Tainted Rose (23 page)

“Everyone stay cool,” Josh said.

Rust was starting to move from where he’d hit the ground and Josh said to him, “Just stay cool, buddy. You don’t want to try anything. Not today.”

Josh looked at Rose. She knew it wasn’t the time or the place but she couldn’t help thinking how cool he looked. He had two guns drawn, pointed at the guys on the floor, and he looked over at her and motioned to the door.

“You ready to get out of here?” he said.

She nodded. She couldn’t believe it. Just a couple of hours ago she’d been ready to die, now she was being rescued by the sexiest man she’d ever seen in her life.

“You got anything you’d like to say to these scumbags before we leave?”

She shook her head.

“You sure? I won’t hold it against you if you’ve got a score to settle.”

Rose looked at the men on the ground. She knew what Josh meant. He meant that if she wanted to shoot them she could do it. But despite everything they’d done to her, and they’d done some very bad things, she didn’t think she could do that.

“I have plenty to settle but I don’t think I could live with myself if I left three bodies behind.”

Josh nodded. “You want me to do anything to them?”

“No,” she said. “I mean, I wish I could but I can’t.”

“You hear that fellas?” Josh said but it was like talking to the wind.

Both he and Rose knew that it would make no difference. They could spare these three now, they could let them live, and it wouldn’t change a thing. Serge would have the entire DRMC tracking them down as soon as they left the Cat.

Josh walked over to Serge and bent down on his knee to talk to him.

“Now’s the part where you tell me which of them bikes outside is yours.”

“You can go straight to hell,” Serge said.

Rose cleared her throat. “Josh,” she said. It was the first time she’d used his name and the sound of it felt deliciously good in her mouth.

He looked up at her.

“I know his bike.”

“You go get your things,” Josh said. “I want our friend here to tell me himself.”

Serge grunted in disgust as Rose went to the changing room and grabbed her few, meagre belongings.

“I’d rather die right now than tell you,” Serge said.

“You sure about that?” Josh said.

Rose put on her leather racing suit. It was a miracle that she’d just gotten it back from Serge and already was being given a chance to wear it. When she went back to the bar Josh was still standing over Serge. He looked up at her and she could tell he was surprised to see her in a racing suit. She must have looked incredible in the full-body, ski-tight leather. It clung to her figure perfectly, like a catsuit. She smiled at Josh as he stared at her.

“We should go,” she said.

“We’re not leaving till Serge tells me which bike is his.”

“Fuck you,” Serge said.

Josh took Serge’s hand and flattened it out on the floor. Then he pressed his gun to the center of the palm.

“Come on, Serge. Think about this. Be reasonable.”

Rose watched it all. She knew that one day they would pay a price for this. If she and Josh rode out of that place on Serge Gauthier’s bike, leaving Serge Gauthier alive, there would definitely be a price to pay. They should have killed him but it didn’t seem either of them had the heart to do that.

Josh cocked the gun. Serge looked up at her. His face was pressed against the ground and he looked scared.

“I aint playing around,” Josh said. “Three.”

Serge said nothing. He grunted. His crazy eyes danced around the room. Rose still had her gun and she kept it on Rust and Murdoch in case they tried anything.

“Two,” Josh said.

Rose knew that if he said “one,” he’d have no choice but to pull the trigger. You couldn’t call the bluff on guys like this.

“Alright,” Serge said, just as Josh was about to say, one. “It’s the softail. The blue one. You hurt it and I’ll make you eat your own cock.”

Josh was already on his feet. “Thank you, Serge,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure, boys.” Then he turned to Rose. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get the hell out of this shithole.”

Rose followed Josh out to the lot and shook her head in disbelief. She must have been the luckiest girl in the world. She hopped onto the back of the softail while Josh went and put bullets in each of the other bikes in the lot. He shot out the tires on the old Ford too.

Then he got on the bike and fired her up. The engine purred like a kitten. It seemed to sound better, louder, than when she’d ridden it with Serge. They cruised out of the lot of the Velvet Cat and Rose prayed it was for the last time in her life. She put her hands around Josh’s waist and held on. His body was so firm, so smooth, it was just perfect.

