I had to do something.
Unfortunately, in order to do something I had to wait for Barbarian Barbie to turn her back.
At least long enough for me to borrow one of her guns.
Which I realized very quickly was going to be hard when she didn’t leave my side. When I showered, she sat on the toilet with the lid down and filed her nails. When I cleaned out the freezer, she did a bizarre series of stretches in the middle of the kitchen. When I went outside to throw away the trash, she kept pace beside me and complained about the heat.
That first night when I went to sleep in my little twin bed in my old room, Rage surprised me by getting in right beside me. “What’s going to happen to this house?” she asked without a trace of tiredness in her voice.
“Bank will probably take it back soon.” I said, yawning.
“Good. That means we can blow it up when we leave,” she said, sitting up and hopping up and down on her butt and clapping like she’d just been crowned prom queen, which she most certainly could’ve been with her blonde hair and tanned skin. However, I had the nagging inkling that Rage’s past was more colorful then prom court and pep rallies.
“Deal,” I agreed, enjoying the idea of watching the place go up in an explosion of flames. “But do you really have to sleep in here? You can sleep in my brother’s old room. Or on the couch. It pulls out. The extra linens should be in the hall closet.” I didn’t mention anything about my parents’ room, preferring instead to pretend like the room where I’d found my father’s bloodied body didn’t exist.
Rage ignored me, her silence telling me all I needed to know about her plans for going to find another place to sleep.
“Is what King said true?” I asked. “You don’t sleep?”
“No, I don’t. Not really. Not for a long time, anyway,” she said, staring up at the ceiling.
“How do you survive?”
“I don’t really know,” she answered with an audible sigh, although she seemed like she was talking about more than just her lack of sleep.
“I have to help Bear,” I admitted. Testing the waters to see if there was any way I could get her to help me instead of hindering me.
“You can’t help him,” Rage said, taking me by surprise.
“Why the hell not?” I asked, turning on my side to face her. Rage did the same. Her blue eyes sparkled but were lacking something which I soon realized was what King had been talking about when he’d dropped us off.
“Because you can’t leave the house. Those are my orders.”
“But why?”
“All I know is that I’m here to make sure you don’t try anything stupid.”
“How are you going to stop me?” I asked, growing bold.
Rage giggled like a schoolgirl with a secret, she rolled onto her back, again turning her attentions to the ceiling. “That, Thia, is entirely up to you.”
CHAPTER TEN
Thia
I had a dog.
Well, sort of.
I sort of had a dog.
I first spotted it one night when I was sitting out on the porch in my grandmother’s old rocking chair. Rage, who I was supposed to believe was a killer, unabomber, babysitter of sorts, spent the afternoon baking muffins. Really good muffins as far as I could tell from the one bite I’d had. But before I could grab it off the plate again, which I’d set on top of the old wooden toolbox, it ran away in a flash of teeth and brown fur. I stood up an looked out over the railing at the tiny thing who was barely out of the puppy stage, happily munching on my muffin. He was all skin, ribs, and bones. The second he took his last swallow, he hightailed it between the trees and into the grove.
The very next night I left out some food again, this time on purpose and this time it was a few pieces of breakfast sausage. I sat in the same spot, watching and waiting. Sure enough, he crept from his hiding spot in the trees and stole my food all over again.
Night after night it played out the same way, except I’d switched to feeding him actual dog food that Rage had delivered from the feed store. Everything else we needed was magically stock piled in the refrigerator and pantry, even the deep freezer in the garage. We weren’t just hiding out. We were all set for the zombie apocalypse.
“You should name that thing,” Rage said, taking a seat on the top step. You spend enough time with it.
It’s not like there is much else to do.
“I should just name him Muffin since that’s what he took from me the first time.,” I said.
Rage turned up her nose. “Nah, if you’re gonna name him a breakfast food then name him something good at least, like Pancakes, or Waffles, or something like that.”
Pancakes.
I fed Pancakes for weeks. Every morning and every night, I put out a bowl of dog food and another with water and stand back and watch him suck it all down, keeping a distrustful eye on me the entire time. And without fail, each night after he’d finished, he’d scurry away again. Eventually I started standing a little closer while he ate and finally instead of running away, he began to linger for a few minutes after his meal.
