Page 111 of Dizzy

There’s another long pause. He must be on the side of the road. I hear vehicles zip by, shouts fading in the low roar of traffic. He must already be downtown in Anvil. It’s a sleepy mountain town fifty-one weeks a year. During Spank the Devil, it becomes the largest city within two hundred miles.

I’ll never find her there without his help.

My fists ache to cross the distance and beat her location out of him.

“We have eyes on her. She’s safe.”

“She’s mine.”

He either gets it, or we’re done.

“Head on up. I’ll take you to her. You have my word, she’s safe until then.”

“Once I’ve got her, we’re havin’ it out.”

“No doubt, my brother.” He exhales. In the background, tires screech. “Everything I do, it’s for this club.”

“I know. That’s why I ain’t gonna kill you all the way.”

“There’s no way I convince you to hold off? Just ‘til we see where they go after the rally?”

“Fuck you.”

“Fair enough. Call when you’re fifteen minutes out. I’ll meet you at the town sign. We’ll get her. I don’t suppose you’d agree to go in subtle, would you?”

“Not a chance.”

“I’ll call Harper then. Tell her to dress up in her lawyer clothes and bring her briefcase.”

“Good idea. Oh, and Heavy?”

“Yeah.”

“Make sure Jed’s somewhere else.”

There’s a moment, a silence where the truth we’ve both come to separately sits between us, thick and rank.

“Ayup.”

We hang up, and I pad down to the gun safe and strap up. Fay-Lee’s coming with me if I have to fight my way through a mob of Raiders. Honestly?

I welcome it.

13

FAY-LEE

I’m sitting in a lawn chair on Rab’s gross bony-old-man lap. His leathery arm is a steel band around my waist, and his hard dick is poking the small of my back. He smells like cheap beer and mothballs. I want to puke.

He stirs the campfire with a long stick and embers go flying. A few greasy, younger guys are squatting nearby, eyeing me like dogs under the dinner table.

I’m in deep trouble.

Everything was fine on the ride up to Anvil. I’ve heard of Spank the Devil. Everyone has. The biggest biker rally on the East Coast. Four days of motorcycles, music, and mayhem. A hundred opportunities to lose Brick, five-finger some cash, and make a friend who’ll give me a ride when the thing’s over.

And the morning was fine, a two-hour road trip on a mild fall day. Brick is a cautious driver, and his touring bike has big, comfy seats. Before we left first thing in the morning, Dawn gave me an old quilted jacket of her daughter’s. She’d hidden ten bucks in the pocket.

As soon as we hit the Anvil town limits, bikers swarmed us, a dozen men in cuts with the Rebel Raider’s red-and-white patches. The man from the bar—Rab—pulled into the lead. When I first met him, he’d struck me as a grizzly old head. Weathered and harmless. The kind of guy you find sitting for hours at a lunch diner counter.

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