Bear by Lily J. Adams

 

Chapter Nineteen:  Missing In Action

 

Bear

 

My cell phone rang, distracting me from my racing heart. I answered it on the first ring, “Bear,” I barked without looking at the caller ID.

“Bear, it’s Smoke, big guy. We know what’s going on. Angie just called us, and we have your back. I know how much Delphia means to you, whether you say it or not.” Smoke paused for a minute. “Just breathe, big guy. Just breathe.”

I was losing it, I could feel my common sense slipping away. That’s how much I cared about Delphia.

He went on, “We called the taxi services here through our networks and we got a taxi that took a lady to the train station early in the morning. The guy said she was interested in going to Cutover… and the Greyhound left from there about half an hour after. If you roll to the train station, you can confirm it,” Smoke relayed quickly.

The guys were waiting to hear my next commands.

I relayed the information Smoke just gave me.

“Good idea. Lead out, Bear,” Keys said as the other guys saluted and waited for me to take the lead.

Cranking my engine, I rode out hard with a clear determination to find Delphia, if we could catch that slow-moving Greyhound she was on, we would be able to find her in time.

Arriving at the bus depot a few minutes later, I strode over the customer service desk. “Hi Ma’am. I’m wanting to check on the buses that left for Cutover this morning. Do you happen to know when the first one rolled out?” I read the lady’s name tag and it said Shirley.

She looked like she was part of the furniture and had been working here a long time. Her cheeks were a little flushed from the appearance of the six bikers as she nervously chuckled a little. “Sure, I can help with that. Are you picking somebody up along the way?” she asked sweetly.

“You could say that.” Impatiently held my neck as Tank cupped my shoulder in support.

Shirley frowned at her screen for a couple of minutes.

As the minutes ticked by, my pulse started to ramp up.

She finally hummed with a nod and said, “I can see there’s one that left early this morning and they would be pretty close to Cutover right now. The bus left at butt-crack dawn, around four?” Shirley laughed at her own joke and saw that I didn’t find it that funny and fingered her blonde curls.

“Thank you, arrival time?” I didn’t have time for small talk with her.

Shirley peered at her screen and hummed again, “Umm, I would say in another hour or so. The driver is running on time.”

I thanked Shirley, marching back to my bike as I stood in the middle of the six men. “She’s close to Cutover. We don’t have much time.” I was a breathless man on a mission.

“Let’s rock and roll, Bear,” Tank commanded.

I nodded, leading the guys out as safely as I could without getting busted by the Holbeck police for speeding. As I rode, the conclusion became obvious. Delphia had grown on me over time. With my every visit to Holbeck Gas, we planted a seed of our lives together. It might have been a slow burn process, but we’d gotten there. I’d found out that I literally couldn’t breathe without her in my life.

The throbbing motor of my Harley and the cool breeze over my beard kept me alert enough to direct the crew. We rode on a major highway, snaking in and out of the traffic like road racers. I accelerated hard when I had to and paced the speed when I saw cops in my eyeline.

On the ride to Cutover, I saw another rider and my hackles went up. This rider was familiar to me and I couldn’t place why. As I drew near to him, I saw his bulk.

Rocky.

I could tell by his hulking side profile and the shape of his chin. He was two lanes clear from us. I pointed to the guys via sign language, expecting my crew to understand. They knew me well enough that they would put the puzzle pieces together.

I honked my horn to accentuate the loud circus of our bikes.

The rider who I knew to be Rocky looked back at us. A showdown was about to occur on a major highway.

Rocky was trying to hunt down Delphia like the predator he was and I wanted to splatter him all over this road.

Three sets of cars were in the way and one of my guys was already cutting across the lane to him.

Fury boiled in my veins, I wanted Rocky’s head. I wanted him dead and buried with a skull lying on top of his grave as my reward. I signaled hard to merge right.

Rocky indicated right for the next turn. The son of a bitch was slipstreaming away from us.

With my heart pounding, I stretched my arm all the way out, as one by one we all moved to the right.

We're coming for you, asshole.

Beeps from pissed off drivers found their way faintly to my eardrums, but were drowned out by the maelstrom of intensity fueling my system. All but two of us had merged in the chase to get to Rocky.

