Page 9 of White Lights
“Where did you come from?” Dez asks.
“That’s a long story,” he says.
“There’s a car up there.” She points. “I need to catch it.”
“Somebody do you wrong?” The rider seems to be studying her face, though it’s too dark to be sure. “Or didyoudo somebody wrong?”
His cool amusement makes Dez want to bend him in half, then steal his bike, but he’s sitting just out of reach, and she doesn’t know how to drive a motorcycle.
“My brother’s hurt.” Dez’s words feel sharp as knives.
The rider tips his head toward the bike’s rear seat. “Hop on.”
By now her eyes have adjusted to the semidarkness of the motorcycle’s headlight. The guy looks a few years older than her, maybe. Still on the slick side of thirty. In the face of what she’s going through, what she just did to Mo, in the face of the revolting eyeball in her pocket—Dez finds herself offended by his radiant olive skin, his perfect shave on his model’s angular jaw. Those cheekbones. Cobalt-blue eyes only a half shade darker than her own. Dark brown hair the definition of bedhead. Then he smiles, and yeah, of course, he’s been to some primo orthodontist.
Fuck this guy.
But also? The longer she looks, the more she begins to wonder. Have they met before? He seems familiar to her in some essential way. She doesn’t know him, but she’s seen him somewhere.
She stares into his eyes, trying to puzzle it out. For a while, so many bad things were happening so quickly, she couldn’t keep up. Now it feels like time has slowed. She can almost swear she’s looked into this man’s eyes, just like this, before.
But where? When? How? The memory itches the edge of her mind.
The rider holds out a napkin to her. “Dry your eyes. I’ll give you a lift.”
Dez takes the napkin, wipes her face. His smug calm grates on her. And what’s with his jacket? It looks beyond vintage, like it was made before motorcycles were invented. Cast-iron skulls stare out from the jacket’s lapels.
She knows the style of this stranger’s jacket is a highly useless thing to think about when every second her brother grows farther away. But it won’t help if she gets herself murdered on the way to find Mo, and so far, she can’t get a beat on this guy.
On his bike’s black shovelhead gas tank, the chrome wordAcheronglows in the moonlight.
Under normal circumstances, Dez would never consider catching a ride on the back of some stranger’s motorcycle. But it seems likely no circumstance will ever be normal again.
“Where have I seen you before?” she asks.
“A dream?”
A police scanner crackles to life on the bike’s instrument panel.
“Got an eleven-eighty-three on County Road 89, mile marker forty-two … red Nissan Sentra … crashed into a ditch.”
“That’s my brother,” Dez says. “Are you a cop?”
She can’t immediately tell if this would be good or bad. It would help her get to Mo, but it would also require confronting her recent actions. And the trouble she’ll be in.
“Furthest thing from it,” the rider says. “Lucky for you, apparently.”
Dez scowls. “Then why do you have a police scanner?”
“You know the saying—check in every now and then on your friends. But never take your eyes off your enemies.”
Sirens sound in the distance.
They’re coming.
“You got yourself in a real mess this time, didn’t you, Dez?” the rider asks.
Dez feels her mouth fall open. “How did you know my—”
