Annabelle could blink. She smiled, grateful to finally have the chance to see what the Night Rod could really do. She leaned into the bike, carefully twisted the throttle, and grinned ear to ear.
Annabelle and Dylan followed Jack down the long, dark hallway to a metal door at its end. Annabelle did her best to walk normal. But the time she’d spent on the bike had allowed the ache in her hips to set in and getting back on her feet had brought the pain back. As strong as the drug was, under the circumstances, it was wearing off. The pleasant physically numb feeling she’d been embraced by was slipping away, leaving a weariness and pain in its wake.
She grimaced as they came to a stop. She’d be damned if she was going to mention anything about her discomfort to either of her companions. It was her own stupid fault she was in pain, anyway. And at least she wasn’t nauseated. The Vicodin would work for days to that effect. She was pretty sure it was also responsible for the fact that Max’s death still wasn’t bothering her as much as it should. Chalk one up for opiates.
Besides – Dylan didn’t appear to be doing any better. His color had never returned and he had that look about him that yearned for a dark room, a bed, and a shit load of oblivion.
Jack rapped with his gloved knuckles on the door and the lock tumbled on the other side.
The door swung slowly outward. Jack stepped back and another man stepped out. He stood a few inches shorter than Jack, which still left him a lot taller than Annabelle. He looked maybe five or six years younger than Jack; mid-to late thirties. He had short jet-black hair and light hazel eyes. A well-trimmed goatee graced his chin. His clothes closely resembled Jack’s own ensemble; black t-shirt over a well-muscled chest, black jeans, black shoes. Annabelle noticed that they weren’t motorcycle boots. Not sneakers, but still soft-soled. They looked comfortable and easy to not notice. She figured that was probably the point.
The man nodded at Jack and immediately stepped aside, allowing the three of them to enter the room beyond.
It wasn’t a large room and was furnished with bare necessities. Annabelle guessed it was an emergency grouping center, containing a couple of couches and love seats, a few tables and a door on the opposite end that she assumed led to a bathroom. She hoped it did, anyway. The bottled water she’d downed before the ride was now wanting back out.
Jack stopped and turned, ushering her and Dylan in before he made certain the door was locked behind them. The black-haired man moved to a table across the room and pulled two duffel bags off of its surface. He walked over and handed them to Jack, who instantly handed one of them to Annabelle.
“Change of clothes,” he told her softly. “You’ve already guessed where the washroom is.”
Annabelle looked at the bag and then up at Jack. He smiled. She shrugged and headed toward the opposite door, just grateful to be on her way to sitting once more.
The bathroom was small but contained all of the necessary basics. It was also clean. Thank God.
She dropped the bag on the floor and began to strip down to her underwear. That was when she noticed that it was also heated, because she didn’t get the chill she expected from the night air. She relieved herself and then closed the lid on the toilet. She folded her clothes, placing them on top of the toilet lid and then unzipped the black duffel bag at her feet.
“What the-”
The articles of clothing carefully folded inside were something straight out of a science fiction movie. She lifted out the top garment and held it up in front of her. It was a long-sleeved shirt, grayish-black and looked to be about her size. However, the material it was composed of shone iridescently in the overhead fluorescents. She moved it from side to side, watching the gray-black material shimmer like very, very fine chain mail.
“Way weird.”
She turned the shirt upside down and felt inside. It was soft on the inside, just as one would expect cotton or even fleece to feel. It was the outside that felt so strange. And it was heavy, too.
She put the shirt on the stack of clothes on the toilet and then bent down to retrieve what was next in the bag. A pair of jeans.
Sort of.
These were black low-rise, boot-cut and exactly the style that Annabelle favored. However, they, too, were composed of the same strange material as the shirt, only thicker. And heavier.
She turned them this way and that, examining them with generous curiosity. And then she shrugged and pulled them on.
They fit perfectly. Something about the material caused the jeans to cling to all of the right parts of her legs and to ignore all of the wrong parts. As utterly ridiculous as it was to admit as much in the midst of all of the craziness that had become her life this night, she decided that she loved these jeans. If only she knew what they were made of and where she could buy some more. If only she had a full-length mirror.
The shirt was next. Its weight was hefty and slid along her arms like some luxurious kind of armor. She pulled it down over her waist and sat down on the toilet top to put back on her riding boots. The black leather Harley Davidson’s didn’t look out of place at all now, and in fact, matched the outfit flawlessly.
Annabelle ran her hands over her clothes, wondering at their design, and then stuffed her old clothes back in
