Tainted Rose (21 page)

XIX

J
OSH LEFT FOR VAL-D’OR THAT
night. Before he left he threw Drake the keys to the handcuffs. Then he went and put bullets in the tires of Drake’s and Rex’s bikes. He rode out of Montreal with nothing but the handgun he’d bought and the gun he’d taken from Drake. He had some money on him, his jacket, his bike and nothing more. He didn’t need much more than that in the world.

Val-d’Or was a long way north of Montreal so he filled gas on the edge of the city. With the temperature dropping the way it was, he knew he wouldn’t be able to ride through the night so he checked into a motel close to the gas station. A few hours sleep would do him good.

He didn’t say much to the clerk in the motel and went straight to his room. It was small and functional with a battered old air conditioner at the window, a color television and a door leading to the bathroom. Starched sheets were spread over the bed. Josh went straight through to the bathroom. He was cold from the ride but when he stepped into the shower he ran the cold water. He stood there naked and let it wash over his body. He took deep breaths. He had a lot to take in. Ten years he’d been waiting in Montreal, drifting, watching, waiting. Now he’d finally take action. Rex Savage was dead. The man who had killed his father was dead at last.

Josh didn’t realize it until after he’d done it, but he’d punched the wall of the shower so hard that the tiles around his fist cracked.

He got out of the shower and lay on his back on the bed, naked, soaking wet. It seemed like he only closed his eyes for a second but when he opened them it was morning. If he dreamed at all he had no memory of it. He looked at the clock by the bed. It was seven. He made some coffee in the machine in his room and drank it standing by the window. Then he took out his wallet and left fifty dollars on the bed to pay for the damage to the tile. He went down to the parking lot and got on his bike and kicked off. He rode hard and fast north through the vast province of Quebec and only stopped to fill gas.

In the late afternoon he was passing through the Réservoir Dozois. As he drove on the long causeways that formed the dams through those lakes he got the strange sensation that he was being followed. He pulled over and looked back. A few miles behind him was a rider in black, wearing a black helmet.

The rider was closing in on him fast. Josh drew his guns and checked them. He had the gun he’d bought and the gun he’d taken from Drake. The rider seemed to reach down to his leg and when he straightened up Josh saw that he’d drawn a rifle and was aiming it at him. He’d never seen anyone aim with a rifle from the back of a motorcycle before and he had only just enough time to dive over the wall of the causeway when a bullet grazed past his ear. He landed hard on the broken rock that was on the other side of the barrier. Below him was the icy water of the reservoir.

Who’d followed him, he wondered but he didn’t have time to answer the question as another shot was fired. Josh was behind the barrier but he heard the bullet hit his bike, right in the gas tank. Miraculously the bike didn’t explode.

A second later, following close behind the bullet, the rider swooshed past without stopping. Josh got up and took aim and let a single bullet fly. He didn’t know if it hit the rider or not but a moment later the driver slumped, and a second after that his bike swerved and struck against the barrier of the causeway. The crash occurred at full speed, well over a hundred miles per hour, and there was no way whoever was riding that bike survived. Josh ran toward the wreckage. As he was running a huge explosion mushroomed from the bike. The force of it blew Josh backward onto the asphalt of the road.

The rider was over a hundred yards farther up the road and Josh got back on his feet and ran toward him. He had to shield his face from the heat of the fire as he ran past the wreck.

When he got to the body it was already dead. He pulled off the helmet. It was Drake. That’s what he got for showing mercy. He should have known better. He wondered if Drake had told anyone what had happened at Rex’s but given that he had followed alone, Josh figured Drake had been acting alone. He wondered how he’d known to follow him in this direction.

He went back to his bike and examined the damage. Apart from the hole in the gas tank the bike was undamaged. The problem was that without a gas tank he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He kicked the bike in frustration.

