Free Roll Me Away: A Smokey's Roadhouse Novel by Jessa Jacobs Page A

first would be the race across to Rawlins, a longer trip than I’d ever made on a motorcycle before. It was surreal – a dream I never knew I dreamed – but I was pumped.
    The smart thing to do would be to blend in with the crowds and try to ignore what I’d be doing in a few hours. I needed to be calm and smart about it. The crowds were noisier than they’d been before noon, so I knew the drinking had commenced.
    When Sarge cut me loose, I took a minute to orient myself in the little town, and then headed toward Downshift. I expected to see some brothers there. I also wanted to hook up with Jake and his crew, and find out if they were working in tandem or every man for himself.
    I found Gears and Snail outside on the patio munching on pretzels with a pitcher between them.
    “Hey.”
    “Hey, prospect. What’s your name again?” Gears asked.
    I took a split second to decide whether this was a taunt that deserved a smart-ass answer, or whether he was just drunk already.
    “Dunno. What’s yours?”
    The two of them busted up. “Have a beer, man,” Gears answered. “There’s a bitch around here somewhere. Have her get you a mug.”
    The bitch in question was right behind him, in fact. She sneered at the back of his head and then smiled at me when I winked.
    “What can I get you, honey?”
    “Just a mug. These losers offered to share,” I answered.
    “I’ll bring you a cold one and fill it fresh,” she said. “This is piss-warm.”
    As she walked off, I told Gears he hadn’t made a friend.
    “Ah, fuck it. If I wanted her to, she’d be sucking my dick before nightfall,” he bragged. Yep, he was drunk.
    “So, what’s the plan, you guys? We doing this in pairs, or on our own, or what?”
    “Doing what?” they chorused.
    That wasn’t going to catch me. I kept my mouth shut.
    Snail glanced around, and seeing we weren’t in anyone’s range, leaned forward and stage-whispered. “Don’t wait for no one. You see something, go for it.”
    Good news for me. These guys were going to be sloppy drunk by the time the easy pickings started. I didn’t want to be within three miles of them, much less in sight. I couldn’t figure why the five rebels were the cream of this club’s crop, or so they seemed to think. They were careless, and that wasn’t something I wanted to be around.
    I nursed my beer and shot the shit with the guys who, despite being careless and not what I wanted for partners in crime, were pretty funny. Maybe an hour after I got there, Hoss showed up. Gears asked him about the others.
    “Pug snagged one last night. He’s probably on his way back by now. Haven’t seen Jake.”
    After we compared notes, it turned out I was the last to see Jake, when he dumped the girl on me. “I saw him, around midnight. As far as I know, he went back to his room. Wait, wasn’t he at church?”
    We racked our brains. It was strange no one had remarked on his absence, but then, Pug had been absent, too. We knew where he’d been. We finally came to the conclusion that Jake had, in fact, not been at the meeting.
    “What was he doing when you saw him, Zach?” This, from Gears, gave me a clue I was on the verge of being accepted. He’d called me by name.
    “Uh, he asked me to escort a young lady home,” I finally answered. It seemed the safest thing to say.
    The others broke out in guffaws. “Escort… ha, ha, didn’t want to keep her, huh?” They pressed me for details, but I just shook my head. Let Jake tell the story if he wanted it known. I knew when to keep my mouth shut.
    In a coincidence I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it, just then I spotted the young lady in question, approaching from the inner bar behind Gears. I looked at my watch. Three p.m., right on time. This girl had it bad. Unfortunately, Jake wasn’t here as I’d suggested, and now I needed to make her understand why he wasn’t, without knowing the truth of it myself. I sure couldn’t tell her he was on his way back to