Tank managed to get in the same lane as him before the turn off, as Rocky sped off down a side street.

We chased him hard for a good ten minutes, but with the traffic flow it was hard to keep steady and keep him in sight without having an accident. If anything, we’d kept him off Delphia’s tail, but keeping my eye on the prize was the main objective. I flagged the guys with my right hand in sheer frustration. I set my ego aside and trusted that Angie’s article was going to hit Rocky where it hurt him the most.

Veering over to the left, I pulled up as the guys settled in line behind me.

I yanked off my helmet in disgust.

Tank ran to the front with a warrior-like look on his face. “Good call. What now?” he asked breathlessly with a frown.

“We gotta get to Delphia. I don’t know how much Rocky knows about these backroads. I have a couple of shortcuts that can get us to Cutover before the bus pulls out. You with me?” I asked.

Tank’s large head glinted in the sun as he tapped my bike. “Say less.” He jogged back to his bike.

We got back on the road and on the main freeway. As we got closer to Cutover, the traffic lightened, and we got on a clear run, which sped up our timeline. The picture of the main depot in Cutover came up in my mind. I was good with landmarks, but sometimes forgot the street names.

My gut told me Hancock Street with the large cathedral on a corner roundabout would lead me in the right direction. Sure enough, as I looked up at the sign it pointed to the right with the bus symbol. I’d been taking a chance, but my army days gave me an unshakeable belief in my ability to sniff out the truth.

Our procession of bikes roared around the roundabout, passing the local information center as the people of Cutover looked on at us. Right out in front was a large Greyhound bus. All my cylinders fired from the inside out as I pulled my bike up to a stop. I couldn’t see completely around the side of the bus, but a large puff of grey smoke blew out from the exhaust as it took off.

“Shit!” The heel of my hand clapped my chrome handlebars.

Then after the bus took off, a girl with short blonde hair was left standing there while holding onto an overnight bag with a small black suitcase in front of her.

I lifted my ass from my bike and peered over the handlebars. From ten feet away, I stared at the girl and she looked back at me. It was Delphia and I felt such relief. This time, I got to her first.

This time, I got it right.

My leg raised up and off the bike as I dismounted. I jogged the short distance to her.

“Bear? W-what are you doing here?” She gasped.

Pounding thuds of pressure on my heart were making it hard for me to breathe, let alone get my speech out as the guys gave us some distance behind. I could hear their bikes idling. “Delphia, baby. What’s going on? You aren’t safe out here alone!” I shouted in an exasperated tone.

Her large eyes shone back at me as tears welled in them and her bottom lip quivered. “I’m not trying to hurt anybody. Rocky’s going to get me. I know it. I can’t put everyone in danger. Especially you. I can’t Bear. I can’t!” Her voice choked up as she released her fears to me.

I crossed over to rein her in. I breathed heavily in her ear as I kissed her tear stained cheek. “Come back to Holbeck. You can stay with me and he won’t get to me or you. Rocky’s done for. We got a whole crew here.” I pointed to the guys behind me with a big reassuring smile. “See them? Rocky’s not getting past them. And he isn’t getting past Rebel Saints, or Angie for that matter. Come on. Come with me baby. I can’t leave you alone here. You’re going to be worse off. Wide open. Rocky knows you're here.” Then I did it, I poured my heart out to her, “I lost my girlfriend to a drunk driver and I loved her. I made a mistake back then, and I can’t make another one. You gotta come with me now.” My voice was about to give out but I wanted her to know what I felt inside. “He was following you. You could have been…” My voice trailed away.

She looked stunned and terrified. “I know, he must have been watching me at my house.”

Her hair was blonde and bob-length. She had cut off her locks—either way, she looked good, but the shock of seeing her with her hair cut so abruptly ran it home that she had been serious about being on the run. “Delphia, come with me. I can’t let you be here. Otherwise, I’m staying here too. You can’t get rid of me.” The threat was soft, but impactful. I was going nowhere without her.

In that moment right in the middle of Cutover, she looked up at me through her thick lashes and said, “You came after me, I can’t believe it.”

I wiped her tears away. “Damnit Delphia, you just don’t seem to know how much you truly mean to me.”