“ARVIN HIDES THIS SHIT, WILLY. I’m telling you. I have never seen this kind of range of early Indian and Harley parts. Fucking unbelievable.” I opened up the back of my truck.
A knowing grin lit up Willy’s face. “The man certainly has a very particular supply.”
“I think he only likes to sell to Willy,” Butler said, laughing. “I bet he hides it from everybody else.”
“There is that, too,” Willy said, settling on his bike, putting on his gloves. “He sure doesn’t give us any discounts, but I’m still grateful.”
“So am I.” I shoved a box of vintage headlamps into the truck. Butler and I loaded my truck with the rest of the engine parts and the rusted frame we’d just bought from Arvin Hooper, an Army veteran buddy of Willy’s who lived outside of Spearfish.
We were working on a special made-to-order bike and had contacted Arvin. Sure enough, he’d had a few prime parts we were after. We’d also found some specialty items Lock and I had wanted for the shop.
Willy adjusted his goggles, his lid fitted over his thick gray hair brushing down his neck. “Let’s get on home.”
I stared at him as he gunned his engine.
In my first years as a Jack, Willy and Wreck used to say that very same phrase when we’d be on the last leg of a long run. To me, it had always been a throwaway saying, old-fashioned, a cliché. I’d be exhausted from hours in the saddle, from too much partying, only wanting a couple of beers to knock me out and a real bed to collapse on. I’d roll my eyes and groan when I’d hear it come out of their mouths.
Looking back on it, it was the way those two used to say that phrase along with a quick, purposeful glance at each other, each and every time. It was as if they had known something the rest of us didn’t.
Those words had never sounded so good to me.
I raised my chin at Butler. “Let’s get on home.”
Butler got into the passenger side and slammed the door shut.
My phone rang. Dawes. “Hey, we’re just leaving.”
His sharp intake of breath over the line made me still. My hand clutched the door of my truck. “Dawes?”
“You gotta get back quick, man.”
“What is it?”
“Mindy. It’s Mindy.” His voice was low, almost choking.
“What about her? She causing problems again?”
“No. Someone shut her mouth for her.”
“What?”
“We found her this morning on the back gate off the track.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We found her body hanging off the old gate. There was a crowbar on the ground, covered in blood and—fuck, it’s bad, man. It’s bad.” His voice shook. “Jump is freaking out.”
My eyes squeezed shut. “Where do you have her now?”
He cleared his throat, sniffing in air. “Dealing with it. What the fuck is going on, Boner?” Dawes whispered hoarsely.
“Do what you got to do. We’re just leaving now.”
“Okay, okay.”
I got us back to Meager in record time.
“Holy fuck,” muttered Butler at the photo Dawes had taken of Mindy’s body hanging off the fence. An unwanted doll ditched in the garbage teetering on the edge of the can.
Her face was unrecognizable, her long brown hair matted with blood, and her clothes were ripped and soaked in red, her body broken.
I deleted the photo.
“This isn’t Catch. He’s crazy, but he isn’t vicious like this,” Butler said. “This is just fucking over the top. You’re gonna have to work hard to convince me this is him.”
“It’s not him,” I said.
“Well, it’s a fucking message. Someone’s watching us. Are they fucking with Jump? The whole thing with Alicia put Mindy on the map.”
“She was leaving town,” said Dawes, his arms wrapped around his middle. “One of the girls said Mindy had already packed up her shit at her apartment and was planning on leaving this weekend. Just like she had been told to do. What the fuck?”
I stared at the crowbar at my feet in the grass, my eyes following the long line, the curve of its head. I recognized the incisions, the notches on the lower left edge. My hands flexed on instinct.
It was my crowbar.
My piece of iron was covered in so much blood and bone—and not just Mindy’s. Etched with marks from my many early successes. I had left it behind in Denver, a wild, stupid gesture. A fuck-you to Inès. A fuck-you to Alejandro Calderone.
And now, he was fucking me right back.