I’m pushing a hundred miles an hour on Route 60, and the rubber on my front right tire is totally about to blow.
I should slow down, but I can’t. If Andrew catches up to me, it’s going be a lot worse than a car crash.
“Come on, please hold together,” I mutter to the dashboard. My hands are molded to the steering wheel so tight they’re leaving dents.
I’ve had this car since I was sixteen. After eight years of driving around Arizona, my poor midsize sedan has more than held up its end of the bargain. After this, I’ll get it washed and waxed. I’ll even vacuum the mats. It just has to last for—
The tire pops. Sparks explode up to my side mirror as the steel rim scrapes asphalt, and I desperately try to remember what driving school taught me about this a lifetime ago. Don’t brake—that’s the key, don’t brake.
Fighting every tense muscle in my body, I slowly lift my foot off the gas pedal, keeping the wheel a bit to the right so I don’t fling myself off the road as the car slows down. The noise from the rim makes every alt-rock band I listened to in high school sound like an angels’ choir, but somehow everything else is still in one piece.
I come to an ear-splitting halt on the side of the road, half in the lane and half in rock-studded dirt. It’s not ideal, but on the worst day of my life, I’ll take what I can get. A hard twist kills the overworked engine. With shaking fingers, I yank out my keys, sinking as low in the driver’s seat as I can.
“Christiana, you can do this,” I whisper. One deep breath, then two. “Get out your phone, call for assistance. He’s not here yet.”
A single glance at my phone presents two new problems. First, it’s at about ten percent battery. Second is that there’s no reception in this part of the desert. Best guess, I’m twenty miles from the next gas station. Maybe thirty.
I’m so screwed.
Panic puts everything at a distance, like I’m seeing the world through a shard of glass. Somehow I convince my fingers to open my seat belt, then step out of the car into a scorching hundred and ten degrees. I grew up here, but you don’t really get used to the kind of heat that fries an egg on the sidewalk in five seconds flat.
The distant rumble of an engine startles me, and I look around everywhere for the source—for somewhere to run. I’m surrounded by scrubland and distant dunes, stretching off into a bright and wavering mirage.
Wait. The sound’s coming from the other way.
A motorcycle hooks over the far hill in the opposite lane, gleaming with chrome. The rider is breaking ninety, but starts to slow on the way down. It’s not a tow truck, but I’ll take any kind of help I can get right now. I wave, hoping I don’t look as frantic as I feel.
The bike growls with a change in gear, and a tiny glimmer of hope rises in my chest as it drifts over onto my side of the highway, coming to a stop about twenty feet from my car. I’m about to say hello when I see the rider’s leather vest, lined with so many patches and pins my eyes don’t know where to focus.
Shit. Who exactly did I flag down?
Lean, tanned arms grip the handlebars, tight cords of muscle running from wrist to elbow. I catch a glimpse of a tattoo, lines of black and purple ink, in the gap of bare skin between the vest and a heavy black helmet. It comes off with a hard tug, revealing a shock of snow-white hair held at bay by an undercut. The buzz is fresh and clean, a perfect, sharp symmetry. She—she—has bright and glorious hazel eyes, piercing me through with a single look. For a second, I can barely breathe.
I take a step toward her, then jerk back. Why am I walking into the middle of the road?
“Hey.” Her voice is cradled by a deep, rolling timbre. “You all right?”
“My tire blew up,” I manage to say, “and my phone left its signal back in Phoenix.”
With her helmet hooked on two fingers, she climbs off the bike. Even from a distance she towers over me, passing six feet compared to my heel-less five-four. There’s a casual confidence in the way she walks, all surety and swagger. I’ve watched way too many superhero movies about women who could throw around tanks and planes, but she looks like she could do it for real—and with one hand.
The closer she gets, the more of her vest I can read. An old rectangular patch catches my eye—Micah. The next one down says PRESIDENT in block capitals, with an equally worn FOUNDER underneath.
