Burn (6 page)

She had survived then, and she would survive now.

She tucked the piece into her waistband behind her back just as the door creaked open again.
 
To her surprise, it wasn’t Fixer, but the man who had brought her dinner last night.
 
Roscoe
 
He didn’t shut the door when he entered.

He gave her a hard look and pulled out a handgun.

“I’d like to use the knife,” he said.
 
“But Fixer said gun, so I guess it’s gonna be a gun.
 
Either way, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this.
 
Maybe I’ll shoot you in the legs a few times, just to really draw it out.”

“Fixer wouldn’t like that,” said Danni.

“Who gives a fuck?
 
He ain’t here.”

Danni snapped, “He’s standing right behind you, asshole.”

The man turned to look as Danni launched at him.
 
He was turning back right when her hands reached his throat.
 
She wrapped her left hand around his neck, and with her right, she deftly pulled the shard out and drove it into his neck as hard as she could.

The gray-haired biker pushed Danni away and she fell to the floor.
 
Then his hands went to his neck.
 
He pulled out the sharp piece of ceramic and blood shot out.
 
With every beat of his heart, more blood pumped out of his body.
 
He fell to his knees, his hands covering his neck in a sad attempt to keep the blood inside.
 
His eyes were fixed on Danni.
 
He tried to say something to her but no words escaped his mouth.

Danni picked herself off the ground and stepped over the man.
 
Just before she walked out the door, she bent over and met his gaze.

“Don’t fuck with Black Ice,” she said in a poisonous whisper.
 

She walked out of the cabin and shut the door tight behind her.

“C
ome on man, we got to get a move on.”

Mercer was standing outside of Cruz’s door.
 
He had been knocking for five minutes, but with no answer.
 
Finally, the door opened and Cruz stood in his underwear.

“Jesus, you aren’t dressed?
 
Get a fucking move on,” said Mercer.

“Yeah,” said Cruz, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
 
“Just give me two minutes.”

“Two minutes nothing, let’s go.”
 
Then Mercer spotted movement behind Cruz.
 
“Who you got in there?”

“What?
 
No one,” said Cruz, unconvincingly.
 

Two women came out of the room, carrying their shoes and looking embarrassed.
 
It was Darla and Stacy, the two women from the night before.
 
They hurried away and Mercer turned back to Cruz.
 
“I don’t even want to know how that happened.”

“You really don’t,” said Cruz, with a big grin on his face.

Two hours later, they were rolling into Casper, Wyoming.
 
They checked the map and once again found that the marking was imprecise.
 
The X took them to the edge of town, just north of the Platte River.
 
It had taken Mercer and Cruz hours to locate the barn in Billings, but it only took them fifteen minutes to find out what was marked on the map.
 

It was a concrete building with no windows, twenty feet wide and forty feet long.
 
There were large garage doors on both ends, secured by a padlock.
 
It broke easily with Cruz’s crowbar, which was fitting because there was barely anything inside the building at all.
 
While the last one looked like it was holding supplies for an army, this building just had cots and food.

“Kind of a letdown after the last one,” said Cruz as they stood inside.
 
“What in the hell is it being used for?
 
Why mark this building on a map?”

It was a good question, but neither of them knew the answer.
 
They poked around for a few minutes, thinking that maybe something was hidden underneath, like the bunker outside of Billings, but they found nothing.
 
It was so empty, they’d thoroughly searched the place in fifteen minutes.

They left the building behind and headed into town.
 
They had skipped breakfast to get on the road and both of them were beyond hungry.
 
They stopped at a greasy diner.
 
Mercer ordered biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon, and Cruz got the huevos rancheros.
 

“Something bothers me about that place,” said Mercer.
 

“Other than it’s owned by a bunch of psychotic killers who’ve captured your girlfriend?” said Cruz.

Mercer resisted the urge to jump over the table and beat the shit out of him.
 

Cruz saw the look on his face and said, “Hey, sorry.
 
I’m really stressed, too.
 
I joke around when I’m scared.
 
Defense from when I was a kid.”

Mercer’s rage diminished, although he still wished he’d gotten his way and made this trip alone.
 
“You know, you have a way of making me want to smack the shit out of you just when I’m started to like you.”

“I should introduce you to some ex-girlfriends,” said Cruz.
 

Mercer didn’t smile.

“Look, it’s how I get by.
 
You close yourself off, I make jokes.
 
We all have our way of coping.”

Mercer wanted to protest and defend himself, but he knew he couldn’t deny what Cruz was saying about him.
 
After their conversation in the bar the night before, Mercer had thought a lot about what Cruz said.
 
He had shut himself off.
 
He’d focused on Black Ice and ignored everything else around him.
 
Danni had been lonely and Mercer had gone and made her even lonelier.
 
