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“It’s not going to happen.” He grabbed her by her forearms and gave them a light squeeze. She didn’t say anything. She still had one hand over her mouth and the other was on her thigh shaking. As she tried to regain her composure, Cruz said:
“He wants to kidnap you to draw me away from the group, so he can kill me.” She closed her eyes. He was still holding her arms…hoping to give her strength. “Brian had told him he didn’t know how to get me alone, so Jimmy told Brian that that was what he wanted to happen.”
She moved her hand away slowly and said, “So, if I’m not going to be involved, howisit going to happen?”
“We’re going to ride to Amarillo…”
“But he could do anything along the way,” she said. “He could run us off the road.”
“No, that won’t happen. He can’t run us all down…besides, he thinks he’s going to get away with it all and go back home like nothing’s happened. He doesn’t want the cops after him for murder.”
“But Brian will know,” she said.
Cruz raised his eyebrows slowly and waited. “Oh, no,” she said. “He wants to kill Brian too?”
“Yep.”
“So….” He could tell she was thinking of the next problem Jimmy had. Her.
“Yep…he would have to kill you too.” She stood up from the end of the bed that she’d been sitting on, and walked over to the bottle of water on the table, breathing out a long slow breath, before she twisted the top and brought it up to her lips. When she turned back to Cruz, she poured some of the water into her other hand and washed it over her face. It smeared her mascara and foundation, but Cruz still couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she looked. He was also impressed with how she was handling all this deadly information. He couldn’t imagine how any other woman accountant, from an above-average lifestyle, would have coped. He guessed that all she’d been through had given her the resolve to do so.
“Why don’t you just go to the cops?” she said.
“We can’t. We have nothing on him, and we fix our problems our way,” he said.
“You’re going to kill…”
Cruz held his finger up and shook his head slowly from side to side.
“You don’t need to know the details. I won’t be killing anyone, and he won’t be kidnapping you. We will all get to Amarillo safely, and once we deal with Jimmy, we will all be able to continue on our ride as if nothing happened.”
“Okay, then. That sounds peachy,” Eden said, with a nervous laugh.
Cruz laughed at that. “There’s a whole lot more to Eden Myers than Cruz knows…methinks.”
“I’m finding out there’s a whole lot more to Eden Myers than Eden Myers knows too,” she said. She was filled with a strange mixture of fear and excitement. Her counselor had suggested she do something that would scare her out of her funk, when she was trying to process all the emotions she was dealing with, with her cancer treatment choices. Her counselor had suggested a sky dive or a bungee jump.Looks like I’ve managed to scare myself well and truly this time.She chuckled at that thought and Cruz asked her:
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I am.” He lifted an eyebrow, so she said, “I really do think I am.”I can’t believe this is happening, but the past is not going to control my future. And nothing is going to stand in the way of it either…or you, Jimmy, whoever the fuck you are.
* * *
Brian had calledJimmy to tell him that they were riding to Amarillo in the morning and that would be the best place to get rid of Cruz. “I’ve got a plan to get his old lady away from the group.”
“Speak,” Jimmy said.
“It’s Cruz’s birthday tomorrow, and…”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Brian…you just made my day. Imagine that. He won’t be blowing candles out…we’ll be blowing his fucking brains out.” He laughed like the devil. “And his bitch too,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Brian said. “So anyway, I’ve been talking to her and she’s like his latest old lady, so she wanted to do something special for him.”
Jimmy butted in: “Won’t she ever.”
“So, I told her I knew a place in Amarillo…because they’d already said they were headed there…where there were really good gifts that a biker like him would appreciate.”
“You done good, man. So where is this place?” Jimmy asked.
