I chew on my lip. He sounds confident — capable, even — but knowing what I know about him, I’m not so sure.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I was a smokejumper — you know, those firefighters they send in by parachute to remote fires — with the Northern California Redding 5 crew for a while. I know a bit of first aid, at least enough to see us through here. You ready?”
I don’t have time to answer before I’m howling — the tweezers take hold of the rock in my heel and I feel every twist, turn, and pull send excruciating fire through my body.
“Take this. Drink,” he says, pulling a flask from his first aid kit and handing it to me.
Screwing my nose up, I open it, take a sniff, and flinch.
“What is this? It smells like nail polish remover.”
“Whiskey. It’s for drinking, not smelling. Trust me. Drink it. You will need it in about five seconds.”
I take a suspicious sip; the inside of my mouth catches fire.
Then I’m howling again, as he wets some gauze with the hot water and begins cleaning my wound. The whiskey tastes better, this time; it’s an essential burn that takes my mind off the fiery pain in my foot.
“There,” he says. “Done.”
I take another sip from the flask, emptying the last drops into my mouth.
“That hurt,” I say. Already, my lips are tingling.
Blaze takes the flask from my hands, shakes it, and gives me a look. “All of it? You were thirsty, huh?”
“What did you expect? You pulled a boulder from my foot.”
“I reckon you’ve got about twenty minutes before it hits you. And then it’ll hit you again tomorrow morning.”
“I’m an adult. I can handle alcohol.”
“Sure, you are. But I still say you’re going to regret it.”
“Says the guy who goes around calling himself Blaze. How did you get a nickname like that?”
He shakes the flask again — checking that it’s empty — and shrugs. “It’s a road name. But I got it over a game of pool with one of my brothers.”
“I don’t remember you having any brothers. I mean, not that I paid much attention, but I think I would’ve noticed. Especially if they looked anything like you.”
He smirks. “What do you mean by that?”
My cheeks feel hot. I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or the fact that he’s still got his hands on my calf and he’s looking at me in a way that he’s most definitely never looked at me before.
“I mean, you’re big. Like some kind of colossal Paul Bunyan. Except with a gun and a motorcycle.”
“Wasn’t Paul Bunyan huge to begin with?”
“Shut up. I might be misremembering that. I am a little drunk, after all.”
“That’s fair. I don’t have any brothers, exactly. I’m talking about the other members of my MC. The Twisted Devils. We’re family.”
That sobers me up enough that I try to stand. And immediately regret it. I collapse back on the couch in pain and Blaze is there in an instant to keep me steady.
“Stay still,” he says, worry in his voice. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“You’re in a gang?”
“It’s more than that. Listen, I didn’t have a lot of options when I first met them; I got myself kicked out of the fire crew because of some dumb decisions I made. But I found a family and I consider myself damn lucky to have done that.”
I take a breath. He sounds genuine. And my worry subsides as I realize that, if he really intended to hurt me, he wouldn’t have bothered to bandage my foot. Still, it takes a few more breaths before my heart calms all the way down. He’s a criminal, after all, and he looks more than capable with the gun he’s been toting around.
“Why then did you need the fifty thousand dollars? And why go to a bank? Why not just take some cash from the gang you’re in?”
He laughs. “Saint Tiffany, you don’t know shit about being in an MC.”
My cheeks feel hot; I’m not used to being laughed at or feeling out of my depth. “No, I don’t. Edify me, Blaze.”
“Do what, now?” He says, looking confused.
“It means ‘educate’,” I say, feeling a little less embarrassed. It’s a minor thing, but I feel a little more in control now.
“Then why not just say that?” He says. “The MC doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to just throw around at any old problem. It’s a mostly legit business — trucking and auto repair, mainly — and taking out that kind of cash would be a really bad move. It would hurt people.”
I nod, starting to wrap my head around the structure of his gang. A legitimate business, small-scale, that dabbles in a few illegal enterprises to supplement cash flow. Probably on the scale of a small or medium-sized enterprise; a sudden and unexpected withdrawal of fifty thousand dollars would be a crippling blow to an organization like that.
“So, why do you need the money?”
“It’s personal.”
I can feel the alcohol working its magic. My cheeks and lips feel warm, my fingers and even my toes are tingling, and the searing pain in my heel is nothing more than a dull throb. And my tongue is so much looser than it usually is.
“Come on, Blaze, you got me fired, you took me hostage, you stuck a gun in my face, and I’ve seen your credit history. We are way past the point of claiming something’s ‘personal’ as a valid excuse.”
“You’re still hung up on that credit thing, huh?”
I sit up a little. “I mean, it was just so low. Like, when I was studying finance at Stanford, you would’ve been textbook for a high risk client. Honestly,
