RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (35 page)

I watched the cars drive away, one after the other, a solemn cortege. As terrible as it was that Evan Kramer had to die, I was glad that he had family to grieve for him.

The ride back to Lupine gave me far too much time alone with my thoughts, and by the time we got to the clubhouse, the whole damn thing had me surly and out of sorts. I didn’t seem to be the only one. The brothers stepped off their bikes one by one, and headed inside almost as quietly as the funeral procession had left.

A few of the men headed to the clubhouse bar to unwind after the somber afternoon. “Jesus,” Winger, our secretary, swore as he went back behind the bar and popped the top off a bottle of beer. “After all that, I need booze and pussy.”

He took a long swig, then headed off to find one of the willing women who made it a habit of hanging around the club.

I knew he wouldn’t need to look very far. I also knew instinctively that tonight would be a night of heavy drinking and partying, to stave off the demons we had all glimpsed today. Myself included.

I
t took
me three days to get to Lupine, Colorado.

Three days of getting off of one bus, waiting hours for the next one to arrive, and living in a more or less constant state of panic that someone from the WFZ Ranch would find me and drag me back home.

I knew that the leader, Harlan Radleff, would never let me go without attempting to find me and drag me back. It had happened before. People who left and never came back were bad for the interior harmony of the community. The idea that anyone would want to leave that earthly paradise would send whispers and rumors skittering around the Ranch, and Radleff and his men wanted to avoid that whenever possible. I just had to hope that the precautions I had taken to avoid being followed would be enough to keep them from figuring out where I was until eventually they just gave up.

Only a handful of people had ever tried to leave in my memory. And when, inevitably, they were brought back, they were kept in isolation for a few days, far from curious eyes. When they finally rejoined the community again, they usually said that they had fallen ill from some malady they had picked up outside the Ranch and had to be nursed back to health. Their drawn expressions and tired eyes seemed to corroborate that explanation, but I think many knew better.

Usually, once someone had tried to leave and failed, they didn’t try again. In fact, I could only remember one person ever getting out successfully and not returning. That person was who I had come so far to find.

I had been wearing the same set of clothes since my escape, and hadn’t been able to bathe except by wiping myself off with wet paper towels in bus terminal restrooms. I had almost run out of the money I’d managed to bring, even as careful as I had been with it. I was exhausted from the little bits of fitful sleep I had managed on the road, having been too afraid of discovery to let myself nap in bus stations.

On the morning I finally got to Lupine, I used most of my remaining money treating myself to a real breakfast in a diner to fortify myself. Then I spent the next few hours making inquiries about the person I had come to see. Mistakenly, I had thought that once I was in Lupine, the hard part would be over. It turned out that tracking him down was more difficult than I imagined it would be.

In fairness, I didn’t know what I had expected. All the information I had — the sum total of all the things I had heard about him since he had disappeared — was his name and the name of the town he was said to have gone to. And that he was a biker.

Not like a bicyclist. A motorcycle rider. And to hear my brother tell it, he was probably a rapist and an axe murderer to boot.

Which raised the question of why in heaven’s name I was trying to find him in the first place.

The truth was, I didn’t see that I had much choice. Maybe other people in the world were just stronger than I was. It had taken me more than a year to finally convince myself that I had to leave the Ranch — that any life on the outside would be better than the life I was condemned to there. I had spent months of planning, secreting away clothes and money that I would need to get away and start fresh somewhere else. I had spent countless nights lying awake, practically paralyzed with fear that Isaiah would find where I had hidden those things and beat me, then haul me in front of the leader and the council for my punishment.

After all of that, I had somehow found the courage to actually leave. But the only way I was able to manage to convince myself to actually go through with it was by telling myself that there was someone out there on the other side who would help me. Who
had
to help me. Even if he didn’t want to. Simply because he was the only one who could.

At the restaurant where I bought juice, eggs, and hash browns, I asked the waitress if she knew a man named Leviticus. She looked at me like I had two heads. “Leviticus?” the waitress squeaked, as though I’d said his name was Daffy Duck. “No, sorry, I don’t know anyone with a name like that.”

