Survivor: Steel Jockeys MC (23 page)

"Like Sean said, a little outside San Diego,” said Lydia, crossing her arms “That's if she took the right one. I think my dad built some offshoots over the years, but only some of them are finished."

"What offshoots? How many? Where do they go?"

"I don't
know,"
said Lydia, a whine creeping into her voice. "Three? Four?"

"Find out," Joe growled. "Now."

"Why the hell should I?" Lydia pouted. "If she went running off into a drug tunnel with some directions she got from that stupid meathead Tony, she deserves to get lost out there."

"No, what's stupid is your cousin thinking he could keep Ruby locked up in a fortified compound and not expect her to try to get out. What did you think she was going to do, just sit by the pool and drink margaritas for the rest of her life?"

Lydia's eyes flashed as she tossed a lock of hair off her face. "If she was smart, she would."

Joe turned away in disgust. There was the fundamental difference between the two women, one that only proved what a deluded idiot he'd been for having ever wanted to be with Lydia.

"Okay, okay," she said as he followed her back into the bar where she grabbed her phone from her handbag. "I know I have a map stored on here somewhere. I don't know how current it is,” she murmured, swiping through. “Ugh, god this is slow. I need a new phone. Anyway, what are you going to do, ride out into the desert to look for her?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do,” he said, grabbing Lydia by the shoulders, watching as her eyes went wide as moons. “Part of the agreement with Aaron was that nothing happened to Ruby. If she dies in the middle of some godforsaken desert, that doesn't exactly fall under the category of 'nothing.' And not only that, I am going to figure out what the connection is between Fox Keene and the Reapers and how you and your cousin figure into it. This whole scheme of yours could start unraveling pretty damn quick if you're not careful. So you can either cooperate with me and come out smelling like a rose or the alternative, which is not quite as pretty. So find that fucking map and send it to me. Now."

When things didn't go Lydia's way, she didn’t look quite as pretty as she did when she knew she had the upper hand. The pupils of her eyes dilated, and she tended to clench her jaw too tightly, making her nostrils flare and the prominent veins in her forehead and neck stick out even more, and her high cheekbones looked less soft and more severe. Joe had noticed this before; it hadn't made much difference to him when they'd been dating and he was horny, turned on by the fact that scion of the most powerful drug dynasty in California wanted him. When Joe released his grip on her, she bit her wavering lip and ducked her head toward her phone, swiping diligently.

“Got it,” she murmured. Joe grabbed his helmet off the bar where he’d left it and strode out front and around the side of the bar to where the Jockeys’ bikes were parked. "Go ahead. Play hardball with Aaron and Fox," she said a little later as she followed him outside again, raising her voice to be heard as Joe kicked the motor into gear, the exhaust starting to choke off her vocal chords. "You won't be the first person to try."

"No," he agreed, just before he positioned his hands on the handlebars and fixed his gaze to the horizon. "I'll just be the first to win."

***

She didn’t know how long the frigatebirds had been hovering. They seemed to float, suspended from the sky as if on an invisible string, every so often giving a languid, lazy flap. But it seemed like she had been lying there on her back, watching them, for centuries -- not moving, not blinking, just watching. Sometimes she thought they were smiling at her or singing to her. Sometimes she thought she was one of them.

She spent the night in the tunnel, awaking from strange, fitful nightmares every ten to fifteen minutes. She clawed the dust beneath her, praying that being lost in this hellish hole had been a dream and she'd find herself awaking in her apartment back in Walnut Creek, or even in the spare room at the Curtises. That she would awake and float down the stairs, and Joe would take her into him, kiss her like cool water down her back, and peace would come.

Joe. She saw his face more than any other. When she closed her eyes, before falling asleep, and in that strange space between sleeping and waking, when she’d jerk back to consciousness, faced by the specter of her own imminent death. When this happened at home, she'd drag herself up off the couch to bed; or to the bathroom for a glass of water, but here there was no water, no bed, no place of comfort, except when she closed her eyes and Joe was there.

And she was thirsty; so thirsty. When day dawned, she knew she had to walk to get her bearings. Perhaps, she told herself, she was only minutes away from the nearest phone, from a gas station, from a bodega – from a telephone to call for help. But she'd walked in a circle for hours now, and seen nothing but low sagebrush, cacti, and animal bones. She resolved to walk an hour in every direction, going back to the entrance to the tunnel so as not to get lost. But she’d been walking for so long, she wasn’t sure where the tunnel was anymore.

