Page 16 of The White Rider
“His music wasn’t good enough to make excuses for the way he treated you. Writing a song about you doesn’t make up for cheating on you.”
“At least the song was wonderful. It was all downhill after that.”
Leif popped his head around the back of the van.
“She’s all gassed up. Providing there are no mechanical issues from sitting here so long, we should be good to go.”
“Please, fixing a van is child’s play,”Dice scoffed.
“Shotgun!” Aeron yelled.
I heard the sound of an engine trying to turn over. Asher was bravely sitting in the driver’s seat, like it hadn’t been marinating in Rage Head guts for who knew how long. I still thought he was an asshole, but I had to admit he took one for the team to rescue those women. He got some bonus points for that.
I hopped into the back of the van with everyone and started gagging. There was one of those pine tree air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror, but it had long lost its scent, and it wasrankin there.
“Is anyone going to think it’s weird if a bunch of Bubbas drives up in a creepy van with kidnapped women and the windows down?” I groaned, trying to breathe through my mouth.
Thankfully, the windows all started rolling down. Either it wouldn’t make shit awkward with the Bubbas and Marthas, or we’d have to roll them up when we got closer, but they had to be down for as long as possible… that stench was nasty.
“Finding a car that didn’t once occupy a dead body is hard,” Asher said. “Some people still have their original set of wheels, but unless you are great at fixing cars and finding parts without the internet to match them up, a lot of them aren’t running anymore.”
“In case the class is wondering,Iknow how to match parts without a database,” Dice said.
“Yeah, you’re a fucking genius,” Aeron grunted.
“If you can do that, there’s a lot of shit at the hotel that needs fixing,” Daria said. “We can’t run the air conditioner anymore because it keeps tripping the breaker when we try, and everyone loses power.”
“Dice can easily fix that while I finish up vaccinating everyone,” Leif said.
“Whoareyou guys, anyway?” Daria asked. “You aren’t the government, or Isaiah would have had you killed with the rest of them. You all have unique skills too, so I doubt you were coworkers before all this happened.”
Aeron started laughing.
“What I do have are a particular set of skills. Skills—”
“Don’t you dare!” Leif said, sounding weary.
I was dying to know where Aeron was going with that, but I just had a feeling that was another movie quote, and I should have known where it was from.
“Movie quote?”
“Aeron isn’t just a Bruce Willis fan. He has a thing for Liam Neeson movies, too. His go-to when he doesn’t want to answer something is to usemovie quotes.”
“What?” Aeron said. “We all have particular sets of skills that we acquired over a long career. It fits.”
“Everyone knows that quote fromTaken,”Pepper said. “I would have beaten you with this very nice guitar if you had finished it.”
“You could certainly try.”
“Let’s not break anything in here,” Dice said. “I was going to cannibalize everything here for parts, except that guitar. I want it.”
“I didn’t know you played guitar,” I said.
“I don’t. Asher is a musician. I want to listen to him on this guitar. He can play just about everyinstrument. I want him on my radio show with this piece.”
I expected him to say no. He didn’t strike me as the type that did anything for fun. I didn’t take him for a musician either, not with that big of a stick up his ass.
“If I go on your show, I pick the music. I’m not taking requests from the likes of you three.”
