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8
“We have to get out of here, Topaz. It’s pretty obvious their ultimate plan is to kill us eventually, so we need to try and escape.” Onyx stood up and peered out the window.
The slow movement showed her how much damage had been done as she got up, retrieved his coat and cut from the fireplace. Much loved and respected item of clothing was now covered in gray ash, but at least it hadn’t been burnt. Not yet, maybe because the men who took them didn’t understand the significance of the item and how important the symbol was. Strange, for the men who practically wrap themselves in the flag claiming to be the true Americans. The ones destined to rule the world.
When she’d been younger, Topaz had heard things in passing. Never understood why one man was better than the other, when taken at face value. Then as she got older, she saw the insecurities of people. Lyna was the perfect example. Over sexualized and confident to the point of annoyance at times. Ready to lash out at anyone at the drop of a hat. All of it coming from her inadequacies and dreams for more unachieved. Topaz had wondered why the woman stayed so long with the Steels. Even with all the love and acceptance she never tried for more, but seemed upset with her station in life.
For Topaz, the Steels did give her purpose. Not the dream she had in high school, but so few actually achieve that when they shoot past their station in life. Her cousins had hit their mark. Not the first in her family to do jail time and since their sentences were close to ending, too soon in her mind, they wouldn’t be the last. There was little doubt within a year of release they’d each have a baby raised by women as slow and ignorant as they were.
She was under no delusion she was basically the queen of the trailer park even though the crap house she’d been raised in wasn’t mobile. It had a foundation and everything, but she’d been the pretty one in a town of fuck ups. The brain she attributed to her grandmother, but it wasn’t like she was a scholar. And the last thing she wanted was to go to college. Her Nanna tried to encourage her, saying it would be a fresh start, but Fayetteville wasn’t far enough away. Hell, Mars wasn’t at that time in her life.
“Don’t think leaving would be that hard,” Topaz said, helping him put on his coat then placing her hand on the door handle only to have Onyx pull it away. “What? It locks from the inside.” Her body was a flood of emotions, twisting in bad memories and the image of the man, standing in front of her was gut wrenching. He was shadowed mostly in the dark cabin, but catching light from the full moon, cresting the horizon as twilight was shifting into dawn, gave her pain.
“Maybe, doesn’t mean they haven’t rigged it,” he said. “Make us feel safe and boom. So we killed ourselves out here.”
“You think they have a Brick?” she joked.
Brick had a penchant for blowing shit up, more times than not, he at least warned the rest of the MC for safety reasons. But they’d found it was better to let him have a little fun every few weeks than to let him go months at a time without at least one explosion or another. While it had been useful to the MC more than one time, that didn’t mean the man’s issues weren’t annoying at times.
“Besides, the sun is going down and even if it wasn’t, I don’t see any type of light out there. We could be five miles or fifty from Turnabout Creek.” Onyx again, looked out the window, this time, he was damn near parallel to the glass trying to see the door.
The American Citizens for Truth Uniting Peoples or ACT-UP, the moniker alone showed how slow witted the people were since ACT UP had been and still was a big fundraising and AIDS research organization that had started in the nineties focusing initially on another of the groups’ hated class. Those in the LGBTQ community among others. And here these assholes used the same acronym. The group had been using Cream for some plan of world domination, and although they had tried a big national coup, the Steels caught wind and took them down. Now, the stragglers were trying to build them back up it seemed. Didn’t the world have enough hatred to refill their ranks as quickly as a dam and lock system refilled to allow boats to move along a river never meant for them?
At least the group taught others a little about explosives when they tried to blow up the shop Baldy ran. Topaz, on the other hand, had learned from the Brick of the south, Dell when she’d been in New Mexico. Steel’s Ol’ Lady had served in a similar unit as Brick and while Topaz understood putting an explosive together, her dismantling a bomb she hadn’t constructed wasn’t in her skill set, but she did know one thing. Look for wires. It wasn’t like the door was flush to the edge of the doorjamb, there was a few cracks and she tried to make out if the block in light was natural or primer cord.
“We need to find weapons.” Onyx limped toward the chairs. Snatching one, he smashed it against the wall splintering the wood and breaking it apart. Gathering two of the legs, he passed one to her. “Use this to protect yourself.”
Topaz spotted a poker next to the fireplace. “Here, this is better.” She handed it to Onyx.
He gripped it in one hand and the chair leg in the other. “I can use both. There ain’t much here in the way of getting out.”
“Something tells me even Santa uses the front door,” she said trying not to go for the obvious route, as she placed her hand on the small chimney flute that went to a small hole in the roof.
Setting his weapons down, Onyx tried the window, his eyes cautious of the destination. “Where the hell are we?”
Topaz, content in her exam of the door and beginning to feel claustrophobic tried the door, shocked to learn it was locked from the outside.
“Shit, they must have used something to lock it on the outside.”
“I told you—”
“I checked it okay,” she said holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m not dumb.”
“No one ever thought you were dumb,” he countered, the sun setting outside the window, barely cresting the horizon, but still bathing him in light. “What time do you think it is?”
“It’s summer,” she replied. “Could be near ten or so.”
“No sun in the winter, all sun in the summer. My body still hasn’t adjusted to the long and short days,” he admitted.
“We also don’t have a consistent seventy-five degrees or whatever it is in LA.”
“Hey, can’t help it I was raised in the sunshine and happiness.”
“Violence and pollution.”
“That pollution is for temperature regulation,” he joked.
Having unburdened herself to him, she now appreciated the fighting, joking style he had in his banter. Similar to Hollywood in many ways. The guard needed to see what they’d seen, been who they were and do what they do. This past year or so, she had wasted enjoying a man for who he was, she couldn’t go back. Relive those moments and respond better. All she could do was move forward. Push on and hope they had a life to live where she could truly apologize.