She closed her eyes against the sun, though she could see it now even when she closed them, burned on the insides of her retinas. Her skin felt hardened as if cooked in an oven. She opened them again, resolved to look. That little mound of dirt looked familiar. Or maybe it was that one. She reeled; she had to sit down. Her feet felt as heavy as lead, painful, swollen, her sandals raking at her already-blistered heels.

She collapsed. Her limbs felt like popsicle sticks, her body like a brick. Little lizards darted under her feet, taking refuge from the sun. High above, the frigatebirds glided on air currents, their long, thin wings spread out like jets and their white tails out behind them like streamers, casting shadows over her. She watched them, and held up a hand in front of her, eyes dully staring as if she were drugged. It was as red as a fire engine and shaking.

I’m dehydrated.
Better to lie down and save energy, she reasoned hazily, remembering back to the first aid class she'd had to take in in order to join the school safety patrol and wear that blaze-orange sash. Sleep burns fewer calories. Save water. Don't move. They'll find you. Who would find her? Aaron? Brenda? They wouldn't waste time looking for her. Hapless Tony would probably get lost himself. It had to be Joe, then.

Joe. The one time she'd woke up and felt healthy was when she dreamed she was in his arms out in back of the Thunderbird bar on that beautiful afternoon they'd spent together before everything collapsed. When he'd opened to her like a rose in bloom. Maybe if she closed her eyes now she could go back there, just for a little while. Far off, she heard a roar, a Harley's pipes, rumbling in her dreams like always, so she knew it couldn't be real. Soon, she could almost see him appear before her like a golden vision, blocking out the killing, scorching sun and replacing it with his own warmth. Kneeling down next to her, one strong hand supporting her neck, wrapping her in a cool cloth, pressing a bottle of water to the lips she could barely creak open, they were as dry as sandpaper. She opened her mouth to take him in, feeling him flow into her like cool water into her mouth, over her face and down her back.

"Ruby? Ruby? Can you hear me?" he pleaded, her eyes a blur meeting his wide golden ones, his blond hair falling over his face as he bowed his head toward her. "Please. Please be okay."

It was all so clear. Truly, she thought as she closed her eyes again, this was the sweetest dream yet.

"How do you feel, sweetie?" asked Holly.

For the first time in a day and half, Ruby opened her eyes and blinked, testing her limbs, lifting them. Everything felt where it should be, at least. "Tired. And sore." Her skin was a sight: red and reptilian, feeling off in thin flakes. She wiggled her fingers, noticing the tubes inserted into the crook of her arm, raising her head to see where they were connected to the IV drip up above. There were other tubes and monitors taped onto her, and they all served to make her feel heavy and weak.

Holly, perched on a chair turned backwards beside her bed, followed her gaze. "They've been rubbing you with lotion and pumping fluids into you for two days. All you need now is rest. The doctor said Joe found you just in time. An hour more out there, and you would have lost too much water."

"It was really Joe, wasn't it?" she asked, awestruck. "I felt him, giving me water. Talking to me. Holding my head up. But I thought he was a dream," Ruby told her weakly.

"I'm sure you're not the first girl to say that about him," she said with a little exasperated smile. "He rode down there as soon as heard. Gave me the map in case I didn't hear from him. I waited by the phone until he called to say he'd found you. I don't know how on earth you ended up in a Mexican drug smuggling tunnel, but I promised Joe I wouldn't ask too many questions." Ruby didn’t respond, overwhelmed by what she was hearing. "You spent the night at the hospital in San Diego, then they took you back up here in an ambulance. As it turned out, you were only a mile or so from the border, but how you were supposed to know that, I'm not sure. After three hours in a pitch-dark tunnel, it's no surprise you got lost. I would have been terrified and probably dead. But you were so brave, sweetie."

"I was an idiot." She sighed, sinking down into the bedclothes and the heavy weight of her mistakes. That Joe had rode to Mexico and searched the desert for her didn’t seem possible. And yet none other than Holly was telling her it was.

"You were smart. You tried to stay in one place, which is exactly what you should have been. But the doctor said that the dehydration and heat stroke had already started to affect your brain, and you got confused and delirious." Vague memories of circling birds, of lizards crawling curiously over her limbs. Had those been real, or just delirium?

“Regan had to go to Arizona to see her grandma, kind of last minute. But I called her and told her you were okay." Ruby’s eyes darted to the curtain separating off her room from the next, to the door wedged open, the hallway empty except for a nurse pushing a patient in a wheelchair. "Joe left a few minutes ago," Holly said mildly, as if she knew the question Ruby was afraid to ask. "I tried to convince him to stay, but the nurse had said you would be alert soon, and he told me he was afraid you were still mad at him. He didn't want to be the first person you saw when you woke up," she explained. "But he spent all last night here. On that chair," she said, pointing to a supremely uncomfortable-looking plastic one with a stiff fabric cover. "Not sleeping."

