Page 9

“It’s irrelevant right now.” I flick my eyes in his direction momentarily, watching him as he types rapidly into his phone, before I turn back to the road.

“Where are we going?”

“Just keep driving. Less talk. I’ll tell you when to turn.”

I have to believe he has a plan. We can’t just keep going with the motorcycle gang following us. I can’t lead them into my life. That is the last thing I need. I feel sweat beading at my forehead as I think about the world of trouble I’ve found myself in. Everything has been near perfect for the past week. Orderly. Controlled. Not a sign of trouble until tonight when that pissant showed up at the club and annoyed the hell out of me. I don’t even want to think what could’ve happened if Mystery Man hadn’t come to my rescue. I may be a lot of things, but naive isn’t one of them. I’d probably be dead right now if it wasn’t for him. Rich, but dead.

“Fuck!” I scream, banging my hand on the steering wheel angrily. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, andfuck!”

9

DANTE

“Night couldn’t possibly get any worse for you, could it?” I quip.

She doesn’t respond. No, it couldn’t possibly get any worse. She has gone from one disaster to another, and now she is on the brink of madness, which is exactly what I don’t need.

I don’t even understand what happened. This can’t be just about some guy wanting a piece of ass. There has to be so much more to the story. No way would a motorcycle club draw attention to itself over a woman who refused one of their members’ advances…

“You want to tell me why you have a motorcycle gang crawling up your ass?”

She purses her lips so tight I think she’s bound to break her skin. She sneaks a peek in the mirror, shakes her head in annoyance then accelerates. With no regard to my baby and the rubber she is burning on her way around the winding road. But that is beside the point at the moment, when we have a merry band of outlaws on our tail.

“You want to tell me who you are?” she bites back.

“There’s an intersection up ahead. Take a sharp turn left. But do it quickly.”

“Faster than this and we’ll crash.”

“Just do it.”

A brief flash of annoyance crosses her face, before she tightens her grip on the steering wheel, straightens in her seat as though readying herself, hooks a quick left into the intersection and flies – literally flies – down the road. It’s a maneuver for an adrenaline junkie, and I’ve never seen anything like it.

The sudden wail of sirens bursts out behind us; she flicks her eyes toward me but speeds up, continuing down the road, almost like she understands what has happened.

“You can slow down now,” I tell her, as the drone of the motorcycles and sirens recedes behind us. She lets out a sigh of relief then lifts her foot off the gas, driving steadily with no destination in mind. We drive on in silence, through empty roads dotted with darkness on either side and lands that civilization has long forgotten.

“Where are we?”

“No Man’s Land,” I tell her, looking out the window. I know this area well. She wouldn’t know it because what business would a poker playing woman who foolishly carried wads of cash around deserted gas stations know about a place like this?

“No Man’s Land,” she hums. “Am I supposed to know what that is?”

“No more than I’m supposed to know why those bikers are after you.”

“Me? I just turned one of them down for sex. You’re the one that pulled a gun on him.”

“You saying you would rather I hadn’t barged in?”

“Why were you even there in the first place?” she asks, turning to look at me curiously.

“Pull over.”

“What? No. Why would I pull over in the middle of nowhere?”

It’s the first instance in which I’ve seen a shred of fear in her. But it is only that, an ounce. Before her armor comes back up again and she looks at me defiantly.

“Pull over so I can drive. It gets darker up ahead – if you don’t know these areas, you’ll drive us into a ravine.”