Ghost Riders (A Dark MC Romance)

Failed Escape

Diesel exhaust and industrial wax hung heavy in the station air. Overhead tubes hummed in the predawn quiet. Anna set the bills on the laminate counter in a neat stack, exact to the single dollar, and kept her chin level.

“Barstow first,” she said. “Then Flagstaff. Whatever connects after that.”

The clerk tapped keys without lifting his head. “Single seat?”

“One-way.”

“Transfer wait is three hours in Barstow,” he said. He slid his palm over the bills, counting them under a lazy thumb. “You sure about the connection? It drops you out there past midnight.”

“Just print it,” she said.

That was what she needed. His flat disinterest, the dull mechanics of a ticket counter, nothing to fix her face in his head. She kept her breathing strictly even. The night before, she had practiced that at the kitchen sink, letting water run hard to drown the count in her throat.

“Suit yourself,” he muttered.

The machine clattered, spitting out thin paper. She took it with two fingers, sliding it into her canvas jacket.

The cloth tote hung from her shoulder. Inside lay one change of clothes, eighty dollars tucked into an old paperback, and a photo of her father outside the repair shop on a Tuesday morning, bright sun behind him, half his face in hard shadow. Everything else stayed behind. Walking out of her room had cost nothing. The tote felt weightless.

She climbed the metal bus steps at five fifty-three. The driver chewed food out of greasy foil and ignored the aisle. Anna walked back toward the dark engine housing, slid into the window row on the left side, and pulled the bag into her lap. Outside, nothing watched her through the dark. Nothing visible moved. Pneumatic brakes hissed, and the coach pulled out at six sharp.

The depot lot slid past, then the pitted access lane, then the long concrete slab of state highway where grey sage grew in low clumps and the sky cracked pale across the east. The compound sat three miles north, hidden behind a limestone rise and scrub cedar. Her gaze stayed glued to the glass. She let the highway pile up between them.

Around the fourth mile, pressure loosened in her ribs. No hard boots in the hallway. No latch rattling. No handset buzzing on the kitchen table. She settled her shoulders into the cracked vinyl seat and let her lungs empty completely.

The front door folded open with a hiss of dry desert air. Two men stepped up from the platform in dark jeans and plain work shirts. They bypassed the front rows without scanning faces. They walked the length of the aisle at an even pace, their boots steady on the rubber runner, and their eyes locked on her row before their steps slowed.

Both of them stopped beside her seat.

“Ma’am, if you’d come with us,” the taller one said.

Anna did not move. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” he said, his delivery flat as a clerk citing an office policy. “We’re parked outside. You don’t want to leave your bag behind, do you?”

“I have a ticket through to the junction,” she said.

The man tilted his head toward the aisle, his posture calm and immovable. “The ticket’s done, ma’am. Let’s make this easy on everybody.”

She looked past him to the window. Outside, the concrete station sat still under the blinding morning glare; a woman on the bench was unwrapping foil, chewing slowly, looking down at the dirt. Anna took a breath, reached down for the canvas tote, and stood up.

“Right this way,” the shorter man murmured, stepping back to clear the row.

They walked her off the coach. The driver was already chewing tobacco again, eyes set straight ahead, while the remaining passengers kept their gazes turned toward their laps. She stepped down the metal stairs, and the thick desert heat hit her face like an open furnace.

A dark SUV idled at the cracked curb, its engine barely a hum under the sun. The rear passenger door stood open.

“Watch your step,” the taller man said, gesturing to the floorboards.

She climbed into the back.

The heavy door slammed shut. The two men took the front seats, neither one offering another word; the locks snapped down in unison. The vehicle pulled out of the station lot and found the open two-lane highway, the pale expanse spreading wide under the hard sky.

Anna watched the scrub roll past the glass. The same low sage, the same grey dirt, only moving in reverse now. The perimeter had just been wider than she realized.The SUV pulled through the compound gate and stopped. Anna sat still for a moment, the canvas tote on her lap, the engine ticking down. Then the rear door swung open from outside.

Victor stood at the threshold, hands loose at his sides. He did not pace. He stood in the morning light, watching her climb out like he had expected a delivery. She stepped onto the dirt. The heat came off the ground in a slow, steady press.

“Family doesn’t run,” he said, then flicked his chin to the open doorway. “Inside, Anna.”

“I have my things,” she said.

“Bring them.”

She walked into the house.

The kitchen was dim after the glare of the yard. The Formica table sat under the overhead bulb, four chairs pushed in neat. Victor moved past her and set down an object. Then another. Then a third.

She looked.

A ticket stub, creased along the fold. A printed transfer schedule with the Barstow connection circled in blue ink. And a photograph, time-stamped in the lower corner, showing a woman at a laminate counter, a canvas tote hanging from her shoulder, bills counted out flat.

Her own face. Her own hands.

“Barstow first,” Victor said, pulling out the nearest chair and sitting down. “Then Flagstaff. Whatever connects after that. Isn’t that how you planned it?”

Her exact words, returned to her.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“You really think you slipped out?” He pointed two fingers at the gloss print. “Timestamp says five forty-one. You were still pulling cash out of your wallet when my boy sent the file.”

She did not sit. She stood at the edge of the table and stared at the paper. The image was clear, taken from an angle above and left, a fixed lens she had missed in the grey station hush.

“You were never going to make Barstow,” he said, smoothing the schedule flat with two slow fingers, unhurried and settled into the wood. “I had the route before you printed the ticket. You thought you bought a seat, Anna?”

The bulb hummed overhead. Somewhere past the kitchen wall, an interior door clicked shut.

She looked at the image. The woman in the frame had her chin level and her shoulders squared, a posture rehearsed in the mirror until the glass showed nothing at all. Catalogued. Processed before she ever walked out.

“Sit down, Anna,” he said.

“Victor - ”

“Sit down.”

She pulled out the opposite chair. The metal legs scraped the linoleum with a shrill drag, and she sat.

The stub lay between them, the schedule beside it, the photograph squared in the middle. Evidence laid out without temper. Just the laminate top, the paper, and the fact that she was here.