Chapter 5 - Blood on the Asphalt
The needle on the fuel gauge bounced lazily near empty as the shovelhead climbed higher into the mountain pass. The temperature plummeted with every hundred feet of elevation, turning the mist off the pines into needles of ice that bit into Jax’s exposed skin. Behind him, Toby’s grip on his belt was trembling violently from the bitter cold, but the boy never once complained.
Jax glanced into his vibrating side mirror. The headlights of the pursuit had vanished ten minutes ago, lost behind the switchbacks, but he knew the mountain better than they did. The trucks couldn't make the tight turns at high speed, but once the road leveled out on the plateau, their horsepower would erase the distance.
His left shoulder was burning, a dull, throbbing torment that sent spikes of numbness down to his fingers. He had to stop. If he passed out while leaning into a sixty-mile-an-hour curve, they were both dead.
Jax saw the faint break in the timberline—an overgrown logging trail marked by two rotting cedar stumps. He slowed the bike, downshifting until the engine rumbled at a low idle, then swung the front tire off the asphalt into the mud and wet needles.
The heavy machine slid dangerously in the muck, but Jax wrestled it through fifty yards of thick brush, killing the headlight just before rolling into the shadow of a collapsed timber shed. He cut the ignition.
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the tick-tick of the cooling exhaust and the ragged sound of Jax’s own breathing.
"Down, kid," Jax whispered, his voice shaking.
Toby slid off the pillion seat, his legs wobbling as his scuffed sneakers hit the muddy earth. Jax tried to swing his leg over the saddle, but his strength gave out; he tumbled sideways into the mud, his injured shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. A strangled groan tore from his throat as the world flickered black around the edges.
Through the haze, he felt two small hands pressing against his chest, trying uselessly to drag him toward the timber shed.
"Don't die," Toby’s voice broke for the first time, thin and frightened in the darkness. "She said you were the only one who could fix it."
"Fix what, kid?" Jax wheezed, tasting copper on his tongue.
May you like
Toby reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brass key on a rusted wire. "The box she buried under the chapel."
Before Jax could ask what chapel, the high-pitched whine of motorcycle engines echoed from the highway below, sweeping up the valley like a swarm of hornets.
