Ignition (BBW Alpha Male MC Biker Romance) (6 page)

     “That
was awesome,” she said simply.

     “Good,”
Victor replied.  “I hope that keeps you smug as a bug for now.  But we better
leave before someone realizes this guy isn’t answering his calls and comes over
to check on him.  This guy uses big, therefore he probably deals big.  Someone
will be asking around for him sooner rather than later.  Let’s pick up and pull
out.  I’ll buy lunch.  How about Esmerelda’s?”

     Olivia
thought of the upscale Mexican place he mentioned.  Sure, quesadillas by
candlelight sounded romantic enough. 

     “Oooh,
it’s a date,” she laughed.

     “That’s
my brother there.”

     She
stared into the screen.  In it were two men, sitting at what looked like an
outdoor patio, with a pitcher and a couple of pints in front of them.  They
were in sunglasses, embracing each other and smiling in a semi-hug around the
shoulders.  “I can’t believe I haven’t seen what he looks like until now.  You
both look so happy.  I see a lot of love in this pic.”

     Victor
and Olivia were in the van, waiting for their latest mark.  They woke up early,
before five in the morning, to drive to the next address.  Hot coffee sat
steaming between them as they watched for their next hit.  Victor knew he
needed to be alert and quick at the ready for this service call.  So to
distract his girlfriend from her seemingly endless epinephrine induced libido,
he pulled out his phone to show her some highlights from his misspent youth.

     “Yeah,
Troy was the best of my family.  We took care of each other growing up.  Life
can be real shitty at times.”

     Olivia
replied softly, empathically, “What happened to you?  When you were kids?”

     “Well,
my dad liked the bottle.  More than his family, anyway.  And when he was really
in it, you had to get out of the way.  He got angry.  And my mom, well….”

     Victor
paused, gathering momentum to continue.  Olivia knew he was having a hard time
recalling the painful memories of his past.  She waited for him to go on.

     His
voice hardened with anger.  “My mom one day had enough.  She ran out one day
with someone else, leaving the both of us with this fucker of a father.  And I
never saw her since.”

     Olivia
placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.  Rubbing it into him as a show of
sympathy and support. 

     Victor’s
attitude suddenly softened as he told her the rest.  “They found my dad a few
weeks later.  Alcohol poisoning, obviously.  He couldn’t hack raising two
teenage boys that were just as angry as him by himself.  Rick took over for a
while.  Took us in when we didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

     Victor
scrolled through several pictures of himself with his brother and Rick.  On
their bikes, at a football game, drinking together.  One new happy family.

     She
smiled as she scanned through pictures of his past.  As a teen, he looked so young,
but mostly with a grave and serious tone to his appearance.  He was just
starting to develop the bulked muscle mass that lit her on fire every time she
saw him unconsciously flex.  She thought his brother Troy looked similar to him
in some areas, especially around the eyes.  The color was the same and the hue
of their hair matched exactly.  But the shape of the head was much different.  The
bone structure on his brother’s face was more streamlined and angular compared
to Victor’s.   She came to the last few photos in his phone album.  It was the
three of them, all older now.  Now men.  A woman sat in the middle of the three
of them, her right hand firmly enclasped in Rick’s left one.

     “This
Rick’s girlfriend?  Wife?” she asked.

     “Carlie? 
You could call her that.  They are common-law now.  There in this picture they
just started seriously dating each other.”

     Olivia
jealously looked over her face and figure with some envy.  She was stunning. 
Long flowing blond hair framing a flawless California-babe type face.  Large
breasts that accentuated a slim athletic tanned body.  Dramatically, she
gushed, “She’s beautiful.”

     Victor
gave her a flippant apathetic reply.  “Sure she is.  But honestly, who gives a
shit.”

     Olivia
watched him with a quizzical expression.  “Why would you say something like
that?”

     Victor
smirked.  “She’s a stone cold bitch.  I hooked up with her before she was with
Rick.  I learned the hard way where the looks department is concerned that that
shit is overrated.  What it comes down to, hell, it doesn’t matter too much
what a person looks like.  If they’re there to please you completely, and make
sure you’re happy, that’s what counts most.  If they’re not willing to put in
the effort and put you first, in the end, it’s not worth it.”

     Olivia
opened her mouth to say something which Victor quickly hushed away.  He saw the
front door crack open.  A hand held the frame of the door as it opened wider.  Someone
was coming out of the house.  “Oh, it’s on.  Game time.”

