Only once in my life have I been this happy to see the California state line shrinking behind me, and with the wind in my face and the feeling of Lauren’s arms around my waist, I have to say, this blows the first time out of the water. We have everything packed, and there’s nothing but miles of road and a bright future ahead of us.
Lauren squeezes me as she notices me turn my head to glance in the rear-view mirror, and I chuckle, putting my hand over hers. We’re going to have to stop somewhere nice for dinner tonight.
“How long is the ride back to Wyoming?” she shouts over my shoulder.
“Fifteen, sixteen hours,” I shout back. “Not counting any time we spend at the hotel rooms I’m getting us.”
She presses her face close enough to mine to feel her smile, and she hugs me tight as I ride. This is why I’m a biker. This is what it’s all about. The landscape is whipping by all around me faster than I can keep up with, but at the same time, it stands before me like a vast and unending plain, full of richer beauty than I ever thought possible in the real world. I grew up in a rough town, and I never knew anything else until I was forced to run from it.
But now, we don’t have to run from anything. I’m going to take Lauren to new heights in bed at every hotel we stop at, and with the nest-egg I have saved up, I’m going to shell out for the best rooms I can get, while I’m at it.
And once we’re back in Wyoming, that’s not all I plan on shelling out for, if all goes according to plan. But I can’t get ahead of myself.
As the asphalt flies by under my wheels, I notice something in the rear-view mirror. There’s a pickup truck behind us, and it looks like it’s moving fast. I glance ahead. There’s nobody for miles, and it doesn’t look like there’s anyone behind the truck, either. Thinking little of it, I drive ahead steady. The guy has plenty of room to get around me.
But then I get a bad feeling in my gut.
It’s something in the air. The sound of his engine is different than what I’m used to. Spend enough time riding, and you get to know what a truck doing 90-100 miles per hour on the interstate coming up on your left sounds like. This doesn’t sound like that. This sounds a little more like it’s pushing 140.
“Hold on!” I shout as I tighten my grip on Lauren’s hands around my waist and veer to the left as the truck driver hurdles right into where I had been a moment ago.
The fucker is trying to drive us off the road!
I stick my middle finger out as he slams on the brakes so as not to pass me, and when he does, my jaw goes slack when I look into the driver’s eyes.
“Kevin?!” Lauren shouts at the punk at the steering wheel.
He’s grinning like a crocodile, and he’s laughing as he leans on the horn and falls behind us. His face looked sweaty and flushed, and his eyes looked wild. We already know that he has gone off the deep end, but now, he’s absolutely crazed...and he’s caught up with us.
“How the fuck did he catch us?” I bark as I roar forward, but Kevin is hot on my tail. I reach for my gun, but with Lauren on board, I can’t pull the same cowboy shit I used to be able to pull on my own. I’m not going to risk her like that.
In the mirror, I see Kevin take his seatbelt off, and he sticks his head out the window. “Slow down, let’s talk it out!” he howls, and as he slinks back into the driver’s seat, I can see the cackling grin on his face. The fucker must be strung out on coke, or something.
The truck barrels forward close enough that I can almost feel it behind me, and as it starts to back off slowly, I know what’s coming. I take my gun out, and I swerve to the opposite side of the road as Kevin guns the ignition and blazes forward. He misses narrowly, and I feel his rear-view mirror come so close to hitting my bicep that I feel the air cutting.
But as the truck hurdles past, I take aim and fire. The bullet hits the door and ricochets off into the plains, but it definitely got Kevin’s attention. The fact that it doesn’t make him hit the brakes is...troubling. There’s a good chance Kevin sees this as the end of the road for him, and if that’s true, then he’s the most dangerous kind of man there is.
He doesn’t have anything to lose.
I take aim again, trying to get a steady shot on one of his tires, but I don’t have time to line up the shot—he suddenly swerves in front of me and hits the brakes, screeching abruptly and forcing me to turn the handle hard and go right. I feel the bike start to threaten to spin out on me, and it feels like it takes every muscle in my body to keep me from laying her down and killing us both. Adrenaline pumps through my body like I’ve never felt it before. I’m not just fighting for me this time, I’m fighting for Lauren and her right to live free from fuckers like this jackass.
And living free is what the Heartbreakers are all about.
Once my bike is back up, I twist around, extending my gun-toting hand past Lauren to keep her out of the shot and firing. The glass of Kevin’s left headlight explodes as it shatters.
“Slow down, I want to talk to him!” Lauren shouts behind me, into my ear.
“What?!” I bark. “He’s insane, Lauren! He’ll kill us both!”
“You’ve got a gun!” she reminds me. “If he did, he’d have used it by now!”
“Fuck,” I mumble, “you’re right. Why?!”
“He’s after me,” she shouts as Kevin starts to gain on us again. “I might be able to talk him down!”
I glance at Kevin in the mirror, looking at the crazed look on that sweaty face, and I don’t think I can see the humanity in him Lauren can. But for her, I’ll go out on a limb. I veer left and slow down, holding my barrel up into the air to show that I’m not going to point it at Kevin unless he makes me—and that’s a low bar for me.