XXII

R
OSE HAD EXPECTED JOSH TO
head west into Ontario. They could make it to Toronto in about twelve hours if they rode hard in that direction. The DRMC had less of a foothold in Ontario and they would have been harder to track down. But Josh didn’t head west, he rode east back in the direction of Val-d’Or. He took the 117 as far as the 101 and then before they reached Rouyn-Noranda he turned at Lac Dufault and rode due north.

Rose wasn’t sure if that was the smartest way to go. It would only get more desolate the farther north they went and with so few people and towns that way it would be very hard to hide. At least if they headed for the cities in the south they’d be able to hide out for a while and make a plan. This way was definitely riskier.

It was already getting dark and the temperature would be dropping soon. The 101 led north past Lac Dufresnoy and some of the bleakest logging country in Quebec. After about an hour they hit the tiny village of Poularies and Rose wondered if they were going to stop. It was down below freezing already.

There wasn’t much accommodation to be had but it didn’t seem like Josh had a mind to stop anyway. They kept going, riding fast along the treacherous, icy highway for another hour until they reached the slightly more civilized town of Macamic. That was where the 101 ended. There was another provincial road that cut through Macamic, heading east and west, and Josh headed west on it for a mile or two. Rose wondered where on earth they were going. They stopped at a small crossroad a couple of miles out of Macamic. The road they were on continued west, it was paved, but heading north and south was an unpaved track. Josh turned right onto it and rode on. He never turned to speak to Rose and she didn’t say anything either. It was enough for her just to hold on to his solid waist and try to comprehend the fact that she was finally free.

She just prayed that Serge and the rest of the DRMC weren’t on their tail.

A few miles after getting onto the unpaved track they came to a frozen stream. There was no bridge and Rose saw that they wouldn’t have been able to continue if it was summer. As it was, they were able to ride across the frozen river, or so she hoped.

She clutched Josh even tighter as he lowered the bike down the bank toward the river.

“Will the ice hold us?” she said into his ear as the front wheel of the bike slowly rolled onto it.

“This ice would hold a fleet of trucks,” he said. “You couldn’t break it if you wanted to.”

That made her feel better as he put the full weight of the bike onto the ice. A moment later and they were climbing up the far bank. They continued along the track for another mile or two till Rose saw some lights through the trees up ahead.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Chazel,” Josh said back to her but she didn’t hear him.

“What?”

“It’s called Chazel. It’s a hunting community. I’ve got some friends here who’ll put us up for the night.”

“Who are they?”

Josh laughed. “Brigands, I guess you’d call them.”

Rose laughed too but she was a little nervous. What were brigands doing up here in this forlorn wilderness?

*

J
OSH PULLED THE BIKE UP
outside a crude, wooden hut. Rose could see some warm light coming from inside and she longed to go inside to it. The racing suit was good at keeping out the cold but at this temperature nothing stayed warm for long. It had been over four hours since they’d left the Cat and she needed to warm up.

“Are we going in there?” she said to Josh.

“I hope so,” he said.

He got off the bike. Rose watched him from her seat.

“Jac,” Josh called out. “You in there, you old bastard?”

Josh went up to the door of the hut and banged on it like a bill collector. “Jac, Jac,” he called.

The door swung opened and Rose almost fell off the back of the bike when she saw the man who opened it. He could not have looked more like a bear if he’d been wearing a bearskin. He must have been almost seven feet tall, with dark, weather-beaten skin and a coarse, rough beard. His hair was black and bushy and he was wearing a checkered shirt and blue overalls strapped over his shoulders.

“What the hell is going on out here?” he shouted in a mixture of Quebecois and English that Rose could hardly understand.

When he saw Josh his face changed from surprise to what looked to Rose like pure rage. That couldn’t be right. She must have imagined it. But then, Josh stopped in his tracks. He held up his hands.

“Wait, Jac, I can explain everything.”

Jac reached up above the door frame and pulled down an old shotgun that looked like it might have been an original French musket.

