Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(14)

Staring straight ahead seems like the best plan, but there’s almost nothing for her to stare at except desert dark and the biker in the lead. At least the guy in front is allowing more distance now between the tail of his bike and the nose of her SUV.

There’s faint purple in the western sky, but it’s mostly dark out now. In fact, there aren’t even lights to mark the spot where she knows their hideout stands. And that’s bad, she thinks. That means the place isn’t just a hideout—it’s some kind of storehouse, and they don’t want anyone to know about it.

Up until a few weeks ago, she was alone out here, which is exactly how she likes it. When the bikers first showed up, she hadn’t given them a second thought. Criminals who just want to do their own thing—a change of pace from the monsters in her past. Let them cook or deal their meth in peace, she’d thought. She wants to be left alone, and so do they.

But now they’re taking an interest in her. A really loud, scary interest. And up close she can see the telltale signs of hard-core outlaws.

A guy named Benny used to come to the meetings at the center all the time and share about his Hells Angels past. The other alcoholics got tired of him after a while, maybe because his shares had less to do with recovery than bragging about his criminal cred. But Charlotte was riveted every time he spoke, and now, thanks to Benny, she knows the sleeveless denim shirts these guys are wearing are called cuts; the patches on the back are signs they’re full-fledged members of the gang in question. The word Vapados fills the center patch on each guy’s back. She’s not sure what it means. Is it the name of their biker gang?

Benny’s shares always made it sound as if Arizona belonged to the Hells Angels. So where did these guys come from?

Only a few more minutes until they’d pass their hideout. If they still had her fenced in by then, it might be time to take the Beretta out of the glove compartment. But what good would that do?

Charlotte puts in several hours a week of practice on the thing, but she’s never tried getting off a good shot at sixty-five miles an hour. If they work together, the bikers could run her off the road before she manages to fire. Then where would she be?

They’re close to their hangout now, close enough that she might have to make a decision in the next minute.

She looks to one side.

Sure enough, the biker to her left is staring at her. His helmet, yellow-tinted glasses, and wind-rippling beard steal most of the definition from his face. But he’s big. Thor big. He stares at her with a leisurely confidence. When she sees the tattoo of a pistol on the side of his neck, and the sleeves of ornate carnage inked down his arms, her spine feels like piano keys being walked on by a cat. “Fuck,” she whispers.

He smiles. He’s read her lips and he’s amused.

Then he aims a trigger finger in her direction and peels away suddenly. His buddies follow suit; their headlights bounce across the roadside and briefly illuminate the old sheds they’ve made their own.

She welcomes the darkness that closes in all around her now, even though the absence of the deafening motorcycles leaves her with the haggard sound of her own breathing.

At least she’s got her first journal entry. Thirty minutes after initial dose, biker gang manages to scare ever-living shit out of me. Got anything stronger, Dylan?

Should she kill her headlights when she gets close to her house?

Or do they already know she lives out here? Maybe that’s why they were slowing down and checking her out. But the message of that trigger finger was clear—don’t come back. She sometimes goes two weeks without leaving the house. That must be why it took them a while to pick up on the fact that she’s passed them more than once today.

There’s got to be some way to send a message that she could give two shits what they’re doing in those sheds. Or what they’re hiding.

Maybe if they knew I was Burning Girl . . .

Just thinking the nickname turns her stomach.

Or maybe that’s the aftereffect of almost being run off the road.

Or maybe it’s the Zypraxon.

Or maybe, and this thought makes her dizzy as well as nauseated, it’s the realization that she barely noticed the bikers’ approach because she was still thinking about Dylan’s kiss. Dylan’s quick but somehow furtive and totally inappropriate kiss.

She hates that she let her guard down on a mostly empty road because she was obsessing over her psychiatrist like some love-struck teenager.

But that’s not quite it, she realizes.

Yes, there’d been a moment right when his lips touched her skin when she’d felt something open inside her. Some hunger for intimate connection she’d assumed she’d locked away. It was instinctive, this response. But now, with a little distance between her and the center, it wasn’t just the kiss that bothered her. It was the way he’d touched her after. The way he’d guided her out of his office, one hand against the small of her back. As if, because she’d finally broken down and consented to taking the pill, he now saw her as firmly under his control.

Touchy. Confident yet strangely hurried.

An odd combination of words to describe his behavior, but an accurate one. And one she never would have applied to him before.

You’re overthinking this, she tells herself. You’re feeling guilty and weak because you took the pill, and now you’re reading too much into his behavior.