     A
balding middle-aged man wandered out onto the driveway.  He was rubbing the
sleep still out of his eyes, wearing only his boxers.  Olivia saw the man’s
hairy paunch billow out over the hem of his boxers.  She stuck her tongue out
and made a face.  If women couldn’t be in public topless, there should be
similar rules for men that took such poor physical care of themselves like this
man.  His bare feet padded on the black pavement of his driveway.  As he bent
down to pick up the morning paper that was tossed at the edge of his lawn,
Olivia noticed that Victor had hunkered down in the driver’s seat, silently
screwing the silencer on the end of his gun.  He lowered the window down stealthily
on the van and poked the end out of the corner in the window, to hide it from
view. 

     As the
man raised himself up from stooping to fetch his paper, Victor squeezed the
trigger.  Three muted shots pumped out of the barrel, hitting the victim
squarely in the chest.  As the man crumpled to the ground, Victor took a few
more shots for good measure.  After the man collapsed face first into the
pavement, Victor started the van and gunned it. Speeding away from the house,
he made a few dangerous turns onto several residential streets in top form
before slowing down out of the neighborhood and entering the main road.  Victor
repeatedly looked in his rearview mirror and checked his surroundings often to
make sure no one saw the events unfold and was following him.  He drove two
miles down the barren street before driving into an abandoned parking lot in
the back of an empty building to put the plates back on the van.

     Victor
got back into the van and grinned wildly at his accomplice in crime.  “Well,
another one down.  Buh bye to Terry.  One more double crossing prick to go. 
And the dues that are owed my brother will finally be paid.  I knew this one
would go easy.  You go early enough, when no one is awake yet, and it’s easy
cherry pie.  Let’s head back and celebrate like you know best.”

     Victor
winked at her and started the van.  Olivia crinkled her nose back at him in a
flirty gesture.  As they drove together, Olivia rested her hand on Victor’s
crotch.  She clutched at it and kneaded it in her hand.  Like molding putty
until it dried into rock.  Victor eased back in the seat and did a bit more
manspreading to let her have better access to it.  He was thinking of sizzling
some bacon and sausage for breakfast.  Of course, this would be after another freakish
round of her fucking the brains out of his head again.  This was the start of a
really good day.

     As
Victor was pulling in from the main road into the general neighborhood of her
house, a cruiser whizzed past them.  Then two more followed behind the first. 
No lights or sirens.  Strange.  His erection rapidly fizzled away. Victor
slowed his speed cautiously and pulled the van to park it temporarily beside a
house three streets over from Olivia’s.  He was going to walk over to the house
first, just to put his mind at ease before driving in.  One can never be too
careful.

     Victor
turned to face Olivia.  “Stay right here.  Whatever you do, don’t leave this
van.  I’m just going to walk over, make sure everything is ok at your place. 
I’ll be right back.  Promise.” 

     He
leaned over and kissed her quickly on the mouth before getting out of the
vehicle and carefully shutting the door, trying to minimize the sound of it
slamming.  She watched as he jogged off in the direction of the house.  He
turned around the block disappearing from view.  Olivia spent the next very
stressful minutes in the van by herself, nervously waiting for his return.  She
started biting her nails.  Then she got out her phone and started playing a
game on it to distract her.  Seven minutes later she heard some huffing as
Victor ran back around the van, opening the side panel of the vehicle.

     He
commanded sharply, “Quickly, get your head down.  I gotta switch the plates. 
They found us.  They are at your place, waiting for us.  We gotta fly.”

    
Confusion muddled with the stress in her mind. 

      “Who?”
she weakly asked.

     Victor
searched for and found the second set of plates in the van lying near the front
seats.  He grabbed them and replied in a rushed clip, “The cops.  There’s at
least four of their cars in front of your house, all the lights flashing.  We
have to move out.  Time to go.”

     He
moved to the back of the van and jogged shortly after to the front, securing
the new plates to the van.  He hopped in and started the engine.

     “What
are we going to do?” Olivia whined, scared out of her wits.  The adrenaline
rush that simmered in her previously while she was fumbling for his cock in the
van dissipated into pure fear.  The thrill of those moments of seeing life and
death first hand were replaced with entirely different emotions of guilt, panic
and dread.  She hadn’t mentally prepared herself at all for the reality of
getting caught.

     “It’s
going to be all right, Livs, no worries.  It was only going to be a matter of
time before they found me.  I just didn’t think it would have happened so soon,
or that you would be so involved.  But I planned ahead.”

     He
drove out to the main road again, scanning the exit signs, a plan organically
forming in his brain.  He poked his thumb to the back of the van.  “Back at the
clubhouse, I took a few duffle bags of cash.  I made the leader confess to it and
had him open the safe.  There’s enough for us to lay low for a long while. 
Just one more hit and it’s off to the rugged mountains of Canada or the cool
cervezas in Mexico.  Ladies’ choice.”

     “But
all my stuff is back there.  I left my purse there.  I need that stuff back,”
Olivia wheedled.

