Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
It was too much to carry.
And I had no car.
“Okay, baby. We’re going to stash all this in our unit until the morning.”
It was too late to find a car of any sort.
We were going to need to lie low until an appropriate hour.
With that, we took several trips down to the unit, then started on a careful walk toward town. And the twenty-four-hour coffee shop there.
I got a table in the back, and I ordered half-caf coffee after half-caf coffee—black, since I had no way to regulate my sugar aside from my daily slow-acting medication.
Sugar slept at my feet.
I stared out the window, watching the night shift toward day, and thought.
The car solution came to me easily enough.
I needed a place for Sugar and our things. But also my bike, since there was no way I could leave that behind.
I was going to rent a moving truck.
To go where was the question.
I had a decent amount of money. But I wasn’t sure where to go. Or if I was going to get someone else to agree to renting to me when I didn’t have a current job.
There were long-stay motels.
Not ideal.
Almost always dirty.
Sometimes full of creeps.
But I could make do.
Get a job to sock away some more money.
It was going to set back my revenge plans.
Then again, those weren’t going to move forward very easily now that they were onto me. And that they’d screwed around with another club.
I straightened at that.
The other club.
They had to be pissed off at Roach and his guys.
Someone had tried to murder one of them.
They had to retaliate, right?
And, well, the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
I wasn’t typically someone who would reach out for help. But for the first time—maybe in my whole life—I was fragile, vulnerable.
And what did it matter if I had help, so long as I got what I wanted out of this whole thing in the end?
I reached for my phone and typed in the town that had been on the bikers’ rockers.
Shady Valley.
It was a town over in Inyo County, right in the shadow of the Death Valley mountains. Almost four hours from where the drop had been. Nearly five from where I’d been living.
A long drive.
But doable.
Once I was there, I could find my way to a clinic or hospital and get a new prescription for insulin. Then figure out the whole sleeping situation.
“Okay. Mama needs to get something to eat. Then I can feed you. And we can go to the rental place.”
Without insulin, I had to be extra careful about what I was eating. My long-acting medication would (hopefully) prevent any crazy spikes in the meantime, but I wanted to be extra careful.
So we left the coffee place and went to a restaurant, where I got myself an egg and cheese meal and a side of breakfast ham as a special treat for Sugar.
After that, we walked to the moving truck place.
An hour later, all our belongings were in the back with my motorcycle, and Sugar and I were in the front, on the way to some tiny little nowhere town.
“You’re doing good,” I told Sugar as I reached over to pet her.
I was sure cars had been some part of her training, but she hadn’t been in one since I’d gotten her, and I’d been worried she might get anxious.
I should have known better.
That was what made service dogs so valuable—and so expensive. They were personality tested to be calm and non-reactive as well as to obey commands and do their jobs. Nothing bothered her. The closest she got to being hyped up was when a squirrel was teasing her by playing too close to where she was relaxing.
I reached for the radio, turning it up, hoping to drown out the thoughts that were getting louder with each passing mile.
But short of hurting Sugar’s ears with the volume, there was no quieting all the concerns and insecurities about reaching out to some unknown club for assistance.
All alone.
No backup.
Sure, I still had a few guns. Some mace. A knife or two. But none of that would help me if these guys turned on me.
“Stop,” I grumbled at myself when my GPS told me that Shady Valley was my next turn.
Nothing was going to happen.
I’d saved one of their lives.
They wouldn’t attack me.
They might be suspicious and curious. They might have a lot of questions for me. But they wouldn’t hurt me after what I’d done.
At least that was what I was forcing myself to believe as I drove down the center street of a quaint little small town lined with mom-and-pop shops. I clocked a gym, diner, pub, pool hall, martial arts studio, and a stationary store.
Though there were more empty buildings than occupied ones.
It was cute. But also maybe a little bit sad and rundown.