“Keep quiet and stay calm. You’re safe,” he answered as, from my vantage point of looking over his shoulder behind us I saw the rest of the motorcycles line up behind ours.
“Safe? Safe from what? Who are you?” I asked and tipped my head back to see a strong jaw, a partial view of a goatee and longish dark hair curling around a muscled neck and his ear.
“I’m Tack.”
Oh boy.
“President of a biker gang Tack?”
His chin tipped down slightly but not enough for me to get a good look at him before his eyes went back to the road and he muttered, “See Lawson’s told you about me.”
“Uh –” I started.
He cut me off. “Motorcycle club.”
“What?” I asked.
“Chaos isn’t a gang. It’s a club.”
From the firm tone of his gravelly voice sounding over the roar of the motorcycle I noted that, clearly, this was an important distinction.
Right.
“Um…sorry,” I murmured.
“Just keep quiet and hold on,” he ordered and I thought this was good advice seeing as I’d never been on a motorcycle. I also didn’t know you could ride on a motorcycle like this. It didn’t feel very safe though he seemed in command.
Still, probably better if he had nothing to concentrate on but the road and making sure we didn’t crash and die since neither of us were wearing helmets.
We roared onto Speer Boulevard then we turned and roared up University Boulevard then another turn and down we roared on Alameda then another turn and more roaring down Broadway and then we turned into the enormous forecourt of a mechanic’s garage.
He parked in front of a long rectangular building and all the bikes roared in beside us like they practiced this formation often and they were the motorcycle equivalent of the Air Force Thunderbirds.
It was then that I realized somewhere along the way I’d lost my phone and purse.
And I’d been talking to Mitch when it all happened.
“Oh no,” I whispered, staring at Tack’s neck.
“Hop off, chestnut.”
I blinked and looked up at him to see his shadowed face looking down at me.
“What?”
“Can’t get off until you let me go and get off so hop off, chestnut.”
“Chestnut?”
“Your hair,” he grunted. “Now hop…off.”
And it was then I noticed that I still had my arms tight around him. Considering his tone was becoming impatient, I felt it prudent at that juncture to let him go and hop off. So I did that and stood unsteadily beside his bike while his brethren closed ranks.
He threw his leg off, grabbed my hand and started walking with wide strides toward the rectangular building taking me with him.
“Um…Mr., uh…Tack –”
“Just Tack,” he interrupted, not breaking stride and dragging me toward the door to the building.