Page 58 of Phantom
Taylor glared at me. “They do.” He looked at Bucky. “Let it go. This will be the last of Dear Old Dad’s favoritism.”
“Get out, both of you,” Nick ordered, and neither Tess nor I hesitated.
We turned and rushed out of the bar, and the second we got outside, Tess started to panic. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I honestly thought he would listen.”
“He wanted to,” I said. “He ran out their patience.”
“I never should have made you come.” She grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come on. We gotta go.”
We climbed back into Tess’ car and took the fastest route home, speeding while we were at it. Tess packed a few of her essentials while I grabbed a couple of changes of clothes from the guest bedroom and grabbed some of Lockjaw’s dog food.
“We’ll take the car,” I told her. “We can leave our bikes in the garage and leave the lights on so that they think we’re here if they come by.”
Tess let out a deep sigh. “Okay.”
“I know. I don’t want to leave them, either, but it’ll be better this way.” I kissed her on the forehead. “Let’s go.”
We didn’t spend more than five minutes in her house before we were back in the car with me at the helm. We both spared longing gazes at our bikes as I backed out, but then we turned onto the road headed out of town, leaving our bikes and, unfortunately, our Hoppa lives behind.
The motel I’d secured was about an hour outside of Hoppa. It wasn’t any place I would ordinarily want to bring Tess or Lockjaw, but we were making do with what we had. It was just one night. By tomorrow afternoon, we’d be on a plane on our way to Munich.
We got in the dingy and dirty room, and Tess immediately worked to make the place as comfortable as possible. She took her time, cleaning as much of the dust—and God knew what else—off every surface in the room using a rag that she found in the bathroom. In truth, her efforts were pointless. Her cleaning seemed more like a nervous tick than anything else, so when I caught her trying to clean the exact same spot over and over, I grabbed her and pulled her over to the bed to lay next to me.
“I’m sorry, Tess. I never wanted it to be like this.”
“Maybe this is always how it was meant to be,” she replied. “I was always hoping that if I just stuck it out, things would change, but ten years is a pretty good indicator that’s not the case, eh?”
“Some people just don’t want to change,” I said. “I’m just sorry that it took me coming here, lying to you, and disturbing your life for you to realize it.”
Tess’ fingers gently caressed the side of my face. “You still have a lot of making up to do for those lies, by the way.”
“Oh, yeah?” I looked down at her. “We do have a lot of time.” She rolled over and straddled me, and my hands were already sliding up under her shirt when I heard a sound that made me sick to my stomach. I clung onto her to stop her moving. “Shh. Do you hear that?”
Tess twisted her head a little and listened, and her face registered a fear that let me know she could hear it, too. We could both hear the distant roar of multiple motorcycles, and it was getting louder.
I carefully set Tess to the side and climbed out of bed. The door unlatching was louder than I might have liked it to be, but I ignored that fact and poked my head out the door. The open layout of the motel rooms allowed me to look right out onto the road, and as much as it made my stomach knot up to stand there and wait for the sound to reach me, doing anything other than that didn’t make any sense. I stood in wait, staring up the road toward Hoppa, waiting to see the Steel Knights come cresting over the horizon.
“Is it them?” Tess asked, but I just shook my head and remained quiet.
And then came the only thing worse that could possibly happen. The bikes’ rumble finally reached the motel, but it wasn’t Steel Knight bikes heading out of Hoppa. My heart and head pounded unbearably as I watched a familiar sleek, gray and black, modern street bike go flying past the motel. Even though the rider was wearing a helmet, his long blond hair blowing out of the back in the wind was unmistakable.
“It’s Luther,” I huffed.
“What!” Tess yelped, and a second later, she was at my side, looking out the window.
We watched in horror as at least a dozen Unchained Dogs’ bikes rode past the motel. Any relief that I had that they weren’t turning into the motel abated in a flash. I wasn’t their target.
Hoppa was.
“They’re going to the Knights.”
“Fuck,” Tess said. “What do we do?”
It was my fault. I was the one who gave Nick the idea to start a rumor mill to bring the Unchained Dogs to Hoppa sooner rather than later. Luther acted impulsively, exactly as I expected. The ten or twelve bikes he had with him weren’t a nick in his total army, but I’d originally planned to be there when the Unchained Dogs arrived.
“We have to go back,” I said.
“What?” Tess said.
