The police officer immediately pushed her aside and reached for the receiver attached to his shoulder to make the call. “Base, this is officer 17 requesting backup at the intersection of Sage Brush and Lone Star.” He released the call button and yelled at Eve, “You stay here!” He jumped up and ran to his vehicle, leaving Eve by the curb, between the bike and the squad car, trying to decide what to do.
“Hey, wait!” she called out, but he had already gotten into his vehicle and was giving more information to the dispatcher.
Eve did as she was told and remained at the curb.
She swept off the dirt and dust from her pants from where she had both knelt and then fallen. The questions swirled around in her mind: Did the man have Dorisanne and Daniel in the car with him? Where was he taking them? Were they back at the house? Had they been harmed? She looked in the direction of the house on Lone Star and in the direction of where the stolen car had headed and then at the squad car still parked behind her.
She desperately wanted the police officer to return so she could send him either after the man in the vehicle or back to the house where Daniel and Dorisanne had been held at gunpoint. Every passing moment was critical to their well-being.
She considered running over to the officer in the squad car and begging him to follow them, but she knew that was not such a great idea since it seemed that he was convinced she was a dangerous suspect. And he still had the gun strapped to his belt, even as she still had his handcuffs attached and hanging from her left wrist.
Eve took in a breath, closed her eyes, and tried to be patient, tried to wait for the officer to return or at the very least drive after the man in the car who had only barely missed hitting them. She tried to pray, tried to recite familiar words. In the end, she could think of nothing meaningful to think or pray. She only knew to act.
She lifted up a quick Hail Mary before she finally bolted to the bike, whose engine was still running, a pair of handcuffs dangling from her arm, and took off. She was glad that she was unable to hear the officer’s shouts behind her and just hoped he wouldn’t take a shot, her back an easy target. She chose not to look in her rearview mirror to see how he was responding.
Considering the direction the car was headed, there was only one route the man could be taking, which was the same way she and Daniel had come earlier. Eve followed the road until she thought she saw the car speeding ahead of her. She leaned forward and hit the gas.
He made a turn and she made a turn. He sped forward and she did the same until she was almost close enough to . . . and she finally had that thought: Close enough to do what? She had no weapon. She didn’t even have a phone. The motorcycle, although fast and a machine she could easily manage, was no match for Daniel’s heavy sedan. All the driver would have to do if she did manage to pull up beside him was take a shot at her, since it was clear he had a gun, or even simply swerve a bit and knock her off the bike. She had no cause to stop him or even slow him down. And that was when she had another thought.
A rider loves his ride.
She glanced to her right and, recalling how the street curved and turned toward the town of Pahrump, noticed a field that could provide her with the necessary shortcut. She headed off the road, driving as fast as the bike would go, until she figured out the way to beat the car that was still speeding ahead of and away from her.
She hit bumps and swerved to avoid the bottles and cardboard boxes, narrowly missing a set of old tires littering the barren area. She used every maneuver she had ever learned when she raced before she headed over a ditch, finally making it to the place she thought would be exactly where the car would arrive. She spun and stopped dead center in the middle of the street, and before she could second-guess her decision, she saw the car speeding in her direction. She didn’t even have time to get off the bike. She closed her eyes, made the sign of the cross, gripped the handles, and prepared for the worst.
A horn blared. Brakes squealed. And when Eve opened her eyes, the car had come very close to her before veering off to the right and plowing into the ditch she had just jumped. She was right. The man could not bear to run into his Harley.
She drove over to the passenger’s side of the car at the same time she heard the sirens heading toward her. When she looked inside the vehicle, there was only the driver, still dazed and slumped over from the hard hit. She leaned down and cupped her hands as she peered into the window. Dorisanne and Daniel were not in the car. She sat upright on the motorcycle seat, trying to determine her next move.
Eve knew she would be in trouble for not waiting for the police to arrive, but she also knew that getting arrested was now the least of her problems. She revved up the engine and headed back toward the house on Lone Star, passing a number of squad cars that were speeding to the location she had just left. She knew that no matter what she found at the house where Daniel and Dorisanne had been, the driver of the stolen car, the owner of the bike, would be apprehended and hopefully arrested.
Straight ahead on the street where she had been stopped by the first officer and then right at the warehouses and down to the end of Lone Star Place, Eve drove as fast as she ever remembered having driven a motorcycle. She stopped and jumped off the bike, throwing it down as she hurried to the front door.
“Daniel! Dorisanne!” She shouted and banged on the door, but there was nothing, no sound coming from inside. No one came to the door.
She ran around to the back of the house and at the same time she was trying to look in the window, she was pounding on it, calling out their names, trying to get their attention, hoping that nothing bad had happened but feeling more and more desperate as she continued to shout and pound.
Finally, she couldn’t stand not knowing, not hearing anything, any longer. She looked around, found a large rock near the fence, picked it up, and hurled it through the window. When it landed inside, she hurried back and yelled through the broken glass.
“Daniel! Dorisanne! Are you in here?”
She thought she heard noises from a room off to her right, and she took off her jacket, rolled it around her hands, and knocked away the jagged edges of glass from the window. Then she pulled herself up and over and fell inside.
“Dorisanne!” she called out again, standing up, looking around and seeing a refrigerator, counters, a sink, and recognizing that she was in the kitchen, near the table where she had seen her sister and Daniel earlier. She grabbed a large piece of glass and, unsure of what or who might be there, crept toward the front of the house.
There was no one in the front room, but now the sounds from a room down the hall were even louder. Eve hurried past a bathroom and another door before she stopped at the room the noise was coming from. She held the piece of glass high in one hand while she slowly turned the knob.