"He doesn't need sleep," murmured Ruby. "So he told me."

Holly laughed. "He told me that, too, a long time ago. Then I found him passed out on our roof after sneaking in late one night and finding I'd locked all the windows."

"Holly, he...he saved my life."

"He sure did," Holly said, with a kind laugh in her blue eyes. "And it doesn't surprise me that he took off."

"Huh?"

“Listen, I've known him longer than you have. I think I've known him longer than he's known himself if that makes any sense. Joe is the puppy who wakes up his family to save them from a fire, then expects to get kicked in the ribs for barking too loudly. As a kid, no deed he ever did, good or bad, went unpunished, and I think it might take a little while yet for him to realize it won't always be that way."

So that was it. Joe thought she would punish him. That was so warped. When all she had wanted while clinging to life in that desert was to lose herself in his arms, even if that sweet vision of him turned out to be a vision of death. Knowing he was out there, had once made love to her, willingly and generously, was enough to sing her to rest. And then, like an angel, he'd come. And now she wasn't sure there was a way she could ever tell him that. After all, the one subject that had not been addressed was Lydia.

Lydia. After all this, she still couldn't reconcile Joe sending Lydia to break the news that he was no longer interested in her. And that was why Ruby knew there was a chance that, as heroic as he'd proved himself, saving her had been no more than an obligation to keep the promise he'd made to Kyle. She knew he had a sense of duty, of devotion, to his brothers. Maybe the reason he'd left the hospital was that he didn't want her to become too attached, to read more into his actions than was really there. She turned over and buried her head in the pillow.

Holly borrowed Colt's van to drive her home. She tried not to gaze too closely for familiar faces as they passed the Thunderbird. Ruby had convinced herself that she didn't need to be mothered, that she was strong enough to live without it. But she had also just gotten over the biggest health emergency of her life. Being mothered wasn't the worst way to recover, and she didn’t complain when Holly helped her into the house and ordered her to bed immediately. T was no denying that as she sunk beneath the freshly-laundered sheets of the spare room, she felt more at home there than she had anywhere in weeks. She told herself to enjoy it while it lasted because when she closed her eyes, she could see trouble around the bend.

***

"Wakey, wakey," a cheerful and uncomfortably familiar voice said a few days later. "I hope you don't mind my bringing you some fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee."

"Huh?" Ruby hid her face in the pillow.

"Holly's still asleep, but Morgan was up getting ready for school. She didn't mind letting me in."

"Typical," Ruby muttered.

"Were you hoping it was Joe? He's not going to come unless you invite him, you know," said Lydia Beeson, who was as preened and polished as the first time Ruby had seen her, the golden highlights in her black hair sending out shimmering rays from the shaft of sunlight outside.

Ruby blinked and tested her weakened limbs. She had eaten dinner with the family last night and had gotten the energy to go out in the yard and see Kyle's bike, safe and preserved where she'd left it, even starting the motor and driving it slowly around the yard. She felt like a girl on a pony ride, but it comforted her. She tried not to look at herself in the mirror too much; her skin was healing, its snakelike scales shedding and its color morphing from lobster-red to brownish-pink. In another few days she'd merely look like someone who'd spent a week by the pool in Mexico, instead of someone who'd been nearly cooked to death in the desert.

She'd tried to fight boredom; she'd borrowed some of Regan's books, finished Henry James' "Daisy Miller," started Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," and at night, watched Holly's old DVDs, which all seemed to star either Marlon Brando or Steve McQueen. For at least fifteen minutes a day, she tried to practice her yoga poses so her body wouldn't atrophy.

But none of that could fill the empty space she wanted most to fill. Every day that had passed where Joe hadn't come into see her felt like a knife raking over Ruby's already sensitive skin. Her body had started to heal, but her heart was still reeling. What kind of person saves someone's life, and then doesn't check back to see how she's doing? Could it really be that he'd only done it out of obligation, that he had no further desire to be with her or even look at her? Or could it be what Holly said, that he was too afraid that Ruby would punish him or blame him for letting Lydia chase her away?  

