into the driveway and cut our engines. Rat points to what appears to be an older two story house at the end of the street. No signage, no one outside. In fact, the entire street appears to be a ghost town, or everyone is at work.
“That’s it,” Rat says.
I assess the house. It looks ordinary, with a stucco fence that runs across the back of the house to either side, probably to keep out predators and for privacy. The closest houses on either side are a hundred feet or more off. A driveway runs along the side of the house around to the back. There’s a well-kept garden and low shrubbery neatly lining the driveway, and a stone path leads to the front door.
Clean-cut American suburbia, straight out of Leave It to Beaver.
I dismount along with the others, who take off their helmets. “I’ll go in and check the place out. Rat, you come with me.” I gesture to him. Tall but slender, with an approachable face, he’s less likely to frighten anyone in there. “We don’t want to scare dear old Rosie into the next life with all of us standing on her front stoop. Reaper and Striker, you stay here and keep an eye out.”
Rat and I leave Striker and Reaper behind and make our way up the path to the front door. I give Rat a look and point to a sign that’s posted on the manicured front lawn. The sign reads Protected by Bates Alarm Systems.
“I know,” Rat says in a low voice, looking not at all worried. “I’ll take care of that if we have to.”
I look around at the windows. No curtains switch. There’s no car in the driveway. Maybe there’s no one home. I bang the brass knocker on the door.
No one answers, and I hear nothing from inside, so I knock again, louder this time.
A few seconds later, a lock clicks. The door opens, and a young girl’s face peers out of the gap.
“Yes?” She speaks so softly that I almost don’t hear her.
Several things strike me at once. Her face is sallow and pale, as if she hasn’t seen the sunlight in years. Her pale brown hair is long and stringy. Her clothes look old and worn, her baggy jeans hanging off her rail thin frame. She wears a faded black Harley shirt, the emblem half worn off. She has the unhealthy look of someone who’s lost a lot of weight in a very short time. Shit, she can’t be older than nineteen.
There’s also sweat on her brow, and as soon as her gaze goes to our cuts, what little color there is in her hollow cheeks drains out of them.
Intimidation isn’t going to work with this girl. If we’re going to get into this house, we need to tread carefully. I step back, letting Rat take over.
“Hey there. Rosie around?” he asks.
The girl shakes her head. “She’s not here right now.” Again, her voice is barely a rasp, but it’s not low enough that I miss the tremble in it. People are usually put at ease when Rat talks to them, any nervousness over our biker status soothed. But when he’d stepped forward, far from being put at ease, she’d flinched. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“Are there any rooms available? We have some guys in town who are looking for a place to stay for a few nights.”
“Rosie won’t be back until tomorrow.” She wrings her hands. I notice that they’re calloused and chapped. Dee would have called them dishpan hands. “I don’t know what’s available right now.”
Rat glances at me, and I give him the slightest nod, silently telling him to keep her talking while I step across the front stairs and look into the windows as though looking to see if this is the kind of rooming house we’d stay in.
Rat gets the message. “How much do the rooms cost? And what’s included?”
To the left of the doors, the large bay window looks into a spotless living room with a clean beige carpet, horrible flower patterned furniture, and ugly lamps on side tables. Further in, I make out a set of stairs going to the second floor.
It looks like a grandma’s house, the kind of place where a little old lady putters around the kitchen baking cookies and hearty breakfasts for her boarders. I’d have been ready to call it fucking quits and head back right now, writing this trip off as a waste of time,