He did shut himself off, which in and of itself wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but now he’d shut himself off from Danni, the one person who needed him the most.
 

That was another reason he was so hell-bent on getting her back.
 
She was in danger, yes, and he feared for her life, but he also wanted to be there for her when she needed him.
 
He wanted to prove that when it came down it, he would throw everything else away, even Black Ice, just to save her.
 
That was why he wanted to find her alone.
 
When he kicked down the door of whatever prison they were keeping her in, he wanted Danni to see him—and no one else—standing there, ready to take her home.

The men finished their meals without saying much more.
 

When they got to their bikes, Mercer turned to Cruz.
 
“You’re going to be around a while, looks like.
 
I need to trust my crew, so we need to get past all this bullshit.
 
I’ll ask you once.
 
Can I trust you?
 
Will you always be straight with me?”

Cruz said, “You can trust me.
 
I’m loyal to Black Ice and I’m loyal to you.”

“Good,” said Mercer.
 
“I needed to hear that.
 
So we got each other’s back.”

Mercer went to get on his bike, but Cruz didn’t move.

“Wait.
 
There’s just one thing you got to know.
 
I kissed Danni.
 
She didn’t want me too, but I did it anyway.”

“What the fuck, man?
 
What the hell is this shit?” said Mercer angrily.
 

“We can’t trust each other without being completely honest, so I’m telling you everything.
 
I saw something in her.
 
We were both lonely and needed something.
 
And the truth is, at the time I didn’t know you or even like you very much.
 
It’s different now, so I got to tell you.”

Mercer stared at him hard.

“Punch me in the face,” said Cruz.
 
“I kissed your girl, you punch me in the face, so we’re even and can start fresh.

Mercer didn’t even hesitate.
 
He pulled back his fist and landed a blow right on Cruz’s jaw.
 
Cruz fell back into the gravel of the parking lot.
 
He stayed down for several seconds.

“Fuck.
 
Don’t think I’ve ever been hit that hard,” he groaned, holding his jaw.

“You fucking deserved it.”

He nodded slowly.
 
“Yeah.
 
I did.”

Mercer stood over him, honestly wanting to hit him again, but he knew that one blow was enough to put the past behind them.
 
He extended his hand and Cruz took it.
 
Mercer helped him up.

“We cool?” asked Cruz.

“We’re cool.”

D
anni hurried out the door of the cabin, leaving the man bleeding to death on the floor.
 
For the first time, she got a good look at her surroundings, but it didn’t tell her much.
 
She was in the woods, as she’d already guessed.
 
There was a long gravel road, which she thought lead to the street, but it disappeared around a bend.
 
The other way was another gravel path that lead to a much larger cabin.
 
She guessed that was where the surviving Rattlers had been staying.
 

She took stock of her options.
 
She could head down the gravel drive and get to the road, but she wouldn’t get very far and she’d be easy to find once the Rattlers realized what happened.
 
She could head into the woods, but there was no way of knowing where they would lead and how far she could even get.
 
The one thing she knew for certain was that to get away, she’d need wheels.
 
And the place she could find them was up the hill at the Rattlers’ cabin.
 

She didn’t want to go there.
 
She knew it was walking right into danger, but she didn’t see a way around it.
 
She needed to minimize the danger.
 
If she could find a set of keys without anyone finding her, then she could wheel the bike down the hill and start it when she got to the road.
 

A thought suddenly occurred to her.
 
The bikers probably kept their keys hooked on their belt loops.
 
If that were true, she could go back and get Roscoe’s keys and take his bike.
 
Her stomach turned at the thought.
 
She had driven the plate into his neck, but hadn’t stuck around to see the damage it had actually done.
 
She’d killed a man, and even though it had been self-defense, she knew the thought of doing it was going to haunt her for a very long time.
 
She didn’t want the image in her brain of the dead man covered in his own blood, but she didn’t have any other choice.
 
She may have survived so far, but she was far from being out of danger.

She went back into the little cabin.
 
The man was on his side, hand still at this throat in a feeble attempt to keep the blood in his neck.
 
She saw that his eyes were still open, staring at nothing.
 
She couldn’t stand the look of the body, so she grabbed a blanket from the bed and threw it over the man’s top half, then searched his belt for the keys.
 

She was right, they were clipped to his belt, but he was lying on them.
 
She’d have to move the body to actually unhook them.
 
She rolled the man carefully, as if he were asleep and could wake up any moment, and grabbed the clip.
 
She removed them slowly, then let the man roll back to his original position.
 
She stood up to leave, then remembered the gun.
 
It had rolled under the bed during the struggle.
 
She reached under and found it.
 
She hadn’t ever fired a gun before, but if these dumb animals could do it, she figured there’d be no problem.