     Victor
replied, “No you don’t.  You’re better off without it.  We’ll get you new ID. 
Reinvent yourself.  Be creative, honey.  Who do you want to be?”

     “I
don’t know…” she mindlessly responded.  Her frantic mind grasped at reason. 
“How did they find us?”

     Victor
nodded to himself at an exit and sharply banked towards it.  He was going to
take some less travelled back roads to get out of sight and clear his head for
a bit.  He needed to carefully think of his next move.  “I don’t know Ollie. 
But they zeroed in on your house.  They tracked me to you somehow.  Which gets
me to thinking.  What of yours do you have with you now?”

     Olivia
glanced at the phone hidden and tucked underneath her hand.  “Just my phone,”
she said.

     “Is it on
or off?” Victor asked.

     “On,”
she replied.

     “Normal
settings?”

     Olivia
replied, her voice sounding pretty unhappy, “Yeah, I think so.  I don’t know.”

     “Can I
see it for a minute?’ Victor asked.

     “Sure,
hon.”

     She
handed him the phone with some reservation.  Victor rolled down the window, and
tossed the phone out of his car onto the highway.

     “Hey! 
Why did you do that?” she yelled at him.

     “They
could have tracked us with your phone.  Perhaps that’s how they put me and you
together so quickly in the first place.  I don’t know yet.  We’re lucky they
haven’t caught us already,” he answered.

     Olivia
called him out on what she thought was hypocrisy and irrationality.  “They
could have tracked us with the phone you stole from that club leader.  I’ve
seen you going through it, looking for your next intended victim. So don’t say
it was my fault.”

     “I’m
not putting blame on anyone, Livvie.  But I put this guy’s phone on airplane
mode back at that house we torched, so they couldn’t track us with that.”

    
Olivia’s face came up empty.  She had no idea what he was talking about. 
Victor read her blank expression and explained further.

     “On
airplane mode, there is no connectivity.  No Wi-fi, no internet.  The phone
can’t be tracked.  It’s silent.  But I can still see the info he stored on that
phone.”

     “Oh.” 
Olivia’s shoulders fell as she realized that her lack of technological
understanding probably led the law enforcement right to them.  She remembered
reading the text she got from Victor as she hid in the van.  It travelled with
her right to the rival MC gang’s house, silently alerting her of more texts
sent to her from her friends.

     “We’re
probably going to have to get rid of the van as well.  The switched plates
aren’t going to fool people for long.  They’re probably out looking for the
make and model of what I’m driving right now,” he said.

     “How do
you think they figured that out?” she asked.

    
“Perhaps the tire treads on the van back at the clubhouse.  I had to drive in
some mud, and probably left some behind.  It’s an old beater of a van.  Not
many of them around anymore.  I was going to torch it and ride off on the
motorcycle in the back, but then you happened.”

     “So why
didn’t you just torch the van and we both leave on the bike?”

     Victor
pointed to her head.  “No extra helmet,” he said.  “I had nothing that would
fit you.  Safety first, dearest heart.”

     Even
though he said it offhandedly, and mostly for explanatory purposes, she melted
a little at his last two spoken words to her.  No one had ever used such terms
of endearment before with her.

     Victor
continued further.  “So if I were to guess, they put two and two together. 
They used the tread and the info from your phone, which they can use to
identify both to the clubhouse and pinpoint the time when we were there.  Going
to the gas station on the way home was probably another giveaway.  They have us
on camera near the location, with the van.”

     Olivia
supported his theory weakly, “And I went in.  I bought a lotto ticket….”

     “Well,
the camera in the store probably had better resolution.  So they got a good
recording of you being there.  But that doesn’t matter now.  What’s done is
done.  What we need to do soon, is start unloading this van.”

     They
both drove in unsettled silence while Victor picked his brain for another
abandoned area.  He found a rundown barn in the middle of an abandoned
farmhouse and drove up to it.  He got out of the car and undid the latch that
held the barn entrance closed.  Swinging open the large wooden doors, he used
some large nearby rocks to keep them propped open.  He walked over to the side
of the van and slid the door open.  He grunted as he carefully dropped and
wheeled the heavy bike out onto the long grass of the small hill leading up to
the barn.  Victor spent a few minutes in the back, rummaging around and
stuffing things into two large black duffel bags.  He got out and placed both
of those beside the bike, where they landed in the soft earth with a dull
thud.  Olivia sat motionless in the passenger’s seat and stared at him,
watching him work in solemn concentration.  She saw him move back into the van,
picking up items and strapping them to his body.  Over top, he strapped on a
dark jacket.  He tossed a matching flak jacket up to her.

     “Here
Liv’s, put this on, please.”

     She put
the jacket around her body and strapped it on.  It was heavy, and weighed her
down.  Victor grabbed two bike helmets nestled under the blanket she brought
with her to hide in the van.  Both were black and shined in the sunlight.  He
held one up to her.

