It’s not long before I’m pulling in to the parking lot of a scary-looking bar, where the parking lot is full of motorcycles and work trucks and the type of van that’s used for maintenance or creepily lurking outside of elementary schools.
My heart is terrified thunder in my chest and grows louder with each step closer toward the front door of this raucously loud bar.
What am I going to say?
How am I going to get these men to even listen to me?
Will they laugh me away? Will they hurt me? Will they help?
I’m feeling as lost and terrified as I was earlier. Only now I’m advancing into what feels like a lion’s den.
The door opens to a wood-paneled, smoky-smelling, booze-soaked bacchanalia. From every corner, I feel eyes pat me up and down in ways that make me feel violated. There’s laughter all around — some drunken, some menacing — from rough-looking men in leather. There are women here, too; some of them give me looks more threatening than the men. They look like they’re club groupies, while a few look like they might be normal women, except they seem to have a harder edge.
Who do I even talk to? How do I find the boss? Is that even his title?
Feeling myself shrink with every step into this terrifying den, I head right toward the bar and the kind-eyed young woman behind it. She looks like she’s about high school age, maybe older, and I feel some of my terror ease as I get closer to her. She gives me a calming, yet inquisitive, smile.
“Can I help you with something?” She says. When I say nothing — because I have no idea what to say — she leans in a little closer and her smile gets warmer, more caring, less inquisitive. “My name’s Adella. What’s yours? Is everything all right? Do you need help?”
Just being next to her helps me get my senses back together. I stand up straighter and try to muster up the assertiveness to speak.
“I, uh, I need to talk to your manager. It’s important,” I say. And my voice comes out more stern than I intended. Probably because I still feel a dozen curious eyes roaming all over my body.
She raises an eyebrow, and her warm features harden. “Are you trying to pull a ‘Karen’ on me right now? Because my dad is the MC’s president, and he’s technically the ‘manager’ of this place, but if you try to pull any bullshit over on him, you will not like the outcome.”
I stop. Breathe. And try to be more like Blaze — I calm the doubtful, loud, overly thinking portions of my mind — and just act.
“My name isn’t Karen. It’s Tiffany. And Blaze is in serious trouble. He’s going to die.”
Her eyebrow, somehow, arches higher. “Oh? So, you and him are dating, huh? This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. What’d he do this time?”
I shake my head. “No. Yes. I mean, we’ve slept together but we haven’t defined our relationship, and we did just have a big fight, so whatever we were is possibly over, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Adella pours a glass of white wine and hands it to me. “You look like a wine person. Tell me, what sort of trouble has Blaze gotten himself in to?”
I throw the wine back in one big gulp. It tastes terrible, but I wouldn’t expect a place like this to even have wine. “His mom’s been kidnapped by some people who will definitely kill her, and he’s been picked up by the cops for attempted bank robbery and burglary, both of which he did — in fact, the bank robbery was how we met because I worked there and he took me hostage — but I’m pretty sure the cops will kill him, too.”
Her mouth drops open. “Well, fuck. That is not his usual kind of mess. Wait here a second, OK?”
She refills my wineglass and then takes a long drink from the bottle herself. Then she walks over to one biker who is currently perched atop the corner of one of the pool tables. He’s a wild-looking man, with a mess of tattoos, a warm smile, and rough, ready laugh. She trades a few words with him, then grabs another biker — who, despite his rugged looks and mussed up, inky hair, has a bookish look to him — and brings the two of them over to me.
“Tiffany, this is Mack, and this is Crash, they work for my dad. Fill them in while I go find him, OK?”
Adella’s gone before I answer.
The wild-looking one — Mack — speaks first. “Tell me what the fuck is happening with Blaze and what kind of shit he’s stirred up.”
He’s so intense I take a step back and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as fear surges inside me. “Um…” I stutter.
The other one, Crash, comes closer and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Relax. Mack’s just got a problem toning it down sometimes. Fatherhood usually calms people down, but it seems to have had the opposite effect on him.”
“Matyas used to be a quiet baby. Used to sleep the whole fucking night. Used to being the key word, because that wee one now screams like he’s auditioning to be a banshee. It’s fucking horrible.”
“Chill out, Mack, let her breathe for a second. She’s obviously had a rough day,” Crash says. “Tiffany,