My heart does a confused flip. Between the car chase and locking eyes with her, I’ve never been so terrified and so distracted at the same time.
“I don’t have a patch kit on me, but from the amount of rubber you left on the road, I don’t think it would matter anyway.” She leans to the side, examining the front of my car. “Rim’s busted.”
Sirens howl behind me. They’re miles away, but this part of the state is so flat and empty that everything carries. My entire body goes rigid, hands clenching into fists. It has to be Andrew. He’s been chasing me this whole time.
“Can you get me out of here?” I ask. “Please.”
Micah frowns. “I can give you a ride to the gas station, if that’s what you mean.”
That’s generous, but it’s the next place Andrew will look when he sees my car beached on the side of the road. I need to be far, far away.
Which means being brutally honest with a total stranger.
“The guy blaring those sirens is coming for me.” Tears burn at the corner of my eyes, somehow hotter than the sun blazing down on us. “I don’t know what he’ll do if he gets here before I’m gone.”
That hard, bright gaze flickers from mine to the horizon behind me. Micah’s distant curiosity transforms into sudden understanding. She steps forward and pushes her helmet into my hands. “Put this on. Have you ever ridden a motorcycle before?”
I shake my head. My whole life, I’ve definitely been a four-wheels-on-the-ground kind of girl, but right now I’ll adapt to anything.
“Take whatever you need from the car.” Micah’s voice is steady, offering an anchor I desperately need. “Then get on the back and hold on to me.”
With my phone in my pocket and purse strung over my shoulder, there’s nothing to salvage from the car except my champagne-scented air freshener, and that’s not worth going back for. The helmet is heavy but lined with thick foam, with a tinted visor that saves my eyes from the sun as soon as I tug it on. This will definitely wreck my hair, but hey, priorities.
Micah straddles the bike with practiced ease, shifting her weight so there’s enough room for me to fit on the seat. I’m glad I wore leggings, because sitting on hot leather in a skirt doesn’t sound fun to experience. The motorcycle is a bit wider than I expect, but the bulk makes me worry less about falling off.
Holding on to her is a different story. I grip Micah’s shoulders at first, trying not to wince at the warmth radiating off her leather vest. The solid bulge of muscle under my fingers, on the other hand—she is built.
Then her hands cover mine, sliding them down until my arms are encircling her stomach. Rough callouses line her palms, but I don’t mind. “Here. Squeeze tight. You can’t hurt me.”
I do, and my fingers meet a stomach like solid steel through the thin material of Micah’s shirt. She definitely has abs. It’s a split-second distraction, though, because the sirens are getting much, much louder. She rolls the throttle, and a vibration rumbles through the body of the motorcycle as Micah turns it around in a slow, curving crescent.
“Don’t let go,” she says, and we’re flying.
Okay, not literally, but there isn’t another way to describe suddenly cutting through the air, going so fast the road blurs into a sun-scorched serpent. Even on teenage joy rides, I never went down the highway at this speed, but Micah drives like it’s her own private racetrack. The logical part of my mind says that a single curve or an unexpected stone in the road could flip us into a fireball of a crash—the rest is too exhilarated to care.
Before this moment, I’d assumed that driving without air conditioning in this weather would be a whole new layer of hell, but the wind whisks away heat the second it touches my skin. The sirens linger on the edge of earshot, but they’re getting farther and farther away. After ten minutes of neck-breaking speed, there’s nothing but the relentless rumble of the engine.
Micah slows down to seventy, which is chill in comparison. I’m not even sure where we are, since every sign we’d passed disappeared in a blink. I also have no idea how I’m going to get my car back, but surely my phone will start working at some point.
“So,” Micah interrupts my musing with her dark velvet voice, “got a name?”
I totally asked for a rescue without introducing myself. Wow. “Um. Christiana Arjean.”
“Okay, Christiana. Want to tell me why the cops are after you?”
I owe her that much. She saved me, no questions asked. “Not all the cops. Just one of them in particular.”
“Your parole officer or something?”
