A guy named Benny used to come to the meetings at the center all the time and share about his Hells Angels past. The other alcoholics got tired of him after a while, maybe because his shares had less to do with recovery than bragging about his criminal cred. But Charlotte was riveted every time he spoke, and now, thanks to Benny, she knows the sleeveless denim shirts these guys are wearing are called cuts; the patches on the back are signs they’re full-fledged members of the gang in question. The word Vapados fills the center patch on each guy’s back. She’s not sure what it means. Is it the name of their biker gang?
Benny’s shares always made it sound as if Arizona belonged to the Hells Angels. So where did these guys come from?
Only a few more minutes until they’d pass their hideout. If they still had her fenced in by then, it might be time to take the Beretta out of the glove compartment. But what good would that do?
Charlotte puts in several hours a week of practice on the thing, but she’s never tried getting off a good shot at sixty-five miles an hour. If they work together, the bikers could run her off the road before she manages to fire. Then where would she be?
They’re close to their hangout now, close enough that she might have to make a decision in the next minute.
She looks to one side.
Sure enough, the biker to her left is staring at her. His helmet, yellow-tinted glasses, and wind-rippling beard steal most of the definition from his face. But he’s big. Thor big. He stares at her with a leisurely confidence. When she sees the tattoo of a pistol on the side of his neck, and the sleeves of ornate carnage inked down his arms, her spine feels like piano keys being walked on by a cat. “Fuck,” she whispers.
He smiles. He’s read her lips and he’s amused.
Then he aims a trigger finger in her direction and peels away suddenly. His buddies follow suit; their headlights bounce across the roadside and briefly illuminate the old sheds they’ve made their own.
She welcomes the darkness that closes in all around her now, even though the absence of the deafening motorcycles leaves her with the haggard sound of her own breathing.
At least she’s got her first journal entry. Thirty minutes after initial dose, biker gang manages to scare ever-living shit out of me. Got anything stronger, Dylan?
Should she kill her headlights when she gets close to her house?
Or do they already know she lives out here? Maybe that’s why they were slowing down and checking her out. But the message of that trigger finger was clear—don’t come back. She sometimes goes two weeks without leaving the house. That must be why it took them a while to pick up on the fact that she’s passed them more than once today.
There’s got to be some way to send a message that she could give two shits what they’re doing in those sheds. Or what they’re hiding.
Maybe if they knew I was Burning Girl . . .
Just thinking the nickname turns her stomach.
Or maybe that’s the aftereffect of almost being run off the road.
Or maybe it’s the Zypraxon.
Or maybe, and this thought makes her dizzy as well as nauseated, it’s the realization that she barely noticed the bikers’ approach because she was still thinking about Dylan’s kiss. Dylan’s quick but somehow furtive and totally inappropriate kiss.
She hates that she let her guard down on a mostly empty road because she was obsessing over her psychiatrist like some love-struck teenager.
But that’s not quite it, she realizes.
Yes, there’d been a moment right when his lips touched her skin when she’d felt something open inside her. Some hunger for intimate connection she’d assumed she’d locked away. It was instinctive, this response. But now, with a little distance between her and the center, it wasn’t just the kiss that bothered her. It was the way he’d touched her after. The way he’d guided her out of his office, one hand against the small of her back. As if, because she’d finally broken down and consented to taking the pill, he now saw her as firmly under his control.
Touchy. Confident yet strangely hurried.
An odd combination of words to describe his behavior, but an accurate one. And one she never would have applied to him before.
You’re overthinking this, she tells herself. You’re feeling guilty and weak because you took the pill, and now you’re reading too much into his behavior.
Behavior that included a kiss.
She drives past her own house.
Maybe that’s for the best. If the bikers are following her, which she doubts, this gives her a chance to kill her headlights and double back. She’s made her way from the edge of the highway to her place in the dark plenty of times when she thought someone might be trailing her. Once her eyes adjust, it’s fairly easy. The line of mountains on the distant horizon is jagged enough that it’s often discernible against even the night sky, especially when there’s still a faint fringe of purple as there is now.
When the shadow of her house rises up out of the desert floor, she hits the garage door opener attached to her key ring. The light comes on inside, and she uses its bright glow to guide herself the rest of the way in. The garage isn’t covered by the security system, but any attempt to break in through the metal door would be more than visible in her headlights. Still, the minute it takes to get from her car to the alarm keypad next to the back door always leaves her feeling exposed.
Her Escape crosses the threshold. She turns on the headlights and hits the key fob. The garage door begins to descend.
Before stepping out, she scans the cement floors just to make sure no desert critters followed her in. She’s had enough contact with rattlers to know they just want to be left the hell alone. Unless you step on them. If you step on them, you’re screwed. If there’s one inside the garage with her, it’s because the tires dragged it in by mistake, in which case, it’s probably dying or in pieces.
There’s nothing in the garage with her. Just the ticking sounds of her cooling vehicle and the rattle and whine of the steel door descending behind her.
She’s home.
Safe.
And, man, does she have to pee. It’s either a result of her brush with the Sons of Anarchy or a side effect of the medication.
There’s a half bath right before the main hallway’s entrance to the kitchen. As soon as she sits down on the toilet, she realizes something feels wrong. It’s her pants. Their weight seems off. Something’s missing from the pockets.
Her phone. She hasn’t carried a purse in years, and she rarely visits town in anything other than blue jeans, so she usually tucks her phone in her front pocket to avoid sitting on it. But it’s not there. Her jeans feel light, and they slid too easily over her knees.
Did she leave it in the car?
She can’t remember having it since she wandered into Dylan’s office. She must have put it down on his desk. When she’d thought she heard it during their session, Dylan had told her the noise came from his and she needed to focus . . .
She’s not sure how to describe what she hears next.
Creak isn’t right, but it’s too half-hearted to be a footstep.
Movement.
There is movement somewhere inside her house, just outside the bathroom door she didn’t bother to lock.
And I don’t have my phone, she thinks. The same phone that would display an alert if someone messed with my alarm or, God forbid, managed to turn it off while I was gone.
Miraculously, she manages to finish peeing. But when she reaches for the toilet paper, her hand is shaking.
It feels as if a ghost has closed its fingers around the back of her neck. And she realizes that while she lives in a state of perpetual anxiety, and sometimes flat-out dread, it’s been a long time since she has been truly afraid. Not just afraid—terrified. And it’s physical, this feeling. A series of pulses traveling through her body. Like she can feel her heartbeat in her hands and feet.
The sound repeats. And the silence on either side of it is unmistakable—a silence that suggests restraint, human restraint. An effort to stay as quiet as possible. One of the bikers? Impossible. Even if they’d killed their headlights, there’s no way they could have followed her into the garage without her seeing them. Or hearing them.