My face flushed in embarrassment. I was becoming more or less used to feeling like a space alien in my interactions the past few days. I had thought that changing my clothing would be enough to help me pass as one of the “worldly” people (as the people in the community called them), but it seemed as though the things that came out of my mouth were just as strange. I didn’t
think
it was my appearance that was calling attention to me. Though my clothes were a little dirty by now, they didn’t seem too different from what other people were wearing around me, though perhaps a little less revealing than the clothing preferred by most of the young women my age.

I had finally managed to cut my hair in a gas station bathroom when one of the buses I was on stopped for a break. It had never been cut in my lifetime, as women of the WFZ Ranch were told that to cut their hair was a sin in the eyes of God. My hands were shaking as I picked up the scissors to do something that no woman in the community would ever think of doing. In the end, I had been too chicken to do anything drastic, but I did manage to cut off almost a foot, and it now fell to the middle of my back, which seemed like a “normal” length that wouldn’t attract attention. I had bought a toothbrush and toothpaste at the same stop, so I didn’t think my oral hygiene was causing any negative reactions.

I tried again with the waitress. “Well, would you know where I could find a biker? Like, a motorcycle rider?”

If anything, the question just seemed to amuse her more. “Like,
any
motorcycle rider?” she asked, her darkly penciled brow cocking in what I was pretty sure was mockery.

“The person I’m looking for is a motorcycle rider,” I explained, willing the ever-hotter flush in my cheeks to go away. “I thought, if I could find someone who knew other motorcycle riders, they might be able to tell me where he is.”

She shrugged. “You could just go hang out downtown and wait for someone on a motorcycle to show up,” she suggested. Her eyes flicked away from me toward a table of boys about her age who were roughhousing noisily. It was clear she was getting bored with talking to me. I thanked her, and she wasted no time setting down my check and heading toward the boys’ table. I absently watched her as she flirted shamelessly with the best-looking of them, her voice growing teasing and animated.

Taking a sip of my orange juice, I thought about my next move. Actually, the waitress’s suggestion about going downtown and trying to find a motorcycle rider wasn’t a bad one. At any rate, I couldn’t be very choosy, considering I had basically no other ideas. I reached into my pocket for my few remaining bills, paid my tab, and wandered outside.

Downtown Lupine was about a mile and a half from where the bus had dropped me off at a combination bus depot and truck stop. I walked the distance along a dusty highway with no sidewalks, and eventually came across the area, which primarily consisted of one long main street lined with bars, restaurants, and shops of various kinds. I covered the several blocks from one end to the other, noting a smattering of motorcycles along the way. Eventually, I stopped in front of another diner, where a cluster of them were parked. These machines were larger and more imposing than the others I had seen, and some of them had leather side bags, or skull designs on the gas tank.

Pushing down my nervousness, I decided that talking to whoever owned these motorcycles would probably be my best shot at learning where Leviticus was. There were no benches or places to sit that I could see, so I sat down awkwardly on the curb to wait.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but eventually a group of men came out of the diner talking in loud voices. They were wearing jeans and leather vests with patches on them that said undecipherable things like “Road Capt.” and “Enforcer” and a couple of them had long, thick beards. Tattoos lined their muscled arms, and one of them immediately lit up a cigarette as soon as they were outside.

I stood up, brushed off the backside of my jeans and took a deep breath. “Excuse me,” I called out to them.

The one with the longest beard turned to look at me, smiling to reveal a set of straight, very white teeth. He reminded me of the big bad wolf in the fairy tale we read to children at the Ranch. “Well, well, well, darlin’, what can we do for you?” he said in a voice that was both a challenge and an invitation.

I took a few steps forward and tried to keep my voice from trembling. “I’m looking for someone. A motor… a biker. And I was wondering if you might know where he is. “

Beard looked at another of the men, with razored hair about the same length as his whiskers. “If you’re lookin’ for a man, darlin’, I can help you out,” he leered suggestively.

A wave of fright shot through me. Suddenly, I realized this might not be such a good idea. Nervously, I looked around, reassured that there were a few other people on the street who would hear me if I cried out.

“I’m sorry, no,” I replied in a shaking voice. I didn’t want to provoke these dangerous men in any way. “It’s a particular person I’m looking for. His name is Leviticus Wolff.”

“Leviticus Wolff?” Beard repeated in disbelief. His tone matched the one the waitress had used when I’d said Leviticus’s name, and I almost laughed at how similar this enormous bearded man sounded to the teenage girl. He laughed then, a loud bark, and turned to his friends. “Levi’s name is fuckin’
Leviticus
?”