“Kevin!” Lauren shouts as he glares over at us, looking poised to swerve the truck into us at any second. And truth be told, he probably could—we’re almost in a standoff. “Cops are looking for you! It’s over!”
“Then two more will be a drop in the bucket!” he barks. “You’re gonna fry for what you did to Murray, bitch!”
“You don’t even know us!” she hollers, voice cracking as she digs her nails into me. “Why the fuck do you care about Murray?!”
Kevin’s head snaps over to us so fast I swear I hear it crack, and his face goes red with anger. “What?!” he shrieks, and I see his right hand lunge for the handbrake.
Several things happen at once on that long, lonely, dusty road.
The second his hand goes down, I have to assume he’s reaching for a gun we haven’t seen yet. The fact that it turns out to be the handbrake doesn’t make a difference as I lower my gun, pointing it as close as I can to his front left tire. Kevin pulls the handbrake at the same time that he yanks the steering wheel left, and suddenly, there’s a metal wall of truck closing in around my bike. I pulled the trigger a split second ago, and as I watch Kevin’s face come into view, I see his eyes panicked at the sight of his now blown-out tire.
I swing the bike sideways, screeching across the length of the truck...just before its groaning mass of metal tips over from the momentum, missing us so closely that I can catch a half-second of Kevin’s scream. His truck starts tumbling over and over off the side of the road, glass shattering and metal bending as it crunches into the desert before getting wedged against a rock and coming to a stop. Miraculously, it lands upright, and a cloud of dust half-obscures it.
“Oh my god,” Lauren breathes, eyes wide at the scene.
I’m not letting him go, though. This is beyond personal.
I steer the bike off the road and guide it cautiously down to where Kevin’s truck has come to a halt. By the looks of things, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. My gun is still out, and I still have four good rounds I am not afraid to use.
“Careful,” I whisper to Lauren, but she moves around me and rushes forward. “Damnit!”
I run after her, but then I see what she sees: an arm is hanging limply out the window. She rushes to the door and pulls it open, and immediately, Kevin starts to stir, proving that he isn’t dead like I thought. Lauren doesn’t fail to notice. As he starts to squirm, she reaches into the truck with fire in her eyes and grabs him by the collar, yanking him upright and-
Crack!
“Shit,” Lauren curses as Kevin flops to the ground under the impact of the punch Lauren just hit him in the jaw with. The sound of it takes me right back to the night I punched Brandon and first saw Lauren, and I have to admit, it brings a smile to my face despite all this.
Lauren takes a step back as Kevin leans against his car door while slumped on the ground, breathing heavily and staring up at us as I join her, gun pointed at him.
“Do it,” he snaps.
“Shut up,” I grunt.
“Why did you do this, Kevin?” Lauren asks, fists still clenched. “My life was already hell. Is this how you get off? Me hurting? Is that just how all you fuckers get off?”
“Maybe that runs in the family,” Kevin says with chilling coldness, and Lauren’s face pales, bringing a smile to his lips. “He really never told you about me, did he?”
“What?” she breathes, and my eyes widen.
“You think Sandra was the first woman Murray had a child with?” he says, a shaky laugh creeping into his voice. “No. She was just the worst one. Murray had another one, Raylene. He had me.”
“Holy shit,” I murmur as Lauren takes a few quivering steps back, shaking her head.
“What’s the matter, sis?” he chuckles up at her, smiling with unnerving calmness. “Disappointed he never invited me over? I was too. I was disappointed when he wouldn’t speak to me, too. I was disappointed when he disowned me, and even though I was willing to forgive all that, every fucking bit of it, I was disappointed when he wouldn’t let me speak to him in prison. Me, the one son of a bitch who fought for him when nobody else would,” he snarls, pointing to himself with red-rimmed eyes and a quivering lip. He glares daggers at Lauren, teeth clenched and a trickle of blood running from his nose. “You had a father. You had that life. He loved you, Raylene. And you stabbed him in the back.”
“You’re insane, Kevin,” Lauren says, shaking her head slowly. “Even...even if that’s true. You have no idea what Murray was like. You didn’t see what I saw.”
“No!” Kevin barks, and I can see him for the wounded, pathetic child that he is, half-cringing in the dirt. “You didn’t have the full picture. You were just a stupid kid! If he had been free, he…”
Kevin’s hands ball into fists, and he tears his eyes away from Lauren to look up at me. “Do it, you fucking coward. What are you waiting for?”
“Don’t, Bones,” Lauren whispers, looking at me with pain in her eyes.
“I was going to kill her,” Kevin says, pointing to Lauren and leaning forward. “I still will. I want to. Do it! Get it over with!”
But even if Lauren hadn’t been urging me not to, I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger on the broken soul on the ground before me. We stare each other in the eye long and hard before my ear pricks up. The sounds of sirens in the distance just reached me.
Kevin’s head hangs, and he starts to sob as the sirens draw closer, and Lauren slowly slips her arm in mine as I lower my weapon.