Read Rage's Story (Vanish Book 1) for Free Online Page B

cell phone. I wonder for a moment, why. Then I remember I’ve got more to be nervous about.
    I eye the spot across the street where I stashed my bike. It’s still there, I can see the black through the greenery, it’s untouched. I can’t reach it, though. They’ll spot me, question me. Drifter trying to sneak his hidden bike out to drive off, number one suspect. I’ll have to leave it, hope they don’t find it, and take off in the night.
    That leaves the day. A good twelve hours to kill before it gets dark. I turn around and march back towards the center of town, deeper into the valley, but not so far I reach its affluent core. I know better than to show myself there, scruffy stranger among legging joggers, lawn mowing fathers, and noisy playgrounds. It’s a life I never knew, not that I came up poor white. Father and father’s father, all from the outskirts of society. Going back to the first generation in America, we’ve all been outlaws, it’s in my blood. I’ve seen poor days and rich ones, so I don’t pity and and I don’t pine, money was always a fluid thing. It’s freedom we sought to idolize, and made perverse. What a transient thing, certainty. It provides faith and belief, lasting long after the creed grows meaningless. The MC is a story of disillusionment, beginning to end, but trading one fool’s assumption for another, like federalism for anarchy, presumptive structures collapsing beneath the weight of the real people they forget. Leaving open vacuums of power for the opportunists of the world to fill and crown themselves. Mike. Mike was nothing but that, a drug running, violent thug of a pimp who led with fear instead of respect.
    I’ll admit, I don’t have the answers, I don’t know the right way to live. Maybe Auna was right, maybe I need to run. Motion might be the only sensible way to survive.
    But as I sit in a shitty diner for six hours, buying round after round of coffee and fries, motion is barred from me. Waiting, still, is my only option. The manager doesn’t seem to mind. Another old man minding his own, like the motel owner, keeping their heads down. He’s probably afraid of me. I don’t want to scare anyone anymore, but I don’t reach out to change his mind, either. It serves me to let him keep quiet.
    In the silence of the diner, I hear a rumble growing outside. Devil’s Right Hands. They’re on the move again. How long are they going to stay here? If they’ve seen Richie, they have to assume I’ve run off. It can’t be for me.
    I slink down into the linoleum booth as they pass. Just two, they race by, black bikes burning rubber across the asphalt in front of the little diner on their way into town. The old man shakes his head watching them pass. They’re not in my line of sight for long, but long enough to recognize the rider in the lead.
    He’s here. Evin. The VP of Devil’s Right Hands. Mike’s son. In the flash of a second that I see him, I make out a scowling expression, greeting the rushing air with a fiery aggression that holds his arms up and out, flexing. Loss has made him furious. I’d hoped it would cripple.
    I can’t stay here any longer. Leaving is now imperative. I throw the cash for the bill on the table and head for the door, where I get a whiff of her on the gusting wind, a blast of the cold carrying the memory of the previous night and it all comes rushing back, her touch, her taste, her brown eyes. My heart aches. I wonder what she’s doing now, surely hours after she’s woken to find I’ve left without a word.
    I have to see her.
    No.
    I literally clench my jaw from the chest pain that onsets from the refusal. Jesus, it physically hurts to think of not saying goodbye. Alright. I’ll go to her apartment, catch her before her shift if she works, and say…
    ...it still doesn’t come to me, the words of finality, when I reach the building, eclipsing the descending sun, outlining the brick structure with a pink hue. I hear the first crickets as