“Jac,” Josh said, backing away. “Wait. It wasn’t what you think.”

Rose gasped in shock as the ground in front of Josh exploded. Jac had let off a shot from the musket.

“Jac,” Josh said. “You’ve got it all wrong. Believe me.”

Jac was reloading the gun. Josh saw his chance and ran at him. A moment later he was on him. Josh hit Jac like a football player rushing a brick wall. Jac must have weighed close to three hundred pounds and the majority of that bulk was pure muscle. Josh put a foot against the doorframe and pushed himself forward. Jac took a step backward and lost his balance. They were on the ground, struggling like a dog fighting a bear when Rose let off a shot of her own.

They stopped what they were doing and looked up at her. She was standing in the doorway, Serge’s handgun pointed at the two of them.

“You two can keep doing what you’re doing but I’ll shoot again and I might not miss next time,” she said.

They looked up at her, both of them with their hands raised in front of them as if that might protect them from a bullet. She made a motion with the gun like she might fire it again and they both cringed.

She looked at Josh. “I thought you said he’d help us.”

Jac looked up at her and she could see that despite his appearance there was a real kindness in his face.

She looked back at him.

“We need your help,” she said.

Jac sighed. “You, maybe I’ll help. That son of a bitch is on his own.”

*

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR
Rose to find out why Jac was so angry with Josh. It turned out they went back quite a long ways. Jac used to live in Montreal and as was custom for the men of his ilk, it didn’t take him long to get in trouble with the law. He wasn’t a bad man, he was just used to living as he pleased, free of the shackles of modern society. That didn’t go down so well in the city and for a time he found himself sharing a cell with Josh in Bordeaux.

As cell mates they quickly became good friends. They didn’t have a whole lot in common but then, Jac didn’t have much in common with anyone and Josh was the only inmate in the entire place who seemed to have even the slightest interest in getting to know him.

It turned out that when Josh was getting out, Jac had asked him to do a favor for him. Rose had laughed when she heard the story but she didn’t exactly like it.

“There was this girl, a dancer, that I knew on the outside,” Jac told her. “I knew she was having trouble with her pimp and I wanted to help her out so I told Josh where’d I’d stashed all my money. There must have been about five grand there, stuck beneath the floorboards of this cheap apartment in the old quarter.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Rose said.

“It’s a lot for me,” Jac said. “So I told Josh exactly where to find it. Then I gave him the name of this girl, the dancer, who was very close to my heart, I must say.”

“I think I can see where this is going,” Rose said.

“It’s not the way he’s making it sound,” Josh said. “He never told me he had feelings for the girl. All he said was that he wanted to help her out. He wanted her to get that money and I made sure she did.”

“I have to spell everything out for you, now?” Jac said to Josh. “I have to tell you exactly what I feel about every stripper in Montreal?”

“I’m just saying, I did what you asked me to do?”

Rose looked at Josh. She’d only just met him but already she felt possessive, even a little jealous. She did not like where this story was going and she didn’t really want to hear any more of it. Obviously she knew that Josh must have been with other girls before, but he’d come to rescue her and she felt that gave her some sort of claim over him. She didn’t want to hear about every other woman he’d ever been with. Not if she didn’t have to.

“He took her from the club, took her to Quebec City, and in the space of about two weeks the two of them had blown through my five grand.”

“I gave her every penny of that money,” Josh said, his hands in the air like he was surrendering something. “I did what you asked. It’s not my fault how she chose to spend it.”

“Not your fault? Not your fault?” Jac said.

Rose didn’t want to have to break up another fight.

“Enough,” she said. “I think we can all agree that Josh acted improperly in that matter.” She looked at him and even the thought of him with that girl made her mad. “He acted like a complete pig.”

“Hey!” Josh said.

“He acted like a pig, he couldn’t be trusted to keep it in his pants, and he hurt you in the process,” she said.

“Come on,” Josh protested. “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

But Jac was nodding in agreement at everything she said.

“I think you owe this man an apology,” Rose said.