"Invite him? I didn't think that would be allowed," said Ruby darkly. Besides, as much as she had to admit, she longed to see Joe again, she didn't want him to see her the way she'd looked in the past few days: ungroomed, unshowered, and covered in unsightly layers of red, peeling skin. And now Lydia was probably going to report all of that back to him.

"Look," said Lydia, perching on the window frame. "I'm sorry about what I said when we talked the other day about you clearing out. That was insensitive of me. Of course, you could have told me you had
feelings
for him."

"Who said I did?" asked Ruby stubbornly, throwing off the covers, hoping to convey to Lydia that she was healthy and not to be trifled with. She’d been sleeping in nothing but one of Holly’s old Joan Jett concert t-shirts and a pair of panties, and now she glimpsed herself in the mirror and frowned.

"Look, I'm nothing if not forgiving. I admit that Joe got to know you while we were on a break, and come on, he is a guy. It's only natural that his protective impulses got the best of him. But listen. I’m still in business with Aaron, and I'll be in and out of town for work even after Joe and I get married. As long as you guys keep it on the down low, who am I to judge?" She grinned. "After all, I've got my own extracurricular activities."

Ruby looked around for the bowl Holly had placed under the bed just in case, because what Lydia had just said literally made her want to retch. She thought back to what Tony had told her; if Joe had agreed to marry her, it was only because he'd had no choice.

"Lydia, why are you doing this?" she asked in a measured voice.

Lydia’s shoulders slumped. She began speaking quickly. "Look, maybe being an outlaw's mistress isn't precisely how you had your life envisioned, but we can't all get what we want now, can we?" She shrugged, an effort at nonchalance. Her brow was furrowed, the vein in her forehead prominent. She was not exactly the same glamorous, confident Lydia who had marched into the Thunderbird to single-handedly demolish Ruby's dreams of being with Joe, as handily as if she'd been wielding an axe. "We'll both be over for dinner tonight. It's your chance. I'd advise you take it."

She was scared, Ruby realized. The long-haired woman in leather knew her grip on Joe was, for whatever reason, starting to slip through her hands. She was trying to offer a bargaining chip to Ruby, hoping that if she could get the other woman to settle for second place, she wouldn't try to go for first.

She was determined not to think the worst of Joe. But she needed answers, and he was the only one who could give them to her. She had to believe Lydia was right and that he really was waiting for her to summon him. But he wasn’t waiting powerless. Ruby owed him her very life. Receiving her invitation, knowing that she wanted him in her room – even in her bed – and that she was willing to overlook the fact that he belonged to Lydia, once again gave Joe all the power and gave him confidence that she could. She would not be his other woman, and she would not beg. Yes, she would invite him, she decided. But somehow, she would have to make
him
beg.

She reached for the coffee Lydia had brought her, wondering idly if it was safe to drink. She didn't think Lydia was creative or stupid enough to resort to tactics straight out of a Shakespeare play, but as with everything, it was wise to be cautious. She brought the cup to her lips. "You know, you're right, Lydia," she said. "Maybe I have been a little short-sighted about all this." She thought she saw the other woman's ears perk up. "There's no reason why the three of us can't have a sort of arrangement. Of course, I want everything to be above board. Which means I need to talk to Joe."

"Right," said Lydia, a little too quickly. "Of course."

"But I might need your help." Lydia nodded and swallowed. "Where do you shop for lingerie, by the way?"

***

"Ruby won't be joining us tonight," Holly told Joe. "She's not feeling as well as she'd hoped."

Joe looked at the floor, trying to hide his disappointment. He should have already given up hope. It had been four days. Four days in which he’d thought of nothing but saying “fuck it” and coming over to see her. Once, he'd actually gotten on his bike and almost started it, determined to casually drop by the Curtis house and ask Colt if there was anything he could help him with in the garage, and then find some excuse to hang around even if there wasn't. After all, if he was there, there was a chance he might at least a glimpse of sunlight off the copper highlights of Ruby's curly chestnut hair, or a flash of her full, rose-colored lips through an upstairs window, or barring that, her handbag swinging casually off a kitchen chair, or even hearing Holly talk about how much Ruby had found she liked "On the Waterfront" after ribbing Holly about 1956 wanting its movies back. He'd been told she was healthy and doing well, and he had to be content with that. Holly had even told him that she'd talked about how grateful she was to him. He never doubted for a second that he was, but it was little comfort. Owing her life didn't mean she was ready to embrace him again after having thought she'd rid herself of him for good. He feared it was more of an inconvenience to her than anything that he'd been the one to find her. She'd be out of the Curtis's house, off to a new life on Kyle's bike, just as soon as she could endure the ride.