Razor The Wild Ones - Jessie Cooke Page 0,5
been frozen in time, she spent the first five years sending toys for Christmas that were appropriate for an eight-year-old boy. She’d finally stopped sending the toys, but even now that he was twenty-three, she still sent the money. It was fifty dollars each time and he thought about telling her he didn’t need it, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, or cut off the only thread that remained between them. He called to thank her every year and they made small talk about her kids and what he was up to, and other than the two trips out he’d taken with his parents when he was in middle and high school, that was their only contact.
As he drove along the old highway, wondering how surprised his sister would be to see him if he showed up on her doorstep, the sun began to rise higher in the sky, casting shadows from the trees across the road that looked like dancing giants from a distance. Razor had been riding since he was sixteen, so he was good at judging the difference between a shadow and a human being. However, when he rounded a corner, he could swear he saw the silhouette of a woman along the side of the road, with her hand in the air. Seconds later, she was gone though, just like that.
Razor downshifted and slowed enough to get a good look into the trees. As he did, he spotted a wisp of something, disappearing through the brush. There was a swamp that ran back there along the old highway and Razor being a curious kind of guy, he wondered what a woman would be doing out there alone at dawn. He knew it was going to bug him all day if he didn’t stop and investigate. He liked to believe his curiosity was healthy and intelligent, even if his brothers in the club liked to call him nosy.
He pulled the Harley off the road and turned the ignition off. He slid off his helmet and hung it on the handlebars and then pulled his weapon out of his saddlebag and tucked it into his jeans. He started through the brush, toward the trees where he saw the woman run, and that’s when he heard the heavy breathing.
“Someone there?” The rock that beaned him in the forehead came out of nowhere and stunned him for several seconds. “Son of a bitch! What was that for?” He was talking to the trees though because the person who had thrown it was already on the run. Pissed now, Razor took off after the figure, realizing, once he got a good look, that he was chasing a small, dark-haired woman. She had on hiking boots and a pair of black stretchy pants with a light blue t-shirt, and even in the middle of the swamp, and with a bump rising on his forehead, Razor had to admit the backside of her was fine. “Hey! What the heck are you running for?” he tried. Razor was a big guy. Running wasn’t in his list of top thousand things to do. Even as a football player in high school, he’d always gone for the positions that wouldn’t require him to run. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
The girl kept running though. Her long, dark ponytail bounced back and forth as she leaped over fallen branches and skirted through the mud. Razor was huffing and puffing, trying to catch his breath and cursing his gumbo addiction when suddenly the woman lost her footing, hit the ground, and began sliding in the mud on that gorgeous butt. For a second, she didn’t move, but just about the time he finally caught up with her, she tried to scramble to her feet, only to let out a little cry and fall back down into the mud. Barely able to find enough oxygen to speak, Razor gasped out, “What the hell is wrong with you? Who are you running from?”
“Get back,” she said, “I have a gun.” She was digging through the bag she’d been clutching as she ran, and her big hazel eyes were wide and slightly crazed looking. Razor reached back into his jeans and said:
“Me too. Now what?” Her arm stopped moving, but he had a feeling that if she really did have a gun, her hand was clutching it down inside that bag. He wasn’t about to shoot a woman, but he might be about to get his own nosy head