I’m kind of glad she can’t see my face, because my innocent shock would probably make her laugh. My whole life, I’ve never gotten in trouble for anything worse than a speeding ticket. “No. Andrew’s my ex-boyfriend. And a highway patrolman.”
With my arms around Micah, it’s unmistakable when her entire body stiffens. “Yeah?”
“It was a mistake.” I thought he was one of the good ones. He had seemed so nice—but I guess they all do until the mask slips. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to get you in trouble too. I was just...no, I’m still scared.”
She relaxes, leaning back against me a little. I feel less guilty for clinging so tight. “You can’t get me into more trouble than I’ve already gotten myself into. But the Patrol has jurisdiction all over Arizona. If you want to hide, there’s not a lot of places to go.”
What am I supposed to do? Mom and Dad live down south, a lot closer to the border, but the last thing I want to do is have Andrew show up and tear into me in front of my parents. He could hurt them too, if he wanted to.
With the adrenaline wearing away, my throat aches like I swallowed a chunk of concrete. I have maybe fifty bucks cash, a little bit of leeway on my credit cards, and two days before my shift at the bar comes around.
“Any recommendations?” I ask weakly.
Micah is quiet for so long that I start to wonder if I’ve pissed her off.
“You can come with me,” she finally answers, “but only if you can stand living rough. I don’t exactly rent an apartment.”
Every stranger danger alarm I have should be going off, but Micah hasn’t made a single move that set me on edge. I mean, I’m the one wrapped around her right now, and no matter how many times I grip tight, there’s no comment or reaction. Andrew would have teased me about being a coward by now, or suggested the touch meant I wanted something else.
Still, it’s hard not to feel like I’m imposing. “Are you sure? You could drop me at a hotel out of the way or something.”
“Do you want to go to a hotel?” Micah asks.
No, I don’t. Any place I could afford would have paint peeling off the walls—tips have really sucked lately. Never mind trying to sleep in some weird bed in the middle of nowhere, hoping I wouldn’t wake up to Andrew’s cruiser right outside.
“I want to go with you,” I finally answer.
She’ll keep me safe.
My whole body feels it like the truth, then ratchets up the tension again. Where did that even come from? We just met.
Maybe I have a lot more relationship baggage than I thought.
“All right.” Her wrist shifts, opening up the throttle. “Then we’re making a detour. Lean when I lean.”
I stifle a scream of surprise as Micah makes a sharp ninety-degree turn, but when her body bends, I bend with her. We veer off the road and onto sand-drenched gravel, heading right into open desert as the sun starts to fall. It takes another half hour for our path to even out, but the bumps and dips in the ground still feel a lot different through the motorcycle than a steady line of asphalt.
I’m trying to figure out how she’ll scale the dunes on a bike like this when a line of trees comes over the horizon. They’re tall, narrow ponderosa pines, stretching out towards the sky in pure defiance of the dry earth surrounding them. A lot of people hear “Arizona” and think we’re always tripping over cacti, but here stubborn grass sprouts between red rocks and comes together in brilliant golds and greens.
Micah slows to a crawl as we near the tree line, urging the motorcycle over a low hill and then down to an old trail riddled with footprints and bicycle tracks. The sounds of the forest spill over the engine noise—flocking jays and the constant tap, tap, tap of a dedicated woodpecker, pine needles brushed aside by the wind, the distant burble of water. I’m not exactly a nature buff, but it’s gorgeous.
She must know these trails well, since there’s no hesitation as she leads the bike deep into the park. We have to be as far in as we can go, because the prints from other people start to disappear, and there’s no markers to guide us back. Here the trees are so thick you can’t see through them, and the heady smell of pine makes me think of Christmas.
Is that really the last time I saw a tree? I need to get out of the city more.
At the very end of the trail, Micah stops the bike and kills the engine. “I have to walk this the rest of the way.”
It can’t be that much farther, right? “Okay.”
She lets out a low chuckle. “That means you have to let go of me.”
Oh!