Then he lifted it over the barrier of the causeway and hid it among the rock above the reservoir. There was a mile marker nearby and he remembered the number on it, seven-seventy-two. He could come back for this bike later. He looked up and down the road. Then he went over to Drake’s body and dragged it over the barrier too. He loaded the body with rocks and then dragged it down to the edge of the water. He didn’t want the body to be found anytime soon so he took off his own clothes and got into the water. He dragged it out as far as he could. The water got deep very fast and he dived down with the body and rolled it along the bottom of the lakebed to make sure it went deep.

The water was icy cold and he could only bear it for a few minutes. He got out and dried off and dressed. Then he gathered whatever useful things he could take from his bike and began walking. He was still a couple hundred miles from Val-d’Or.

*

I
T TOOK JOSH A LONG
time to reach Val-d’Or. He hadn’t hitchhiked in years and he quickly remembered why. The highway was long and hard and the wind that blew over it came straight from the forgotten norths, far beyond the last habitations and logger camps.

It had been mid-afternoon when he was attacked by Drake. It was dark before the first freight truck passed him and that was headed in the wrong direction. Josh saw the driver turn to look at him in awe. It just wasn’t natural to see a man walking that way alone. It is hard to imagine how desolate the highway got beyond the last of the major towns. The landscape was almost completely empty. It was not like other places where farms and farmhouses punctuate the space between towns. That far north there were no farms. Nothing grew but trees and wilderness. There were vast swathes of forest that had never been logged, never been cut down, never even be seen by men. Around some lakes there were fishing huts and beer cans and signs of human presence but around many of them there was nothing human. No one went there, no one lived there. It was a harsh and inhospitable place that even the Native Americans declined to settle.

Over an hour passed before another truck went by. This one was taking supplies up north from the port in Montreal. Josh held out his hand and heard the truck shifting down through its gears long before it reached him. It was a big operation to bring one of those heavy trucks to a halt once it got going but the driver pulled over. There was no way he could pass a man on foot on a road like that.

“Where you headed, son?”

“Up past Val-d’Or.”

“Well I’m going as far as the town if you want a ride.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Josh said.

Josh pulled himself up into the cab.

“Was that your bike back there?”

“Afraid so,” Josh said. “Spun out on some ice. I was lucky.”

“I’ll say. I drove past it and I was afraid to stop. There’s still smoke coming off the wreckage.”

“Guess I should call that in or something.”

“I can let dispatch know,” the driver said. “They’ll notify the highway department. Might have to wait till it warms up before they send out a crew.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Josh said.

The driver radioed his dispatch in Montreal and called in the accident. They drove on in silence for a while. They got to Val-d’Or a few hours later. Josh had been dozing in his seat and the driver asked him where he wanted to get dropped off.

“Town’s good. I guess I’ll need a place to spend the night.”

“There’s a motel off the highway here.”

“That’ll do,” Josh said.

Josh spent the night in the motel and woke up early the next morning and continued west and north out of Val-d’Or in the direction of the Ontario border.

XX

J
OSH TRUDGED ALONG THE SIDE
of the highway and tried to stay out of the spray of the passing trucks. He saw the Velvet Cat from a distance and shook his head. He knew exactly what kind of a place it was. Everyone knew that the DRMC made a lot of money whoring out young girls. More often than not, those girls didn’t have any say in the matter. For a lot of guys, the fact that the girls had no choice in the matter added to the allure of the place. It was like raping a girl without having to worry about the consequences. Josh never understood guys like that. It had got him in more than his share of fights.

It pained him that Jack Meadows’ daughter had ended up in such a place.

From the outside, the Cat looked like any other roadside bar. It had a worn wooden facade, a few loose shingles on the roof, and a sign over the door. There was also a small board taped inside a window that said One Percent. That was a sign to bikers and everyone else that the bar was owned by a club. It meant no one would cause trouble, not even the police if there were any in these parts.

