Page 5 of Virago

He closed his lunch box. “Okay. I’m on my way. Where am I going?”

~oOo~

She’d sent him to the Missouri State substation of the Springfield PD. Whatever she’d done, she’d been on or near campus at the time. Zaxx dismounted his Harley LiveWire and paused to consider whether he should wear his kutte inside the station.

In and around Signal Bend, the Horde wore colors in virtually every situation. There was no town police department, nor was there a sheriff’s substation; the club served as town enforcers and protectors, and most everybody who lived there was fine with the Horde being in charge. Besides, they weren’t a one-percenter club, not anymore. Zaxx had been a kid who’d never heard of the Horde the last time the club had gotten into any hardcore doings. Their definition of law-abiding was maybe a little broader than most, but nothing they did these days rose to a level that might catch LEO attention.

However, they’d been national-newsworthy for a time back in the day, so much that Hollywood had come calling, and that reputation was like a soggy bit of toilet paper they couldn’t shake from their collective boot. Some thin-blue-line types saw the leather and made assumptions.

Zaxx was hopeful that he’d go into the station and smooth things over while Zelda still sat in the bullpen, before she got processed and sent to cool her thrift-store Docs in lockup. So he stood beside his bike with his hands on the plackets of his kutte, trapped in the decision about what to do with the thing.

It was Springfield—not exactly in Signal Bend’s back yard, but close enough to smell barbecue on the grill. The cops here should know they weren’t the bad guys anymore. Besides, Zaxx needed his kutte. That leather was like armor, if only to his psyche.

But if he ended up facing a cop who had a thing about bikers, he could make Zelda’s problems much worse while he was trying to fix them.

Fuck. He folded up the kutte and put it in his saddlebag.

~oOo~

A cornfed blondie sat at the front desk, typing away. When Zaxx leaned on the desk and said, “Hey,” she looked up from her stack of forms full of chicken scratch handwriting. He saw her do that thing chicks did when they first saw him, like looking up from a salad to see the dessert cart rolling past.

“Help you?”

“Hi, yeah.” He added a little sheepishness to his greeting smile. He’d use her name for a little extra flirtatious impact, but long hair obscured her name badge, and he didn’t want to stare at her prodigious rack long enough to suss it out. “I got a call from my little sister. I guess she got picked up.”

Officer Cutie smiled back, her plump cheeks blooming roses. “Oh, I think I know who you mean—but name?”

“Zelda. Zelda Lara Bello.”

Their folks had been hardcore gamers in their youth and still were, by middle-ager standards. They’d named both their kids for video games or their characters. Zaxx—whose full name was Zaxxon Xevious Bello—had started calling his sister ‘Peach’ long ago, while teasing her about being a princess, so apparently the video-game-name thing was hereditary.

After a few keystrokes, Officer Cutie picked up her phone and pressed some numbers there. “Bill? I got somebody here for Bello. Her brother.” She looked up at him. “Your name?”

“Zaxx, with two Xs,” he answered.

That made her tilt her head and do a little frown of benign confusion. He got that look a lot.

“Zaxx,” she told the Bill on the other end of the handset. Then she said to Zaxx, “Oh, I need to see some ID.”

Pulling his wallet from his pocket by the chain, he flipped it open and showed his license. She didn’t ask him to take the card out.

“Yes, Zaxxon Bello is his name,” she said into the phone. Then, “Okay, I’ll send him back.”

She hung up. “You want to talk to Sergeant Bill Danvers. Just around the desk here and back to that red door. Press that button beside the door. Somebody’ll let you in.”

“Thanks so much, ma’am.”

“Oh, sure, honey. You’re welcome.”

Always a good idea to make nice with the ladies up front.

~oOo~

Zaxx followed the index finger of the officer who let him into the bullpen to a desk at the window, where sat a beer-bellied fifty-something with a brush cut and that cracked-earth nape all cops and farmers seemed to get. That was Zelda’s arresting officer? The cover of that book did not bode well for tidying things up just between them.

No one occupied the basic-issue chair beside the desk. It did not look like he’d arrived before Zelda was processed. Another tick in the not-boding-well column.

Keeping the charm activated, but shifting gears from flirtatious to elder-respectful, Zaxx went up to the desk. Cutie had told him Zaxx was coming, but Sergeant Danvers had decided to look like he was too busy to be bothered. Another unhopeful sign.

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