My face burns as I climb off the bike, and it has nothing to do with the sun. To add insult to injury, my legs tremble as my feet touch the ground. I feel like I’m fifteen in my first pair of stilettos all over again, except I’m definitely in flats right now.
Micah starts to push the motorcycle, guiding it up a subtle slope and through a band of trees that aren’t as close together as they looked from a distance. I don’t think I’ve been in a national park since sixth grade, so it’s all I can do not to make a total fool of myself while ducking around branches and trying not to trip on every stone in sight.
How is she moving that thing without breaking a sweat? It has to be at least four hundred pounds, but there’s no hint of effort, only the subtle flex of muscle along each well-sculpted arm. Micah isn’t even breathing hard.
I miss how fit I was in college. Dancing every day gave me the endurance of a god, and a couple sessions a week of YouTube yoga can’t replace that kind of relentless cardio. Never mind the strength and flexibility—picking up my partner was the easiest thing in the world.
A sharp whistle catches me off guard, but Micah puts two fingers to her lips and whistles back. “Walking in with company. Everyone behave.”
Wait a second. “Um, who are you talking to?”
“The rest of my club.” She gestures over her shoulder. “You didn’t notice?”
I had my body pressed against Micah’s the whole ride, so it’s only now that I take a full look at the back of her vest. A curved silver patch on top reads HOUNDS OF GOD in worn black letters, and below it is the head of a wolf, fangs bared, half its face cast in shadow. The bottom rocker simply declares ARIZONA, but it’s just as weathered as the others.
She doesn’t just ride motorcycles. She’s a biker.
Maybe that wouldn’t mean a lot to everyone, but I was just a kid when the Hells Angels ditched California and hopped a state east. A lot of my teachers warned us about them in the after-school special kind of way, which made most guys in the class want to get a motorcycle license the second they hit sixteen. I never thought about it much, but with the ink and her build, Micah’s the spitting image of a one percenter.
If they ever let women join, anyway. That’s probably why she made her own club.
Micah stops past the next copse of trees, and between the pines it opens up into a wide patch of flat earth. The stones of an old firepit are in the middle, with two wide trunks serving as seats, and four people taking up the respective space. There’s just as many bikes behind them, tires stained with red earth, but otherwise immaculate.
The closest is a woman my age wearing a vest almost identical to Micah’s, but the name tag says Alejandra and the patch underneath reads SERGEANT. Dark brown hair spills in unruly curls down to her shoulders, but Alejandra’s eyes are a touch darker, like rich mahogany.
“Ooh, who’s the new blood?” She smiles, sharp with curiosity. “I didn’t know we were taking in prospects.”
“Does she really look like a prospect?” the woman next to her chimes in: Talisa, VICE PRESIDENT. Her locs are a killer two-tone, starting out black and tapering to a vivid red. “No offense. You kind of have a deer in the headlights look going on right now.”
Yeah, you know, I probably do.
“Sorry. I’m Christiana.” Getting to know new people has always been awkward for me, but this is on a whole new level. “I didn’t know I was crashing the party.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not,” the person closest to me—Royal—says, smiling wide. Instead of a title under the name patch, it simply reads They/Them. They’re built like a powerlifter, with a heavy gut and broad frame, their flaxen hair pulled back in a narrow, neat braid. Like Micah, they’ve clearly spent enough time under the sun to accrue some serious tan lines.
“We were just starting on dinner.” Micah has some ink, but Connor—going by the tag—is absolutely covered in it, both of his pale arms decorated in full, colorful sleeves. Unlike the others, there’s no shirt under his vest, so I get a full view of his tattoos from neck to hip. “Hungry?”
Breakfast had been a caramel macchiato, and sometime around lunch I’d snagged a protein bar and a bottle of sparkling water. Usually I’m a lot better at keeping hydrated, but it’s not every day that you come home and find your ex ripping your apartment to pieces, saying he’s going to kill you.
I have no idea what I’m getting into, but I’m not turning down free food.
“Starving.”