I flinched at the curse, but otherwise didn’t react as the men burst into loud laughter. Nonetheless, my heart leapt at what he had said. They knew Leviticus! But apparently he went by Levi now. I made a mental note of it; the fact that these men didn’t know his full name might mean that he didn’t want them to, for some reason.

I waited until their laughter had died down and repeated my question. “Do you know where Levit… where Levi is?”

“Honey, you sure you know what you’re gettin’ into here?” a man whose head was shaved clean spoke up. His eyes raked slowly over me, lingering on my breasts, making me feel as though I was naked instead of wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt.

“He’s… He’s someone I know from way back,” I lied. “I have a message for him.” I hadn’t though through this part of my plan very well, I realized. I should have thought of some plausible reason why a dangerous biker would want to talk to me.

“You got a message for him?” Shaved Head mocked. “This the pony express or something? Why the fuck don’t you just call him?”

“I don’t have his phone number,” I explained.

Or a cell phone.

“Look, darlin’,” Beard began. He shook his head slightly. “You need to get in touch with Levi, you’re just gonna have to figure out how to do that yourself. I don’t know what your business is with him, but you look like a nice enough girl. Why don’t you run along, find yourself a nice college student or male librarian or something.” He nodded once toward the man beside him. “Come on, let’s go.”

“You have a nice day, now,” Shaved Head drawled, winking at me so suggestively it made my cheeks burn hot. The men walked past me and headed toward their bikes, a couple of them murmuring crudely about how I would look naked just loudly enough for me to hear them. As I watched them go, I noticed that the patches on the backs of their vests all said the same thing: Stone Kings MC.

I watched them pull away, then sat back down on the curb to think. The encounter with the bikers had left me shaken and rethinking my plans. I had thought I’d prepared myself for the possibility that Leviticus was in some sort of motorcycle gang, and that it might be dangerous to go see him, but the reality had been much more frightening than I had expected. Still, I was out of money and out of ideas, and being all alone with no one to help me and nowhere to stay was just as frightening.

I had to believe that even if Leviticus was a hardened criminal, he would at least take pity on me and give me a few dollars or point me toward someone who could. Surely he would help someone who had escaped our community like he had? Of course, he had been gone for years — more than ten, at least. I didn’t even really know him when I was a child, and I had absolutely no idea the kind of man he’d become. There was always the possibility that he had no trace left of any morals or decency. He belonged to a motorcycle gang, after all. What if I found him, and instead of helping me, he… did to me what the men who were his friends had made it clear that they wanted to do, with their leering and suggestive words?

I shuddered, and almost started crying at the sudden realization of how alone I really was and how much potential danger I was in. Growing up in the faith, in the center of a tight-knit and isolated community, I had never been alone before. Family and friends were constantly around me. In fact, at the Ranch, I hardly ever had a moment to myself, unless I was taking care of my bodily functions or getting dressed or undressed. By contrast, in the three days I had been gone, I had spoken to no one apart from the impersonal few words necessary to order food or buy something at a store. The singularity of my purpose — to get to Lupine, to make contact with the only person I had any connection to in the outside world — had mostly kept me from considering how alone I truly was. But now, I was lonely, scared. And facing the very real possibility that at best, Leviticus Wolff would be completely indifferent to me. And at worst…

A slight sob escaped me. An older man passing by me turned at the sound to look at me curiously. I cleared my throat and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. I stood up abruptly before he could ask me anything, and started walking purposefully in the other direction as though I had suddenly remembered an appointment.

Stop it, Cherish,
I told myself sternly.
No matter what happened, I scolded myself, it would be better than what I had left. Here I was, wringing my hands at the thought that some dangerous biker might take my virtue. Was that really any worse than what had already happened to me?

It was a sad realization that a total stranger forcing himself upon me was really not much worse than what I already went through on a daily basis back home. I was not innocent to the ways and dangers of a man’s desire, having been married not once, but twice before. My first husband, Abram Radleff, had been the brother of our leader, Harlan Radleff. I was Abram’s fourth and final wife. The other three had died, the last of cancer. I had been only sixteen at the time of our marriage. Thankfully, Abram, at almost eighty, was too old and frail to consummate the marriage, so I was spared being deflowered by him.