     “This
one is yours,” he gestured. “I managed to find the time to get one for you.”  He
walked over to the bike and set the pair of them beside the duffel bags.  Then
he got back into the van.  They drove up the hill into the barn that was
falling apart on all sides.  Once the van was inside, Victor got out again.  He
went to the gas cans that he left in the back of the van.  They both went to
work, emptying the rest of the contents in the gas cans on the vehicle.  Victor
took the gun with the silencer and blasted the front part of the dash to
obliterate the VIN number, just to be sure.  He didn’t know whether they had
doused the vehicle with enough accelerant to make sure it would be thoroughly
torched.  And he didn’t want any of his recent activities leading back to
Lucifer’s Breed.  But he figured there was enough loose dry old straw in the
barn to help feed the flames.  He tossed the lighter in the air at her, letting
her ignite it.  It was tradition now.  With a hungry stare, she flicked the lit
flame to a soaked tire and watched as it blew up in a plume of orange flame. 
Beautiful.  She backed off slowly and watched as the van rapidly engulfed in a
spreading plague of fire.

     Victor
grabbed her hand and led her away.  “Come on, Liv, we gotta go.”

     They
jogged away from the barn to the bike before the fire spread to the rest of the
building.  Victor helped lift one duffel bag onto Olivia’s back and assisted
her with putting her helmet on.  Victor then strapped his helmet on and placed
the second duffel bag around his shoulders, with the stolen money, extra guns
and ammo cushioning his stomach.  As they pulled away, Olivia glimpsed behind
her to where she started to see the first flames reach the building, licking
the wooden slats of the old barn.

҉҉҉

     They
rode for miles and miles, clear out of town where they wouldn’t be recognized
easily.  And as the time on the bike dragged on, Olivia felt the weight of the
duffel bag grow heavier and heavier with each passing minute.  Her shoulders
ached under the gravity of holding it over the shoulders of her body.  Her arms
ached from holding onto Victor so tightly as he wound his way on the bike along
the narrow back country roads.  He rode with expert precision, but never being
on a motorcycle was an unfamiliar and slightly scary experience for her.  In a
car, she felt insulated from the speed.  Not so here.  She was riding behind
him, in the thick of it, with the ground racing below her at what seemed a
million miles a minute.  She had fearful premonitions of losing balance on the
bike and wiping out at full speed.  For some reason, she was not enjoying this
adrenaline rush much at all.

     Victor
spied an area in the distance where they could pull over safely.  He could feel
Olivia’s arms starting to sag and slip from around his sides.  He figured that
she was due for a much deserved rest.  He slowed the bike and pulled over to a
small rest stop area by the side of the small country road.  It had a lonely
worn out picnic table sitting under a heavily shaded area filled with large old
trees.  A sign two yards ahead of the picnic table identified food and lodging
five miles down the way.  Looking around the gravel parking area, they were the
only ones that pulled in for a break.

     As the
bike stopped, Olivia quickly shrugged off the duffel bag that was starting to
dig into her shoulder blades.  She felt the strained muscles of her back and
shoulders ache under the pressure of keeping the back on her back.  She leaned
back on the bike and shook her arms in an effort to relax them a little.

     She
gave him a light hug around the torso, still seated on the bike. “Ughh, thanks
Vics, you’re a lifesaver.  I was starting to think that bag was going to pull
me off of your bike.  It was really weighing me down.”    

     “I
could tell.  Your arms began to feel a bit droopy around me.  I thought you
could have used a break.”

     She
looked out into the wooded area, into the strange and unfamiliar place she was
in.  No traffic had crossed their path in over seven minutes.  It felt
deserted.  A stillness permeated the place.  It made her feel lonely, and
without the familiar feel of her phone in her back pocket, completely cut off
from her friends, family and the rest of civilization.  She thought of the job
and people she left behind.  A black hole of absence seeped into her heart. 
She quailed, “Vic, honey, what are we going to do?  Will I ever be able to go
home again?”

     He saw
the longing and searching hope in her face as she asked him that question. 
Looking towards him for deliverance back to normalcy.  But she chose to walk
with him, and the path to shared revenge was, more often than not, a harsh
one.  He wanted to comfort her and prevent her from going into a full-blown
panic, but decided it would not benefit anyone if he sugarcoated it too much.

     “Don’t
worry, hon.  I’ll take good care of you.  I gave you my solid word on that.  If
things go down, I’ll make sure I take most if not all of the heat for it,” he
offered.

     Olivia
responded in a whiny pleading tone of voice.  “How?  What are you going to do? 
You said it yourself, that my phone probably led them to us.  I’m totally
implicated in whatever they’re going to accuse us of.”