One night I didn’t wait for him. I just set out his food and went back inside.
I was in a bad mood, unable to shake thoughts of Bear never coming home, and the hope of doing anything to help him faded away minute by minute as I sat there being utterly useless.
I didn’t wonder where Rage was. She was always close by. I stopped talking to myself out loud because even though I didn’t see her all the time, she was usually close enough to answer me back. The first few times it scared the crap out of me, once I fell off the porch.
I really wish that bitch slept.
By the time I reached my room I thought that Pancakes would be long gone.
I was wrong.
Not only did Pancakes not wander back off into the wild, but he followed me into the house, and when I plopped down face first onto my bed, the mattress dipped slightly and a wet snout came to rest across the back of my knee. I lifted my head and there he was, looking up at me with big, yellowish-colored eyes like his behavior was perfectly normal. After a few seconds of staring at one another, he fell asleep, like he’d never been afraid of me at all.
“I guess I have a dog, now,” I muttered into the pillow, drifting into my own nap as Pancakes’ warm doggy breath tickled the backs of my legs.
He was a poor substitute for Bear.
Too hairy.
Too skinny.
No tattoos.
But he would have to do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thia
Six months.
Six loooooong fucking months with no end in sight. Not a word from Bear. What was worse was that each time Rage’s phone rang, my stomach lurched and my heart dropped. The world around me stopped spinning until she gave me the, “It isn’t that call” look and I could breathe again.
At least until the next call.
I felt nauseated at least three hundred times a day.
I became jumpy. Paranoid. My hands shook whenever Rage mentioned Bear’s name.
I couldn’t eat, and just like Rage, I couldn’t’ sleep. Afraid that at any moment I would lose the one thing in my life that ever brought me real happiness, I became someone I was really starting to hate.
Bear could have asked me anything else. Anything at all, and I would have done it. Rob a bank, become a flying trapeze artist, learn Japanese. At that point I would have gone to the MC and put a bullet in Chop myself if it meant that I could take a breath again without wanting to pull my own hair out strand by pink strand and DO NOTHING.
But no. He asked me the worst thing he could possibly ask me.
He asked me to WAIT.
He might as well have asked me to sit while someone removed my fingernails one by one with tweezers because waiting was a torture in and of itself.
“How many of them went in there?” I heard Rage ask in a whisper. I stopped in the hallway and pressed my ear to the door of my room. “Four? Shit, d
o you know anyone on the inside who can protect him? I know that one guy but anyone else? Yes, it is my fucking business, because I’m here babysitting his old lady in little house on the motherfucking prairie out here, so if you want me to protect her, you will tell me what the fuck is going on.” There was a pause. “Really? Well, that’s something I didn’t know. No, of course I won’t tell her. She’s going to be fucking pissed though. Yes. Okay, fine I got it.” She ended the call and I leapt into the kitchen. With my heart in my throat, I threw open the little cabinet above the refrigerator and searched through my mother’s prescription bottles until I found the one I was looking for. I poured two glasses of soda and when Rage came back out I was leaning over the counter, pretending to be interested in the cookbook I’d just opened. I handed her one of the glasses.
“Thanks,” she said. “Cheers.” Rage raised her glass to me and took a sip.
As much as I couldn’t stand the girl when we’d first met, I really started to like Rage. We talked. I mean I talked and she mostly gave vague responses back, but it was companionship nonetheless, and lord knows that being in that house alone would have driven me up the biggest cliff in crazy town until I was sailing off the edge.
Which is why I almost felt bad when I crushed three Ambien into her Dr. Pepper.
Almost.
Ten minutes later her eyes closed and her head fell back against the pillow. “Sleep well,” I sang as she began to snore softly. I quickly dressed in my best sundress. A short, light blue, spaghetti-strapped number with tiny white flowers that made my legs look a lot longer than they were and my chest a lot bigger than it was.
The serious nature of what had to be done required a serious dress.
I grabbed a bike from the shed that probably hadn’t been ridden since the seventies, pumped some air into the tires which were seriously lacking tread, and peddled into town with my constant companion, Pancakes, running close behind my back wheel for the fist mile before growing bored and running off behind some trees in search of better entertainment.
