Page 27 of Phantom
“Feeling up to a ride?”
Suddenly, Caid flashed into my mind. His outstretched hand and the promise of seeing him healthy and happy in Germany. Was the way my dream laid it out the reality? The closer I got to Tess, the further I got from Caid? “I’m not sure.”
“Okay,” Tess sighed. “Is this because you don’t feel up to going out, or because you’re trying to maintain this weird distance between us? If it’s the latter, you don’t need to worry. My dad asked us to do this.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We have this big music festival every year. We and our allies do it together, and every year, the club hosting it rotates. It’s our year this year, and my dad wants us to go check out the venue. It’s this open plot in the desert. We built this clubhouse out there for all of our members, and there’s a meeting space where my dad will have his annual meeting with the presidents of the other two clubs. He wants me to go and asked that I take you.”
At first, I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. Tess was aware of the distance between us, and as much as I needed that distance, it didn’t make me feel any better that she might be feeling hurt by it. If only I could reach out for her hand. If only there wasn’t the need for me to get to Caid or Luther’s impending threat.
“Okay. I’ll go.”
She nodded. “Good. I’ll be in the living room. Just come out when you’re ready. Take your time.” With that, she was out of the room.
I dropped my head to my hands. Maybe coming to Hoppa had been a huge mistake, after all. Any way I looked at it, I knew that I’d overestimated my ability to resist Tess. Dr. Marteau’s words skidded across my brain and ran down my left arm in a chill. She probably wouldn’t think twice about the scarring. It was an excuse.
Crickets rhythmically called out in chorus just outside the bedroom window, and I used the sound as a cycle to breathe with—deep breaths in and deep breaths out. More likely than not, I was just overthinking things. More than one person had accused me of possessing that trait, and for as much as I tried to convince myself and others that it was a good thing, at the end of the day, I often lost a lot of the world as I sat in one place, trying to calculate all of the possible outcomes for any situation I found myself in. Tess gave me a feeling of freedom that I typically only felt when I was on a bike. It was time to give in to that feeling. Just a little bit, just enough.
“Come on, Lockjaw.”
I stood up off the bed, and Lockjaw quickly hopped up and jumped down to follow after me. Tess was sitting in the living room exactly where she said she would be when I entered, and when she noticed me, she looked up and smiled.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
It had only been a week since I had last been on my bike, but it felt like years. The chilled air rushed against my face, and my whole form got lighter. For the entire two-hour ride, I disconnected from my reality and enjoyed the feeling of the pavement beneath me and the colorful blur of cars as I raced by. I kept Tess’ bike in my sights while she led the way, and after what felt like too little time for me to have fully enjoyed the sensation of being back on my bike, she pulled off the main road and onto a plot of empty, desert expanse.
Apart from a chain-link fence wrapped around the area and a single building in the far distance, the place was entirely evacuated. Animal footprints in the dirt indicated that a few critters had made the property their home, but that aside, it looked undisturbed.
Tess pulled her bike to one side and turned it off, and I followed suit. We’d left Lockjaw at home for the trip, a decision I was grateful for when I saw the flurry of small rodents and birds skittering around. Trained or not, he’d likely be chomping at the bit to get out and chase them, and I highly doubted that we’d be able to catch him if he broke loose.
The lock on the fence gate rattled as Tess stuck a key in and undid the massive padlock on the front, then I helped her grab one of the big gate doors and pull it enough to the side that we could walk in.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Tess asked.
I led the way through doors, and Tess followed, shutting and locking the gate behind her. “My dad bought it forever ago. We pay reduced land fees because he promised not to build anything permanent on the property, and so it is considered protected land in Arizona.” She pointed toward the single building on the land, a white barn with a black, slatted roof toward the back. “The barn was here when he bought it, but we flipped the inside and made it a clubhouse. I made him keep the loft in the top, though. I love it. Come on. I’ll show you.”
As we made our way toward the barn, we did a careful sweep of the open land. There were divots in the sand where booths and other temporary structures had stood in the past, but the fact that there were also little lizards rushing around was proof enough that the land had been undisturbed enough that creatures could live without issue. They’d be in for a hell of a party in a few weeks, but then they could go back to their usual routines.
When we reached the clubhouse, Tess used a different key on the same ring as the front gate key to unlock it. A beeping started immediately, and Tess reached to the right of the front door and entered a code into a security system hanging there, after which, the lights all cut on automatically. There was a thick layer of dust, but aside from that, the inside of the barn had a sleek, simple, modern look. A small kitchen nook had a fridge, stovetop, and a few units of cabinets and countertops, and a bunch of small sofas and chairs were scattered around, with a big white wooden pool table sitting in front of a fireplace. The pool table’s legs were decorated, one with each of the Steel Knights, the Blazing Rebels, and the Raging Vipers’ sigils, and the fourth hadMiDpainted on it.
To the right of the small kitchen nook was an open door that looked like it led into a bathroom, and next to that, another door was shut and was marked with an Authorized Personnel Only sign. Tess walked over to the shut door and used a third key to unlock it, then she opened it. I remained standing in the main room while she walked into the room that she had to unlock, but her head poked back out after a few seconds.
“What are you doing?”
I pointed at the sign on the door. “I’m not authorized personnel.”
“Yeah, you are. Nick specifically wanted you to come and help me check things out. He knows you’ll be in here, so just don’t go snooping.”
Her explanation was enough for me, and I walked over and entered the room. It reminded me of the meeting space in the warehouse back at Hoppa’s Taphouse. A single round table sat in the middle of the room with a dozen or so chairs placed around it. The table itself was divided into three colored sections that I assumed correlated with each of the clubs. The Steel Knights’ section was silver, the Blazing Rebels’ was orange, and the Raging Vipers’ was red. There was another fridge in this room, but there were no windows or additional doors, and there were a few tall filing cabinets stacked against one wall.
Tess started to creep along the walls, feeling her hand on the surface and carefully checking it for anything strange, so I dropped to the ground and crawled under the table. When I was still with the Unchained Dogs, stealth was my forte. Not only was I skilled in getting in and out of a place without being seen, but I also had to know the best spots to hide weapons and cameras for any covert missions. My paranoia tried to convince me that Nick somehow knew that, but the conversations we’d had thus far were an indicator that he didn’t. He just trusted me, something I was both happy and sad for.
I ran my hand over the wood of the table and all the nooks and crannies, and when I was confident that there was nothing hidden under the table, I moved over to the filing cabinets and slid them aside to make sure there was nothing strange behind them, and then I did the fridge.
“Do you have the keys to the cabinets?” I asked Tess. “Not snooping, just if I was trying to hide something in an inconspicuous place, that’s where it would be.”
