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The edge of one of the boxes is stabbing me in the back and another clearly broke open and spilled its contents because the corrosive smell of bleach is burning my nose and throat.
“This was not the plan,” I snap, because I can’t help myself. This escape attempt is about to be cut very short, because the Renegades are fucking idiots.
“No talking,” Snake hisses back.
The truck keeps rolling at a steady pace and I’m expecting it to stop any moment now, because only about three hundred yards separate the laundry room from the main gate. Yet we just keep driving.
Until a deafening explosion followed by the sound of metal breaking rocks and shakes the truck so hard I’m thrown right past the box poking me in the back and my head slams into the metal side of the truck. Gene yelps in pain beside me.
Hot blood is now streaming down one side of my face, my eye stinging from it and before I can even fully comprehend this new situation, the truck picks up speed and bullets start pelting the side of the truck.
We’re going as fast as this truck will go and the road beneath us isn’t smooth and level anymore, but rutted. I feel every bump all along my spine. And we just keep going and going.
The sound of sirens followed us for a while, but they’re fading now and we keep on riding at the same breakneck speed on the same rocky and rutted surface. Every bone in my body aches from the vibrations, including my skull, which I’ve banged against the metal side enough times to cause a concussion before the road beneath us finally levels off again.
The respite doesn’t last long before we’re once again getting tossed all over the place by the rough terrain we’re driving on. So it’s no wonder I’m woozy and my head is spinning when the truck finally stops.
The back is pulled open and the scent of tall ancient redwoods and rich forest soil immediately overpowers the stench of bleach, sweat and blood.
My first thought is that we’re in the forest surrounding Sanctuary, the HQ of Devil’s Nightmare MC, a lush untouched place where Harper gave herself to me for the first time, giving meaning to my existence for the first time in my life. But I’m about as far as from that happy place as I am from the protection of the Devils against the nearly twenty Renegades clearing out of the truck in front of me.
“Out, quick!” Snake barks at me, and I follow the Renegades jumping out the back.
“You all right?” my father asks with something close to genuine concern in his voice as I watch one of the Renegades grab Gene’s arm and yank him out of the truck because he was talking too long.
“You’re bleeding,” my father adds.
“It’s nothing,” I say and wipe the sticky mess covering the right side of my face away with the back of my hand. “Just a split brow or something. Why are you here?”
What I actually mean is, why didn’t you tell me you were coming too? But I already know the answer to that. It’s because the Renegades have always and will always come first in his life. Whatever loyalty he might feel for me, his flesh and blood, is nothing compared to the loyalty he has for these men. At least they took him with them on this escape, seeing as he was doing a thirty-five to life stint for riding with them on a job which was most likely just about as badly planned out as this prison break.
I’m fairly certain I can hear helicopters whirring overhead but can’t see any because the canopy above us is so thick barely any light gets through. And the trees are so dense I have no idea how they managed to drive the truck into this clearing.
Originally, I had planned on overpowering Snake, Tiny and the driver as soon as the truck bringing us to freedom stopped, then driving it away and towards Harper right away. But that plan has gone out the window now. I have no idea how I’ll get away with all these Renegades watching my every move.
“What happens now?” one of them asks Snake.
“We get hunted down and hooked up to an electric chair,” I mutter to the angry grumbles of most of the men here. “That was the dumbest way to break out of prison that anyone could ever come up with.”
“But it worked,” the wiry Rider says cattily. “We took a page from the Devils’ playbook and used a javelin to smash open the prison gates. That’s how they demolished our clubhouse and killed everyone in it.”
Yeah, but no one fucking cared about that, while we’ll have the entire California Sherriff’s department and who knows what else after us now. I very nearly say all that. But what’s the point? We need to get as far away from here as possible.
“We spread out, no more than four men walking together,” Snake says. “The meet is Willie’s Mine. Whoever doesn’t make it by nightfall gets left behind.”
I have no fucking idea what or where Willie’s Mine is, but before I can ask Snake adds, “Jax and the rat come with me and Tiny.”
So I might get my chance to end both of them after all.
But given that I have no idea where I am, that might not be the best plan anymore. If we’d done it my way and gotten lucky, no one would’ve missed us until it was time to report for work tomorrow morning. If we weren’t so lucky and evening bed check made it clear that we weren't there anymore, we’d still have a good twelve hour head start on our pursuers. And no dead guards.
The Renegades start trudging away, making a lot of noise as they stumble through the under bush. My father wishes me good luck before he disappears with his group. I wonder if that’s a warning of some sort.
But they need me. And I need to get out of this forest and onto a road leading north.
Unless she changed her plans, Harper is performing at some tiny island off the Washington coast tonight. I remember bitching about the prices for staying the night in a hotel room there when she booked it. I also remember her telling me we can always just sleep on the beach, under the moon and stars, naked. I remember thinking about that for the rest of that long hot day because there was no way to have her sooner. But most of all, I remember that night when we recreated the idea in the soft grass under tall redwoods just like the ones growing all around me and blocking my path to her.
Harper