Trust me, his note had said. And I did trust him. I trusted him enough to know that he would die for me, and six months was pushing the limits on borrowed time. After hearing Rage on the phone, it didn’t sound like there was much hope for month seven.
I was done waiting.
There was a certain deputy sheriff I was going to see, and although the last time I’d seen him ended with him locking me in a cell, and Bear almost murdering him, I had to at least try.
And I hoped the good deputy would be agreeable to what I had planned, because I wasn’t leaving until I got what I’d come for.
I patted the messenger bag I’d slung across my chest that held the gun I’d taken from Rage.
No matter what.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thia
I dropped my bike in front of the hardware store and looked around for Buck’s police cruiser. When I didn’t see it, I popped inside where I found Ted standing behind the counter in his usual attire of overalls, and not much else covering his huge belly. He was polishing something with a dirty rag. When he heard the door chime, he set whatever it was down and came around the counter. “Thia,” he said, with a sympathetic smile. “I was so sorry to hear about your parents. How you holding up?”
“I’m all right, Ted,” I said, appreciative for his concern. Most of the people of Jessep were raging gossips. It’s the small town way. Ted’s always been the first one to ask me about me without joining in on the rumor mill. “You seen Buck around?” I asked, needing to see my friend ASAP.
Or my ex friend.
Or whatever he was.
Ted shook his head. “Not yet today, but sometimes I see him parked behind the diner ’round this time. You could check there.”
“Thanks, Ted.” I spun around to rush back out the door, but Ted stopped me.
“You know, I met your Bear last time he was in here,” Ted said. “He’s a good one. I can tell. We bonded over bike parts and being outcast bikers.” Ted smiled and I could tell it meant a lot to him to meet one of his own. Bear had told me about their conversation and I’d been surprised. I’d known Ted my entire life and in our small town I’d never heard a soul utter a single word about him being an ex member of the Wolf Warriors MC.
“He told me,” I said, offering him a tight-lipped smile.
“Good,” he said, straightening a stack of Auto Trader magazines by the door. “He’s a good kid and I know he didn’t have nothin’ to do with the way your parents went out, but from the look in your eyes I can see you already know that.” It sounded so weird to hear someone call Bear a kid, because to me he was the furthest thing from it.
“I do know that,” I admitted with one hand still on the door handle.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told him when he came in here. I may be an old man and retired, but my club knows I’m still here, just inactive, and I’ve still got friends in the life. If Buck can’t give you the kind of help I think you’re looking for, then you come see me.” Ted walked toward the register and reached behind the counter. He pulled out a shotgun, resting it high on his shoulder like he was a soldier going to battle. “I can still be pretty persuasive when I need be,” he said. The evil glint in his eye made me instantly believe him. It was like I was seeing Ted for the first time and it made me realize something, if I were being honest.
I liked this Ted.
“Thanks, Ted,” I said. With that, he tipped his hat and put the shotgun away. He went back to his polishing as if Biker Ted had never been there, slipping easily back into the role of Hardware Store Ted.
“You tell him I said hello,” He added, as if I just came in to buy a quart of oil.
I was touched by Ted’s offer, but what I really needed right then was someone who had a connection.
A way in.
There was only one person I knew who could help me. With one last wave to Ted I rushed out the door in search of the only person in Jessep who had such a connection.
And who may or may not hate my guts.
* * *
I found Buck in his cruiser behind the diner, exactly where Ted had said he would be. He wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, and although I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew they were shut. His head was tilted back against the reclined seat, his mouth wide open as he snored away. The sun reflected off his badge as he breathed in and out, making it look as if it were a light bulb being turned on and off.
“Bucky!” I shouted, slamming my open palm on the roof of the cruiser, startling him back to consciousness. His head connected with the headliner as he jumped up in surprise.
“It’s Deputy Douglas,” he mumbled the familiar correction as he came out of his haze, catching his sunglasses as they fell off his face and rubbing the top of his head. “Thia?” he asked, squinting against the sun.
“The one and only,” I said, leaning up against the cruiser. Buck reached for the handle and I stepped back to let him out, but before he did so he put on his ridiculous wide-brimmed sheriff’s hat that made him look like Deputy Dog from the cartoon we used to