Josh entered the bar and it took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He couldn’t believe that Rex had condemned a girl like Rose to a place like this. How could that son of a bitch have been so vindictive? Turning on your own brothers was one thing, a reprehensible thing, but going after their children? That was unforgivable.

For a brief moment Josh wished he’d taken more time in killing Rex. He could have made him pay a higher price for the things he’d done. But that had never been Josh’s style. If a man had to pay the price for what he’d done, he might as well do it fast. He wasn’t able to take pleasure in hurting another man, no matter who he was. He’d never tortured anyone. The important thing was that Rex Savage was dead now.

The bar was empty and he walked up the counter with a slow, tired gait. He’d been walking all morning, he’d covered miles, and had only managed to get a few short rides from drivers along the highway. His feet were killing him. He pulled up a stool at the counter and then stopped short.

*

T
HERE SHE WAS!

*

S
HE WAS STANDING NOT TEN
yards from him, her deep, blue eyes staring at him like a deer caught in headlights. He’d never seen someone so beautiful and knew he’d die before he ever saw someone that beautiful again. He recognized her instantly. There was no mistaking those big, round eyes. They were the eyes he’d seen on a child ten years ago and even then they’d made a deep impression.

He wanted to say her name, Rose, but he didn’t dare. He didn’t know how she would react. If the bar owners overheard him and realized he was here for her there would be trouble.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He knew he was staring but he didn’t care. She looked up at him, slightly startled, and he just looked right back. Her face was fresh and youthful. Her hair was long and rich. She had a brightness about her that Josh thought was almost angelic.

He knew the years must have been hard on her. He felt so bad that she had had to feel the pain of losing her father, her only family, at such a young age. If there was anything he could have done about that he would have done it. Looking at that face now, he felt like the only thing in the world that mattered was protecting that beautiful girl, getting her away from this horrible place, and keeping her safe from as much pain and suffering as possible.

“Can I help you?” she said.

Josh was dumbstruck. He was usually a pretty quiet guy, not the kind to talk too much, but he’d never in his life felt like he did right then. Words literally escaped him.

“I’m just here,” he said, unable to finish the sentence, not even sure what the sentence would have been if he had finished it.

“You certainly are,” Rose said.

“I mean, I’d like a beer.”

*

W
HEN ROSE CAME OUT OF
the changing room she felt like everything in the world was coming to an end. She couldn’t handle this life any longer. She’d been forced to spend the night with Serge and Rust and they’d treated her as brutally as two men could treat a woman. They’d hurt her, forced themselves upon her, and when they were finished they’d left her a quivering, shaking wreck. She could still feel the stickiness of their cum on her skin, on her face. It was there even though she’d washed herself a hundred times.

If something didn’t change soon, she knew that she wouldn’t survive. Someone like her couldn’t live in a place like that forever. One way or another, even if it meant harming herself, the end of it was coming. It had to.

*

A
ND THEN, IN WALKED A STRANGER.

*

S
HE RECOGNIZED HIM IMMEDIATELY AS
the drifter she and Serge had seen earlier when they were riding in from Val-d’Or. The very first thing she felt was fear. It was fear for him. She knew that Serge had marked him as a biker and that could only mean trouble for him. She wanted to warn him, to tell him to get the hell out of there while he still could, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

All she could do was look at him. He was just gorgeous. It was as if the entire room, the entire world, filled up with sunshine when he entered. He looked tired, worn out, dirty, unshaved, but there was just something about him. The way he moved, the confidence of his motions, his swagger, it just made her heart beat a little faster. This was the kind of man she pictured when she closed her eyes at night and fantasized about being rescued. This was the kind of man her father would have picked out for her if he was still alive. She knew it.

There was something about him that almost reminded her of her father. The last ten years had been hard, she tried not to think about her father too much because it was so painful, but every now and then she saw someone, or something, and it reminded her of the man her father had been. Everything about this man, from his boots to his faded jeans to his classic leather jacket and messy long hair reminded her of her father.